This is a rant I came up with while tokin (Budah) and trippin on DXM (Howard). Ok. Today I realized how we see ourselves. We don't see ourselves every second of everyday, but others do. The only thing we see except from a mirror or reflection is other people, otherwise we can only see ourselves from the viewpoint of a first-person perspective/shooter(video game type). Now when we see these other people looking at us or what we're doing we form a visual image in our head based on the last time we looked in a mirror/saw our reflection and also based on how we are sitting/the other person's reaction. Namely it's the person's reaction and if you know your facial expressions and your personalized movements and such you can tell what you'd look like if you did that reaction or expression at a person. Anyways, when you form these visual images then your viewpoint changes from first-person to 3rd-person view. Today when I was hanging out with Lil' Howard and Budah and R-money and all, my ability to view myself/the world in 3rd person was gone, and I could only view things in 1st person without knowing at all how I looked. It was only when i was looking at R-money and saw how he was looking at me, and through his eyes I could tell what I looked like. I had to really concentrate to do this, but I succeeded and got back my 3rd-person view sense. It was then that I realized that when I look at other people, if they are looking at me as well wether in the eyes or not, I was actually looking at myself! Thats right! Everytime someone and I look at each other, we aren't looking at each other, we're looking at ourselves through our subconcious/dormant areas of our brain. Think about it next time you look someone in the eyes.
I think you may be talking about Charles Horton Cooley's "Looking Glass Self" idea. Which is pretty much saying we see ourselves through the eyes of others. Like if a lot of girls are interested in you and all the guys think you're 'the man' then you will have more self-esteem.
YES! CHRIST FINALLY! is that a book you mentioned, or a movie? because i seriously need to read it! The people that know me real well that I smoke with and so on understand what im talking about, but no one that has not smoked with me has ever understood what i was saying.
Well I think he got the term 'looking glass' from Alice in Wonderland if I remember correctly, so hopefully he was a stoner to, lol. But I don't know if it was a book or what, just an idea that he probably wrote down in one way or another. Just search google for Looking Glass Self.