The self is bound to others and the world, not separate or controllable

Evidence

What’s especially tragic about a mind that imagines itself as something separate, defensible, and capable of “efficiency” is not just that it results in a probably very boring (and bored) person; it’s that it’s based on a complete fallacy about the constitution of the self as something separate from others and from the world. Although I can understand it as the logical outcome of a very human craving for stability and categories, I also see this desire as, ironically, the intersection of many forces inside and outside this imagined “self”: fear of change, capitalist ideas of time and value, and an inability to accept mortality. It’s also about control, since if we recognize that what we experience as the self is completely bound to others, determined not by essential qualities but by relationships, then we must further relinquish the ideas of a controllable identity and of a neutral, apolitical existence (the mythology that attends gentrification). But whether we are the fluid product of our interactions with others is not our choice to make. The only choice is whether to recognize this reality or not. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 477

Categorization

• XREF: This connects to the reader’s existing interest in Odell’s framing — the relational, constituted self is the ground for her claim that attention constitutes a world; also resonates with Buddhist/relational views of self and the breakdown of the possessive-individualist subject in feminist theory. — connects to: Writing itself can be an act of reciprocity toward the world — Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom,…, 531; Human existence is defined by exposure to the world, not retreat into the self — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 160; Being is self-sufficient and rejects interaction, unlike every question. — Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, 812 (+1 more)