Column: Who are you, really?
By Charles Jeanes
Being true to Self: individualism and its discontents
“But nonetheless, there is a kind of popular discourse about finding your true self. People are always trying to look for that thing down there. It’s somewhere in there, if I can just find it, I’ll be happy.”– Joseph Henrich https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2021/01/04/128-joe-henrich-on-the-weirdness-of-the-west/
“Follow that will and that way which experience confirms to be your own.”― Carl Jung https://medium.com/@equimax21/on-carl-jung-dff7682ac0c7
“We do not perceive ourselves in order to know ourselves, we perceive ourselves in order to control ourselves.” — Anil Seth https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC13059087/
Being a person
What does it mean to be a person? Is your Self ‘a real thing’ or some fantasy of human consciousness?
This is not the first Arc to ask questions about personal identity, and is probably not the last. I write on the assumption that for my reader, “who am I?” is an important question for you. Or perhaps, “what does it mean to be a ‘Self’?” [https://www.etymonline.com/word/identity ]
At first glance, the question of being an individual seems uncomplicated. We all likely have heard of Descartes’ motto/formula for being-ness: “ I think, therefore I am.” Is being a human really so simple? Thinking is being?
There is a library of research now available to delve into, on the question of human notions of selfhood. Socrates told us, citing what was written in stone at the Delphic Oracle, gnothi seauton – Know Thyself. Historians of human consciousness – not scientists, but scholarly researchers on the topic – are prone to write about stages in the history of human understanding of the Self.
I am attracted to models proposed by William Irwin Thompson or Clare Graves, who observe human mind evolving concepts of identity over time. Each stage of evolving consciousness in a civilization is a stage of human understanding of what it means to be an individual.
https://wkelly1-19385.medium.com/structures-of-consciousness-wilber-gebser-thompson-a704b97d08d7
https://www.landsiedel.com/en/library/m-08-02-graves-wertemodell-neu.php
Anyone seriously interested in the topic of mind and personhood must surely begin with both a philosopher and a neuro-scientist. Each has pieces of truth. [ start with Charles Taylor and Anil Seth: https://eppc.org/publication/charles-taylor-psychological-selfhood-and-disenchantment/
https://www.words-and-dirt.com/words/snq-anil-seths-being-you/ ]
Who has the Biggest Self: on the ‘size’ of personalities
The topic of personhood and power is on my mind due to the outsize effect of a few very powerful people who dominate our news and preoccupy our anxieties. It is crucial that humans solve the challenge of awful leadership.
This fact demands we do investigation of the meaning of personal selfhood. It fascinates. It frustrates. Billionaires whose decisions affect us all – – presidents of potent states, masters of war, scientists of genius, artists of renown, all of them with immense effect on the lives of We-Without-Power – – are all individuals. They celebrate it. Some (e.g. Alexander the Great) have believed they were divine beings, son of a god, superhuman, Übermensch.
But – they are not “more” individuals than we are. Or are they? Peter Thiel and his ilk think they are indeed not like us, that an elite human deserves more “personhood.” [https://sociology.cass.anu.edu.au/events/sovereign-individual-reloaded-surfacing-thiels-alt-canonhttps://citizensassembly.arts.ubc.ca/resources/submissions/csharman-10_0403161337-315.pdf]
Capitalism and the Individual in History
Before going on, please watch this 39-second video from a famous film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y48hZ_rGsP4
It should be clear to most people that they are not what they own, or what they can show to other people as their personal material possessions. But is it? It should be clear you are not your “style” in appearance, or taste in music and literature and art, or the content of your conversation. That’s not You. Right? You are not things. You are not ideas. What you are, you must discover.
When someone asks, in the capacity of a good friend not a critic, “who are you really?” – what do you offer as an adequate, sincere reply? The roles you play in life – employee, friend, parent, lover, child etc. – are not the deepest level of Self. So what do you say? (Charles Taylor argues that your values define that identity. https://firstthings.com/retrieving-the-modern-self/)
Capitalism of course has invaded our minds completely because of technologies that serve it. The scientific methods of indoctrinating us to what is normal seem, to me, almost infinitely effective. We are absolutely convinced that we are what we own, and do, and appear. We do in fact identify ourselves rather easily with matter, not intangibles. We even “own” intangibles: MY idea, my thoughts.
Capitalism drives a vast machinery of desire. If things define us, we will want, and work for, and buy, things; capital grows as we grow our appetites. We can hardly imagine any other way to be. Reality [thing-ality] is in the mind.
This indoctrination to socially-constructed reality is the purpose of “systems” – “I feel myself a cog in something turning” is how Joni Mitchell expressed feeling trapped in machinelike systems of economy, politics, society, law — cultural normalcy in 1969. “We have to get ourselves back to the garden [Eden].”
Freedom was our watchword in the ‘60s, we young Western types. We indeed lived freely, relative to others elsewhere, no doubt. We were, and still are, the very paradigm of Henrich’s WEIRD individuals. (see section below)
The result of the intensely materialistic and physicalist notion of personhood is the world of 2026, in its totality. Our species, not infinitely malleable but very plastic in what we believe and think, has been shaped to fit the world. We want to change the world; but it changes us as much as we alter it, for we are simply constrained by capitalist “reality” – economic needs for our subsistence – to conform. Taylor says we have to know what we value. Yes. And we must “make a living” within the capitalism we are born into, also: a major limitation.
W.E.I.R.D. [Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic]
Joseph Henrich is an anthropologist who wants Westerners to understand our uniqueness in human historical development while at the same time we do not feel superior to other kinds of people. A worthy goal, and not easily reached. He invented the acronym WEIRD to summarize our differences. Naturally we have a sense of Self not to be found in other civilizations. Our particular history – the cultural evolution of Europe – is unique. Thus, so is the modern Western “Self.”
