Identity

Reminded of a bunch of important issues by this post, I made an excellent, witty, and summarised reply to it in a comment, and then accidentally hit "back" and lost it. I made a crappy comment instead, so don't read it.

Now the reason I started this blog, initially, was to post as a bunch of alter egos, to spice up the content more than just blathering on about my own boring existence. I don't think I quite succeeded, but it doesn't matter because sort of my point and message was that one stable identity is, to me, impossible. I mentioned this in the very first post, and I'll try to revisit the concept again, because I think it is important enough to this blog, and to my message.

I act a whole lot different when I am with different people. This isn't an act, it's my true self that actually changes. I don't know if I'm a lot more impulsive than other people, but I genuinely *feel* like a different person when I speak to, say, Iceye, than I do to Adam, Kristin, my father, or myself, for that matter. Hence the name of this blog - man of many masks. This isn't very peculiar - we all do it. What befuddles me is that I can't seem to find a stable core inside this chaotic mess. It's like I find layer upon layer of masks until I've digged through the whole heap and come out on the other side. A rough metaphor for how "I" feels to me is kind of like a cloud when you fly through it with an airplane - it's very tangibly there, it's all around you and it constitutes the entirety of the landscape. It's got discrete shapes and a creamy white colour and you get the feeling that you could touch it and it'd stick to your hands in great lumps. But actually, it's just very intangible water droplets that are impossible to touch, and the plane just flies straight through.

Now imagine the airplane is also made of cloud, and you've got a good idea about how I picture the self. It's not there, yet it's very obvious, tangible, visible, and it also somehow makes you fly.

This is why I don't do much introspection nowadays - I just keep lying to myself, or using concepts I've imported from other sources - reflecting my own cloud in those of other people. For instance, when contemplating religion, I think about what Jesus and Buddha and Immanuel Kant and my friends have said, but I don't think there's any stable core to it - I mostly gather what bits of religion that seem to make sense, and then puzzle them together and see how they interact with my own ideas - but it's not really me anymore than my current mood, it just happens to last a bit longer. When I'm happy, I'm happy. Who knows if I stop being happy tomorrow? So, how could I possibly know if I stop being religious tomorrow? If I stop liking philosophical waxing? Heck, how could I know I won't suddenly start identifying myself as a woman?

What's strangest of all, is that it's all these little puzzle pieces that come together and form me. Meaning that "I" is but a series of processes, sensible processes of course, but still, temporary processes. Not news for anyone who's read philosophy of course, but my point is not that the self changes, but that integrity is (kind of) an illusion. I can make my own choices, sure, but I can't make them independently of my surroundings. Is identity a function of the masks we wear? Of what others see us as? I don't mean to say we're slaves to our environment, I'm meaning to say that what we don't show, doesn't exist. What complicates the matter is that we must see the "I" as an observer as well, but not as the only observer, not as an independent observer. It's kind of like a series of processes that can be part of ourselves only, but also processes that are part other people, and these concepts blur together.

Ironically, of course, many of these thoughts are taken from Douglas Hofstaedter. I thought them, though. I mean, I think I thought them. Therefore, I think I am a thought?