The self and the perception of self...

[fajrdrako]

Browsing for something else, I found an line in someone's LJ profile that made me pause. A piece of wisdom I ran across in someone else's userinfo: I am not my LJ, and my friends are not my flist.

This doesn't sound wise. This sounds to me sort of... unfriendly.

Now, the first part is, on the face of it, self-evident. There's more to anyone than a journal or blog or any bunch of letters or electrons. But if there is nothing in the journal that is them, isn't it - well, 'pointless' would be kindest word I can think for it; 'dishonest' would be another word. The truth is that no one sees the whole of a person, even oneself: we all see bits and pieces of others, sometimes face to face, sometimes in magazines or books or television, sometimes in electronic journals. One venue may reveal more than others, but there aren't degrees of reality. Why do people think the world online is not real?

Maybe it's the 'maya' thing: the yoga doctrine that the physical world is illusory. People are trained not to know what is real.

As for the second part, does it mean "I don't want my real friends to read this", and "I don't feel friendly towards the people who are here"? That sounds sort of rude to me, but I can't think of another way to interpret it.

Just for the record: I do think of the people here as friends, even when I don't know them. And the voice by which I speak here is as much "me" as any other interaction.

Comments

[sraun]

I see them being mirrored "are not all" statements. Let's see if I can rephrase it:

All that I am is not on my LJ, and all of my friends are not on my FL.

Or alternatively:

I am more than my LJ, and I have more friends than are on my FL.

[fajrdrako]

That's a nicer way to put it - your rephrasing makes it sound much less elitist. But I'm not sure, then, why the person felt it necessary to say it. No one would say it, for example, being introduced to a stranger in a face-to-face meeting.