The Unseen Value to “Know Yourself”

Hello and welcome to rewilding philosophy - your letters for ^ekophilosophical health in a collapsing world.

Socrates said, “Know thyself.” This philosophical maxim was inscribed upon the Temple of Apollo in the ancient Greek precinct of Delphi.

“To know its Self is the aim of the Universe. To gain Self-knowledge. To behold its Self for what it is. That is what it has been striving to do. That is what all of this has been about. That is the telos of existence.” Brendan Graham Dempsey

“The ignorant man is not the unlearned, but he who does not know himself, and the learned man is stupid when he relies on books, on knowledge, and on authority to give him understanding. Understanding comes only through self-knowledge, which is awareness of one's total psychological process. Thus education, in the true sense, is the understanding of oneself, for it is within each one of us that the whole of existence is gathered.” Krishnamurti

We typically associate the discovery of who we are at our core, what our deepest longings and fears are, with the idea of getting to know ourselves.

We also hear ideas such as “be true to yourself, live your truth, find your passion, discover your purpose, listen to your inner voice and unlock your full potential”. Many of us have heard this alleged advice all our lives.

To do that, we obviously need to know what our truth, passion, purpose, inner voice, and potential are.

So we start searching within ourselves.

And we are on it. The self-help market has been booming for decades. It is full of advice on how we go about finding those things within ourselves.

As I have written before, self-help literature is the modern version of practicing philosophy. Yet, without the substance. Sometimes it, of course, can be helpful nonetheless. But in this case, the lack of substance is leading us into a hellhole of never-ending question marks.

Remember a while back, when you finally found yourself? When you were crystal clear on what you are here to do on this planet. When your truth not only spoke clearly to you, but you also communicated your truth clearly to others. And now, three months later, you take random jobs just to get by, and if I ask you who you are, you ask me to repeat the question because you forgot.

I have certainly been there. I don’t know how many times I have found who I was at my core, only to realize a little while later that that wasn’t me and the search began again.

Knowing ourselves and developing self-awareness and -understanding is necessary to move on in life. I think about 99% of people would benefit from improving their self-awareness, including myself.

But we have it the wrong way around.

Self-knoweldge is not going to uncover who we are, instead, it uncovers who we are not.

Self-knowledge uncovers our unconscious habits and patterns that make us respond in ways that we don’t intend to. Those habits and patterns were developed by otherness, usually in our childhood. They are responses we learned through other people, our culture, landscapes, histories, beings, and times.

When we grow up, those habits and patterns may not be in our best interest. The inner distance we built to protect us from neglectful parents now keeps us from deep connections. Not standing up for ourselves prevented us from getting laughed at in elementary school and now keeps us from expressing ideas at work.

It’s not that the patterns are bad per se, but it’s when they run on autopilot and we apply them to situations in our lives where they are inappropriate and out of age, that they become a problem. Therapy is often about becoming aware of and breaking those patterns.

Knowing ourselves helps us do all that - it helps us to let go of who we are not (anymore).

The idea that we will find something inside ourselves, though, is a different story.

To find something implies that there is a stable, discoverable self within each of us—a core identity to be unearthed through introspection and reflection.

Many argue that such a part within ourselves exists, that there is a core identity or a soul that came here for a specific purpose. I am not saying that this is necessarily untrue. My lived experience, though, is that searching for it often makes me feel worse and is also a tedious process of which I can never be sure. I will say more about this another time.

The point I want to get to here is that the self is not a static entity but a dynamic, evolving construct.

Existentialists like Satre, Heidegger, or Camus would agree. They argue that the self is not static but is continually created and defined through personal experiences and choices. A foundational idea in existentialism is that "existence precedes essence." This means that we are not born with a predetermined purpose. Instead, we must forge our own identities and meanings through our actions and choices.

We don’t discover ourselves; instead, we create ourselves.

In a world in which we are suffused with otherness, the way we create ourselves can be conscious or unconscious, it can be intentional or unintentional.

I am not siding with the existentialists. As Lou Marinoff says, existentialism is a phase-

“something you go through but get past. The most successful existentialists recovered a secular sense of meaning and duty from the ashes of a world formerly understood to be created and designed by a superior force. Existentialism asks, “Without God, without a grand design, what should we do?” Just following their path all the way to that end can restore your sense of purpose. As long as you’re working with the assumption that there is a right thing to do, your purpose becomes to discover and do the right thing.”

Otherness is always there. Our creations of ourselves will never be without otherness, therefore, a telos (a particular purpose or final end) cannot be found within is always already present. At the same time, the only way we re-create ourselves is through breaking some of those patterns and habits that we discover through knowing ourselves, which is knowing what we are not.

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Feeling like you learned something? Or maybe you were mildly entertained? Share this newsletter with a friend who’s also grappling with getting to know themselves. After all, we are all better with a little company. Stay curious!