The self and the Other

In David Abram’s book The Spell of the Sensuous, he talks extensively about the idea that perception isn’t something we “do” to other things, but rather a mutual comingling of reality. I believe that this is an important part of understanding the place of humanity in existence as a whole.

Human’s have a knack for categorizing things in a way that’s as useful as possible – if the term works for what you’re trying to describe, then you’ll keep using it, in our case the idea of “self” and “other”. It isn’t useful to ignore that distinction, because to a certain extent it’s true – we can only ever (for now) experience our own sensations, and thus it makes sense to treat ourselves as a sort of container, blocked off from the rest of the world and designed to perceive and manipulate the other.

Abram’s challenges this assertion by removing our idea of causality from the equation. We often think of ourselves as free agents, deciding to do what we do based on what our brain “tells us” to do – the “cause” is our perception, the “effect” our interaction with that thing - but this ignores the fact that other objects and organisms provide a metaphysical “cause” within themselves. We’re drawn to things because of the roles we’ve prescribed them, and those roles take on form within the object in question. We decided that certain molecule-clouds are “chairs” and that they’re meant for sitting. Now whenever you see that cloud of molecules, it is imparting on you the weight of that presupposition – it is drawing you in with the promise of sitting.

As we come into contact with the world around us, we create these distinctions and connections which then go on to influence us just as we influence them. In this way, what is seen as “magic” may be just that, a connection we’ve made with an emotion or experience that now imparts on us a sensation beyond any other explanation.