Nosce te ipsum - A Treatise on Identity
In case you don't know Latin or the famous quote, Nosce te ipsum means "know thyself." Since my good friend Raskolnikov has decided to write about “the ripening of identity,” I thought I should explore this topic further in a sociological framework by asking two important questions:
1. what comprises one’s identity
2. why is identity important?
First of all, a person’s identity is comprised of two elements: their past and their present. The past includes genealogy, upbringing, hometown, prior associations, etc. Essentially everything in the person’s past: the smells in the kitchen, what grew in their backyard, what church they went to, what names they were called, who their friends were, etc. Even if they don’t believe, practice, or associate with any of those things that they used to, those elements are still a part of them because they may adversely, if not positively, affect them, with or without the person knowing it at all.
Secondly, what the person currently believes and practices comprises the second element of a person’s identity. After all, if someone was born in New York City as a Jew but moved to Pakistan and became a Muslim, then the current identity is more salient than the former, even though the past still will always influence and shadow the current. But nonetheless, current associations, practices, and beliefs are an essential determining factor in an individual’s identity.
But why is any of this important? Why should anyone “identify” with monikers and labels to begin with? Isn’t any such label insufficient in truly explaining who one is? Can even an autobiography fully explain an individual? Maybe not. Maybe words cannot completely describe someone. Maybe words, with pictures and video cannot fully describe someone. Maybe even personally knowing that person and being their best friend cannot completely pin point their identity to do them justice. This is because only the individual in their own mind can be completely sure of who they are.
Labeling others and assigning identity to others is useless and perhaps even destructive because it’s inherently incomplete and dishonest. The only person anyone will ever completely understand is themselves, because they are in immediate awareness of their past, present, and future plans. I didn’t include future as one of the elements in determining identity because I see that as just words without action. Projection of an action doesn’t make an individual, unless they are characterized by constant babble and no action. But generally we all have plans, but we don’t become them until we actually execute them. My point is that actions, not words, make an individual.
So then, why is it important to know yourself? Why should you grill yourself with difficult questions about who you really are? Where you come from? What you believe in? What you should do with your life?
Identity has two sides to it: it can be tool of enslavement, or a tool of liberation. If you choose to ignore the fundamental elements that make up your existence by ignoring your past, rejecting purpose and beliefs, and ignoring the world around you, you become a slave to identity because others will determine it for you. Not knowing or ignoring these things will cause an unnatural dependence on others. For happiness, wealth, and all substance; you will always be borrowing someone else’s standard of living and subscribing to someone else’s beliefs. Whether it’s your parents, your boss, your lover, your friends, or whatever subculture you belong to. Being a pawn in someone else’s game is an identity, albeit not your own. However, being a pawn does give you the comfort of having established positions and standards that have been created by someone else so you don’t need to think for yourself. You know if you just move eight spaces forward you’ll get the chance to be a queen or any other piece you want. Just go to law school, become a lawyer, and you’ll make money and that equals happiness, right? But what about the perils that lie along that set path? Are you guaranteed success? What if you never make it to the end? Does that mean happiness was never achieved? Could it be that a life was actually wasted by conforming to someone else’s game?
Now consider the alternative of knowing one’s identity as being a tool of liberation. You stand up from the game that is set before you, knock the board with all its pieces off, and design your own game. Let it be hopscotch. Let it be jogging. Whatever game you design, as long as it is completely your design, you will always score points. You will always win. You will always be happy. Because if you aren’t, you can always change the rules or change the game all together. The point is: you are in control. You set the rules and you determine the standard. Only by creating your own game, which occurs after the laborious process of truly knowing your own identity, knowing what made you, and knowing what you want, can you be free. And only when you are free can you be truly happy.
I’m sure we all have something in our past, or something about ourselves that we aren’t particularly fond of. I’m sure of that because I’m certain that no one living is perfect. What I’m saying is that instead of hiding it, or ignoring it, or rejecting it, embrace it. It is who you are. It’s a part of your identity. The sooner you come to know it and accept it, the sooner you can improve on it, or work on it, or hell, even increase it.
