Identity Crisis

It's always worse than I imagine

Noticing

Perhaps you are familiar with the following question: “How would you feel if you hadn’t had breakfast today?” This is simultaneously an in-joke, an insult, and an insight, uncomfortable as it may be, into the mental capacities of humans. I still have trouble accepting the proposition as true - how could anyone be incapable of evaluating a simple hypothetical, and one that they have surely experienced first hand as reality in their lives? There are a number of similarly uncomfortable perhaps-truths that I am struggling with and grappling with how to respond to them. It is true there is variation for human capacities from the slam-dunk to solving differential equations. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy. It is the extreme low-end capacity of some segments of humanity that I have difficulty believing in outside of obvious retardation, Down’s syndrome, brain-damage, and the like. If it is true, then the moment when I had the frame shift of “I am average intelligence” to “most of humanity is working with less than what I have”¹ is worse than I thought at the time. I don’t experience excitement or exultation over this - I experience mind-numbing and a desire to turn away from these thoughts and dismiss them.²

Now think about the same proposition about human variability and apply it to another human capacity: identity. I have been writing here about how some people are like children in that they are still easily moldable, and it is useful to keep in mind that advertising, television programming, and the like are insidious because even if you know something is fiction, especially visual fiction, your mind will still process it in some way as if it were true. This is a danger even for people of some intelligence - normal adults, dorks who can specialize in a single area but not apply things outside of that, and whatnot. It is also true for what you read but the processing is via different pathways and it’s easier to interrupt and evaluate a non-visual media at any given time. What, then, could possibly make this identity plasticity worse?³ I’m glad you asked and wanted to explore that territory because I didn’t.

Welcome to the salt mine

MY EYES

Famous poaster, the Last Psychiatrist, is known for a few phrases and the key one here is: “If you’re reading/watching[/CONSOOMING], it’s for you.” An insight if there ever was one about self-sorting by individuals. You read the New York Times because you’re either the demo who reads it, or you want to be thought of as that demographic. Likewise the Atlantic, or Forbs, or PCGamer⁴. This ties directly into my thinking on identity, and now we’re going to extend it.

If you read/think/consume it’s for you becomes read/think/consume it IS you, for some people. The ultimate in plastic identity is being what you see. When my son runs around jumping and flailing and declaring that he is a big jump motorcycle⁵ you can stop him at any moment and ask, “Are you really a motorcycle?” to which he will grin and say, “Noooo! That’s silly.” What if not every person has enough grounded identity or identity self-conception as learned from their community to maintain their atman, to borrow the term, in the face of a constant barrage of tantalizing imagery?

It’s never a joke and it’s always worse than I imagined

What do you mean, there is no such thing as playing as a character you don’t identity as? This sounds insane, does it not? It simply can’t be true, that is ludicrous, why I bet it never in the history of the planet has ever ha-

This also explains the seemingly confusing desire to “have {XYZ} represented in media” outside of the propagandizing and demoralization frames. Another tool in the belt; we did it! However, there are more troubling questions that arise and require us to spend some time meditating upon them.

Just ignore the user name and call him Randy

• What does it say about today’s culture/society/environment that the incidence rate of such total identity obliteration is on the increase?⁶

• How do we respond to those who have lost themselves in this way?

Roleplaying

What role, then, are we to play? In writing Rootedness the impetus was: what if these idiots’ plans backfired in unexpected ways? Now, I am considering another role for community, and Christian community: close-knit, local, communities⁷ are crucial for the formation of whole human beings. This is juxtaposed with our societal trending toward atomization and self-selected identity via brand, political party, you name it you can become it! All unchosen ties will be cast as forced, as if by violence, and portrayed as a negative for the infinitely malleable human persons. Tabula rasa writ large even though it’s blowing up in our faces and our technological might unleashes horrors instead of beauty on the regular.

For those that still have communal ties it is much easier: we show them ideals to pursue - Jesus Christ, the Lives of the Saints, and fill their minds and souls; as should be done for everyone, but especially the least capable. Walking into a church adorned with icons of the Saints whose stories we tell; seeing the great dome above us as Heaven descends to Earth; watching the censed smoke rise and with it our prayers; knowing the hot coal burns as the Divine must have within the belly of Theotokos. We must create community where these are real and lived every day instead of pushed away into mere intellectual understanding. In this way we serve the least and the greatest among us and make sure all are cared for in compassion.

Heaven descends; Christ is compassionate and stern; SIX WINGED MANY EYED ALOFT SINGING AND PROCLAIMING

When it comes to influencing society at large: outside of providing a community known by its compassion, love, generosity, and not partaking of the vices of the world but remaining somehow apart from the world, we have another way to show the Way. When Mel Gibson produced and directed The Passion of the Christ there was a segment of the population for which the film made history real and not the film let me connect in a new way⁸. I have now officially come around on the “we need to be producing art” position after finding the arguments around how to influence culture or shape the elites a little bit too fuzzy.

A simple start can be found in the adornment or ornamentation of buildings in public spaces with Christian icons, mosaics, and the beautification thereof. We walk in spaces where the True Flag of our Nations’ religion flies and we are told that we must have prayer removed from schools, football fields, and our faith must be private and hidden away. Yes, this will invite attack: graffiti and arson, and we are expected to be cowed in the face of such threats. What good is there in being a lamp unto the world if we cover it up?

1. We all have our blind spots

2. There is also the problem of the increasingly complex requirements made of the average person in today’s age and the reduction of communal or local-societal help to navigate these systems. That is for another day

3. This is where my imagination experienced failure and I didn’t take the concept to the extreme. Thanks be to Twitter for giving me yet another Oh, oh, no

4. If Hitler had been born in the age of the personal computer he would clearly have been a member of the Master Race and this joke is going to fly right by everyone but the appropriate time for an obscure joke that you can tie to Hitler somehow is always

5. SuperCross is a good influence

6. Leading Indicators - is this drugs? Loneliness? Hormones in the water turning the frogs gay?

7. Starting with the default community - family

8. An RCC friend of mine whose little sister was, to use the hip term, neuro-divergent came to believe the reality of the Crucifixion after seeing the movie and this just clicked