UTS

• Attachment is the cause of unsatisfactoriness and suffering.
• Anthropology is a relative newcomer to the debate on selfhood, emerging from the imperial ambitions of European states during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
• Anthropology initially served to identify the weaknesses and failings of other cultures so they could be exploited and subjugated.
• In the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, anthropology threw off its intimate links with the national and religious organisations it had been serving, and began to ask the big question that has informed its research ever since: ‘What does it mean to be human?’
• Anthropology expresses a unique view on the issue of selfhood, stating that the self needs to be seen as a socially defined phenomenon, created by both the impression of the group upon the individual and the expression of the individual upon the group.
• Humans have a unique relationship with other members of their species, both communicatively and socially.
• Our capacity for group living and group institutions exceeds that of every other animal on the planet.
• Anthropology has an important voice in the discussion of selfhood.
• French anthropologist Marcel Mauss has an explanation for the paradox of remaining the same person and turning chameleon by adapting to one’s context.
• Every self has two faces: personne and moi.
• Moi refers to a person’s sense of who he is, his body, and his basic identity, his biological givenness.
• Personne is composed of the social concepts of what it means to be who he is.
• Downward Social Comparison is the more common type of comparing ourselves with others, where we create a positive self-concept by comparing ourselves with those who are worse off than us.
• Freud's theory of human personality revealed another facet of society, stating that the individual human mind—the source of our subjectivity—is created by social and cultural forces that operate beneath the level of the unconscious self.
• Social relationships can affect our self-esteem through social comparison, a process where we learn about ourselves, the appropriateness of our behaviors, and our social status by comparing aspects of ourselves with others.
• Sigmund Freud, the influential German psychologist of the early 20th century, provided a revolutionary way of understanding human personality and how society affects our psychology.
• In Freudian perspective, the individual human mind is constantly being engaged with by the person.
• Self-consciousness is when self-awareness can be too much that we are concerned about being observed and criticized by others.
• Upward Social Comparison is comparing ourselves with those who are better off than us, which can be a form of motivation for some but can also lead to lower self-esteem as it highlights more of our weakness or inequities.
• Carver and Scheier have identified 2 types of self: The Private self, which includes internal standards and private thoughts and feelings, and The Public self, which is the public image commonly geared toward having a good presentation of yourself to others.
• Deindividuation or the “loss of individual self-awareness and individual accountability in groups” can occur when we attune ourselves with the emotions of our group and because the large crowd also provides some kind of anonymity, we may lessen our self-control and act in ways that we will not do when we are alone.
• According to Freud, "socialization", the lifelong process of learning the ways and behaviors appropriate to a particular society, is not only an external or structural process but also an internal, mental process.
• Self-Evaluation Maintenance Theory suggests that we can feel threatened when someone out-performs us, especially when that person is close to us, and usually react in three ways: distancing ourselves from that person, reconsidering the importance of the aspect or skill in which we were outperformed, or strengthening or resolving to improve that certain aspect of ourselves.
• Personne has much to do with what it means to live in a particular institution, a particular family, a particular religion, a particular nationality, and how to behave given expectations and influences from others.
• All Buddhist traditions share the goal of overcoming suffering and the cycle of death & rebirth, either by the attainment of Nirvana or through the path of Buddhahood.
• Buddhism is the world’s 4th-largest religion, with over 520M followers or over 7% of the global population are Buddhists.
• The self is in harmony with everything in Taoism.
• The self in Taoism is described as one of the limitless forms of the Tao (nature).
• The three marks of existence in Buddhism are Impermanence (anicca), Suffering (dukkha), and Non-Self (anatta).
• In Taoism, the self is part of the universe and living a balanced life with society and nature, being open and accepting to change, forgetting about prejudices and egocentric ideas and thinking about equality as well as complementarity among humans as well as other beings.
• In Confucian thought, moral character is perfected by continuously taking every opportunity to improve oneself in thought and action.
• According to Buddhism, every person has the seed of enlightenment, hence, potential to be a Buddha.
• To Taoists, the self is an extension of the cosmos, not of social relationships.
• The three treasures or three jewels in Taoism are Jing (essence), Qi (energy), and Shen (spirit).
• Self-evaluations involve highlighting personal achievements and keeping a low profile as promoting the self can be seen as boastfulness that disrupts social relationships.
• Self-promotion is seen as boastfulness that disrupts social relationships.
• Harmony is a central feature of Taoism and is applied to the concept of health for energy (qi/chi), balance for disease prevention, healing, and the development of human potential.
• Taoism aims to describe how to attain life and the self is part of the universe.
• Dualities are seen where you are distinct from the other person, the creator is separate from the object he created.
• Individualistic collectivists focus on the person and group and social relations are given more importance than individual needs and wants.