Reflection(s)
Despite not being a requirement of life like say food or clean air, our reflections, or, more specifically, the mirrors and myriad screens that allow us to view of reflections, we can scarcely picture a world without them. But being without them is how the world was for much of history. Humans didn’t invent hollow glass until 1500 BC; they didn’t invent the mirror until 1835. For most of our history, how did humans look at their own faces? Occasionally in the water of a puddle or lake, but mostly: not at all. They knew how their family and friends looked but hardly themselves. Of course, long before 1835, at least if you were of high social standing, it was common to have your portrait drawn - but what could this have done for the self image? To view yourself more in the grand and pompous artworks drawn of you than as a reality in a reflection.
This has, obviously, went through a drastic change. Most people don’t go more than a few hours without seeing their own reflection. In the morning when they brush their teeth; in their pocket mirror while they do their makeup on the bus; in the reflections of shop windows as they cross the street; on their phone screens as they take a selfie. And in the reflections that are frozen in time all over their social media, on all ID cards and on the mantelpieces of relatives. You’re constantly remind of this, the self, your own body, your face. No wonder, as it is often claimed, that at present the people of affluent Western societies are the most anxious and neurotic people there have ever been. No one is ever given time to forget themselves, to float away into the stream of the present moment, before they are once again facing their own reflection.
To reflect on oneself once held a grand weight to it. Something philosophers spent years exploring. Socrates proclaimed “know thyself”. Freud committed a life’s work to exploring the inner recesses of the self. Now it is drilled into everyone that they must reflect on themselves all the time. From primary school, children are asked to reflect on their work and write sheets bullet pointing their abilities and “areas for improvement”; universities and workplaces want their workers to reflect on their past and their future goals. Visiting a therapist or counselor, the first thing you are asked to do is fill in a sheet number your feelings over the previous week on a number of different scales. What once seemed profound has been made clinical and dull. Why would a child ever wish to “know thyself” if that is what a teacher wants them to do? Self reflection, the type that will help the individual, is certainly not elicited by being handed a paper and pen and told to write.
This has, obviously, went through a drastic change. Most people don’t go more than a few hours without seeing their own reflection. In the morning when they brush their teeth; in their pocket mirror while they do their makeup on the bus; in the reflections of shop windows as they cross the street; on their phone screens as they take a selfie. And in the reflections that are frozen in time all over their social media, on all ID cards and on the mantelpieces of relatives. You’re constantly remind of this, the self, your own body, your face. No wonder, as it is often claimed, that at present the people of affluent Western societies are the most anxious and neurotic people there have ever been. No one is ever given time to forget themselves, to float away into the stream of the present moment, before they are once again facing their own reflection.
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To reflect on oneself once held a grand weight to it. Something philosophers spent years exploring. Socrates proclaimed “know thyself”. Freud committed a life’s work to exploring the inner recesses of the self. Now it is drilled into everyone that they must reflect on themselves all the time. From primary school, children are asked to reflect on their work and write sheets bullet pointing their abilities and “areas for improvement”; universities and workplaces want their workers to reflect on their past and their future goals. Visiting a therapist or counselor, the first thing you are asked to do is fill in a sheet number your feelings over the previous week on a number of different scales. What once seemed profound has been made clinical and dull. Why would a child ever wish to “know thyself” if that is what a teacher wants them to do? Self reflection, the type that will help the individual, is certainly not elicited by being handed a paper and pen and told to write.
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