Thoughts on Identity

Field Notes IV.XXVI: Philosophical hatchet work on the nature of identity

Welcome to Field Notes!

Thank you for checking out today’s essay. I hesitated to publish this one, as I know it is unfinished. My understanding of the topic is admittedly limited, and thus my conclusions may be off base. Its definitely some philosophical hatchet work!

Read it with that in mind. Field Notes is about the exploration of ideas, not my professing of answers. This essay is my own effort at mental clarification. The only reason it is published is to give myself some real world consequences for my conclusions, and therefore hold my thinking to the highest standard I can. Self induced peer pressure to try to avoid sounding like an idiot, I suppose! Hopefully it works.

Bear in B&W. Slightly different that others I’ve shared.

Who are you? Not who you think you are, but rather, who shows up when everything is going wrong and the consequences are dire? Who are you when things are great, but you’re pulled away from that by a friend in need? Who are you when all alone and there’s no clear direction to choose?

Ethical decisions interest me greatly. Especially those that we must make in haste, without clear information, and in the rapidly changing opacity of life events. Perhaps in order to even be able to attempt this, we have to begin with the foundation of knowing ourselves. We must understand who we are before we can decide how we should act. But who are we?

The air is oppressively still. In July in Georgia the mid afternoon sun falls with unfiltered violence. Humidity from the surrounding vegetation makes every breath a struggle.

I’m prone at 100 yards with my rifle, trying to see the dim red dot of my optic before a tiny steel target blending in with the berm behind it. This range training day is focused on long distance accuracy. The sweat rolls freely off of me. Blink. Squint. That red dot blurs. It streaks in my vision. At times I see two dots. Which one is the illusion?

Salt stings my eyeballs. I swipe it away and look again. Now its a little better. I’ll never be a sniper, but I know I can find enough clarity of the dot to perform well enough for today. I’m getting old, though. How long can I keep up with the expectations of being a SWAT officer? That role isn’t something I bring up often, but it has been a big part of my identity for many years. Who am I if my vision no longer meets the demands of the job? And, though I’m nowhere close to this now, what if visual limitations ever prevented me from making photographs? Who would I be then?

At times I am on the lookout for a particular vehicle. Let’s just say a yellow VW Bug as a standout example. You couldn’t possibly imagine how many yellow VW Bugs are out there until you start looking for that one in particular. Such is the case with ideas, too, and this past week or so it has been the topic of identity that I encountered seemingly everywhere.

Skye Cleary shared an ARTICLE recently discussing Jean Paul Sartre and some of his ideas discussed in Existentialism is a Humanism. This book is a transcription of a speech Sartre gave. In it, he asserts that man is the sum of his actions. As Cleary illustrates-

‘[Man] is nothing more than the sum of his actions,’ Sartre declares. Blaming circumstances or claiming you deserve better is, for Sartre, self-deception. According to Sartre, ‘there is no love other than the deeds of love; no potential for love other than that which is manifested in loving.’ You make yourself through what you do, not what you might have done. ‘In life, a man commits himself and draws his own portrait, outside of which there is nothing.’

Bear in mind that I’m just beginning to tackle Existentialist philosophy and, in honesty, struggling to follow some of the premises. I assure you there is vast depth that eludes me at this point. From my initial contact with its concepts, there are some that seem instantly objectionable and others that resonate with attitudes I’ve adopted long ago.

I recently read Existentialism is a Humanism and this passage already stood out to me. Cleary’s essay highlighted it once more, but clarified that there may be some problematic aspects to it.

I am reminded of seeing the movie Batman Begins back in 2005. At the time, a particular scene affected me strongly. Bruce Wayne (alter ego Batman) explains to Rachel Dawes that he is more on the inside than the playboy persona he presents to the public. Rachel responds “But its not who you are underneath. It’s what you do that defines you.”

For many years this was fundamental to how I lived. Best intentions do not matter if you do not back them up with your actions. It rang true as I was working as a paramedic in the inner city, is what then steered me towards working as a cop, and then later inspired me as a father to take great efforts to introduce my kids to such things as camping and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

Thinking on this now, it seems in alignment with Sartre’s statement that we are the sum of our actions.

