Intimare

The Wordy Games – Part 1

So I’m sure we all have a familiarity with the word intimate.

Some of us may have a very close and familiar relationship with the word, and some of us may even have an intimate relationship with intimate. And if I were to ask you what imagery comes into mind when I use that particular word, you might just linger in thought before giving me your answer. And if I were to ask you to repeat the word back to me you’d probably accentuate your answer with a certain voice intonation and quality to add even more meaning. You’d might even just breathe the word rather than speak it!

Then there’s the word intimate.

And we might have slightly less familiarity with this word for it is more about disclosure – with a hint of suggestion thrown in; much more less than suggestive, you might say, compared to intimate – like that!

Of course when we see the word written then we probably know it could either be a noun, an adjective or a verb. When we hear it spoken, then the intim“ate” of the verb version sounds like a spoken “8”. Thank goodness for that little clue towards the different meaning being conveyed to us! English language can be so ambiguous!

They are my intimates – my buddies, or my “mates” for short.
Those two are having an intimate relationship.
He intimated to me all that he knew about the plans.

Predating, pre-dating and predation

Now we might all have an idea about what is meant by predating – ie where something, some event, some person’s life perhaps, comes before another in chronological order.

Shakespeare 1564-1616 predates Descartes 1596-1650 is an example of this – in the same way the abacus predates the electronic calculator and is predated by counting on our fingers.

Pre-dating is seems to be more about what goes on prior to dating. 

The folk at eHarmony might have a set of good tips and strategies to help with pre-dating, for instance – and we get a sense, rather like with pre-nuptial agreements, that anything described thus involves some kind of preparation, or preamble, or prologue. You could say it’s a form of foreplay though couldn’t you, is it not?!

Predation is about the preying of one thing upon another or, to do a Wikicrib, the action of attacking or plundering. 

The Vikings were good at predation, and rape and pillage were their chosen predatory means. A cynic might also view certain types of pre-dating as predation – a kind of pre-foreplay you might say. For the predatory stalker this is very much so, yet all the pre-intimacy drama is played out entirely within his mind.

Now, although the lives of Shakespeare and Descartes actually overlapped in a chronological sense, The Bard had actually shuffled off this mortal coil by the time Descartes published Cogito Ergo Sum in 1637.
Yet we might contemplate that To Be or Not To Be would have been written from a slightly different perspective had Shakespeare lived long enough to encounter I Think therefore I Am.

Of course the existence of the contemplative question “What is it like To Be” bears more than a passing relationship with both of these now famous quotes. It draws us in to the philosophical world of Existence; of being and thinking; of life and death; of I, Me and The Self – which is a very intimate relationship indeed!

Showing our Freudian Slip

Within Sigmund Freud’s view of the psyche, the psychic apparatus, he defined three main parts –
Id, Ego and Super-ego.

Now whether or not you go along with these postulates, there is a certain area of common scientific understanding about how the mind works, how it is structured, and how our cognition, behaviour, language and communication, thoughts and feelings, et al all reside within the umbrella of our personality and sense of identity.

Now, let us return for a moment to reconsider the question “What is it like To Be?”

When asked do you like me find your answers being driven towards expressions of how you feel. When I feel X then life is Y, when I feel A then life is B, and so on. It seems that how we are being is very dependent upon our emotions.
I Think and I Feel therefore that is how I Am. 

However – take another look at the question. There is no subjective “Me” after “To Be” – and yet we all assume the question is being asked of us, specifically.

Now in order for us to really answer the “What is it like To Be?” question we need a certain degree of detachment, of dissociation. We need to get out of our own heads – to put aside the Id, Ego and Super-ego of Freud! Then we start to get a whole new perspective of emotion, and how we use it within the umbrella of our own identity and our own personality. For whilst emotion is elemental within “What is it like To Be?” and has neutrality – the moment the question becomes “What is it like To Be Me?” then all the emotions are personalised.

According to Paul Ekman, within human psychology there are six basic emotions – happiness, sadness, fear, anger, disgust and surprise. Now we know from experience, that how each of these impact upon us personally is never entirely the same – whether by interpretation or by trigger. What makes me happy, frightened or disgusted will not be the same as what makes you feel those emotions – AND how you or I interpret what we are feeling through our inner languages and respond to those stimuli through our behaviour is again entirely subjective and personal.
This is what makes your Being different from my Being in terms of how we Exist.
We are both imbued with the power of thought, yet our thinking is different.

Show me your Id

I’ll linger a little longer with Freud and his view of what he calls “The Id”.
Now Freud calls it the unorganised part of the personality structure that contains a human’s basic instinctual drives. He goes on to say, “... It is filled with energy reaching it from the instincts, but it has no organization, produces no collective will, but only a striving to bring about the satisfaction of the instinctual needs ....”

