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6.3 Relationships
The reception and interpretation of meaningful signs is complemented by the
recognition of real and potential relationships between oneself and another entity in
one’s environment, or between two non-self entities in one’s environment. The for-
mer type of relationship has been presented as a pre-requisite for the quality of
‘self- awareness’ that our species acquired while developing from ‘pre-human’ to
‘proto- human’ [ 14 ].
Imagine a pre-human being... A creature embedded in relationships, relationships that are
grounded in exploration, social facilitation, memory, imitation, learning (in all its forms),
instruction and familiarity. My creature experiences the world, but does not yet imagine it.
My creature is not yet self-aware.
... self-awareness can be neither more nor less than an internalization of all the relation-
ships of which pre-human was part; relationships which had arisen in the context of engage-
ment with environment and which patterned that engagement in the present and into the
future. Self-awareness can be no more than an internalization of that which was external.
(pp. 18–19)
Such interactions represent practically the entire lifetime activity budget of a
Solega person—encompassing trophic, economic, medicinal and construction-
related interactions with plants on the one hand, and trophic, avoidance, antagonis-
tic, economic and companion interactions with animals on the other. Many other
types of anthropocentric relationships and interactions could be enumerated, but
will not be further discussed in this chapter, as there exists, I believe, a far more
interesting assemblage of relationships in people’s minds. Dwyer, in his discussion
on the proto-human, misses a crucial aspect of self-awareness, namely the knowl-
edge of what other entities have the potential to think or do, and what relationships
those entities might have with other entities in their environment—a kind of ‘social
awareness’. After all, many authors have claimed that “ there is no self without the
other ” [ 205 , 206 ], and so Dwyer’s “ internalization of all... relationships ” should
also include exclusively third-party relationships. Accordingly, his “ representation
of the world of the protohuman ” (Fig. 6.3a ) could be elaborated as shown in
Fig. 6.3 ( a ) Representation of the world of the protohuman, according to Dwyer (2005).
( b ) Dwyer’s representation modifi ed to include knowledge of third-party relationships
6 Signs and Relationships