But more recently I began to question this premise. Ironically, the questions arise from my understanding of Stoicism, which is professed to be a philosophy of action. You see, Stoicism is a system of virtue ethics. One of its foundational claims is that the only thing man truly controls is his own rational faculty. Sure, we try to do good things. However, we cannot fully control the outcomes of our actions. The archer is a Stoic metaphor. The archer draws his bow, aims, and releases with all of the skill and precision he can bring to bear. However, once fired, he does not have control over where the arrow lands. Extrapolating from this, it may not be the results of our actions that matter so much as the virtue and intent that drive the action.

So is Stoicism suggesting that who we are underneath may actually define us more than our actions? There is something compelling in this view. If my camera breaks and I am unable to afford a new one, I’d like to think my identity didn’t shatter along with the machine. If I am the sum of my actions, then so long as I continue making photographs I am still a photographer. If I stop, then I am that no longer. But perhaps I can be defined by more than the overt external expressions of what I do? The Stoic viewpoint supports an “inner citadel” of identity that is unassailable by the outside world.

A complication I see in this is the fact that intent cannot be judged objectively. Action can be. We can observe that a person did this or failed to do that, regardless of why. But we cannot observe the why. I believe it was Seneca who illustrated this by picturing a man on his deathbed. One man sits with him until the moment of his passing out of genuine friendship. Another sits with him only in hopes of gaining his favor and then possibly inheritance. The action is the same, but only the one performing it can truly attest to the virtue behind it.

Is this a matter of internal vs external definition of identity? Perhaps if we are the sum of our actions we are dependent on others’ perceptions and experiences of those actions? Maybe if we are the sum of our rational choices then we define for ourselves who we truly are?

Russell Holt, The Stoic Elder, offers some clarification of the Stoic position in his essay Decide the Character You Will Keep. He states-

One lesson becomes increasingly clear as we study the Stoics. Philosophy is visible. Not because we announce it. Because we live it. A person may quote Epictetus flawlessly and still lose his temper over a minor inconvenience. He may speak eloquently about virtue while indulging gossip, vanity, or resentment. Knowledge alone changes nothing. Conduct reveals everything.

This is why Stoicism has always been a philosophy of training rather than mere instruction. We do not become better by admiring wisdom. We become better by practicing it repeatedly until it becomes our settled disposition.

So is Stoicism actually also suggesting we are the sum of our actions? Maybe so, just not in the sense of big, overt accomplishments pointed to like diplomas on a wall. It seems to say that the sum of all of our decisions, big and small, moment to moment, move us in the direction of the persons we strive (or should strive) to become. Decisions lead to actions which train our character the way we build muscle. Intentions not backed up by action lead nowhere.

The Existentialists tell us that it is up to us to utilize our inherent freedom and agency to choose our goals, or as they say our projects, and give them meaning. Thus we act, and thus we define ourselves. We don’t find meaning, we create it in our choosing of what we do.

The Stoics might hear this and say yes, but all of those goals lie in the realm outside of our rational faculty. Their results may ultimately not be up to us and lead to disappointment, anger, or frustration. Therefore, the only truly good goal is to define ourselves and give meaning to our lives through the pursuit of virtue, of excellence of character, regardless of external circumstances.

Great Smoky Mountains. This one has slight color. A previous version was B&W.

So where does all of this musing land us? For now I’m still a SWAT cop until the day I decide to hang it up. What happens then?

There is something intrinsically important about confirming intention through action in the real world. Its not the understanding of, but the practice of Stoicism that nudges one towards virtue. But that virtue is expressed in the world in various forms. SWAT cop is just one. Another is as a husband and father. Photographer is another. Who I am is the consistent rational faculty embodied by any given role.

It is that underlying consistency that makes me wonder if Sartre missed the mark a little bit. And consistency is critical. As mentioned earlier, there must be some stable base of understanding who we are and what we stand for in order to make ethical decisions in unclear situations. Thus, maybe we define ourselves through our rational choices and active relation to the world.

I have a lot of learning and reflecting to do still. Stoicism, Existentialism, all of it. Give me some thoughts or feedback on this and hopefully we can expand our understanding!

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