Identities

                                         

I have always felt a sincere aversion to the mainstream. And I do not think I am unique to harbour such emotions. The truth is that one of the many paradoxes associated with the human condition also includes the reality that all of us are unique in our own way and yet all of us know that too, rendering our uniqueness a little less potent. As if the shared knowledge of an intrinsic exoticness takes away some part of it. Therefore, I have no qualms in admitting that my hesitancy to embrace the mainstream is not exclusive to me. In fact, I would venture farther in demeaning myself by saying that this strive to shun what the common man embraces jets out of a need to carve an identity that doesn’t overlap with someone else. Because that’s what an identity is after all, something that is exclusive to us and helps us stand out from others. Something that when mentioned would immediately swivel the metaphorical compass in someone’s mind towards us.

However, there is only so far you can resist the temptation of mediocrity and not fall into the hum-drum of the machine of society, giving into all base desires of belonging and camaraderie. You end up like others and you can’t even be blamed for it. In the cold Bifrost of the world, any semblance of a warm fire and company must always be acceptable and appreciated, even the ones that stab you in the back, especially the ones that do that in fact. Thus, you find yourself at a juncture, where your identity is not solely formed out of a matter of principle of exclusion where you could base your entire personality off what you are not. Having entered the society of man willingly, almost out of compulsion, you must find other ways to build an identity.

This identity, or the word identity is such a lose term here. It is the ‘it’ I have considered in all the philosophies I have read. It is what I want to believe is at the crux of all of it. What I love about philosophy sometimes is the fact that I do not need to completely understand it. I can read the words and sentences strewn together by all these great men and understand it in whatever form that feels right to me. Obviously, I must always then stay open to correction, for my interpretations will rarely be complete and seldom correct. But they lend a more logical progression to decision making in my life. Now when I stand at this crossroads wondering where my identity stems from, I can always look at patched pieces of philosophies I’ve acquired like trinkets over the years.

Freud would say our identity starts building at birth and it is a combination of sorts of extrinsic factors from the environment, our cultural ingrained biases and some repressed emotions acquired over development period in life that find other outlets as we become adults. This sounds very plausible and convincing to me, but it doesn’t help me now. It gives too much power to the past and to what has already happened and leaves me at the mercy of someone’s help who will help me deal through this apparent cementing of problematic behaviours. Compare that with someone like Nietzsche who was very nit picky with words, so much so that he believed that there were no good or bad words or deeds till the toxic mismatch between an altruistic morality rose within society giving birth to a motivated ressentiment where labels were ascribed to previous neutral acts so that society could function. That such an overpowering act of reshaping definitions was a Will to Power is what Nietzsche claims. And only through such wills can we hope to change the world for the better. And why would we do that? Because for Nietzsche there exists an ultimate self, the ubermensch, the over man, who will exist in the future and be the product of generations of humans practicing self-realisation: the act of exercising their will to power, in simpler words: going and getting it, while at the same time embracing whatever fate and destiny throws at them aka amor fati. Nietzsche himself is sceptical whether an ubermensch can exist but he believes that it doesn’t matter if we continue to strive for it. This makes Nietzsche’s perfect idea of a self an abstract concept. The kind of concept of ‘Self’ he refuted himself in the form of ‘soul’. What credibility does that leave to his entire philosophy? I don’t know. But self realisation expressions although liberating are much harder to perform when you are yourself unsure of what your identity is. If you do not know the self, what are you realising? and if all impulse must be realised, how is man not becoming more of an animal than an ubermensch for man shows restraint that beasts don’t. No. Will to power is helpful but only once you know who you are and where you stand can you use it justify and make your decisions. It doesn’t help you in starting the process.

Descartes said "I think therefore I am" to which Ayn Rand quipped "I am therefore I’ll think". One renders the act of existence of self hinged on the consciousness. Almost blaming consciousness for existence. The other is a little proactive and instead provides consciousness as a tool bestowed to wade through existence. Whereas it’s true that all living things think and are conscious, what is not true is the fact that we are compelled to think just because we exist. Saying I am therefore I’ll think, puts the heavy burden of thought upon every living thing, which quite frankly I am better off not doing mostly. And yet, every passing moment of my life I am compelled to think. It’s almost like my consciousness is what birthed me and what makes me. ‘I think therefore I am’ makes more sense to me. Blaming consciousness for my self and my existence feels right to me. I think we can build up on that.

