Split Personalities

“To be a realistic whole is not an undisputed starting point but the provisional achievement of a composite assemblage” -Latour.

Adrian took this to mean that people are not ‘entirely whole’. Simultaneously, people can be many things and fit many roles. Adrian used himself as an example and listed off all the things he saw himself as being in a classroom setting. He presumed that he could embody all of these different titles to different people, but do those titles extend to how others view us, or how we view others?

While Adrian may be a friend, employee, teacher, and many other things, I have only ever know him as my lecturer. That gives me a limited perception of him now that I just how many roles he fills, but to me that is all of him; he is a whole lecturer.

So I tried to imagine how different people in my life may view me. I get to experience all of my moods, thoughts and feelings. I see first hand how I interact with other people, my likes and dislikes, my inner thought. But all this is lost to on everyone. Could we be simultaneously be the same person yet viewed as completely different  by two separate persons?

For example, my mother would claim to know me very well; she’s known me my whole life and is there when I go to sleep and when I wake up, same could be said for my family. But do they get to see the same Nathan that my friends do? I know I act differently around my family and friends. There are things I do and tell my friends that I wouldn’t with my parents and vice versa. But they don’t know that. So which version of myself is then the real me? Me as a Friend or as a Son/Brother? Maybe its a little of both.

Either way, both my family and friends have a completely different perception of the person that I am, and probably neither of them are completely accurate. Does that then mean that we are never whole within our own minds (because we have these different personalities for different people), but are whole from their point of view because that’s all they’ve ever known of us?