Sometimes I hate myself. This hate is real hate towards somebody I look at and who is also inhabiting this same body. I don’t need a mirror to look at him. He’s just there, as I am. He hates me right back, by the way. We are, simultaneously, head-to-head and in the same head. I think the original me is the one that rather sits behind a screen to go screaming life is unjust. The other me wants to go out there and stop whining already. The original one has ideas, the other one wants to see them; executed, implemented, or in any which way realized. All this is simplification of course, because we have a really complex relationship with one another. A funny one at times where we both watch the collectivity which is us amuse others. A depressing one at many other times where we both wonder whether there’s a place in this world for the collectivity which is us. And an exasperating one at some times when we see the ills we collectively cause in our up and down to whom we love. They love the collectivity, but hate it when it falls apart in the head-to-head which - then again - characterizes this head of mine. Alas, when I do fall apart, we just make matters worse for all of us and those both of us love. Maybe all this will be far too personal. Still, I want to talk about it so that’s what I will do here.
It all started in my puberty. The sickly kid I was (the sickly autistic kid I was as I learnt only later on) perfected an inner dialogue that bifurcated a desire to stay at home and a desire to prove I could do as others did. We cooperated intensively: stay-at-home me calculated what could go wrong if prove-myself me went out. Prove-myself me did all sort of experiments in going out that stay-at-home me used to perfect his calculations. A kind of consensus emerged: a bit more experimentation, a bit more calculation, and finally off we went. It was an energy-consuming way to be, but this little dream where we just lived a normal life took shape, thanks in large part to the love granted us by an outsider, someone really else, who loved us for who we were - even if it was consuming a lot of her energy as well. She was an outsider not only to me, but also an outsider full stop, I guess that helped us, in the many senses ‘us’ can take at this point of this story. I wonder whether this ‘being two minds’ condition of mine is not a very human one. I wondered as much already when my pubescent us came up with a philosophy of mind wherein each self in fact consisted out of a parliamentary of selves which convened to decide - before any action to be taken - which action to take, or not to take.
Even if everyone has this lived experience of phenomenologically feeling like they are two minds, I do not at all believe everyone should wonder like I wonder. My better half (in the sense not of the other half of my self but in the sense of my someone else) is not a big fan of wondering this way. Maybe indeed, some things are the way they are, so in wondering about them one just piles energy-consumption on energy-consumption. So maybe I am atypical not in being two minds, but only in being two minds who wonder what it is like to be like that? I vividly remember sitting, as an 18-year old, in the attic window of my student room. I do not remember a lot about the student house that had a tea room at its ground floor. What I remember is disfigured by the many nightmares I had about that place. The house had something like 71 floors and, at least, 3 distinct stair cases. People lived there who made noise but never made it out to the staircase. I could scream all I want, the only effect was an increase in both floors and staircases. I sat in my attic window a lot so as to at least feel at the border of these nightmares and I looked down at the street at the cars passing. And we said to ourselves, if the 4th car is red then …
But here we are, still wondering. Not counting cars but counting letters to create ideal conditions for a consensus decision. Not feeling very well. Trying to make sense of it. Attempting to steer clear from the ‘then …’. Wondering whether being two minds is an essential element of the human condition, and, if so, if it is helpful to wonder why this is so. The former question, I think, deserves a resounding “yes”. The reason being that all of us need to navigate (at least but let’s leave that complication for later) two worlds. One world is the world of a prove-myself me, the world that is. The other world is the world of a stay-at-home me, the world that should be if your collective you were really to flourish fluently. For this last idea I am indebted to the trans philosopher Talia Mae Bettcher, who herself builds on Maria Lugones’ idea of world-traveling. Whilst I don’t fully agree with Bettcher because she does not really retain the traveling part of world-traveling, I think she gets the essential part of being two minds fully right. There is an overworld of all kinds of social norms to which the prove-myself me tries to conform, and there is an underworld of alternative practices to which the stay-at-home me tries to aspire. Those two worlds being incompatible, your two minds …
I wanted to say: your two minds clash, but that would be simply incorrect, as they are a cooperating collective. Better is to say that they are driven apart and that in keeping them aligned, you spend energy proportional to the difference between the over- and your underworld. I am well aware that I risk appropriating the pains of being trans by using Bettcher’s idea as underpinning of something universal in the human condition. It is not, however, that in pointing to a universal pain I relativize a specific “being two minds” pain. I’m not saying that there is some kind of unique underworld, rather what I’m saying is that the two-world/two mind phenomenon is unique to each one of us. If everybody would see this, everybody would respect the unique challenge, the diversity of knots woven by navigating one’s unique set of worlds, that each individual faces. In fact the problem is that some of us believe a specific overworld is the best world there is. Mostly these are people who can easily prove themselves in that overworld. People like me: cis, white, male. They don’t see the need to spend energy to travel worlds and they arrogantly perceive others who do see this need as somehow dysfunctional. They want happiness for all of us - as long as it is their kind of happiness that all of us seek.
Back to:: Does it help to wonder about this? And I think it helps, if your prove-myself me gets ahead of itself and starts to arrogantly perceive others, including even stay-at-home me. In that case it not only helps, it is a requirement to get out of the rut that is arrogance. Only by seeing yourself as not fully fitting to an overworld do you have the chance of even seeing other underworlds, including your own. Only in seeing them is it possible to admit the possibility of stay-at-home me coming out of the closet, to use a dangerously suggestive phrase in this context. And let’s face it: it was always stay-at-home me that both of us wanted could go out, without a need of proving ourself. This is the closest I can come to the for me senseless idea of unmasking. Senseless, because it assumes we can be one mind, solid and unitary, as if prove-myself me is superfluous, a mere product of a dark overworld force forcing everyone of us to only have one mind, solid and unitary. We cannot, not at least if we want to be open to love someone else. If we want that, we have to accept the fact that our underworlds are different and that we can only meet in an overworld that already is before we even were. Masking is the play that prove-myself me adds in order to get to the possibility of world-traveling.
The problem really is, Lugones has it spot on, that we live in a colonial overworld that forbids us to play. We have been raised to believe in overworlds where our fragmented self magically joins in a single mind always in flow. Colonialism ends in a colonization of the mind by the ideal of the tyrannical rule of single-mindedness. The result is that, if the mind is no longer allowed to be fragmented, the overworlds get fragmented and that a completely natural internal struggle turns into a continuous external fight as we see taking over the globe. Gone is the right to aspire to aspects of one’s underworld to surface in an overworld. Stay-at-home me just needs to stay at home. Prove-myself me just needs to prove himself without the little dream of finding someone else, someone with whom to break down conventions and/or start new ones. Colonialism, of course, is a doomed and damning project. It stands no chance of succeeding. As long as there are living things they will have at least two minds to play with, and therefore to resist this pressure for stagnation and eradicating diversity. I’m not so sure what I wanted to say when I started this but it sure feels like I did play around enough to accept what is deemed unacceptable: I am, like all of us are, freaks of nature.