"Who am I"? The question just turned up and presented itself with quiet authority in my mind recently. Not for the first time, but on earlier occasions it was fuzzier, less defined, less important, easy to ignore. Even those of us who are not introspective will likely get snagged by it sometime. We may get a fleeting glimpse of ourselves reflected in someone else's comment and wonder 'Really? Is that who I am'? In a time of crisis or perceived failure we may get filled with self doubt. But the question only gets properly addressed when it becomes unavoidable, in a phase of personal philosophical enquiry of the sort that I have been going through. Here are my ruminations.
One part of identity, and most commonly the dominant part, has a lot to do with identification – who or what we identify with. Family is our first source of identity and is the most primary and universally recognized of all - naam, baap ka naam. Other sources of identity get layered on as we go through life. Our school is our first source of identity outside the home. Activities like acting, debating, sports add to identity. Consciousness of nationality is instilled - stand up for the national anthem; consciousness of ethnicity within that nationality. On to college, which can be an exhilarating and defining experience as we are now young adults, starting to peak physically and mentally, freed of the yoke of childhood school level discipline, getting independent in our thinking. Not surprisingly college years can be a highpoint of our lives as we come into our own, and a time when we form deep and abiding relationships. So our college connection can be a surprisingly strong and steadfast source of identity. People donate huge amounts to their colleges. Schools and other institutions are generally less fortunate.
Then we move onto work, pretty much the largest chunk of our lives. Powerful and abiding sources of identity here - after asking your name people generally ask 'what do you do'? Profession. I was now an engineer and a manager. Most people find it comforting to get totally wrapped up in their careers because it gives a sense of purpose, and also some authority which bolsters ego. When I started my work career, I soon realised that I was going to be spending the best hours of each day, the best years of my life at work, so I should get more out of it than just a paycheck, but still instinctively guarded my autonomy fiercely, treasuring the interests I had developed in college. Leisure was what I was working for even though work had to be better than drudgery, in fact had to be engaging, enjoyable, even fulfilling. We become workaholics when we see work as the only worthwhile thing in our lives, and that skews identity formation towards a single dimension, denuding other areas of our lives including family and the potentially rich joys of leisure activities. Workaholism fortunately doesn't feature amongst my blunders.
The role of family in our lives diminishes in college and fades even more when we start to work, dimmed by financial and emotional independence. Ironically, these dependencies can reverse over time. Family as a source of identity goes through profound changes, mostly quiet, sometimes noisy. Relating to family as an adult significantly resets our relationships. Marriage, then children appear on the scene, and our primary family unit is now different. That will change again when children get married - what goes around comes around. Nieces and nephews appear. Later, grandchildren. Through all this family can actually strengthen as a source of identity, after first fading. Family mattered less to me at 25 than at 15, and more to me at 45 than at 25, but in a different way.
And there is religion. One of the most powerful, divisive forces around, and a major source of identity. Within a religion and between religions, identification for or against can be fiercely strong and binding. Each religion sees its cosmology as the only true one, giving its members a unique place in the universe. This is one source of identity that almost never changes from birth to death, and can in the extreme subsume or even dictate all other sources of identity. Few people are able to distance themselves from religion and see it objectively. It plays to our deepest emotions, and can retain an umbilical strength of connection. Even most atheists, if asked, will state their religion. I did, and even carried some religious prejudice.
Identification leads to loyalty. Loyalty to family, country, college, firm, religion, ethnicity. Loyalty to something generally leads to thinking it is the best. That actually makes no sense. My school cant be the best just because I went there. My religion cant be better than others because I was born into it. My country cannot stand out in the world because I live here. Yet people are prepared to kill and die for ethnicity, country, religion - none of which we choose.
