"Know Thyself"
by Thrasymachus,Apr/07/2019
Arguably Socrates' most famous quote, and it mostly goes unheeded. Not always though, some people fearlessly look inside and don't lie about the sight. This leads to the loss of the Freudian (so-called) sub-conscious mind. That phenomena serves to let its owner off the hook for their behavior, so the loss of it places the agency for actions taken squarely on the acting agent. Responsibility is gained. A security blanket is lost. The Law of Conservation is observed, sort of, maybe, maybe not.
Always knowing the root of why an action is taken, rather than doing things for sub-conscious reasoning, provides a basis for a higher level of personal freedom. We then know what we do in observance of societal mores; they are seen and the agent has to decide each time to follow them or not. Even if one's behavior remains seemingly unchanged, their conscious experience of choosing their actions is radically changed.
I would be remiss not to point out that it cannot change everything a person might hope it would change. For instance, an adult who was tortured as a child might have certain behavioral responses that can be treated pharmaceutically (or dealt with differently), but seeing the source of the problem may not help as much as hoped. I think this has to do with the physical markers left in the structure of the person, PTSD has a basic physical component. Seeing it for what it is doesn't make it go away.
Morality is big bag of snakes of its own. I don't think anyone's taken it further than Spinoza did in his "Ethics." Modern philosophy treats morality either like a psychological topic - the most logical answer for the metaphysical materialist, or like it exists in a vacuum. Spinoza's "Ethics" does something entirely different, by laying out his panpsychic-pantheistic monist metaphysics, the ethics are derived automatically; if We Are All One, then our ethics become something nearer to enlightened self interest, with an expansion to the concept of self.
(I'm writing all this down just now instead of climbing the walls while waiting for someone special. She might like this, since her mind is the only properly intended audience for anything I think about.)
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Yes, knowing yourself is not enough (this part draws my attention) and it doesn't lead to changes. It’s true, we have to take responsibility and have the commitment to introduce new forms of behavior. Each time we repeat our old patterns, we just strengthen our old neural connections and we became a hostage of that pattens. And vice versa if we know something about ourselves and we would want to implement desirable patterns, step by step we can form new connections, new patterns. This time we form them by our choice. Some people might think that what was formed like their character is their self. But more often the biggest part of our character is just the result of chain bad or good events in our lives. This habits to react, to deal with conflicts just more or less stochastically formed patterns we did not choose.
Funny this, more than 10 years ago, I started implementing a new for me business model, remote work. You won't believe that for 2 years I felt guilty that I didn't go to an office every day. It is an example of how much time I needed to get rid of that social standard I had internalized.
Thanks for that long letter about your friend's treatment for PTSD.