Identity and self I

Most of who we think we are is tied up with what groups we belong to. In this essay I'm going to consider what that means, how it limits us, and how we can let go of some of our self-imposed limits and be more directly in charge of our lives.

Humans are tribal animals. We belong together in groups, like all primates. From our first group, our family, to our last, we belong to groups. Groups include your friends (rarely more than 29, because that's the size of the basic primate tribe), your profession or job, your gang, your hobby group, your country, your religion, your garage band, and so on. We each belong to a number of groups, but at any given moment we are primarily in just one.

What does it mean to be "in" a group? Groups have boundaries which separate the "ins" from the "outs". It is usually required by the group members that prospective members demonstrate their willingness to belong by jumping through a hoop of some kind. These hurdles are called "initiation rituals". Groups may require you to pass an examination, carry out a series of difficult tasks, or tolerate pain or embarrassment to "prove" your right to be a member. The difficulty of the initiation helps establish how important it is for you to be a member and reassures the current members that their group is worth the effort of joining. Leaving a group usually results in considerable resentment from the group members or punishment for the person leaving.

When we're functioning as a member of a group, we have to follow the prescribed rules for behavior, dress, language and other related choices. Even though you may belong to other groups with different rules, you are expected to follow the rules for the group you are currently in. The rules have already been established by the group, and may be ethical rules, behavioral rules, dietary rules, moral choices... the list is lengthy but the penalty for breaking the rules may be punishment or even expulsion from the group. Essentially we incorporate the values (repeated behavioral choices) of the group as our own. As a result some part of how we identify who we are is our group identity. That's frequently what we answer when someone asks us who we are. Many of us identify first with our occupational group: I'm a policeman (or whatever). For others the occupational group is less important, and we identify ourselves with another group, such as family or club.

But we are more than our group identity. We have our names, our historical sense of being the focus and center of all the experiences that were focused in our brains. We have our physical point of view, which is unique to us; nobody else can look out of our eyes or hear with our ears. We identify our self as that person who thinks the thoughts that pass through our brain, who remembers the experiences of the past in the first person.

Of course all these latter issues are largely fictional. Everyone without exception who is conscious and aware shares identically the same experience of uniqueness. Our experience of personal uniqueness is really the one thing we all absolutely have in common. (If that be irony, make the most of it.) Everything described in the preceding paragraph is temporary and removable. We can lose our point of view with losing our eyesight or hearing. We can lose our personal memories in a heartbeat, the instant of a ruptured blood vessel in the brain, or slowly through some deteriorative process like Alzheimer's. Our thoughts change from second to second, like a fountain flowing, without constancy and largely without coherence. Every night we surrender control of our thinking process to sleep. Who are we then? When we're asleep or unconscious who are we?

Not every culture celebrates individual value and personality like the West. Not every individual regards their personality as unique, valuable, important. As I get older I find myself wondering if the self I regard as essentially constant really even has any existence at all. Perhaps the "I" is just a comfortable illusion.