Nihilists specially love consciousness. It is their favourite shit-bed. They defecate on it with a nonchalance that only herd animals show to a patch of unsuspecting grass. Once you hold consciousness as the root cause to all your problems it is easy to become an anti-natalist and argue that life is bad because it begins with consciousness, even if it’s latent at start. And that an unconscious world would be better to live in. This makes nihilism appealing too, for it is not the hate of life, or a refutation of bright sunny things. Instead, it is the knowledge of existence that makes the self miserable. Were it not for this knowledge, life would be great, and were it not for this knowledge, there would be no life. What if existence is our exile and nothingness our home? It is easy for me to drop everything here and now and hug nihilistic ideas about self. Or nonideas. Of abandoning any search for a greater meaning because life which bequeaths self has no meaning. But I could only be a nihilist if I weren’t born, or if I weren’t alive. Being an alive nihilist, of any school of thought feels hypocritical. A denial of any purpose to life snatches away so many luxuries that I enjoy having and would rather have more of. My greed and ingratitude know no bounds.

What now then?

Sartre says there is no 'I'. Instead, ‘I’ is only a cumulative product of the experiences, actions and deeds that make the ‘I’. ‘I’ only exists when the self is conscious of it. When the ‘I’ is examining itself, and thus no other activity is happening at that moment except the self awareness, or rather no other activity can be said to be happening. This idea of my self being derived of all my experiences actions and life does make sense, but it too is not helpful in developing it in the first place or rather finding it after having lost it. But maybe it is not worth finding. Because Kierkegaard says that self is directly linked to despair. And to despair is the biggest sin. It gets complicated fast. But to sin is not a problem, but to despair over that sin is a grave mistake. Instead, despair must be considered the natural order of things for it is tied in with the self. And the more self aware we try to become the more despair we will feel. Then is life nothing but despair? Is that too not nihilistic and not an existential notion? And is not considering that existential a little masochistic? It would be all those things, if it weren’t for the fact that despair is both good and bad. That with increased self awareness comes more strength. And the stronger one’s self is the closer one is to God. Thus, all despair vanishes away when one is closest to God, when one has put his entire faith in God. Therefore, one must undertake a leap in faith, of increasing one’s self awareness in the face of increasing misery and at the very zenith jump into God’s lap without knowing where it leads, but to find themselves despair free.

Wow I almost sounded like a religious scholar there. The idea is alluring, and it feels right. It would also be embracing the mainstream yet again. Religion is the most subscribed to service on this planet after Netflix, but there’s just one tiny teeny problem. The leap of faith. The cessation of all logic at one point and just accepting beliefs for lifestyle. I cannot do that. Maybe I am not ready for it yet. Maybe in the future. For now, I’ll continue running tracks up and down the hill of self awareness sometime underground even till I am ready to leap and accepting things for what they are.

Speaking of it is what it is, the stoics have a very dismembering view of the self. It’s not very unlike what I said in the beginning about uniqueness. Like all stoic beliefs, this too stems from wants and desires and works towards the betterment of society directly without much ado about abstract ideas. An experience that may be harrowing for us may not affect another person the same way, and an experience that would be intense for someone else wouldn’t affect us the same way. We would thus agree that at the very base level we are all interchangeable, except ourselves. This illusion of knowing that the self belongs to the group of homogenous species yet believing it is not interchangeable is what leads to feuds now and then. If this belief was realised that we are just one of many, in all senses of that phrase then our selfish agendas would no longer be of any use to us, instead the betterment of society would take preference. How idyllic and utopian and emasculating. It sounds good on paper but what use is my constant self sacrifice when the rest of the society doesn’t compensate? How long can I realistically call my contentment my reward till I am fed up, irate and want more than just metaphorical gifts? This just doesn’t hit for me.

Maybe this pursuit is dumbfounded. Maybe I should be like an ambiguous Kafka-esque protagonist with vague aims and rigid lifestyles, or an Outsider or just tell myself that the pursuit of such questions is philosophical suicide.
But it’s not.

It has lately become important to me to figure out who I am again. I am not quite there at mid-life but I’ve already got the crisis. Unforeseen problems have a way of finding me out suddenly. I cannot seem to love myself even though I can easily love others. And even though I can see myself through their eyes occasionally and see the parts of me that they love. It is still hard for me to coalesce all those little stars into a bigger nexus. I feel like I am missing pieces, and everyone else in comparison feels much completer and more put together. I understand that such a feeling may be universal. That even expression of such a sentiment takes away the sting from my melancholy but I am not here to measure the prognosis of my disease. I am here to get rid of the ennui that haunts me.

