The phrase 'I'm enjoying myself' certainly sounds different from 'I'm having a good time' - listen closely and the latter is about circumstance, while the former has something to do with addressing oneself to it. What's great about 'enjoying oneself' is that the key to doing more of it lies in the very phrase: lasting pleasure and deep fulfillment seem to spring from acting at the limits of your abilities, in a state of total commitment-to-circumstance that rests far below conscious 'awareness.' To truly enjoy yourself you must become unself-conscious, taking pleasure in what you do without dwelling on your self-image, which after all pertains to nothing but your own perceived inadequacies, fantasies, personal myth-history, etc.
Your self-image isn't a positive part of you, as I see it; it opposes action. Why? Because the last thing you want to do is lose your image of your self, find that you've been living out of step with your actual relationship to the world.
So you try to remake the world as what you think it's supposed to be in relation to your fantasy self-image.
Which sometimes fucks everyone up, starting with you but by no means ending there. Maybe you discover electricity along the way, or paint a chapel, or marry the right person (or just someone else), or send your kids to a school where they happen to be happy/sad/lucky/coddled/alone. Most likely you find that the world in your head isn't the world, and you begin to tear things up.
Sounds hopeless. OK, so modify it a little. (I'm carried away anyway.) What keeps us sane is: differentials. Change. As long as we think we're changing the right way we can settle down, live at peace, enjoy ourselves. Which is to say we can love what we are only if we see it as the result of doing right. You have to trust the process that is your self before you can quiet down and notice the world.
'Having a good time' is just about time. 'Enjoying yourself' is about action - getting out of your own way and letting yourself adapt naturally to your circumstances, which is what all the other animals do since they don't have to abstract everything around them to keep from getting [fired/abandoned/ridiculed/sued/shot/etc.].
I believe in the pleasures of incoherence and of fluid form, and I'm able to love things more honestly when I can move with them. I don't always more skillfully or beautifully but I find a line eventually, and can curve with it as the time demands. It's bedtime, doctor's appointment in the morning, work to be done, I'm behind schedule maybe already, the phone needs charging, there are so many ideas to get rid of. How swell is that gonna be.
We effectively are evolution in motion...our consciousness adapts and changes rapidly as does our environment. We evolve in our conscious space just to keep up. Just like you say, complacency just doesn't work, we have to deal with the incoherence and fluidity of (our) reality (that's debatable too!)I love thinking of consciousness like the external world at high speed. Natural selection as we see it around us seems to be a slowed down version of our plastic minds. The stresses that drive evolution work on living things as a whole, so why not our minds?
This is the first I've seen of your site Wax, I'm a phishthoughts daily lurker and happened to stumble across this after the consciousness talk today. I've been following David Chalmers works for a few years and study neuropsych/endocrinology and religion. I'm always on the prowl for talk of consciousness and neurological correlates. Your limbic/neocortex comments today made my ears perk up and I had to check out your site! I've got some good ideas relating to live music, light shows, and synesthesia that I would love to run by another music fanatic, but more to come tomorrow...
Posted by: AintNoTele | 01 July 2009 at 11:03 PM
We effectively are evolution in motion...our consciousness adapts and changes rapidly as does our environment.
Posted by: darkfall gold | 08 July 2009 at 03:46 AM