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170118-how-east-and-west-think-in-profoundly-different-ways
I will return to the “R” in Henrich’s acronym. Rich persons can evolve peculiar individual identities. Inequality makes distinct impacts on individuality.
Knowing Who You Are is your Life’s Work
I personally lean to the Socratic, and the Jungian, emphasis on the seeker after selfhood for my own model of identity. You have to look. You have to work.
Again, Socrates: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Examine what makes you an individual, the self you must know — whom no one else can know so well. Jung insisted that to be that self is your purpose in life. It’s not allotted to you without effort; this is the work of being a human, he said. [https://mentalzon.com/en/post/5045/finding-your-true-self-carl-jungs-guide-beyond-external-influence ]
Again, lyrics of Joni Mitchell: “I don’t know who I am, but Life’s for learning.” (Woodstock)
Paradox: when individualism is stronger in pre-modern culture
The West has a tradition, a method, to make civilians into soldiers by training, and a professional soldier is educated by an army to be very much a team player, very submerged in his military unit and very inculcated with the ethic of self-lessness. Primitive warriors, despite living in cultures where they are organically fused with their community or tribe, are much more individualist when they fight on battlefields. Soldiers under discipline will defeat warriors who refuse to take orders, every time; the Romans knew this very well.
A warrior in a non-Western culture is a fearsome individualist, a champion of single combat, and yet — his individualism in this context renders his military effectiveness inferior to the soldier who submits to discipline. This is the paradox of individuals serving a collective. Service, not egoism, works well.
In this particular, we see how being modern and Western has meant that individualism has been submerged when professionalism demands the person subordinate the self to the collective. We can do this in many other aspects of life. In fact, we have to learn the wise balance between the desire for a free, unshackled self and the responsible, socialized self. We are not a self because we are alone. Like the proverbial tree falling in the forest when no one hears it, a human person is not an individual without dialogic relations with other humans. [This short video explains the paradox of being a point of Selfhood only within a collective of others. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBzdBoRVPsc ]
Inequality and Justice
I noted that the wealth of Henrich’s WEIRD people, Western people ( = us), is remarkable. Wealth means ease, comfort, security, and leisure – all things necessary for the deep seeker after secrets of individual selfhood. Socrates said one must examine one’s life: he lived in a time when slavery was commonplace; Plato opined that the soul of a slave was inferior; Socrates equivocated. Women, in ancient Greek patriarchy, did not enjoy equality with men; they were thought to be naturally inferior to men. The limitations on huge numbers of people for exploring their interior spaces, their inward Self, were enormous. It’s just as true in 2026. Physical hardship, poverty, servitude, ignorance: all seriously limit the freedom of a seeker of True Self.
Our human-constructed inequality is unjust, to say the least. It completely vitiates any generalizations I might make about human capacity for being true to a Self. Evidently the people of this world enjoying stupendous wealth, and the power that accompanies such capital, are the very ones who consider themselves superior and deserving of our devotion.
They feel born to be our masters. They are nauseating, yes, and they rule. So we little folk had better learn what choices we have, and choose wisely, hm?
Conclusions: Death and Termination of Self
I will end with seriousness and frivolity.
First, the seriousness. Do you, in your present state of self-understanding of who-you-are, believe that this individual will disappear at your death? or does this Self have an enduring existence “beyond the Veil of Death”?
Plato, among countless other thinkers, wrote of human soul. Religions have depended on this mysterious phenomenon to reason out meaning from life. It is the Soul where the self is, where your identity has “location”, so to speak. And the immortality of the soul begs one to ask, is the soul ME in eternal form?
The dogma of reincarnation – quite popular among many people I know – asks us to believe that your personhood returns in a new body. Tibetan Buddhists seeking a new Dalai Lama search for a child [a tulku] who seems to have memories from the recently-deceased Lama. https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/it-s-mine-it-s-mine-how-do-you-find-a-dalai-lama-20210528-p57w3a.html
I will leave off this serious question by admitting I am agnostic about the whole notion of an immortal soul that is somehow still you. I know no evidence that convinces me for or against it. Across the Veil, I (I?) might learn the truth.
Now the frivolity. Alice, in Lewis Carroll’s Wonderland, tells The Gryphon, “It’s no use going back to yesterday, I was a different person then.” I quite like the perplexity of looking on my former self (selves) and knowing I am not that now, but I was once… and I am still accountable for things said and done. I am a multiplicity of selves across the span of my life – and at the same time, only one. This everyday mystery, being human, leads me to an amusing scenario.
I mentioned religion. I assume readers understand the Christian idea of Heaven and what it might be like there… I offer you this humorous bit of writing by David Eagleman (from his book, SUM https://www.spiritualityandpractice.com/book-reviews/view/18815/sum )
“God resolved at the outset that He wanted every human to participate in the afterlife. But the plans weren’t thought-out to completion and He immediately began to run up against some confusion about age. How old should each person be in the afterlife? … He decided it was unfair to keep people at the age they were at the end of their lives…God finally arrived at an ingenious solution while he was watching light diffract through a prism. So when you arrive here, you are split into your multiple selves at all possible ages. The you that existed as a single identity is now all ages at once. These pieces of you no longer get older but remain ageless into perpetuity. The yous have transcended time.
“They come to understand, with awe, the complexity of the compound identity that existed on the Earth. They conclude with a shudder that the Earthly you is utterly lost, unpreserved in the afterlife. You were all these ages, they concede, and you were none.” [pp. 72-74]
For whatever reasons of my peculiar and particular sense of humour, I am absolutely charmed by this picture. The selves I have been, am, and will be, are equally real and equally unreal.
It enchants me to think humans all live in this mystery and never give it much thought. Like many another mystery around us.