Hence, it is vital for me to figure out who I am. I know what I am to people. But maybe, and just maybe if I know who I am to myself, it’ll be easier to isolate parts of me I don’t like, cordon them off from the rest of me and let them occlude, shrivel up and die, while I caress and let others tenderly care for the rest of me. Thoughts of not being enough are held at bay by countless hounds of reasons and experiences telling me that the worth of one man’s value varies so much from others and let’s be real, life despite having no problem apparently can always easily go south and it shouldn’t have existed in the first place, but it does and here we are now, and I can curse it all I want, but if I have it, it must be thoroughly used. If I can jolt down some ideas of self maybe I’ll feel content knowing something about myself and this restlessness of not knowing what’s exactly wrong but knowing something is, will go away.

Who am I then? I am the product of my sad consciousness which sprouted out of nothingness and has stemmed into what it is today because of the collective synergism of all deeds thoughts environments and experiences it passed through. There isn’t much point in delving into complexities as they only needlessly perplex, what is far more important is realising that I am here now and that there are people who depend on me and people I depend on. There are people I want to be around even if there aren’t a lot of things I want to do. And that’s okay. Not everyone will do everything. Surviving is just as important. It is the bare minimum but your bare minimum could also be at a higher threshold. I must pick up the rock I put somewhere a month or so ago, remember that where parts of my name start with M and A, some nonliteral aspect of it starts with S too and begin pushing the boulder while relishing in the act alone. Considering that this sole act is the purpose of my existence without being ungrateful of its nature for it is all I have. And maybe
Just maybe someday I’ll push the boulder just enough and I’ll find myself at a peak, and there will be a chasm, and the space across the chasm will be filled with fog, and I’ll close my eyes and leap with complete faith into the unknown.

Only to be greeted by another boulder, another uphill steep.

Story Bazaar

When I was little, every time there was load shedding at night and when we had done our homework and couldn’t yet sleep because of the heat or the general feeling of insecurity in a house surrounded by giant trees and illuminated by a single candle, my mother would tell us stories. Usually, they were stories from the Quran or old Siraiki stories that my mother had been told when she was my age or even younger. A lot of the times, me or my siblings would interject to ask questions and Ammaan would answer, or try her best to do so. But if there’s one thing children are good at, it is being insistent in their unending curiosity. Inevitably our questions would lead us to a metaphorical cul-de-sac which Ammaan would jump over by either saying that asking too many questions regarding religious characters isn’t advisable or that she simply didn’t know because when she was a child, the mere telling of a yarn was a luxury and the thought of interrupting it by asking questions and threatening to hinder the activity had never been a matter of consideration. And that is the trouble with stories. They mustn’t be questioned.

As humans, our lives are dictated at every passing moment by stories. We tell each other anecdotes to pass the time and break the ice. We tell fictional stories to others for entertainment, and fictional stories to ourselves to make up for our own inadequacies. The moment we are born, our parable begins writing itself, in the book of Fate by the ink of your actions and the hand of…well not us for sure. But that isn’t the only story associated with you. Your story overlaps with others’ stories. And there are stories of you that others have written conveniently for you, sometimes out of good intention, mostly out of some need of their own. Our parents write our stories for us. After miscalculating plot points and ending up at a rather anticlimactic ending, they wish to erase the unassailable ink that swells the characters of their story. But it cannot happen. Our stories only progress linearly in one direction. And so, in a desperate attempt at reconciliation with their ego, they push and prod and try to write our stories for us. We, too, are criminals of similar natures. Envisioning stories for ourselves in clouds, when the paper is crumpled and the pen is quite frankly not in our control. We escape from our stories with more stories. In dreams and nightmares, our suppressed stories come to fruition. Plot holes that we pay no heed to enlarge and coalesce to form absurd dreams, amorphous characters living on the fringes of our imagination take shape into nightmare creatures and recurring references to an old tale keep coming back to us in the form of the same dream again and again.

