In this episode, Dara discovers the word ‘haecceity’, which stems from the Latin word for ‘thisness’, and is used to describe the quality that makes a thing or a person uniquely themselves. He argues that this is something we cannot hide, no matter what we do.
He discusses the vulnerability of state change and how it might inform social anxiety or a dread of being seen. That leads to asking in what ways being seen benefits or threatens us. He looks at how being embattled is a very particular state that does not permit reflection or mindfulness until the state has passed.
Dara also looks at how social media makes us objectify ourselves and how that becomes a distancing dynamic that keeps us further from our true selves. He believes that many of us have become compulsive consumers of our own narratives, and that has placed us in a state of permanent presentation that we instinctively understand to be transactionary.
He wonders about what we are attracted to and what we attract, and how what we see in the world is often a reflection of how we view ourselves.
Time is also found to throw in some movie references and to give a shout out to both the new Spurs manager and an eccentric musical entertainer by the name of Earl Okin, whose memorable 1981 desire to be treated as a sex object is a distinct childhood memory of Dara’s!
A Word a Day – https://wordsmith.org/awad/index.html