External sources of identity are like a need, we cling to them. And yet they are intrinsically unstable. It’s like having your center of gravity fall outside your body. When that happens, the laws of physics tell us we will fall, and the only way to stay upright is with support: in this case the support of the source of identity, which is not in our control. This kind of support acts as a tether, because moving away from it is destabilising. I love watching raptors gliding in the sky and think how exhilarating it must be to move freely in three dimensions, soaring high, the world beneath. We are stuck in two dimensions because we need the support of solid ground - to move freely in all three dimensions you cant be tethered to any of them. Wouldn't that work for identity? If we could move freely rather than being tethered to our sources of identity, could we not soar like birds?
The stablest source of identity is within ourselves: who we are. Untethered to any external source. Which brings us to the other part of identity, internal, rather than external. Internal identity has to do with the development of our personality - influences from our parents, siblings, peers, teachers, role models, experiences, learnings, whatever - the whole nine yards of life. These influences leave their imprint on our minds, imprints which we can either accept passively, or absorb and shape the way we want to. The key is how we choose to define ourselves. The less we define ourselves in terms of external agencies even though we draw from them, the more autonomous we can be as individuals. Take for example ethnicity - a major formative influence. It is comforting to have, but need not be defining, need not set our horizon; we can move beyond it while holding on to what we want from it. Going back to the first source of identity, family, that I reckon is the most difficult to figure out - the first source is the last frontier in deconstructing identity. Not only is family widely considered primary in societal terms, but even in evolutionary biology seeing your direct lineage flourish has for long been considered a primary driving force. Not in the animal kingdom though, there the family bond lasts just till adulthood. Equally, recent anthropological studies of many hunter gatherer societies have shown that they were anything but monogamous, and bloodline/lineage was not a concern for us humans for a quarter of a million years. Its only after the neolithic revolution less than 10,000 years ago when farming emerged, that family took on importance fuelled by the need for hands to till the land and driven by inheritance. And now that a large segment of the world's population has been off the land for a while, the importance of family is declining again. So is blood really thicker than water? Is family identity primary or a tether?
In truth, we can identify ourselves with whatever external influence we want, to the extent we want, and not allow ourselves to be defined by anything other than who we are autonomously, and even more importantly, what we are striving to be. Identity as dynamic and live, not static and comatose, and with self determination, not imposed by circumstance. We can reject any source of identity if it offends us, not end up defending the indefensible if things go wrong. Say the school we went to doesn't really measure up (mine didn't); our work organisation is or becomes unfocused, inefficient, or corrupt; our religion is moribund. If we are secure within ourselves we can be objective, distance ourselves, even reject, not feel threatened, driven to defend. How do we achieve such autonomy? I find intellectual pursuits help break out of physical boundaries of time and space. It helps to trawl over three domains: the contemporary, and in the contemporary between local and global; the entire range of past thought; and the timeless. I could, for example, read philosophers from all over the world and since the beginning of the written word, harvest a rich crop of ideas which influenced my thinking, helped free up my mind, changed who I was. Poetry, theatre, film, literature, the social sciences, science, all have helped.
How do we examine our own identity objectively? A good indicator is who our friends are. I find there is a pattern in the closest friendships I have made over time. What kind of people do we like, do we get really close to? People who share love of a certain type of activity? People with the same external sources of identity? Or is it people with a certain set of values, a quality of mind and intellect, a way of thinking – which makes them people who don’t allow themselves to be defined by the external, even though they probably share an external circumstance with us, which is how we met them - school, college, workplace, club. Think of their characteristics and that will reflect on who we are – and what we are seeking in life. I sense that our basic approach to identity formation is a pretty key determinant of our relationships. An external source of identity is an important bond. Lack of an external source of identity an even stronger bond. Both can and do coexist - in the same individual, we are all hybrids, and we will see different blends in different individuals amongst our group of friends. I find that those I have gotten closest to throughout my life have shared similar identity defining characteristics.
