The genetic self
When you’re born, you do not arrive on life’s doorstep as a clean slate ready to be written on by the relational interactions that you’re about to have with your environment. You arrive as an embodiment of millions of years of genetic evolution. When you first enter this world, you don’t come alone. You’ve got baggage, and plenty of it.
The genetic prelude to identity
At birth, you’re already someone who is represented by incalculable amounts of complex, genetically active components that, since conception, have been busy relating to everything around them. Just like all cellular activity, evolving fetuses are aware of changes in temperature, movement, pressure, and various chemical fluctuations that they will continue to experience until they leave their mother’s womb. As newborns, our awareness increases exponentially, continuing to do so until consciousness takes place. As babies, we will be aware of our surroundings but still not be conscious of them.
Awareness is part and parcel of life itself, no matter what state of development life may find itself in. Consciousness, on the other hand, is only possible where there is a “self” and as an infant, the whole self will take some time yet to develop. As a result, as newborns, humans still have little notion concerning their environment and will still be unable to form ideas. All they will have are physical sensations and mental images. They will be aware that there is a world out there, but they won’t have a way of placing that world in relationship with whom they are as living beings. In order to connect with that world and begin that process that will, someday, culminate in the formation of ideas, our environment must continually reflect or echo back to us who it thinks we are.
Environment: The catalyst for consciousness
Indeed, our environment is the only tool we have at our disposal to complete the relational loop, confirm our existences, and allow us not only to continue existing but to become the human beings that we are destined to become, i.e., living beings with conscious selves. Sadly, the environmental image we receive of ourselves is, at this point, inexorably incomplete, flawed, and packed to the brim with discrepancies. After all, what our environment echoes or reflects back to us is only its impression of who it thinks we are, complete with its naturally flawed inconsistencies and tainted perceptions. In turn, our interpretation of our environment’s evaluation becomes, for obvious reasons, less precise still; yet, it’s all we have to go on as we create our self-images. Consciousness is not entirely our responsibility either. That, once again, is the result of a “team effort” that cannot be completed without our environment’s direct yet naturally flawed assistance.
The environmental self
During infancy, our relationship with the environment starts simply: Our five senses are stimulated by the relational activity we maintain with the events and people around us. This relational activity provides us with the confirmations we need to continue existing, yet, at the same time, it also leaves us vulnerable to relational contradiction, a situation that we humans will be spending the rest of our lives trying to avoid. From the time we rise in the morning until we go to bed at night, the search for confirmation and the avoidance of contradiction is, put simply, what makes us tick.
As you now know, nothing can exist alone. This means that in spite of being conceived, your conception as a human being cannot continue its development unless you actively relate to the world around you. Initially, your mother’s womb is that world. At birth, however, an entirely new environment emerges. Once born, you are no longer psycho-existentially dependent upon the relational activity you once had inside your mother’s womb. Now, you become psychologically dependent upon your interactions with the world around you: your environment. Now, you are no longer just a fetus; you are a living, breathing infant, and your life is about to change dramatically.
During the initial months of infancy, your psychological life will consist of a steady series of physiological experiences. You will taste, hear, feel, partially see, and partially smell the world around you, yet you will have absolutely no idea that it is “you” that is involved in these relational activities. Self-realization has not taken place yet because it can’t. It can’t because the self has yet to be created.
The creation of the self
For the same reason that the human eye can’t perceive itself unless its image is mirrored back to it, neither can you perceive your “self” unless it is mirrored back to you by your environment. The creation of your self begins when your environment begins identifying specific objects and events with whom your environment believes “you are.” Unfortunately, and as mentioned before, such reflections are only the environment’s interpretation of who it “thinks” you are. Without such interpretations, however, you’d have no way to either create a “self” or establish an identity. In short, without direct aid from your environment, you can be no one at all. Knowing this, it is little wonder we all pay so much attention to those things and people that form the world around us.
That said, there is not always harmony between our environment, ourselves, and our genetic backgrounds. In fact, the most common form of mental distress occurs when conflict appears between these three vitally necessary relational elements.
For example, when we are obliged to eat spinach, but we are not genetically programmed to like spinach, a conflict takes place between our environmental self and our genetic self. We want to please the self that obliges us to be someone we are not, but we cannot deny the reality of who we genetically are. We are someone that inherently doesn’t like spinach.
The total “you”
Your genetic self is all about who you are genetically; therefore, it refers to any number of psycho-physical qualities and attributes you may have. On the physical side of the equation, your genetic background decides if you’re blond or brunette, tall or short, blue-eyed or brown, a boy or girl, or something somewhere in between. It structures your bones, makes you light or dark-skinned, and chooses how large or small your feet are. It will determine if you have good or bad eyesight, if you’re musically inclined or unable to carry a tune.
Your genetic background will also have an impact on who you are psychologically. From a psychological perspective, for example, genetics govern a multitude of personality or character traits: specific likes and dislikes, learning abilities, innate fears; individual penchants to particular foods, smells, sights, and sounds, colors and tactile preferences; the tendency to be passive, tenacious, gregarious, or a little on the larcenous side, and a myriad of other tendencies as well. Your genetic self creates those emotional platforms from which you will perceive, then deal with other people and other things. Your genetic self will decide if you’re to be innately gentile, kind, loving, and respectful or, on the other hand, terse or confrontational as you relate to those around you. And it doesn’t stop there. Genetics also have the potential of weighing you down with extra psychologically pertinent baggage; baggage full of unfinished business left behind by past generations: unresolved disputes that may come from a far distant grandfather, uncle, or cousin, or mysterious emotions you can’t explain handed to you by a past traumatic experience suffered by a relative whose name you never knew. All in all, your genes form a fundamental part of who you are, yet your genetic self is still just half the story. It’s just the nature side of the reoccurring nature vs. nurture polemic.
Shaping the self
The other side of the total you arrives from outside of genetic boundaries and is often referred to as the nurture side of human existence; everything your genetic self relates to and will relate to as, little by little, you evolve into who you are slowly but surely becoming; a process that will continue until you take your last breath.
Relational growth is a process that takes a lifetime to complete but cannot take place on its own. It requires both a subject and an object. Being that the way this is, an obvious question arises: Which has the greatest influence over us, who we are genetically or who we are becoming as we relate to our environment? Am I more about my genetic self or more about my environmental self? The answer, I’m sorry to say, is “yes” on all counts.
Like a coin that can’t be a coin without its two sides, neither can you be who you are without your other half—your environment or, if you prefer, your environmental “self.” In other words, that self that you constantly consult, have long conversations with, or complain to when things aren’t going quite right. Remember: Your “self,” or environmental self, is not born from within but from without. Indeed, the self emerges as a direct result of your relationship with your outside world or environment. As a matter of fact, when you sense that you’re chatting with your “self,” you’re actually conversing with those people, places, and things with whom you, over time, have established relationships and then integrated into your existential sphere, thereby making them an essential, life-giving part of who you are. That’s what you perceive as your “self”; a self that began as the “other” but once related to you, became your “self”. And that’s important. It is important because were you unable to relate to your environment, not only would your existence be incomplete; but you could not exist at all. Remember, The Structure mandates that either your life is relational or it can no longer be.