NOTES

UNDERSTANDING THE SELF

UNIT 2: MATERIAL SELF: TO BUY OR NOT TO BUY?

MATERIAL SELF:

• Body is the innermost part of material self. You are directly attached to this
commodity that you cannot live without. You strive hard to make sure that this body
functions well and good. Example is Mariah Carey, she was reported to have placed a
huge amount for the insurance of his vocal cords and legs.
• Clothes is next to the body that was being influenced by the “the philosophy of dress”
by Herman Lotze. William James believed that an essential part of the material self is
clothing. Lotze stipulated in his book that any time you bring an abject into the surface
of your body, you invest that object into any consciousness of your personal existence
taking in its contours to be your own and making it part of the self.
• Immediate Family is the third in the hierarchy. Your parents and siblings hold another
great important part of yourself. What they do or became affects you. When an
immediate family member dies, part of you dies, too. When their lives are in success,
you feel their victories as if you are the one holding the bacon.
▪ In their failures, you are put to chance or guilt. When they are disadvantage
situation, there is an urgent urge to help like a voluntary instinct of saving
one‟s self from danger.
• Home is the fourth component of material self. Home is where your heart is. It is the
earliest nest of your selfhood. Your experience inside the home were recorded and
marked on particular parts and things in your home. There was an old cliché about
rooms: “if only walls can speak”.
▪ The home thus is an extension of self, because in it, you can directly connect
yourself.