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.

Identity

Current physical models of the universe specify that there is no "center", that there is no uniquely privileged place which we can call a "zero point" from which to measure distances or locations. All positions are purely relative to one another. Yet we each experience the universe from a single and genuinely unique location, in our brain and through our senses. From our standpoint, each of us is at the unique center of the universe; our experience of being individual and unique is one which is shared by every other sentient creature. In fact, it is the ONLY thing we all absolutely have in common: our experience of a unique awareness located in a particular place and time.

Buddhist thought points out that the experience of personal identity or uniqueness is illusory, in that we share our experience of uniqueness with everyone who has ever lived. Yet the illusion is inescapable. Here we are, looking out through our own eyes and thinking our own thoughts, separately from the experience of everyone else who has ever lived. We find ourselves thinking, "why is my experience of myself right here, right now, behind these particular eyes, and not some other place or time or self?" What places "me" here and now? Even recognizing that the self is as illusory as the uniqueness of a candle flame doesn't escape the fact that I experience myself here and now. Even those who are able to transcend the illusion of selfhood are still located in time and space, here and now.

It's easy to see that the "self" is illusory. It is apparently stable, yet it is obvious that it changes from second to second. Most of us would hardly recognize the self we were 20 years ago, or the one we may become in another 20. Awareness drifts from moment to moment like smoke. Our awareness begins in childhood, suspends every night in sleep, and ends in death, and that's all the universe we can ever experience. In fact, it is our awareness of being located in time and space, here and now, that gives strength to the illusion of a constant identity. We look out through our own eyes, not someone elses; we think our own thoughts and have our own memories, not someone else's. Because of that apparent unique location, we identify the one who looks and is aware as a constant "self", an identity.

The conflict between experience and reality cannot end. We feel unique; we know we are not. We think others are different from us; we know they are not. We pretend our experience is unique; we know it is not. We experience ourselves as at the center of the universe, the zero point; we know we are not and it is not. But the question remains: what is it that is at the center of our awareness and behind our eyes? It looks and feels unique but it isn't. What is it?

Fairness

Fairness is such a peculiar concept. Most of us (maybe all) have strong feelings about the importance of fairness. When we're children "being fair" means that the same rules apply to all players, that there is no "privileged position". Sometimes being fair means that we should all share equally. When children argue about being fair, they always mean that someone else is getting more than they are. They NEVER protest that they are getting too much. Of course, we do much the same today. If the goods were "fairly" (i.e. "equally") distributed among all the world's population, most of the middle and upper socioeconomic classes would have a good deal less than they now do. So when we talk about wanting things to be fair, we don't really want an equitable distribution of the world's goods and services.

The other way in which we use the concept of "fairness" is in regard to the way in which "good behavior" is rewarded. In all cultures this issue has been a struggle. It is obvious that there is no relationship between moral values and rewards or punishments. Good guys have bad things happen; bad guys have good things happen; both are essentially random. We do not wish the world to operate that way. We insist that there is a logic in what happens to us.

To account for the unpredictability and irrationality of events, we invent arbitrary gods who war with one another and with men. Then we invent ceremonies to placate the gods in order to induce them to be more fair, or at least to give us more while punishing our enemies. When we give up hope for fairness, we imagine the god(s) are simply abusers of power or even worse are simply uninterested in the affairs of men, and we resign ourselves to endure unfairness.

In Buddhism (Theravada Buddhism) and some other related religions the arbitrary and unfair nature of the world is accounted for by "karma", which, by assuming that we have a cosmic account from other past lives, imposes a sort of fairness on the present. If something really bad happens to me that doesn't seem fair, then it is because I did something bad in an earlier life for which I am being punished, and the universe is fair after all.

In the Old Testament we observe a god who punishes unbelievers and rewards according to whim. In Christianity we are offered a life in another world after death in which the good are rewarded and the evil punished. Somehow the idea that there is a god who is a perfect accountant and balancer of the scales has endured across the ages and cultures. But the knowledge that this world isn't fair is unavoidable. We won't accept that, so we invent systems which are (at the least) pretty unlikely in order to make things seem more acceptable.

None of us seem to like the idea that the Universe simply grinds on according to its laws and with no regard for important us. Doesn't everything really have a meaning?