So how can you know who you really are? Well, start by thinking about your past. Think of hidden memories and talk to family members or old friends about them. Create art – either by writing, taking pictures, drawing, or whatever medium best expresses some event or quality about you. Stop your daily routine by doing something completely new and spontaneous once a day or once a week. Go travel to a foreign country. Or just go to the next state over if you’ve never even done that. Meet someone entirely new and go to lunch with them. Read the book you’ve always wanted to. Find out about a foreign religion. Eat the thing you’ve avoided your whole life. My point: you need to get out of your box in order to see and know what is inside it. And again, why is it important to know what’s in your box, to know who you really are? Because then you can know how to change yourself and the world around you. And that is the key to happiness.
posted by -R at 10:10 PM
5 Comments:
You confront a lot of the same sentiments I believe. "Finding yourself" is less about determining your role in the world and more about discovering how you and the world coexist. In exploring all of manner of endeavors, you will further connect with the world yet further develop your own perception of it all as well. If nothing else, if one cannot learn to listen to their inner voice, then one can challenge the schemas created while growing up within whatever society or culture they inhibited. By exposing yourself to more, you only learn that you will be tolerant of more and identify with a broader (still unique) scope of influences.
I must've read this over twenty times by now and I just don't seem to understand what you're saying. I am in fact not talking about coexistence, but instead about one's identity. One's characteristics, fetishes, and inclinations which are a unique testament to one's personal narrative that is derived from one's own unique experience. Furthermore, that precisely has to do with finding one's personalized inner voice. If one does not contain this unique inner voice, they also have no separate identity. They are not challenging any "schemas" because they are effectively a pawn. Without your own agenda, you belong to someone else's. Whether one wants to admit it or not.
I do agree with your last sentence, that people should be exposed to as much as possible, because that similarly challenges and shapes one's OWN identity.
I'm basically saying fuck everyone else, do your own thing, where I think you're saying there is no such thing as that. I’m looking at the world through the individual’s eyes where you are looking at it through God’s. But please explain yourself further because I hate to misinterpret what you're saying, but I think you also misinterpreted what I said. But, if there is no misinterpretation, just say that you disagree with me, I just want to know.
I took from your comments about the identity being composed of past and present. I believe that the schemas developed through past experience and upbringing can be, let's say neutralized. Therefore, they don't have to be part of your identity at all. That isn't to say that past experience doesn't aid in developing your identity at all, only that one can choose to filter out those that come to conflict their evolving identity. It's more in the vein that the individual and "God" are at the base the same thing. Each individual operates as an independent sliver of "God," the universe, whatever. However, we should, in my opinion, strive to reconnect our idenitity with much of what is universally true of all of us. In different words, we are both connected to each other through a strong common bond, yet have a completely individual, unique perception of it. We are one and many simultaneously. Man I suck at explaining this. I think I understand what you are saying completely; I'm doing a crummy job of explaining it.
I thought of another way to look at it. We misunderstand each other because as you said, I'm grounding identity in a more spiritual sense, beyond this world, while you are grounding it in the world's effects on identity and our responses to it. It's difficult for me because I agree with much of what you said and most of what you say all the time. Our differences come in how we frame it all in relation to "God." I agree that adhering to nothing makes you a pawn to whatever system (in any form) is in place. You summed up my spiritual beliefs best in your article including the metaphor of a wave and its relation to the ocean. That's exactly how I see myself to god. Using that metaphor, we are as I said different, occupying our own space (however fluid) in the whole and yet ultimately the same as part of the sea. Oh man, we need to have a conversation over a cold one sometime and we could resolve this. Words as you say cannot possible capture what I'm trying to portray entirely.
Ok, again, thank you for clarifying. I knew there was something I was missing.
I agree with everything you say about there being a common bond between all of us but still having a unique perception. Actually, your explanation is the perfect bridge from my "name of God" article and this "identity" article. I propose seemingly separate concepts but they're obviously not. You just explained how that can be so. I should thank you for that.
There is one disagreement I will state, however, and that is what you say about past experiences being able to be neutralized. This is because of my own belief that genes, memories, and karma have a much bigger influence than people give credit to. But you're already a step ahead of me (again) by explaining that these differences arise through our different beliefs in the existential. Furthermore, you are absolutely correct that we need to somehow get together and booze. Any chance of you coming up to DC? I don't have a car, but I think Georgetown's hockey team will be playing UNC at some point so I'll let you know when I go down to your neck of the woods.
Post a Comment
<< Home