Freud also talked of the Id as being the only component of personality that is present from birth.
This certainly gives the impression that we are “hard-wired” and that this particular component of our personality will run our lives – and can often run riot - unless it is moderated by other parts of our personality. This sounds very much like “a leopard cannot change its spots.” Or in other words, I can learn much about everything, including how To Be in a cognitive sense, yet under all this is the instinct-driven and pre-determined Me.

The Logical Levels

Added Values

I coach a rugby team and whilst most of the time we play in a league, last week found us on the road and playing a “friendly”. Now the opposition clearly didn’t buy into this and, mostly out of sight of the referee, played in a particularly illegal and gratuitously violent way. They were egged on in this spree of foul play by one particular group of alcohol fuelled, loud and foul-mouthed, partisan spectators amongst the remaining silent observers.

Eventually I took umbrage at the endless assaults and verbally castigated one of our opponents for his specific violent actions. His team mates remonstrated back, by abusive taunting and goading. This, added to the supporters, led me to perceive a threat beyond mere words.

I felt physically intimidated.

A Fight or Flight response kicked in, for me, and I decided to not enter into any post-match socialising in their clubhouse. I planned to – and did - go straight home.

Now for me, in terms of Logical Levels (illustrated above), when anything I hold at the level of Identity or Beliefs and Values is challenged, this is a potential trigger for certain behavioural shifts. Yet I also know that if my attention is absorbed or I am “on task”, then I’m distracted from the triggers and they pass me by.

Rather like the notion of a thought just being part of the flow of energy, that only becomes part of our thinking when we pluck it from that flow – for me these triggers are there all the time in the flow. And when I don’t notice them I bypass them (or rather they pass me by), plus all the personal consequences they, as triggers, can lead me to.

Now I’ve been to thousands of rugby matches in a whole variety of roles. On this particular matchday I would say that I encountered challenges to maybe 7-10 of my values. There were also challenges to my identity. Triggers were emerging from the flow. Was my attention absorbed or was I specifically “on task”? Answer – YES. I was “on task” with being a touch judge, and this was not compromised. However it did mean I was constantly “up with play”.

But here’s the thing – another role this particular day that I was on task with was player welfare – looking after and standing up for my own players. This opened the door for all those triggers, with additional (and valued) justification.
If I’d been taking notes, or filming the match, or (almost) anything else – then I would never have reacted or got involved.

And I would never have felt intimidated or taken Flight afterwards.

The Wordy Games – Part 2

When the dust of all our thinking settles down, then the conditions are right, within our mental atmosphere, for us to notice many insights when they come along.

The insight for me after this particular experience surrounded my feeling intimidated. Most, if not all of that intimidation was the fact that I knew I would not be able to remain silent about what had gone on in the match.
I was actually intimidating myself, knowing that my triggers – in the ensuing moments – might lead me to do some behaviour I’d later regret.

If none of what happened in the match had been important to me then I wouldn’t have been affected or intimidated myself. 

When water drops off a duck’s back, then the duck is impervious to the saturating and potentially rotting effect of the water. This is particularly important for a creature that spends much of its Existence on or in water. So in terms of Being, for a duck, it has all the hard-wired, pre-determined characteristics that Freud would have ascribed to the Id – no more, no less. And that includes standing up for itself and other ducks under its protective umbrella when challenged or intimidated.
A duck has no sense of identity, and definitely no values and beliefs.

Unlike the duck, I have learnt who I am and what I believe and what is important to me.
I wasn’t born with all that. A lot of thought energy has gone into this over the years. Much plucking from the energy flow of thought has taken place. My particular and personal way of thinking and interpreting has brought me to this conclusion – as it had done 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 even 60 years ago. This is all very personal for me; this is the very closest and most intimate personal relationship of my Being.
It is my relationship with myself.

This is the same for us all, and it is embodied within the quote from ancient Greek time -
Know Thyself.

Yet do we ever know ourselves completely? The recent personal insight I’ve just experienced would suggest that for me, certainly, this is not the case. I certainly have a greater understanding now that when I add the “Id” into my most Intimate personal relationship then this triggers behavioural changes.
If I am walking down a road and a lion is coming towards me, then a very basic instinct – survival – will kick in. When I am thus confronted with a predator, then I’m not going to indulge in selective plucking from a flow of thought energy; I’m not going to spend some time in contemplative thought concerning the whys and wherefores of this whole situation. Instead there’ll be some behavioural change – resulting in my getting the hell out of being remotely intimate with the lion.

Finally – and linguistically – notice what changes when “Id” is placed within “Intimate”.
Answer – “IntimIdate”

It’s just a thought!