Сергей Гладков – The Human Being as a Multilevel System (страница 4)

This objection is important. It shows why the familiar picture is so stable. Even when a person says, "I am arguing with myself," he still says "I". Even when he says, "I do not understand myself," he still assumes some connection between the lack of understanding and himself. Even when he says, "I was not myself," he says this on behalf of the one who restores coherence to himself.

But from the fact that experience gathers into the form "with me", it does not follow that inside there is a separate unchanging essence that stands behind everything that happens.

Perhaps "with me" is not a pointer to a hidden owner, but a form of maintaining coherence.

For now this is only a possibility. Not yet a conclusion. Not yet the central formula. It is too early.

At this stage, it is enough to see this: the familiar model of the inner center does not explain everything. It describes the feeling of unity well, but it explains inner mismatch, automatic actions, contradiction between knowledge and reaction, change of personality over time, and dependence of behavior on relationships less well.

Doubt does not destroy the picture.

It turns it into a question.

What Exactly Begins to Doubt

The doubt discussed here is not the same as lack of self-confidence.

This must be separated at once. A person may doubt himself before an exam, before a conversation, before choosing a profession, before beginning a relationship. Such doubt is connected with an estimate of strength: can I manage, am I acting rightly, do I understand the situation well enough? But this chapter is about something else.

Here doubt is directed not at a person's ability, but at the picture of the human being.

The one who doubts is not the one who says, "I am weak."

The one who doubts is the one who begins to ask: "why do I imagine myself as one center at all, if my experience so often shows mismatches between intention, reaction, memory, body, language, and relationships?"

This doubt does not humiliate the human being. On the contrary, it may be more respectful than too simple a confidence. When we say to a person, "just get hold of yourself," we sometimes address a simplicity that does not exist. We assume that inside there is already a ready-made controlling center, which only needs to press the lever harder. But if the human being is arranged in a more complex way, such a phrase does not help us understand what is happening. It only adds guilt.

A more exact question sounds different:

what exactly failed to cohere?

which level of experience holds the old reaction?

which memory continues to act?

which meaning has come under threat?

which connection with other people supports the old way of behaving?

which attention returns again and again to the same place?

For now these questions are not yet a model. But they change the direction of thought. Instead of searching for a guilty center, there appears an attempt to see the structure of the mismatch.

And this is already another way of relating to the human being.

Not softer in the sense of indulgence.

But more exact.

Three Inner Conflicts

The first conflict can be called the conflict of safety and change.

A person says, "I want a new life." He may be sincere. He is tired of the old work, old relationships, the old way of staying silent or agreeing. He sees that the former form of life narrows him. But as soon as the possibility of real change appears, another line turns on: do not touch it, do not risk, stay with the known. The old may be heavy, but it is familiar. The new may be better, but it has not yet been stabilized.

If we look at the human being as a simple center of decisions, this conflict looks like weakness. You decided, so do it. But if we look more carefully, we see this: one part of experience holds the image of the future, another holds safety. Both have meaning. Both protect some form of coherence. The problem is not that one is "real" and the other "gets in the way." The problem is that they are not coherent with one another.

The second conflict can be called the conflict of truth and belonging.

A person wants to say what he really thinks. But he knows: the truth may change the relationship. He may not be understood, may be rejected, blamed, or no longer considered convenient. Then he chooses silence or a half-truth. Later he is angry with himself for weakness. But inside this silence there may be not only fear. There may be an old memory that connection was preserved at the price of yielding. There may be experience in which honesty led to a loss of warmth. There may be the language of a family where a direct word was treated as an attack.

Here again it is not enough to say, "he simply did not dare." We need to ask what coherence the silence was holding. Sometimes a person is silent not because he has no center, but because several ways of being himself require incompatible actions.

The third conflict can be called the conflict of the image of oneself and the living reaction.

A person considers himself kind, calm, reasonable. This image matters to him. He has built it for years. But suddenly envy, irritation, rudeness, a wish to punish, or a wish to disappear from contact rises in him. He does not want to recognize these reactions as his own, because they disturb the image. Then he either suppresses them, justifies them, or projects them onto the other person: it is not that I am angry, it is that you drove me to it.

But a reaction that a person does not include in the image of himself does not disappear. It may return by indirect routes: sarcasm, tiredness, coldness, sudden outbursts. So another doubt appears: perhaps the familiar "I" is not the whole human being, but only a more coherent, more acceptable part of his experience?

And again it is important not to draw the conclusion too quickly. The point is not that the "real" is hidden in dark reactions. That would only be another romantic mistake. The point is that the human being is wider than his image of himself. This means that the image of oneself cannot be the final center of explanation.

A Small Historical Example

Sometimes something similar happens not only with a person, but also with whole pictures of the world.

For a long time it was natural for people to think that the Earth was motionless and everything else moved around it. This matched immediate feeling. The ground under one's feet does not go away. The sun rises and sets. The sky moves. Everyday experience seemed to confirm what was obvious.

But gradually mismatches accumulated.

Some movements of the planets looked strange. To preserve the old picture, it became necessary to add more and more complex explanations. The obviousness itself did not disappear at once. A person still saw the sun pass across the sky. But it became possible to ask: perhaps what seems to be a direct description of reality is an effect of our position inside the system?

This example is not needed for a direct comparison between the human being and the cosmos. It matters more carefully: sometimes what seems most obvious turns out not to be a lie, but a perspective.

The feeling of a center may be as strong as the feeling of the motionless Earth.

But the strength of a feeling does not yet prove the structure.

It shows how the system is given from the inside.

And if we want to understand the human being, we need to distinguish two questions:

how does a person experience himself?

and

how are the processes arranged through which this experience becomes possible?

The first chapter does not answer the second question fully. It only opens it.

The First Question

Now we can return to the opening scene.

A person wanted to answer calmly, but answered harshly. After that he said, "I do not understand why I did that."

The ordinary explanation might sound like this: he simply failed to hold himself back. But what does "failed to hold himself back" mean? Who was supposed to hold back? What exactly fell out of coherence? Why did the decision made in advance not hold the action? Why, at the moment of the conversation, did another reaction turn out to be stronger?

One can say: emotions defeated reason.

Sometimes this is a useful description. But it too is too rough. Emotions are not an external force that attacks a person from the outside. Reason is also not a separate ruler sitting above them. And if we simply replace one inner manager with another, the problem remains.

One can say: the person has weak will.

Sometimes this explains part of the situation. But not all of it. A person may show enormous will in one area and be almost helpless in another. He may endure great external difficulties, but break down again and again in one type of relationship. He may be disciplined at work and chaotic in closeness. This means it is not only a matter of the general amount of will.

One can say: a habit worked.

This too is true in many cases. But habit is not a final explanation. It itself requires a question: why did this way of acting become fixed? What did it once stabilize? What anxiety did it reduce? What coherence did it hold? Why could the new attitude not replace the old one at once?