I am nonbinary. I expect that this will be the only time I reference a denoted label that establishes what constitutes my sense of bodily-self while writing under this moniker in this publication. Identity, in this month of Pride, is an opportunity for reflection on the process of self-actualization. There is a common and fundamental misunderstanding about this process, which should be dispelled even if you are unfamiliar with the term ‘self-actualization’; it is not something that you have to decide or come into once in some grand, total finality. It is an explorative process that can be ongoing and ever-changing, and thus makes itself a direct contradiction to what Capitalism ‘offers’ the working class: your time must be converted into surplus-value, used to aid the profit-motives of the ruling few, or you die.
The time to truly live, and the space needed to explore one’s self, is heavily restricted and discouraged because it is a preventative mechanism utilized by capitalism. Adhering to concepts such as the gender-binary simplifies marketing strategies, and reinforces strict ‘definitions’ and patriarchal role expectations. If a person ever has the means to question this concept, along with the time to reflect and reckon with how it applies to them, an opening is created to question who established those ‘norms’ – and for what purpose. To stamp this revolutionary opportunity out as quickly as possible, institutions such as schools and media (as formulated within a bourgeois grounding) reproduce binary gender norms early in life – long before many people have the space to question them. This has to be countered because education should be where exploration is encouraged; to learn about one’s self and the material world they exist within.
"To build socialism, there must be socialists.
-Ho Chi Minh, 1960, Complete Volume, Vol. 12 2011
"I think it's time to kill for our womenReflection and Self-Actualization
Time to heal our women, be real to our women
And if we don't, we'll have a race of babies
That will hate the ladies that make the babies"
-Tupac Shakur, Daryl Anderson, Roger Troutman and Stan Vincent 1992, 2Pac, Keep Ya Head Up, Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z 1993
Hegel first presented the dialectic “between Essence and immediate Being” as reflection.1 Essence and Being in the Hegelian definition are subjects for another time, but the contradiction which reflection manifests is one of observing the outer material world we exist in, and the awareness of ourselves existing as material within that world. Marxists apply the materialist understanding to this contradiction as how we render our thoughts on these observations—produced by a material brain through biological reflection—back onto the world.2
Reflection: The re-creation of features of one form of matter in a different form of matter which occurs when they mutually impact each other through interaction.
-Curriculum of the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism, Part 1: Dialectical Materialism, Glossary, Ministry of Education and Training (SRV) 2004, English translation by Luna Nguyen 2023
In inorganic nature, reflection is the process of things reproducing, under the influence of other things, as traces or imprints of the things exercising that influence. In organic nature, reflection is an active process, such as in the adaptation of animals to their environment or the irritability of plants and other organisms. The idea of reflection for the materialist is that mental images correspond with the material world as the source of those images. For dialectics, Reflection refers specifically to the ‘recognition’ of quantities and qualities in terms of notions which have already been acquired through past experience and thought.
-Encyclopedia of Marxism, Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org)
Applying these thoughts back unto the world includes ourselves; a person observes the world, and traces and imprints from past experiences begin to shape how that person materially renders unto the world. A persona develops and self-actualization occurs as that persona is applied to new interactions, which themselves become past experiences that shape the existing and later personas. I will write further on ‘later personas’ in this text, but for now that phrasing helps to highlight that personas come and go, and stresses the position that self-actualization is a continuous process.
Self-actualization as a principle is attributed to the work of Kurt Goldstein and Abraham Maslow, but that current presents it within idealist finality, the peak of human needs in which one’s potential is ‘fully’ realized. An appropriate criticism of Maslow’s formulation of the concept in his theory is how it backs the Western focus on individualism. A healthier formulation would focus on what conditions allow a person to grow comfortable with themselves and others around them. They can actualize a definition of their self through a persona, while acknowledging that it isn’t something they will be forever chained to. When that kind of comfortability becomes the social norm, self-actualization as a principle can be applied to social engagement, developing a welcoming culture and a superstructure that invites and celebrates a natural diversity of personas.
