Discussion Of A Hidden Wholeness

I’m starting a new series of posts dealing with things I don’t really discuss on this blog. These posts are going to deal with “the self”. I feel these topics are important to discuss as artists and designers, as the more you know about your inner-self and philosophy of art, the better you can perform. Plus I have to write about these topics for my Capstone class, so I figured if I can make them in to a good post, why not?

I’m going to kick this off with a post about “A Hidden Wholeness”. I have a few things I want to reflect on in the book “A Hidden Wholeness: The Journey Toward an Undivided Life” by Parker Palmer. The book deals with the journey to a whole self. The part I want to discuss revolves around the idea of the change between children and adults in terms of being able to navigate the hidden self and the public self.

First let me start by saying I’m not a huge fan of the book. I think the writing is a little drab and the author has a tendency to repeat himself numerous times. That aside, I feel the author does bring up several good points.

The author makes the argument that as children, we have an ability to commute between the person we are in public and the the hidden self that is closer to ones true self. As adults we tend to lose the hidden self all together and instead find ourselves longing for that missing “something”.

I agree that as adults we tend to lose our imagination and our ability to live in a fantasy world, but I tend to think that’s a good thing to an extent. At the very least the person needs to develop the ability to differentiate between the two. The thing I don’t agree with is the authors argument that as a kid, the hidden self is a harmless secret, where as adults the secret is considered a masked and armored self. I feel the description of the armored self, where people put on a facade for public and act as their true self in the privacy of their own homes, is essentially the same as a child who lives a fantasy life in the security of his bedroom.

On a side note I find it funny that in this book, the author argues the need to share more, but with the rise of social media, there is a giant increase in the amount of articles arguing we’re sharing too much.

To a certain extent, I think the author is more against dickheads, people who are not outgoing and friendly and generally are selfish people, then he is against people who have two versions of the self.

A best I feel the author is arguing that a persons ethics equals a whole self. One story the author brings up numerous times is about the a farmer who was working in government. The farmers has a choice between doing good for the land, or making money for corporations. The author claims that because the man decided he would rather save the land, he has somehow come closer to a whole self. I find that logic flawed. Sure he may have not compromised his ethics, but I don’t feel that makes him a more whole person than he would be otherwise.

I have mixed feelings about this whole book. I feel there are some good points to be made, but in the end there is something about it that feels hypocritical and preachy. Kind of like another famous book. I feel the author has generalized way too much and has attempted to boil a complex issue down to a black and white view. Something that is never easy to do.