What then is my identity? Who am I? Am I just the sum total of influences from and identification with external sources, layered, blended, synergised, partly by my choosing, partly by fate? If we get past these overlays, is there anything beyond? Are we born with some predetermined identity or predetermined determinants of identity? Is there an identity other than the one defined by this life? In recent years I have developed belief, and I have taken the path of spirituality, while increasingly rejecting religion. I cannot identify with the superstitions and rituals of hinduism, or for that matter any religion. Even the most rational of us accept some level of superstition or ritual as a gap in our rationality, religion on the other hand has some level of rationality in the superstition and ritual which dominate and define it. Yet I still define myself as a Hindu, as hinduism has two distinct parts to it....the temple based religion which I cannot relate to, and the soaring, timeless, spiritual transcendence of enlightened souls. Hindu metaphysics as defined in the Upanishads deeply appeals to me. My wife Kiran led the way along this path to belief, and I followed quite inadvertently with absolutely no intention of doing so, finding my way from arrogant atheism through a humbler agnosticism to incredulous belief, despite my reluctance. Atheism was an important, a defining part of my identity, one I was proud of and reluctant to let go. Belief, especially belief without religion, is a humbler state of being than atheism and tends to soften our ego. We get dwarfed when we contemplate the infinite, our pride in 'who' we are subsides, our identity gets loosened from its man-made tethers. Spirituality is not just an a-priori source of internal identity, it also powerfully redirects our identity from external to internal, while paradoxically providing a sense of connection to the external world.
What does an internally defined identity look like? As far as I can see, the core of my internal identity is about my beliefs on the one hand, which are distilled from all the knowledge and insights I have gained over a lifetime, a dynamic set which continues to grow and evolve, and about what I call my values on the other, which shape my actions and human interaction. My beliefs and my values are related and interactive but not the same thing. Beliefs are more defined by intellect than are values, values start as received, are then altered by the beliefs we adopt. For example, do I believe in equality? Equality of the sexes, equality with friends, peers, bosses, subordinates, servants? How does my belief in equality compare with the values reflected in the sense of equality I exhibit in different relationships? Integrity...what does that mean, and how do I apply it in different dimensions - financial, intellectual, relationships? What does belief mean to my life? What do I bring from the hinterland of spirituality into my everyday life? The uncomfortable truth is that intellectual beliefs and operating values, and therefore beliefs and behaviour, don't necessarily match up fully. I have found to my shock and dismay a distinct gap between my beliefs and my behaviour, and whittling down that gap has to be the driving force in developing my integrity as a person. Integrity as wholeness, without behaviour violating the boundaries of belief, with beliefs that stand up to reason.
Not everyone is interested in this search equally. I believe in the atma, and in rebirth. I believe rebirth does bring forward something from previous lives, something that can help influence our identity in this lifetime. It determines our SQ or Spiritual Quotient. Some people live their lives in a more conscious, self aware fashion than others who are more unconscious and driven. I believe this difference in consciousness is driven by SQ. SQ influences our identity, our self awareness - how much depends on how deeply we mine for it. The more we do, the less external influences matter, though they remain. Perhaps that search ends in the Vedantic: "Tat Twam Asi", "You are That". I am not even remotely near that stage of realisation, but I do feel that as we move towards it, we are more likely to shed externally borrowed identity, and to find our center of gravity in ourselves. That is the physics of stability. A suitable and achievable goal in identity formation over this lifetime. Not a distant goal just a proximate one, one that actually just puts us on the right path. Identity discovery and formation are the work of several lifetimes, spirituality the vector that can help keep this moving towards self realisation.
One part of identity, and most commonly the dominant part, has a lot to do with identification – who or what we identify with. Family is our first source of identity and is the most primary and universally recognized of all - naam, baap ka naam. Other sources of identity get layered on as we go through life. Our school is our first source of identity outside the home. Activities like acting, debating, sports add to identity. Consciousness of nationality is instilled - stand up for the national anthem; consciousness of ethnicity within that nationality. On to college, which can be an exhilarating and defining experience as we are now young adults, starting to peak physically and mentally, freed of the yoke of childhood school level discipline, getting independent in our thinking. Not surprisingly college years can be a highpoint of our lives as we come into our own, and a time when we form deep and abiding relationships. So our college connection can be a surprisingly strong and steadfast source of identity. People donate huge amounts to their colleges. Schools and other institutions are generally less fortunate.
