imago

I've been thinking about this recently:

Why is identity important?

I'm a white, upper-middle class american male.  I have time to think about these things because I am not afraid of starving to death.  Identity is important to me.

When you're starving as Kim Jong Il terrorizes your country, well, it doesn't matter nearly as much, right?  Eat, or don't eat: it doesn't matter who you are.

But when a N Korean refugee returns to his country out of national pride for a leader that would kill him without a second thought, I'm forced to reconsider the depth of identity.  Maybe it's more important.

Identity - knowing who you are outside of your individual self - is probably the most important thing any of us deal with day to day.  I think for a N Korean refugee or a displaced child in the Congo, it's not as important as food, water, shelter, and safety.  But I think it might be in the top ten.  Who do you belong to?  With whom do you identify?

I suspect that it's evolutionary.  Without an identity, we have no family - without a family, no pack, and without a pack, no survival.

Now here's the part I find interesting.  Identity doesn't exist without a population.  We cannot define ourselves without comparing.

Example:  I am white, have long hair, and am a good drummer.

But, compared to native Inuits or Finns, I'm pink.
My hair is short compared to Tim's.
I'm an awful drummer compared to Gavin Harrison.

Stick with me here.

We have no identity outside of our populations, because without our populations, our variances or similarities are neither - they're just traits.  Our constant comparison to the group creates a unique, specialized identity which distracts us from a simple, terrifying fact:

We are all identical meatbags.

If we weren't, modern medicine wouldn't exist.  The reason I can have corrective laser eye surgery is because we know what is correct and incorrect, based on the success of traits (natural selection, anyone?) in our population.

So we're all the same.  Gayle Rubin said this in The Traffic in Women, possibly my favorite essay:

"Men and women are, of course, different.  But they are not as different as day and night, earth and sky, yin and yang, life and death.  In fact, from the standpoint of nature, men and women are closer to each other than either is to anything else - for instance, mountains, kangaroos, or coconut palms...far from being an expression of our natural differences, exclusive gender identity is the suppression of natural similarities."

Now just take out the bit about genders - we're talking about humanity as a whole, not men vs. women - and you see just how un-special everyone is.

If you find yourself reacting negatively to this concept, lets talk about why.  Nobody likes hearing that they are the same as everyone else.

Why?

Evolutionarily?  Because uniqueness, the act of being different and better, survives in natural selection.

Theologically?  Because, perhaps, the christian folk are embedded with the concept a personal god who knows us individually - suggesting that there is individualism to be known.

Theologically, I think there's a deeper root issue here.  Humanity was separated from god, right?  Man and woman walked alongside god and there were no qualms about identity then - we were naked, both physically and metaphorically, and our identities were exposed and known.

Humankind was separated from god.  Humankind wore clothes, and was ashamed of its identity.  Humankind began dressing its identity.  Humankind lost its identity in a sea of self-definition.

So when our smokescreen is called out - when our clothes and politics that we define ourselves by are threatened - we bite back.

This is why we cling to romance.  Northrop Frye said:

“Romance avoids the ambiguities of ordinary life where everything is a mixture of good and bad, and where it is difficult to take sides or believe that people are consistent patterns of virtue or vice. The popularity of romance, it is obvious, has much to do with its simplifying of moral facts”

So here's the biggest romantic notion of them all: our differences matter.

I am no different than Fred Phelps with Westboro Baptist church.  We disagree on just about everything, but we are both the same flesh and blood that clothed ourselves when we realized we were exposed in the garden.  I don't want to believe this.

Instead, I believe that he and I are different on the basis that I love gay people and he hates them, or on my belief that god doesn't hate america specifically, while he believes the US is doomed.

I forget that we both were born of human mothers, and we both have fathers whose genes make up half our own.  We both eat, breath, drink, shit, and piss.

I don't want to be the same as Fred Phelps, but fuck it, I am.

Honestly, I suspect that this is why people are so opposed to compromise and understanding each other.  Definitionally, compromise is coming to a conclusion where both parties are equally satisfied.  I don't want to find common ground with people that make me so angry.  I want to show how I'm different than them.

I want to hate them.

I want to separate myself from them.

I want to prove to someone,

perhaps, to god,

that it isn't me who deserves this curse;

it was him.

It wasn't my fault,

I'm different;

I'm unique;

I didn't take the fruit.

She did.



See, we've been playing this blame game since the very beginning.  And it's all a ploy, to disguise our guilt.  We find our differences, and we exploit them; we stretch them and hyperbolize them until they are stars born from carbon atoms, great chasms separating us from them, isolating ourselves from our guilt and grief, and consequentially, dividing ourselves from the source of our original identity, the imago dei.

And every time we scream and fight, we contribute to the chasm.  We lose our souls to a hole we dug.

All I can do is see it in myself when people throw their weight behind Chick-Fil-A and Douglas Wilson.  I'm revolted by some of the things these people say, and I want to get away - that's not me.  They are the ones wrong, evil - I hate them.

My mother often says that anger and hatred are grief unmourned.

People are too scared.  I'm too scared.  We will never be able to do it.  There are too many centuries of guilt hidden behind self-hatred for humanity to break free.

You christians are lucky.  You believe in an afterlife, where we start over.

Just remember: we define ourselves, not by what we love, but by what we hate.  We have to make the choice: find identity through hatred?  Or risk losing identity in love?  And, theoretically, finding identity in imago dei.