The recognition that current conditions need to be changed to allow the development of this kind of superstructure means that, in the process of that revolutionary kind of change being undertaken, the people enacting and aiding in that change must learn both how to be open to criticism and how to speak to their position with confidence.
Reckoning and Self-Criticism‘Reckoning’ will require some explaining, as it is a concept that I can say has grounding in materialist dialectics, but that remains an idealist hope until it finds footing in the field. It finds its etymological roots from the Greek λογίζομαι:
For the purposes of this writing, treat this definition as a proposal:
Reckoning: The process of calculating potentiality of outcomes, either reactive in the short-term or layered by planning for the long-term. For the materialist, the mental stimuli initially produced via reflection are used to produce ‘original’ (or imagined) mental stimuli. While not directly from the material world, these stimuli are still sourced from past experience obtained from it. For dialectics, the recognition previously obtained is used to weigh the worth of the calculation; these imagined notions produced are compared against ‘organic’ mental stimuli obtained by biological reflection.
In addition to this definition, I am proposing a measure called a ‘reckoning rate’, which in a quick summary is how quickly a person calculates a synthesis between a thesis and its antithesis. With that in mind, it must be made clear that this does not mean that being ‘quick on your feet’ to come up with ‘an answer’ to a contradiction, or a fast reckoning rate, corresponds to a high quality synthesis being produced. When a person takes the content and notions of theories to produce a theory, every theory involved still needs to be tested by being put into practice.
Every day we are faced with and make decisions, often without conscious awareness that a choice exists. A persona developed through self-actualization has to contend with the material world it is engaging with. The persona and the material world may be critical of one-another. How a person ‘sleeps at night’, so to speak, is made of the results of calculations being applied to new calculations. If nothing confronts an individual’s axioms, there’s not much that needs to be reconsidered, or recalculated, or reckoned with. If one is not willing to challenge the notion of who they are, how can they become willing to challenge current conditions? This is why self-criticism is a critical methodology to be aware of and put into practice.3
A political party’s attitude towards its own mistakes is one of the most important and surest ways of judging how earnest the party is and how it fulfills in practice its obligations towards its class and the working people. Frankly acknowledging a mistake, ascertaining the reasons for it, analyzing the conditions that have led up to it, and thrashing out the means of its rectification—that is the hallmark of a serious party; that is how it should perform its duties, and how it should educate and train its class, and then the masses.
-Vladimir Lenin, “Left-Wing” Communism: an Infantile Disorder 1920
To individualize this from the organizational application, it is important to note that often this methodology renders within a person as a lingering focus on previous experiences perceived as mistakes or failures. To utilize it in a healthy and progressive manner, the focus should instead be on holding themselves to task; how did an action live up to the values and principles imbued by your persona? What theorems were you applying to your action, and why? If the outcome wasn’t the expected result you had calculated, have you determined why? How does this new understanding settle with your previous notions?
Are you going to rest on your laurels or acknowledge that a change in the self might be needed? Do you feel like an outsider to the norms of your assigned gender? Do you feel like one to the notion of ‘gender’, the interplay of sexuality [asexual btw], and the roles the current superstructure imposes definitions upon for the sake of their bourgeois project? Seven question marks later, I wish to transition[4] to an established ‘end point’ of materialist dialectics and another proposal to the field. In this, I will make good on explaining the concept of how personas can become ‘previous’, and how contrasting ‘totalities’ in this process can be a healthy part of rendering oneself in this material universe.
You've become art, how could they even start to seeReasoning and Self-Obliteration
Beyond your presentation when they've got no imagination?
-Liz Lehman, The Scary Jokes, Icicles, April Fools 2016
Feuerbach was correct in his notion of love, as the consideration for how one will act (and with what spirit of intention) must come from a positive source of appreciation. What gives them euphoria and contentment - but this is also why Marx and Engels criticized Feuerbach. That appreciation has to extend outwards, and be made material by applied and proactive practice. Idealists and vulgar materialists underplay the act of reasoning, of acknowledging material conditions and the need for change to occur, because they settle with the ‘status quo’ despite its explorative roots.
