The Other

"You look good"

We all have someone who has told us this, more or less recently: another, someone tells us that he finds us in good shape.

An Other who? We are accustomed to place the other according to certain different modes, but not so different: degrees of kinship, degrees of closeness, degrees of knowledge, degrees of importance, degrees of confidence, degrees of trust are among the most common scales.

The action that correlates to "I find you really good" also depends on the position that the Other has on our scales, action that we can place, provisionally, in a point of the continuum that unites, at the extremes, acceptance and rejection.

Now we are confident in quickly moving from the real environment (where someone tells us we look really good), to the virtual environment, where our Ego system is continually at work: all the instructions on how to deal with a configuration of the environment of that type are identified, activated and flowing with the precision and speed necessary to control the proper interaction with the Other.

Interaction that we observe, in the real environment, simply and easy flowing, matter of seconds, often of fractions of second: yet the amount of information to be elaborated is very considerable.

According to some scholars, the prevailing way of processing information of our neural system is quantum, because the serial processing, by series of data and options, would take too long, and we would not be able to "respond" so promptly and in a reasonable way in the very short time that instead, normally, we employ [1].

Among the conditions that allow this particular type of calculation, there is the grouping by plexus of data, as far as I understood: in short, to "respond" we do not take into consideration all the possibilities, we consider plexus, groupings of combinations of data and possibilities.

We are still looking for the elements that can allow us to consider the ego as a system, of the relationships that must exist between the elements of the Ego System in order to allow us to consider it a system: unfortunately we have to rely on converging clues, and, for the mandatory evidence that scientific research can provide, to wait to have tools and methods of investigation far more advanced than those available today.

Even in our common daily life there is no lacking of clues: in observing the behavior of others (and sometimes even ours), it happens quite frequently to note that the same person acts in ways so different to make us think that they are different people, as if they were gone through some sort of transformation.

Or even to find curious similarities: he speaks like his father, walks like his mother, has the laughter of his grandfather, plays like his new professor, as her new friend.

Scientific research prohibits the use of introspection, of self-observation, and rightly so: yet I do not find it so illegal to suggest to jot down, among the clues, even the common experience of self-reproach, form of the flow of our conversations with ourselves, where, with greater evidence than other conditions, we can describe the virtual scene as inhabited by a part of us that reproaches another one.

Scientific research accepts, at least until today, the reliability of a diagnosis of multiple personalities: the same person, simply put, presents at times different ways of conduct that are traced back to different personalities, so different that one does not know, don't remember what the other did, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hide, to be clear.

This is generally considered a serious pathology, in our normality we are accustomed to correlate a single personality, perhaps multifaceted and variegated, to each person.

We are accustomed to consider ourselves (which is scientifically not legal, given that to do so we must resort to self-observation) and others (objects observable in the real environment, thus scientifically valid observation) as a substantial unit, not as a substantial multiplicity: we transform the observable multiplicity into facets, variegations, contiguous aspects that do not violate the principle of unity.

The systemic conception helps us to find a different way out to the flat contradiction between being one and being many: we are integrated systems, we are biological units constituted by integrated systems.

So there is no substantial difference between the "normal" personality (one and identifiable) and the multiple personality: even considering it a pathology, as the official science authorizes us to do, we can however use it to shed some light on the so-called normality.

We can conjecture that the different personalities that manifest themselves in such a glaring manner in the subjects afflicted by that pathology, personalities that function one independently of the other, alternating with the guidance of the biological unit, are the result of a more rudimentary systemic integration, so to speak, than that which seems to enjoy the majority of people.

An integration that we could describe in those cases as obtained by juxtaposition of complex elements, juxtaposed plexus of plexus-sequences of neurograms, placed next to each other, each preserving its autonomous configuration: configurations that manifest themselves in their diversity when they attempt to govern the relationship with the environment (real and virtual) configurations in which the biological unit is located, and which can only be alternate, one excluding the other sharply.

Those same complex elements, differently integrated, are what correlates with what we call normality: a more sophisticated integration, as it were, not juxtaposition, but cross-reference, connection, call in play, between configurations and between the elements that make up the configurations.

Elements that, again, are nothing but our plexus-sequences of neurograms, guiding codes of life-saving actions, hereditary and learned, developed by the biological unit in its meeting with the environments in which it lives, to which, as a system, it refers.

