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What word would describe the quality of not being self-aware?
I am aware that it is allowed to have multiple hyphens in a word. However, the Oxford English Dictionary lists self-aware as a hyphenated word, whilst unaware is not. Therefore, I am unsure which of these options to choose. Or perhaps there is a better word?
Perhaps something along the lines of "oblivious"? "Words" with two hyphens are monstrosities, in my opinion.
As recommended by @JanusBahsJacquet in the comments to the question, I chose self-unaware as my word.
For some reason when asking the question, I got stuck mentally, on having the negation prefix come first in the word.
A mystically-inclined friend frequently mentions the opposite condition to being self-aware. He calls it "sleepwalking". But underlying this is the mystic's idea of what self-awareness is, which might not relate to what the OP had in mind.
I was just think about this today and ended up referring to the "lack of self-awareness" as it was the only thing that felt right.
That being said, if I had to pick something that was a single compound word that would indicate the exact opposite of self-aware, I would go with self-unaware.
In certain cases, you might find 'conceite' to be a good antonym of self-aware. As in "Conceited people generally lack self-awareness". It's not a perfect opposite, but works in some cases.
Philosophically, we are all self aware, some just more so than others (self-awareness is always > 0 for humans). Someone who is literally not self aware (in the literal sense of literally) wouldn't be a functional human being. As such referring to someone as self-unaware would be hyperbolic at best. Perhaps this is why the Internet doesn't have a solid answer?
To think that adjectives like 'self-aware' must remain intact when one is expressing the opposite meaning is a form of grammatical un-sanity or non-sanity, by which I mean insanity.
Those who are aware of themselves are said to be self-aware. Those who are not are said to be lacking self-awareness.
In my view, un-self-aware is the best choice here. It respects the form of the standard spelling of 'self-aware', while avoiding the creation of the puzzling and potentially ambiguous entity, 'unself'. Some people might regard a word with two hyphens as a monstrosity, but I can think of very few situations in which the author of a piece of non-fiction writing would not want clarity of intent to be one of their chief aims, or even the chief aim.
Of course, if you are a writer of fiction or poetry who is playing with the multiple possibilities inherent in an ambiguously spelled word, none of the foregoing applies.
Although, technically the word self-aware or self-awareness is redundant, I think it's been accepted into our lexicon because it underscores the state of being "aware of the truth" as opposed to being in denial. The word "aware" is too vague.
