Identity and Self
"Still I keep a single name
labeling a twinkling sea
though it is ten billion waves
that are constituting me."
- T. Melnechuk
Post Take Aways
Your identity is not your Self.
Constantly test your Self against reality.
Stop thinking about your Self so much.
Optionality is the only thing that allows for true Self expression.
Identity
To be clear, identity isn't real. Your identity is created by you as a vehicle for communication and interaction with others. This is due to a genetic program running in each person tuned for the survival of large groups of people.
Your identity will change based on the type or mode of communication. You are subconciously, constantly editing versions of past and future identities and embody different identities based on the audience that you expect is watching. When you are playing the part of a given identity, I call that "identity embodiment" (or identity realization). You're giving it life and making it real.
People have identities for their family, friends, work colleagues, internet followers, people they’re trying to sleep with, people they’re trying to marry, people they think they’ll meet someday. The list is endless. Think of all the identities you’ve accumulated behind your mind.
The Dance of Identity and Self
All this means your Self is NOT your identity. However, you can't totally avoid bringing parts of your Self into identity embodiments. This is why the best actors have a part of themselves in the characters they choose to play.
When embodying an identity, you either exaggerate, filter, or avoid parts of your Self to fit the role the audience is expecting - or what you think the audience is expecting. As you do this more and more, as you get older, you typically get better at understanding the audiences to know which identity, or parts of your Self, to use when. Which things about you to exaggerate. Which things to repackage. Which things to not do. Which things to not say.
So people go through their lives with this collection of identities and pull the right one out of a hat based on the audience they're addressing or the future identity they think they want to be. However as you approach Self Alignment, you will begin to carry less and less of these identities around with you. Complete Self Alignment is when you only have one identity and it is all of your Self.
Reducing the size of this bag of identities comes down to embodying more and more of your true Self and less and less of the audience-tuned identities. A fully aligned Self will stand unaltered in front of any audience, in any location, in any set of circumstances. People who allow circumstances to alter their expression of Self have not yet reached full Self Alignment*.
The ability to avoid circumstances or changing your position can be a means of protecting your Self. In fact, intentionally changing circumstances so you can best leverage the strengths and avoid the weaknesses of your Self means you understand your Self well enough to use it as a tool for creation. One approach is simply caring less about what the audience is looking for to reduce your identity burden. Best though, is to create enough of the right things that you'll have more power over circumstances than they have over you. But you must first put your Self in as many unique circumstances as possible to begin to outline the boundaries of you.
“The horrific struggle to establish a human self results in a self whose humanity is inseparable from that horrific struggle. That our endless and impossible journey toward home is our home.”
- David Foster Wallace
Test Boundaries
Your Self is not a Platonic form. It’s always moving and can’t be distilled without details being lost. This is why we can never have a complete model of it. It’s too nuanced for our brains to model precisely. Its shape will never truly be known either, but boundaries can be felt. The homunculus actually lives deep in your gut, not your head.
The only way to get a real handle on your Self is to test it. Throw it up against real world situations that force it to produce responses and find its bearings. Struggle. Get challenged. Get crushed. This is why concerted, novel interactions are so important to learning about yourself. Your response to the novelty and discomfort will tell you more than any self-reflection ever will and it will etch that knowledge in your autonomic nervous system. This is the idea behind the “put yourself in uncomfortable situations” bit that people squawk. It’s not about pushing yourself or anything like that. It’s about finding your sweet spot across the sea of situations life will throw at you; knowing where you can live comfortably given what you feel.
“Don’t think about what you want to be, but what you want to do."
- R. Feynman
Stop Reflecting So Much
You should not be constantly trying to explain the patterns of your Self to yourself. That’s the worst way to amplify your essence. It usually plays out in the same way as following self-help books. You’re letting your bag of identities run the show. You’re defining too much the shape of who you want to become and listening less to your actual form and its potential trajectories. You’re investing less focus on finding ways to make your natural inclinations useful. Again, the only way to map and mold your form is through interaction with the world. A person never really believes a truth until they’ve experienced it firsthand. Only then will they believe it past the point of existential threat.
Also, mentally simulating circumstances, and your Self within them, is a version of reflection. Stop it. You will never simulate better or even close to that of the actual thing happening. So go experience it. Do what you feel you should and see what happens, learn, and adapt.