Then we move onto work, pretty much the largest chunk of our lives. Powerful and abiding sources of identity here - after asking your name people generally ask 'what do you do'? Profession. I was now an engineer and a manager. Most people find it comforting to get totally wrapped up in their careers because it gives a sense of purpose, and also some authority which bolsters ego. When I started my work career, I soon realised that I was going to be spending the best hours of each day, the best years of my life at work, so I should get more out of it than just a paycheck, but still instinctively guarded my autonomy fiercely, treasuring the interests I had developed in college. Leisure was what I was working for even though work had to be better than drudgery, in fact had to be engaging, enjoyable, even fulfilling. We become workaholics when we see work as the only worthwhile thing in our lives, and that skews identity formation towards a single dimension, denuding other areas of our lives including family and the potentially rich joys of leisure activities. Workaholism fortunately doesn't feature amongst my blunders.
The role of family in our lives diminishes in college and fades even more when we start to work, dimmed by financial and emotional independence. Ironically, these dependencies can reverse over time. Family as a source of identity goes through profound changes, mostly quiet, sometimes noisy. Relating to family as an adult significantly resets our relationships. Marriage, then children appear on the scene, and our primary family unit is now different. That will change again when children get married - what goes around comes around. Nieces and nephews appear. Later, grandchildren. Through all this family can actually strengthen as a source of identity, after first fading. Family mattered less to me at 25 than at 15, and more to me at 45 than at 25, but in a different way.
And there is religion. One of the most powerful, divisive forces around, and a major source of identity. Within a religion and between religions, identification for or against can be fiercely strong and binding. Each religion sees its cosmology as the only true one, giving its members a unique place in the universe. This is one source of identity that almost never changes from birth to death, and can in the extreme subsume or even dictate all other sources of identity. Few people are able to distance themselves from religion and see it objectively. It plays to our deepest emotions, and can retain an umbilical strength of connection. Even most atheists, if asked, will state their religion. I did, and even carried some religious prejudice.
Identification leads to loyalty. Loyalty to family, country, college, firm, religion, ethnicity. Loyalty to something generally leads to thinking it is the best. That actually makes no sense. My school cant be the best just because I went there. My religion cant be better than others because I was born into it. My country cannot stand out in the world because I live here. Yet people are prepared to kill and die for ethnicity, country, religion - none of which we choose.
External sources of identity are like a need, we cling to them. And yet they are intrinsically unstable. It’s like having your center of gravity fall outside your body. When that happens, the laws of physics tell us we will fall, and the only way to stay upright is with support: in this case the support of the source of identity, which is not in our control. This kind of support acts as a tether, because moving away from it is destabilising. I love watching raptors gliding in the sky and think how exhilarating it must be to move freely in three dimensions, soaring high, the world beneath. We are stuck in two dimensions because we need the support of solid ground - to move freely in all three dimensions you cant be tethered to any of them. Wouldn't that work for identity? If we could move freely rather than being tethered to our sources of identity, could we not soar like birds?