Reasoning: The final phase of rational consciousness, formed on the basis of synthesizing judgments so as to extrapolate new knowledge about the perceived subject.
-Curriculum of the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism, Part 1: Dialectical Materialism, Glossary, Ministry of Education and Training (SRV) 2004, English translation by Luna Nguyen 2023
For Marxists, Reason, or rationality, is the objective form of processes of social action. … Reason is the objectively necessary content of our practical activity which we have internalized in a mental, subjective form.
-Encyclopedia of Marxism, Marxists Internet Archive (marxists.org)
In understanding history, both of the self through experience and social change observed through historical materialism[5], the application of criticism results in a decision being made, and thus applied. Theory into practice resulting in praxis - but a praxis always needs refinement based on obtained experience, and this is where having a self-awareness of one’s persona can reckon its worthiness, how it contends with one’s values and principles. If a person recognizes via reflection the harmfulness in some habit, behavior or trait, how is that materialized into taking action? To this, I present another draft proposal:
Self-Obliteration: The application of reason to invoke an acknowledgment that change needs to be undertaken, the knowledge and context of why through self-criticism, and making this acknowledgment visible to the material world through practical action.
This is the process by which personas become ‘previous’. ‘Obliteration’ is, understandably, a loaded word that carries the weight of totality. Making the decision to stop doing anything feels like a finality, like something has to be laid to rest. That metaphorical framing internalized within the context of self renders a depressing worldview, a misanthropic and hateful persona, when that sense of totality isn’t contrasted by a positive spirit of intention and progressive action. There’s little worth in acknowledging something is harmful when maladaptive criticism is going to create additional harm.
Consider this with the experience of gender dysphoria and the pain brought by adhering (or masking) to the standards of a rigid binary-based identity. That dysphoria is examined through reflection, and the methodology of self-criticism results in a euphoria for some, and a reasoning that their current persona is no longer indicative of who they want to be as a person. To whatever extent they then choose to make this overtly visible, it nonetheless is the beginning of a new persona. This is self-actualization, made possible by the openness to contend with a previous persona developed from a prior self-actualization.
Because it is a synthesis, it still carries the history brought by the experiences of the previous persona, but contrasted by a change that is mentally instigated and materially rendered. This is why the notion of obliteration when a person acknowledges they’re no longer what they once were (and the context for how that came about) does not, and cannot, be a totality or a finality. They were once some other persona, but they persist in a synthesized form; a persona created through sublation.
Exploration and Material RenderingFor the sake of our world and the well-being of those that dwell within it, we need conditions that allow for and invite exploration. We need new experiences to contrast against previous ones, so that reckoning can be induced and criticism applied with the intent of betterment - in oneself and in our collective conditions. When the necessity of change is left unfilled, we’re met with personal and cultural stagnation. Social action to bring change about, theorized and then attempted in practice, is the manifestation of a praxis that has been honed for ongoing change. Someone that conducts themselves with this aim displays the material rendering of a persona educated to understand it.
As the term has been alluded to previously in this text, ‘material rendering’ as a concept should be thought of as the external display of the internal persona. Self-actualization cannot remain just as thoughts as much as theory cannot be studied without applied practice. This extends to contrasting our current conditions to our notions of how conditions could be, and taking action to attempt to make them so. If they fail to materialize, or do so with apparent contradictions that need to be synthesized, examination and criticism is applied to refine theory.
For dialectical materialists, this loop which results in practice that feeds back to further refinement is how change is made tangible. Thus, desired change does not have to be left as imagined utopias or as an unfulfilled life – it is never too late. The inherent right a person has to live life, to take action to explore and realize themselves—identifying however they want to present themselves and being met with a mutual respect embraced by a culture of diversity—is tied to the development of a disciplined, professional revolutionary. When one labors to make that world possible for others, expressed through their personal values and principles, those actions deserve to be reflected upon with pride.
Have fun out there.
1Hegel, Logic, Second Subdivision, VIII. Essence, § 112 1873 (First Edition 1817) – there are other such works, if you wish to examine idealist dialectics.