Self-help for cocoons

and what's on my mind

This is the fifth part in a series. But it can be read on its own.

1. First we shape our social graph; then it shapes us

2. Scraping training data for your mind

3. A blog post is a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people and make them route interesting stuff to you

4. Look for people who likes the illegible you of today, not your past achievements (Writing as communion)

5. Self-help for cocoons ← you are here

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I find it useful to think of myself not as an individual but as an individual + a social context. The things I value and pay attention to and do are all influenced by the people, books, blogs, etc, I surround myself with. When I change the composition of that milieu, I change. Often quite abruptly. Things that seemed essential to me when I was in the poetry world (lying awake at night worrying if I had made a mistake using an Aeolic verse form instead of free verse) seemed like a strange dream two weeks after I had left. I have talked about this before: “First we shape our social graph; then it shapes us.”

But in a way, I feel like I didn’t go far enough in that essay. Talking about a social milieu and how it shapes you, makes it sound like the milieu is something separate from you, something that surrounds you. But it is more like an extension of you. Or perhaps you can say that the self and its milieu is a coupled system. At least that is how it feels to me. My friends and my books are like a cultural cocoon that I spin around myself. I craft a context within which I live, and that context becomes an extension of my mind, which allows me to think, and live, in ways I couldn’t otherwise; it crafts me.

Sometimes the best way to care for myself is to extend care to the cocoon. If the cocoon is healthy and vibrant and thriving, the smaller self that lives inside it is usually ok. Just as there is self-help, there is something like self-help for cocoons.