The Japanese have no word for
“self.” In fact, no society whose written language is ideographic as opposed to
phonetic has a word for “self” in the Western sense of the word.
“How can that be,” you ask.
Western minds parse reality in bits and pieces, like the words in this sentence can be parsed in letters, syllables and parts of speech. Eastern minds see everything all of a piece. Speakers of ideographic languages have no word for “self” because unlike in Western cultures, self cannot be grasped as an independent concept.
To Eastern mind, self is like the facet of a diamond: it cannot be removed from its host.
Carl Jung’s concept of self bears similarities to the Eastern concept of self. He believed that each self – yours, mine and everyone else’s – is connected not only to all other selves alive, but also to all other selves that ever lived. He referred to this connection as “the collective unconscious.”
Western egos for the most part give Jung’s conception of the total self little attention. In fact, it sounds to fanciful for most people to buy into. A bit to New Agey, if you will.
But I’m solidly convinced that the Eastern concept of self along, with the Jungian version, is reality. And speaking of reality, the emergence of reality marketing, as pioneered by Dove personal products, reflects the middle aging of the collective unconscious.
Take a look at the four seasons of life in the adjacent chart (click on to enlarge). You will see that the narrative theme in
life during Fall – the middle years of life – is reality. The fantasy themes of
Spring have gone poof! like a ripened dandelion blossom. The romantic, heroic
themes of Summer that spawn idealized images of life have been grown barren.
Now -- in the Fall of life – comes the
wake up call of Reality – as in real.
Teens talk about being real but we all know they live in a world of fantasy. Young adults often claim,“I don’t play games; I just say things as I see them,” but they unrelentingly play games and mask feelings. This is a necessary vice in summer. It's motivated by the need to projectenough appeal to land intimate partners and impress “old timers” at the office that one is on the ball, and destined to rise far.
Playing games and effecting artifice is a necessary part of being young and is the source of narcissistic values and behavior. It’s all about becoming someone. But comes Fall, the time arrives for self-centered narcissistic values in ones life to dissolve. Displacing them are other-centered values – what Erik Erikson termed generativity values. In the Summer of life we bring forth the next generation; in the Fall of life we nurture its members and prepare them for seasoned adult roles.
It is this shift from self-centeredness to others-centeredness that accounts for the “surprising” decline in the infamous selfish of boomers. For sometime we’ve heard that boomers – the Me generation – would remain as self-absorbed as ever as they moved into old age. That is proving wrong (generally speaking). It is from this shift in life focus that reality marketing has drawn its first breaths – and why middle agers like London Times Journalist Janice Turner (see the last post) are growing tired of marketing messages that project unrealistic on idealizations of reality.
More....
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4 seasons of life.......good in bad and bad in good (Yin/Yang theory, capitalism imbedded with it's own seed of destruction etc.)......all these can be found in the ancient Chinese text....'The Book of Change'
Jasper John did a painting called the Four Seasons.
Posted by: nanoVinci | September 22, 2005 at 11:12 PM
Great post!
Is the chart something that you created? I love it, because it conveys so much in a single chart.
Best,
Anita
Posted by: Anita Campbell | September 23, 2005 at 12:20 AM
Anita,
Yes, I did create it. Let me know if you'd like a Power Point copy and I'll send it to you. That goes for any other reader who would like a copy. It' sharper than the one appearing here. I haven't learned how to get sharp pictures in Typepad.
DBW
Posted by: David Wolfe | September 23, 2005 at 07:43 AM
Yes please send it to me when you get a free moment. Thanks! Anita
Posted by: Anita Campbell | September 23, 2005 at 09:20 PM