I-Thou
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March 16th, 2023
- from a private convo
- context: this tweet by Divia Eden
- > I also think a concept that babies get very early if they aren’t born with it is something like attunement. Which I could unpack a lot more but I posit that the full real deal is an I-thou thing, and the I-it orientation blocks information flow
- my friend Alex commented
- > Hmmmmm so according to Buber a parent (and in fact the whole world) is always a Thou to the infant, since I-It only occurs after the I splits from the world as a separate entity. I-It relationships are composed of I + It put together while I-Thou is fundamental. But equating attunement
with I-Thou feels a little strange; I want to say something more like attunement is a specific I-It move that will likely make you more open to flashes of I-Thou. Buber says that I-Thou exists outside of space and time, and I definitely wouldn’t say the same for attunement. Definitely happy to say more if people are interested. - > I like to think of I-Thou as the points at which one actually meets reality. When one is viewing the world according to I-It, one’s conscious mind is disconnected from reality; it has the illusion of control, but connection to the world has been replaced by a set of objects that it manipulates according to its “pre-existing programing.” While in I-It, the environment can consciously impact you only through your preexisting frameworks. But in I-Thou, one sort of drops the barrier/separation between oneself and one’s Thou (could be nature, a person, an idea/spirit, etc.) and, by entering into direct relation, allows oneself to be changed in a way beyond one’s control; it is beyond your control precisely because you have met your Thou with your “whole being”, and so there is no part of you left to observe or judge or decide what changes will occur.
- > I don’t think one has to be in I-Thou with an infant in order to be attuned; you could still hold part of yourself back to observe/monitor, but sometimes, an infant might call upon your whole being and change who you are, and those moments could be considered I-Thou.
- > Buber says that “causality has unlimited reign in the world of It”, and I think what he means is that in the world of “It”, the laws of physics or w/e apply, while the self-conscious “I” is just an observer. But in I-Thou, by stepping out of an observer frame and into relation, one has full freedom of will as part of the world, though it will feel more like you just acted as you were called to act rather than making choices, since making choices requires I-It: stepping back and separating oneself from the world in order to evaluate various projected futures
- > This sort of reminds me of what CS Lewis said about how prayer and determinism fit together; time is an illusion (an I-It construction), and all of Eternity is contained within the present moment. It is not that God hears prayers and then changes the course of reality, but rather that God---in Eternity (i.e. outside of time)---hears all prayers at once and creates the world in response to those prayers. Incidentally, Buber says that God is the Thou that can never become an It… i.e. one can relate to a person either directly or as an object, but it is impossible to relate to God as an object; if one tries to do so, it is an idol rather than God whom one is relating to.