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.
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