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Self.

Publication: ETC.: A Review of General Semantics
Publication Date: 01-APR-08
Format: Online
Delivery: Immediate Online Access
Full Article Title: Self.(Poem)

Article Excerpt
WITH WHOM DO YOU SPEAK when you talk to yourself? A spirit? An angel? Some wry little elf? A watcher? A pilot? Some brain-dwelling troll? A Zeitgeist? A psyche? Someone in control?

A tiny dictator who rules from inside? Some psychic hitch-hiker along for the ride? An organ or tissue which somehow can care? Some home-grown homunculus? Or one from "out there"?

Then wouldn't that mean that your self wasn't you, and some "other" is driving? Now who's foolin' who? There's no one inside us. No "other" at least. We're all self-contained in the brain of our beast.

And beasties we are ( .... and some beastier than most!). We're made out of matter, and not out of ghost. But somehow our concepts of self all diverge. It's 'cause our descriptions are all made of .... words.

Though words are mere labels, abstractions, and useful. With abstruse abuse they're profusely obtuseful! To end this offense and to fend off this tendency, I recommend that one end one's dependency.

Thinking in labels, omitting the functions, we all run the risk of our hidden assumptions. The logic's illusive, but try this for size: A word may not mean what its "meaning" implies.

A noun, for example, is sort of a short-cut. One thinks it's the thing it purports to purport, but, that's all in our heads. For it's we who've supplied all the means for its meaning from deep down inside.

All by itself that ol' noun don't mean beans! It's what we bring to it that means what it...

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