The Ontological War

Most of the people who increase their degrees of realself start from the socialself world, being mostly their socialselves, and having mostly socialself-to-socialself relationships. Biographies show that there are a few people who apparently had a strong sense of their realselves for as long as they can remember, but most people start out life as the self of the ontological world they were “thrown into,” the socialself world.

In Sex, Lies, and Videotape, Graham meets Ann for the first time at her house, and they sit in her living room and talk:

Graham: How do you like being married?

Ann: I like it just fine.

Graham: What about it do you like? I … I don’t mean to be critical. I’m curious.

Ann: No, no, no, no. That’s OK. Uh …Well … you know the cliché about the security of it? Well, that’s true. And, um, we own this house. It’s a nice house. And … John was just made junior partner, and I really like that. You know, I like the fact that he’s just not, you know, freelance or whatever.

After hearing Ann’s description of her marriage, the first thing that strikes one is that she never mentions anything about her love for her husband or the deepening of their relationship. Everything she says about her marriage might be described as non-ontological, which puts it right in the heart of the socialself world.

Ann does at the time suspect her husband of cheating, and that undoubtedly tones down her description of her marriage. She has also just met Graham, and it’s probably natural for people now to be hesitant in describing the ontological depth of their marital relationship with someone they have just met.

The day-to-day world now, as it has always been, is a socialself world, and because of this almost all of us begin our lives being the self of that world, a socialself. Ann is being mostly her socialself, and she thinks about her marriage in mostly a socialself world way.

But she is also in the beginning Transition, as shown by her thoughts about “garbage,” even though she doesn’t appear to be actively increasing her degree of realself. She is aware of thoughts that are coming to her from her realself, but she has not yet focused on them and started moving in their direction.

One can tell from her description of her marriage that her relationship with her husband isn’t close ontologically, and from just the information here she may be OK with that and maybe she isn’t. Her response is a small piece of information that insightful people might store in the back of their minds, with the knowledge that what she says might mean something ontologically and then again it might mean nothing. There’s too little information to say for sure.

Ontologically, there’s not much to say about her marriage at this stage—it isn’t that different from millions of other socialself-to-socialself marriages—and I mention it mainly to show Ann’s degree of realself at the start of the movie.