Rachel Marston Section 9 Midterm post #1: 30 Rock and Philosophy

                    Theory of Self:  Who are We?

         The Emmy winning, amazing, and hilarious television series, 30 Rock boasts many themes of philosophy that are evident and apparent in every episode.  One major recurring theme is defining what it means to be yourself.  We understand our existence and time in a linear model.  Philosopher David Hume, however, is not sure that one can even be considered the same person from a few minutes ago, or even over the course of a lifetime.  In his Treatise of Human Nature he says: 

         "There are some philosophers, who imagine we are every moment intimately conscious of what we call our       SELF;  that we feel its existence and its continuance in existence... For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure.  I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception."

         Hume views the self as being disrupted, in which he feels we are best described as "a bundle or collection of different perceptions which succeed one another with an inconceivable rapidity and are in perpetual flux and movement."  This means that just because we are who we are now, it does not necessarily mean that we are going to be the same person at any given time.  In other words, we are constantly changing and will never be the same for more than one minute.

         An example of this is when Liz has to undertake compulsory sexual harassment training--or, as Jack calls them, "pervert seminars"--certain assumptions are made about the self over time.  The assumption is that who Liz Lemon is now, completing the seminar, is the same Liz Lemon that committed the offense in the past and is also the same Liz Lemon that will be prevented from committing such crimes in the future due to this seminar.

       In the first three minutes of this episode we can see clearly what Hume is talking about.






Citations:
  30 Rock and Philosophy edited by J. Jeremy Wisnewski