Culture and the Socially Constructed Self
Author: Ken Homer Issue: 2023-01-18
Culture and the Socially Constructed Self
by Ken Homer
I spend a lot of time thinking about self-organizing, language, being, structural coupling, and social construction - especially the social construction of various aspects of self. When I think of self-organizing, I think of it in integral terms:
- self-as-body (somatic self)
- self-as-mind (conceptual self)
- self-as-culture (social/relational self)
- self-as-world (ecological self)
For many years I always thought that “the world” and “the planet” were one and the same, but more recently I have come to understand that while related, they each describe something quite different. We (human beings) do not have much direct access to “the planet.” Instead, there are multiple layers of interpretation between our physical being and “the planet.” These layers combine with our physical senses, with what our family of origin teaches us is acceptable / unacceptable, plus larger cultural influences which give us a highly intermediated and selective / subjective experience of “the planet” which then constitutes “our world.”
In the last Plex, I submitted a graphic of five intertwingled spheres that make up our experience. For this issue I am adding another graphic that shows more detail on these spheres. As always, these are just lenses for looking at experience and they are works in progress. I welcome your thoughts and feedback.
[Image not included in the current archive. Images may be included in the future.]
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