The Emergence of Conscience and Self

{Note: Because this blog is subtitled “The Economics of ‘We’ and ‘I’”/[1], I’m devoting my next posts to examining the “We” within the “I” of human consciousness and identity. To do so I must talk about the emergence of conscience :: what I refer to as our ‘together knowing, knowing together’ :: a word that stems from the Latin words con scientia (con = together; scientia from scient = to know). What I describe below is my shift from ‘Me-being’ into ‘Self-being’ :: an event I remember, unlike you :: a transformational shift that underlies and is the bedrock for our non-biological human identity. This form-shift into Self-being from Me-being altered what I knew, how I knew, and how I knew I knew.}

[If you, my reader, are bemused at this point, let me simply say that this discussion of conscience is neither tangential to economics nor to our understanding our primacy as economic agents. Rather, it is vital. For, without understanding how selfhood predicates upon personhood, we cannot start to make sense of the term ‘self-interest’ at personal or any other levels; and, our misunderstanding of this undermines and threatens our species and our planet. It is, in short, crucial to our welfare and our future that we begin to understand what our being human--beyond mere biology—entails.]}



The Emergence of Conscience and Self



I must begin with a history of conscience: mine, and when and how it sputtered into existence.

The when is simple. I was six then, plus or minus a couple of weeks. And I recall the events of that day because I told myself to. I did that because I’d never experienced anything like these events before. They lay entirely outside the pattern of my thought prior to the emergence of my conscience. Indeed, it was the shocking break, this aberration, in that prior pattern which fixed my attention to the fact that something new-to-me was taking place.

My conscience started with a sputter--with me hearing ‘me’ mentally say, “Maurice is being bad!”

It’s important to note that it didn’t start up with an intralogue :: one of those curious conversations within us that heralds conscience speaking its mind (or so it seems). Nor did it start up as (or in) an awkward contretemps, a clash or struggle within me.

It started simply with my waking up to the sound of Maurice yelling at his mother, prompting the startling notion “Maurice is being bad!”

Yes, startling!

... because, first, I’d never ‘heard’ me say anything like that before. And second, because, well, if you’d spent your entire life as a circle and one day woke up as an ellipse, then you too would be startled/[2]. Your centre would not hold and what you encompassed would have changed.

So, startling!

That interior exclamation :: Maurice is being bad! :: marked in hindsight that I’d lost my me-centricity — so, of course my centre no longer held. The late philosopher, Marjorie Grene, once wrote about life forms that they were living centres of activity: being bodies, having bodies, and acting out of their bodies. Such is bio-centricity. My me-centricity, in contrast, was an ‘Isness’ of Me, simultaneously being what ‘me’ was and what ‘me’ always acted out of.

At this startlement, my Isness had not yet encountered my Oughtness/[3]. That was to happen shortly, but it had not yet happened. Hence, I had as yet no outside reference for ‘bad’.



[Next post will be: My Isness encounters my Oughtness.]



[1] I am deeply indebted to Richard Ostrofsky :: http://www.secthoughts.com/main_menu.htm :: who suggested this subtitle in a casual conversation we had. He encouraged me not merely with the subtitle but with his possibly errant view that perhaps I had something worth saying.

[2] Unlike a circle with a single focus or centre, an ellipse has dual foci. Whereas the orbit of a circle is circumscribed by the end point of a radius extended from its single centre, the orbit of an ellipse is circumscribed by conjoint radii extended from two foci. In either case, R, the radius of a circle (or the sum of the two radii of an ellipse) is a constant. If you are uncertain what an ellipse is goto: http://www.qrg.northwestern.edu/projects/vss/docs/space-environment/2-how-ellipse-is-different.html; and, to draw one with a string and some pencils, goto: http://www.mathopenref.com/constellipse1.html]

[3] These terms were first used by Martin Luther King,Jr. in his Nobel Acceptance speech wherein he said, “… I refuse to accept the idea that the “isness” of man’s present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal “oughtness” that forever confronts him. I refuse to accept the idea that man is…unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him…” See his speech at http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1964/king-acceptance.html Though I will use these terms somewhat differently from him, there is no question that our fundamental co-consciousness of ourselves which constitutes the Self does, in fact, revolve about such foci.