Being and Time - Sein und Zeit

I am re-reading the 2006 'Existential Migration' article by Greg Madison.  It is a phenomenological study of 20 who he calls co-researchers, there were semi-structured interviews with people who fit the description of voluntarily migrants.  Many did admit that their journey started under the pretense of economic migration, none, that I can see, were forced into exile.  


Madison collated the study to include actual conversations and transcript of these co-researchers.  Capturing the experience both as an observer and partly as subject himself.  They were asked open ended questions about their experience leaving home, relaying the circumstances of their leaving 'home', as well as how they feel now since leaving home.


He went onto explaining the ontological inference of Heidegger's influence.  Common themes consisted of self, identity, belonging, personal space, freedom, independence, choice, as well as larger thematic issues like philosophical and spiritual orientation.  He also noted that his co-researchers life paradoxes such as familiarity and foreignness, unable to return home, and the concept of home as a combination of interactions that no longer feels 'home' to them.  


Delving deeper into self and identity, some felt that self is created in its environment, subjective interpretation of that environment to either enable or obstruct development.  "Flood of homogeneity that would obliterate what is unique in one's self'.  This feeling, sometime may override the need to belong."


This feeling of wanting to belong yet rejecting the state of belonging is familiar to me.  My yearning for the unknown sometimes makes me unreasonably curious, yet it is that curiosity that is the core of who I am and what I stand for.  However, this is also a lonely place to be.

His co-researchers indicate that belonging brings about negative sentiments, words like "an imagined warmth and connection with others, while the revulsion is due to an oppressive demand to conform to conventional and disown one's uniqueness".  These are strong words, even if taken out of context to describe a word that often conjures warm and fuzzy feelings in most relationships.  

My personal take on belonging has a balanced view, on the negative, not belonging seems to me like I'm being excluded, however, belonging also means that I am accepted, I am ok, I belong to this 'exclusive' group/ team / type of person.  They are both appealing in their own right in my mind.

Building upon the conceptual frameworks of self, identity, belonging, he goes on to link self-direction or self creation could be jeopardized in 'belonging' and security.  On the extreme, security is incredibly important.  Maslow's hiearchy of needs, safety, or rather security is the next layer up from physiological needs, but well below belonging. 
 
It is rather interesting that belonging and love are at the same level.  In his argument, belonging is almost a rejection of love, to seek yet higher levels - towards self actualization.  

Then, he goes onto talk about the bigger than life issues, such as philosophical orientation and spiritual underpinning of these individuals.  Although it was a small sample of only 20, and I am unlikely to share any background, culture or similar experiences of these co-researchers, I feel I am one of them, telling my story.  Linda Brimm's Global Cosmopolitan talks about how telling one's story, articulation our uniqueness as glob cos can serve to solidify a ephemeral feeling of being one.  


Unfortunately I came across Heidegger's work only very recently, and his influence in the world of philosophy seem to be quit prominent but without understanding the chronological progress or development of philosophy as a 'science', I am merely a tourist in a foreign land for the first time.  On my itinerary, is of course like visiting the Eiffel Tower in Paris, watching a YouTube of Heidegger and have the guy pontificate his best understanding under 30 minutes.  Lesson 23 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPoBsJkuYR8&list=WLF8307052DE4C40C1&index=22

I have a hard time getting to know this fellow by the name of Dasein (I guess it is German for a 'being'), He seems to be like a chines ghost, 'floating' in the prophylactic of self-assured interpretation of things.   Chinese ghosts, are usually dressed in a while gown, skeletal under such, and floats groundless, or glides towards the subject of his/her desire.  Don't like popular films about the supernormal fool you, they do not actually have blood stains on their pure white gowns, they hardly say anything and often just observes.  Sorry to digress, Dasein, like I said, is kind of like a ghost - his existence is only 'real' because he is subject to all that he makes meaning of, in this environment.  His being is a response to his interaction with anything, or anyone.


'Anxiety, or angst, give rise to the 'uncanny feeling in which the indefiniteness of the nothing, the nowhere, and the negated being at home, finds expression'.  Perhaps, my little brain can't handle such abstraction.  To me, what Madison claims is that in the presence of the familiar, it becomes unremarkable, and un- interesting, therefore, to induce a an eruption of emotions, the existential migrant exercises defiance against the 'tranquilized self-assurance', breaking free of all that he/she knows, is the only way to be expressive of the true self that lurks beneath.


I'm not done.. but I have to pick up Eva to go see the screening of : Visions of the East: Asia Through French Eyes - Images of Singapore from French television 1964-1973 at the Singapore National Museum..


I'll be back to put this analysis against the backdrop of summary I read from Brimm's Global Cosmopolitan.  Sense making, telling their stories, understanding of their stories through someone else's eyes - is therapeutic, and perhaps aid in defining that self, identity that creates the belonging...