Identity (Slight Return)

"Identity is the crisis you can't see"

Probably of all the writers on the web, Dave Pollard is one the I find most consistently challenging. There are lots of other writers I like to read but few have pursued their thinking & its written expression with the engaged rigour that Dave has. I frequently find myself at odds with what he has written. I do not always relate to the emotional turbine that powers him across my screen (particularly with regard to gaia & environmental catastrophe). So I find myself considering his post We Are Not Who We Think. It triggers all the thinking about intention & identity (that found expression in this discussion with Miguel and my trying to read this book & failing to understand it) that something (which might be me) has been churning for the past few weeks. I agree with Dave that we are not who we think we are. I suspect that intentionality is a fiction to useful for us to ever discard.

If our actions are indeed "the tantrum of our genes", then where, in the 'product' that is each one of us, is us? If we are, as I would posit, simply our knowledge, our beliefs and our imaginings, figments of reality, and if these three fragile, fleeting figments are determined by our genes, our culture, and our senses, experiences and memories, and if in turn these figments determine what we do, and don't do, during our too-long, too-short 'lives', what control do 'we' have over any of it?

To remix Dave, the paradox of control applies us all as individuals. We are the product of genes, culture, sensation. We are meat puppets. We are masters of the universe. We make decisions. We carry on. There is no core of who we are, no homunculus pulling the strings. We are a jazz improvisation not a symphony under a conductor.

If we want to save the world then we must do so precisely because we are not autonomous. Our genes are not just ours but shared with all life on earth. Our identities do not stop at the edges of our brains or the surface of our skins. They spill out and mingle in a hideous intimacy with the whole of creation. We are the world* and frankly that's a bit scary.

If we want to save the world then we must use all the resources that constitute us. The genetic heritage of millions of years that fuel & form us. The cultures that shape & are shaped by us. The sensations & experiences that are unique to each individual yet can be common enough to withstand the (t)errors of communication.

Now I just have to get off my fat arse & do something.



*N.B. We are not the children.