LESSON 8 - MATERIAL SELF

• • Consumers - are often viewed as victims of greedy companies. But take note that everyone has free will. 
• • Need or Want - know the difference between needs and wants.
• • Foot-in-the door Phenomenon 
  • Making you agree initially with a smaller request. Eventually, will start making a bigger request. 
• • Door in the face Phenomenon
  • Following up an extravagant request with a reasonable one. 
• EXERCISE INTELLECTUAL INDEPENDENCE 

  • Be aware how consumerism control your life. Ignore advertising. 

  CONSUME LESS, LIVE MORE

  • Stop and think about the influences of consumerism in your life. 
• • William James (1980)
  • Conceptualized SELF as having 2 aspects - the I and the ME. 
  • The “I” is the thinking, acting, and feeling self. 
  • The “ME” is physical characteristics as well as psychological capabilities that makes who you are. 
• • The SELF or EMPIRICAL SELF (or ME) is divided into three parts: 
  • The Material Self
  • The Social Self
  • The Spiritual Self
• MATERIAL SELF

  • A total of all of the tangible things you own: 
  • your possessions
  • your home
  • your body
  • All those things you would call yours. Your clothes and other "things" you own.
  • The material self to tangible objects, people, or places that carry the designation: 
  • “My or mine”
• • Two subclasses of Material Self: 
  • Bodily self 
  • Extracorporeal Self - includes of the people, places and things that we regard as “ours”. 
  • Rosenberg (1979) has referred to the extracorporeal self as the EXTENDED SELF. 
• MATERIAL SELF INVESTMENT DIAGRAM

  Primarily it is about our bodies, clothes, immediate family, and home. We are deeply affected by these things because we have put too much investment of our self to them. (William James).

  
• BODY 

  • The innermost part of our material self is our BODY. Intentionally, we are INVESTING in our body
  • We are directly attached to this commodity that we cannot live without. 
  • We strive hard to make sure that this body functions well and good. 
  • Any ailment or disorder directly affects us. 
  • We do have certain preferential attachment or intimate closeness to certain body parts because of its certain value to us.
• CLOTHES

  • Herman Lotze’s “Philosophy of Dress” James believed that: Clothing is an essential part of the material self. 
  • Lotze book: “Microcosmus” any time we bring an object into the surface of our body, we invest that object into the consciousness of our personal existence taking in its contours to be our own and making it part of the self. (Watson 2014). 
• CLOTHES

  • The fabric and style of the clothes we wear bring sensations to the body to which directly affect our attitudes and behavior. Thus, the clothes are placed in the second hierarchy of material self. 
  • Clothing is a form of expression. We choose and wear clothes that reflect our self. (Watson 2014).
• IMMEDIATE FAMILY 

  • Our parents and siblings hold another great important part of our self. What they do or become affects us. 
  • When an immediate family member dies, part of ourselves dies too.
  • When their lives are in success, we feel their victories as if we are the one holding the trophy.
  • In their failures, we are put to shame or guilt.
  • When they are in a disadvantageous situation, there is an urgent urge to help, like a voluntary instinct of saving oneself from danger.
  • We place HUGE INVESTMENT in our immediate family when we see them as the nearest REPLICA of ourselves.
• HOME

  • Is the earliest nest of our selfhood. 
  • Home is where the heart is. 
  • Our experiences inside the home were recorded and marked on particular parts and things in our home. 
  • The home thus is an extension of self, because in it, we can directly connect ourselves.
  • There was an old cliché about rooms: “if only walls can speak”. 
• INVESTMENT

  • The collections in different degree of investment of self, becomes part of the self. 
  • As James (1890) described himself "a man’s self is the sum total of all what we CAN call his.” Possessions then became a part or an extension of the self. 
• WE ARE WHAT WE HAVE

  • Russel Belk (1988) – “we regard our possessions as part of ourselves.
  • WE ARE WHAT WE HAVE AND WHAT WE POSSESS.