The stablest source of identity is within ourselves: who we are. Untethered to any external source. Which brings us to the other part of identity, internal, rather than external. Internal identity has to do with the development of our personality - influences from our parents, siblings, peers, teachers, role models, experiences, learnings, whatever - the whole nine yards of life. These influences leave their imprint on our minds, imprints which we can either accept passively, or absorb and shape the way we want to. The key is how we choose to define ourselves. The less we define ourselves in terms of external agencies even though we draw from them, the more autonomous we can be as individuals. Take for example ethnicity - a major formative influence. It is comforting to have, but need not be defining, need not set our horizon; we can move beyond it while holding on to what we want from it. Going back to the first source of identity, family, that I reckon is the most difficult to figure out - the first source is the last frontier in deconstructing identity. Not only is family widely considered primary in societal terms, but even in evolutionary biology seeing your direct lineage flourish has for long been considered a primary driving force. Not in the animal kingdom though, there the family bond lasts just till adulthood. Equally, recent anthropological studies of many hunter gatherer societies have shown that they were anything but monogamous, and bloodline/lineage was not a concern for us humans for a quarter of a million years. Its only after the neolithic revolution less than 10,000 years ago when farming emerged, that family took on importance fuelled by the need for hands to till the land and driven by inheritance. And now that a large segment of the world's population has been off the land for a while, the importance of family is declining again. So is blood really thicker than water? Is family identity primary or a tether?
In truth, we can identify ourselves with whatever external influence we want, to the extent we want, and not allow ourselves to be defined by anything other than who we are autonomously, and even more importantly, what we are striving to be. Identity as dynamic and live, not static and comatose, and with self determination, not imposed by circumstance. We can reject any source of identity if it offends us, not end up defending the indefensible if things go wrong. Say the school we went to doesn't really measure up (mine didn't); our work organisation is or becomes unfocused, inefficient, or corrupt; our religion is moribund. If we are secure within ourselves we can be objective, distance ourselves, even reject, not feel threatened, driven to defend. How do we achieve such autonomy? I find intellectual pursuits help break out of physical boundaries of time and space. It helps to trawl over three domains: the contemporary, and in the contemporary between local and global; the entire range of past thought; and the timeless. I could, for example, read philosophers from all over the world and since the beginning of the written word, harvest a rich crop of ideas which influenced my thinking, helped free up my mind, changed who I was. Poetry, theatre, film, literature, the social sciences, science, all have helped.
How do we examine our own identity objectively? A good indicator is who our friends are. I find there is a pattern in the closest friendships I have made over time. What kind of people do we like, do we get really close to? People who share love of a certain type of activity? People with the same external sources of identity? Or is it people with a certain set of values, a quality of mind and intellect, a way of thinking – which makes them people who don’t allow themselves to be defined by the external, even though they probably share an external circumstance with us, which is how we met them - school, college, workplace, club. Think of their characteristics and that will reflect on who we are – and what we are seeking in life. I sense that our basic approach to identity formation is a pretty key determinant of our relationships. An external source of identity is an important bond. Lack of an external source of identity an even stronger bond. Both can and do coexist - in the same individual, we are all hybrids, and we will see different blends in different individuals amongst our group of friends. I find that those I have gotten closest to throughout my life have shared similar identity defining characteristics.
What then is my identity? Who am I? Am I just the sum total of influences from and identification with external sources, layered, blended, synergised, partly by my choosing, partly by fate? If we get past these overlays, is there anything beyond? Are we born with some predetermined identity or predetermined determinants of identity? Is there an identity other than the one defined by this life? In recent years I have developed belief, and I have taken the path of spirituality, while increasingly rejecting religion. I cannot identify with the superstitions and rituals of hinduism, or for that matter any religion. Even the most rational of us accept some level of superstition or ritual as a gap in our rationality, religion on the other hand has some level of rationality in the superstition and ritual which dominate and define it. Yet I still define myself as a Hindu, as hinduism has two distinct parts to it....the temple based religion which I cannot relate to, and the soaring, timeless, spiritual transcendence of enlightened souls. Hindu metaphysics as defined in the Upanishads deeply appeals to me. My wife Kiran led the way along this path to belief, and I followed quite inadvertently with absolutely no intention of doing so, finding my way from arrogant atheism through a humbler agnosticism to incredulous belief, despite my reluctance. Atheism was an important, a defining part of my identity, one I was proud of and reluctant to let go. Belief, especially belief without religion, is a humbler state of being than atheism and tends to soften our ego. We get dwarfed when we contemplate the infinite, our pride in 'who' we are subsides, our identity gets loosened from its man-made tethers. Spirituality is not just an a-priori source of internal identity, it also powerfully redirects our identity from external to internal, while paradoxically providing a sense of connection to the external world.