It makes me happy in a guttural sense to realize how aspects of old mythologies are fundamentally the same if you squint for long enough. The Earth goes through geographical cycles that appear the same, and thus there is a possibility of multiple Great Floods occurring. But the romantic plausibility lies with the event happening only once in the history of humankind, and then being retold as different stories over the millennia. The idea that ‘Everything changes but nothing is truly lost’ is common to many philosophies and stoics have reflected on it too, specifically talking about how the world has always been the same. How humans and human emotions, virtues, and vices have remained the same since time immemorial, only the exact mechanizations have changed. And that such changes can easily be considered and shouldn’t hinder the application of a philosophy or a general understanding of human nature for it always remains the same. The emotions of grief at the death of a friend echo similar sentiments through the Epic of Gilgamesh as they do in Greek mythology and as they would today in real life. The characters from Norse mythologies may have been streamlined into digestible superhero characters but it doesn’t take away from the fact that they are still remnants of stories told from generation to generation and their foundations exist in the names of everyday appliances like weekdays. What makes all mythology so succinct isn’t the might of a god or two or the entire pantheon, but it is their power reflected against the mirror of humanity. Therefore, these stories still live today in our hearts and minds. For they are not stories only of gods and ancient beings, but they’re stories of humans. Despite all his strength, Zeus is never the protagonist of the story. It’s Achilles or Hercules or Jason or Odysseus or Helen. It’s humans. Or well, half-humans if you want to be itty gritty about it. But humans nonetheless show the same spectrum of emotions that we are capable of if prejudiced to express.

Some people peddle stories too. And it’s not always the worst thing in the world to buy a story. When faced with the unending void of free will and choice, the nausea takes hold of us and we are forced to attach labels to ourselves in the hopes of never having to face the consequences of our decisions and have them dictated to us based on the spiel we believe in. It only gets troublesome when you start thinking your story is better than someone else’s. That your story is the only real story and all other stories must not exist. Maybe then it isn’t a story after all. For all stories maintain a figment of fiction, and to believe so completely in fiction demands a lack of logical countenance, a predisposition to stupidity. The best stories are the ones that never end. That is why a lot of tv shows with good stories end up being shit because they do not know when to stop. The human mind loves to jump to conclusions. It loves playing detective. We observe stories and continuously experiment in our own heads about how they will end. How a movie will end? How a book will end. How a race will go. How we will score in an exam. How we will die. To us, the neat ribbon-tied packaging of the ending is the biggest indicator of how good a story is. When someone dies in a less than ideal manner, there is always speculation about how they unpleasantly met their end. We ask God to take our lives peacefully, in our own lands, near our loved ones, in our home, rooms, beds, of old age, hand in hand with our beloved. Because to us, the destination matters more than the journey.

And so, the open-ended stories always hold more allure. Therefore, religion is such a hot seller. Nobody knows what happens and nobody can confirm, or deny the claims that can be made. So, you can choose to believe a story about what happens at the end of the end, and avoid the anxiety of the emptiness. Or you can pull your hair out one by one trying to figure out a narrative for yourself, one that you can believe in.

But that is the trouble with stories.

They cannot be questioned.

Must not be questioned.

For if you question them too strongly, they fall apart at the seams and you see them for what they are: charade by a master swindler. A menagerie of stereotypes and ambiguous plot points. The stories you make, are the ones that are easiest to question. Because you made them. Like an artist you know where the faults lie and where the strokes of the brush careen over the frame into reality, indistinguishable. And the stories you buy from the bazaar are less likely to show such unreliable behaviour. Simply because they’re bought. There has been an investment in them. There is less contentment in a bought story, but you have the guarantee of countless others and amazing as well as scathing reviews of the same product. We hesitate from questioning these mass manufactured stories because if they worked for hundreds of others, they should work for you too. If they don’t, maybe you’re using it wrongly. Did you read the user manual? Read it again. Read the 52 translations. And then the transliteration at the end. The fine letters between the lines. If it still doesn’t work, some repairmen will fix you. Not the story. The story is perfect. It worked for everyone else. It should work for you.

If God forbid you to find yourself in an alleyway, with the realization that the story doesn’t work. That too much of life has passed and your imagination has leaked out of your pockets. And you lack the ambition to make stories and crave too much autonomy to loan it from your parents or your friends. You find yourself at this pathway, envying the believers who in their naivety have at least the comfort of companionship, an end to gesticulate about, a journey filled with struggle compliant with their character arc, and a neat conclusion as the dessert. Then it might be too late for you to buy stories anymore. Check your pockets once more for any spare change. And if you find any, go buy the cheapest, easiest chronicle. And believe in it. Because writing stories for yourself is hard.

I would know because I haven’t written any this year. Only poems of wistful passion borne out of necessity and the comforting scourge of love that knows no outlet.