Contradict Your Self
You should actively try to contradict your Self as much as you can. Through continuous contradiction, you’ll converge on the truth. Don’t ever feel the need to be who you were yesterday. You will be who you will be. If contradiction arrises, then there are nuances to your Self that can’t converge on whatever the thing is conceptually and that makes you interesting. Your soul doesn’t live in a box.
Fitting a shape is NOT your soul’s intention. If people can summarize you by saying you’re a triangle, then you have reduced your form so much it’s actually limiting your experience of life. Live by the mantra that “no shape is you” and your beautiful complexities will begin to radiate from within.
On Being Consistent
To you and those around you, consistency is a trait that gets more valuable as you age. How do you merge self-contradiction with consistency? You don’t. As dependencies accrete, your gut will begin to automatically become consistent at things that would interfere with your true expression of Self if they weren’t taken care of.
Basically, even if you try to be spontaneous and contradictory every day, you will become consistent at things without even noticing. Because your gut knows that some consistency allows for the existence of spontaneity. These are not conflicting forces, but existentially complimentary. They must both exist.
Also, if what you’re doing is truly Self-resonant, consistency will flow naturally. If you’re struggling to be consistent with something, it’s because your Self isn’t aligned with that thing, or not anymore at least. Periods of discomfort are natural, but if this is prolonged, your Self will inevitably revolt.
On Relationships
Your Self must exist in isolation. If it is so entangled and dependent on another for its full expression, you’re limiting its potential. The relationship you’re in should amplify your true Self, not restrict it. If when you’re with someone, you’re a version of your Self you prefer or you’re leaning too much on an identity in your collection, then you’re in a situation bound to fail. Some shouldn’t be in relationships at all due to the tendency towards losing themselves, but those who can must protect against accumulating codependency or submit to a slow, inevitable death of Self.
In the beginning of a relationship you can maintain a facade of Self that fools everyone - especially you. You actually trick yourself into thinking you ARE the identity which fits this other person. We’re genetically programmed to do this for increasing odds of mating. Over time though, the Self you were containing or ignoring will come back with a vengeance without you ever realizing it. Midlife crises exist for this very reason. But, you can attract a mate without losing your Self. In fact once you’re on the track to full Self Alignment, you’ll find everyone is more attracted to you and the energy you give off.
“Keep up some kind of minimum with other things so that society doesn’t stop you from doing anything.”
- R. Feynman
Optionality Unlocks the Self
You are your actions. Your actions are created and decided by you or decided by the position you’re currently in. When you don’t have options in your current position, the ones that are available become your actions by default. Though they’re not yours, because they were prescribed by the situation. Let that sink in. You lost your Self because you didn’t have optionality in that situation. People go through their whole life losing their Self due to being dictated by situations where they don’t have optionality. Positions of limited choices. Limited preparation. Slavery is just the total reduction of options.
Optionality is freedom. Optionality at every moment yields the greatest potential for creative expression. Optionality is why we’re all here. Optionality is fuck you.
This fuck you position can be reached externally or internally. Through accruing money or shedding needs. Some of the greatest artists have fuck you positions from simply rejecting the needs that so many of us deem mandatory. So many rich businessmen accrue vast sums of money, but due to their terminally growing needs have less freedom with each dollar gained. This is the distinction between rich and wealthy. If you’re able to accrue money without gaining needs, you’ve become wealthy. If your needs match your large income, you’re simply rich. That’s meant to be pejorative.
Self Expression & Wealth
Self expression will make you wealthy and being wealthy will increase your frequency of Self expression. Once you’ve isolated a track wherein your natural or life-accrued abilities align with a means of making above average wages, you’ve made the first step to becoming wealthy. Applying these abilities to obtain the money should feel easy too. It should take you a surprisingly small amount of time per dollar earned. Sometimes it’s a la cart. Sometimes it’s seasonal deep devotion. Sometimes it requires an upfront sprint, followed by mere maintenance of the system. But cumulatively, it should appear natural and effectively easy. If it doesn’t, you’re doing the wrong thing.
* Footnote on Self Alignment vs Self Expression
As mentioned, Self Alignment is the complete removal of the identity collection mechanism. One identity, one Self, and they are the same. Self expression exists in those moments on your way to Self Alignment where the Self temporarily is presenting in its true form. The more you see of it, the more you’re being hinted that you’re headed in the right direction towards Self Alignment. The less Self expression you see means you’re headed in the wrong direction and losing your Self for the circumstances around you.