For our purposes, awaiting a certification of neuroscientific research, recognizing the existence and the contribution of the Ego System allows to develop strategies and solutions otherwise impossible: the first, and more importantly, is to identify a scale of placing the other otherwise inconceivable.

Basically, the other is placed in a continuum that unites the extremes of the condition of being constituted by elements completely integrated in the Ego System and the condition of being constituted by elements totally unrelated to the Ego System.

It is good to remember that the Ego System is made up of all the neurograms that govern life-saving actions:  possible example of "real" placement near the extreme of complete integration in the Ego System is the human falling in love.

The second strategy/solution allowed by recognizing the existence and contribution of the Ego System is is the possibility of considering the Ego (the Ego System itself) as a harlequin, as a theatrical company, as a system that integrates the activation of plexus of plexus-sequences of neurograms among them integrated, i.e. collected in plexus, with this "responding" more adequately to the needs of elaboration and deployment of the life-saving action.

Plexus of plexus that plausibly are configured (and then activated) by elaborating and stabilizing what we receive from our fellows in terms of actions of help and support to our survival, embodied by those who meet in the real environment: parental figures, teachers, masters, friends, are among the first and most important contributors to patch our Harlequin, to form our theatrical company, to give shape to our personality.

And to our personalities.

[1] Among the few quotations of the work of others which I venture to make, I refer to a magnificent article of Tito Arecchi, Congetture Quantistiche, in Strutture di Mondo vol.2, Il Mulino 2013


Chapters

Useful Narration

Let's start with a tautology, consistent with our systemic premise: the narration, in whatever form and manifestation, is action, and therefore, necessarily, useful to...
By Ugo Bonora | January 7, 2019 | narration

A bit of phylogeny

A promising starting point is the ability to produce noises, sounds, abilities that the ancestors of our species have acquired in the course of...
By Ugo Bonora | January 14, 2019 | narration

Real and Virtual environments

Although pleasant, chirping does not fill the comprehension of the narration: we remain at the signal level, which is no small thing, but it...
By Ugo Bonora | January 21, 2019 | narration

Thinking on things

So far, the evidences on which we can count have provided relatively solid ground to our steps, at the end we have only transported...
By Ugo Bonora | January 28, 2019 | narration

Substance of Narration

A long way to go remains, but we have come a long way: we can begin to propose a first alternative description of the...
By Ugo Bonora | January 31, 2019 | narration

Before the Subject

Is it not enough to exist, to be a person? Usually, if we have nothing better to do, we do not deal with these...
By Ugo Bonora | February 3, 2019 | narration

The Narrating-I

"You'd better do as you were told." I hope to be able, at least a little, to make the idea of the wonderful complexity...
By Ugo Bonora | February 6, 2019 | narration

Emotions

"Good morning!" A good beginning bodes well, also this greeting, short and common, since its first notes indicates what will probably follow. We are...
By Ugo Bonora | February 28, 2019 | narration

Listening

Now several years ago, a professor of applied psychology of a well-known Italian university told us this story. All good religions be blessed and...
By Ugo Bonora | March 7, 2019 | narration

Effective Narration

I have a dream. Effective Narrator is who is welcomed as a Helper, the effective narration consists in the presentation of elements (pronounced words,...
By Ugo Bonora | April 25, 2019 | narration

Effective Narration

I have a dream. Effective Narrator is who is welcomed as a Helper, the effective narration consists in the presentation of elements (pronounced words,...
By Ugo Bonora | April 25, 2019 | narration

Operating

Should I be happy, good health, family in harmony, wonderful children, economically we are well, difficulties and turbulence are long behind our shoulders, clear...
By Ugo Bonora | April 28, 2019 | narration

Emotional Codes

We are on the same team, we all work for the same goal, I treat him as a team mate, and he shows off...
By Ugo Bonora | April 30, 2019 | narration

Ego System

And me, then? Yes, we cannot neglect the Ego System, however difficult it may be to deal with it. Just glancing into our homes,...
By Ugo Bonora | May 3, 2019 | narration

Thinking Needs

... I prepared my favorite coffee, hot and fragrant, and then I started pouring it into the sugar pot... A very serious study about...
By Ugo Bonora | May 10, 2019 | narration