A question on psychology/philosophy

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

The self is social.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

To clarify my position a bit more and to somewhat rise to Antonio's defense, there are obviously aspects of the human... "self" that can not be attributed purely to social circumstances. We can write this off as genetics, the soul, essence, what have you. I think we can find evidence that there is a "human something" there beneath the layers of socialization in the way that certain events may be universally traumatic; in that same way we can probably assert that there is a tangible true evil somewhere. None of this means that most aspects of what "we" are aren't emergent from environment and surroundings.

I would like somewhat to use myself as an example. Early on, as a child, I was drawn to comic books and illustration. Did one flow from the other? I didn't come from a very drawing-oriented family, nor was I raised with that sort of entertainment as my parents did not have comic books lying around the house (nor did they own any). Did both flow from being overly imaginative? If so, to what can we attribute that? No idea. That said, in terms of my biases, my political orientation, my career preferences, and aspects of my "moral character", I'd like to think I'm self conscious enough to be able to trace a lot of those to aspects of my upbringing and socialization. And I believe that which keeps a person "morally aligned" is going to stem a lot from social circumstances--this is not just muh Marxist "superstructure", but also the cognitive pathways and moral incentive structures forged over decades that lead to certain ethical aspirations, certain senses of limitations, certain people or forces one does not want to "let down", and so on. As such, I don't think we can isolate the human being (as an entire concept) from social circumstance to find some sort of "moral essence" that is particularly instructive as to how we view the entire race. There will assuredly always be "problem children" that defy all attempts at discipline, but these are by definition exceptions. And while we can say that the norm of human social control is itself defined by material and biological realities, I think the whole breadth of human history demonstrates these can be quite varied.

Most depraved and altruistic behavior in feral situations can probably be attributed to a sort of benign self interest which is itself fairly amoral. This is why I say that the self is social.