What does an internally defined identity look like? As far as I can see, the core of my internal identity is about my beliefs on the one hand, which are distilled from all the knowledge and insights I have gained over a lifetime, a dynamic set which continues to grow and evolve, and about what I call my values on the other, which shape my actions and human interaction. My beliefs and my values are related and interactive but not the same thing. Beliefs are more defined by intellect than are values, values start as received, are then altered by the beliefs we adopt. For example, do I believe in equality? Equality of the sexes, equality with friends, peers, bosses, subordinates, servants? How does my belief in equality compare with the values reflected in the sense of equality I exhibit in different relationships? Integrity...what does that mean, and how do I apply it in different dimensions - financial, intellectual, relationships? What does belief mean to my life? What do I bring from the hinterland of spirituality into my everyday life? The uncomfortable truth is that intellectual beliefs and operating values, and therefore beliefs and behaviour, don't necessarily match up fully. I have found to my shock and dismay a distinct gap between my beliefs and my behaviour, and whittling down that gap has to be the driving force in developing my integrity as a person. Integrity as wholeness, without behaviour violating the boundaries of belief, with beliefs that stand up to reason.
Not everyone is interested in this search equally. I believe in the atma, and in rebirth. I believe rebirth does bring forward something from previous lives, something that can help influence our identity in this lifetime. It determines our SQ or Spiritual Quotient. Some people live their lives in a more conscious, self aware fashion than others who are more unconscious and driven. I believe this difference in consciousness is driven by SQ. SQ influences our identity, our self awareness - how much depends on how deeply we mine for it. The more we do, the less external influences matter, though they remain. Perhaps that search ends in the Vedantic: "Tat Twam Asi", "You are That". I am not even remotely near that stage of realisation, but I do feel that as we move towards it, we are more likely to shed externally borrowed identity, and to find our center of gravity in ourselves. That is the physics of stability. A suitable and achievable goal in identity formation over this lifetime. Not a distant goal just a proximate one, one that actually just puts us on the right path. Identity discovery and formation are the work of several lifetimes, spirituality the vector that can help keep this moving towards self realisation.
How can I affirm my identity? What part of it is based on how others identify me? Is there a reality test? Does it matter? Is it like the summation of overlapping circles? Overlapping spheres?
ReplyDeleteAs usual, Vikram has presented a broad-based and penetrating insight into identity. As I read it and raised questions, the next few paragraphs answered my questions and enhanced my understanding of myself and my world.
Thank you.
Steve, thanks for the generosity of your thoughtful comments.
DeleteVikram, I have said this before and I will say it again, you write extremely well. You have a wonderful way of crystallising thoughts and expressing them so coherently and simply. I loved this piece. I will read it again, I hope. One of these days, I would love to chat about your journey from atheism to belief. Thank you for sharing this piece. I am still struggling! Who am I? Why am I here?
ReplyDeleteNoni, Thank you.
DeleteYou were introduced to me as 'machhli pakadne wala sardar'. Isnt that enough? ;)
Will be glad to talk about my journey to belief anytime. The key is in my piece 'Why I was an atheist'. Belief is difficult to explain, the journey is easier. Do read that piece again before we talk.
This is your best written piece yet, I think. I think it is interesting you focus on ethnicity, but not on race and gender, both of which have been far more defining for me. I guess it really depends on the external environment. This is also the reason we chose Z's school the way we did -- they have a unique focus on the "whole child", that we think wil be very good for him and his sense of identity. We should talk about this more! :)
ReplyDeleteM, interesting that you find this the best....perhaps also most relevant to your stage of life. I used ethnicity as an example, and yes, it is of great relevance to India. Would love to know more about the 'whole child' approach of Z's school. Lets talk when we meet.
Delete