Got Any I.D.?

  I can’t serve you if you haven’t got any identity.

  As usual regular events have collected, drawn together by some strange gravity.  They have orbited me throughout this week until I had no choice but to notice them.  It is almost uncanny how these issues have presented themselves to me via different and disparate characters on my life’s stage.  It began with a question from someone who I work with who is also studying to be a teacher.  The question was: what is identity?

  The answers she received were very varied; ranging from the way we view ourselves to the way others view us.  The idea of nature versus nurture was also raised in a very basic way.  I then had a similar discussion, completely by chance with one of my closest friends.  We discussed the idea of evolutionary theory, genetics, determinism and fate.  These ideas, along with many others that have been thrown my way this week have caused me to write this blog.  It’s a tough subject so might be a little dry for some of you but I will be as succinct as possible.

  There is a theory by a French psychoanalyst called Jacques Lacan, which discusses the idea of the development of identity in infants.  The theory is based on research of the reactions of infants to their reflection in a mirror.  On a basic level it proposes that identity is formed by the relationship of an infant to its reflection.  The infant begins life unaware of itself; or perhaps it is better to say it is only aware of itself in a primal, sensation led, physical way.  The infant is the purest version of itself.  Upon recognising its own reflection in a mirror the infant is able to point at the image and say (not literally you understand) ‘that is me’.  However, the very instant the infant does this it is creating its own identity.

  Of course the image in the mirror is not the infant, it is something other; it is merely an image.  This paradox creates a split within the child whereby it has two ‘selves’ – the primal, pure self and the projected image in the mirror.  I love that idea; in my head it’s almost cinematic.  The child well project the image for the rest of its life; building and shaping it over the years.  This image is the child’s identity but not the child itself.  Identity can only ever be assumed.

  But identity can be a complex matter.  It might begin with the way we perceive ourselves but can it also be enhanced or magnified by the world around us?  It seems reasonable to say that we might create or embellish certain aspects of our identities to affect the way we are perceived by others; most of us have done this at some point in our lives.  However, it might also be argued that the people around us and their perceptions have their own influence on our identities.  How many of us have ever felt swayed or pressured into behaving in a certain way by our friends or families?  It is not through our own choice that we change our behaviour – there is outside influence.  Is it then a two way street, a dialogue between ourselves and the people we live with that shapes the veil of identity we use to shroud the primal entity within.  The entity that first banged its fist against its own reflection in a mirror, knowing on some instinctual level – it can’t be me because I am me.

  This leads onto yes another problem.  If there is indeed a dialogical relationship between us and the world around us that is shaping who we are, it raises questions of the nature versus nurture debate.  This debate questions the extent to which we are a product of our surroundings (nurture) or if we have an in built character that is almost genetic; in the same way we might have blue eyes, so we might have inherited a talent for dancing, or music, etc (nature).

  The idea of Nature is popular right now among psychologists, particularly when referencing phobias.  They would argue that someone might have a fear of spiders as an in built response to a potential predator or danger that has been carried down from when we were ape like creatures, living in caves.  As evidence they might point to the high percentage of people who are scared of spiders and say it is clearly a primal instinct overly manifesting itself.

  Someone who believed the concept of Nurture to be more important might argue that we are conditioned to be afraid of spiders throughout our childhood.  Perhaps seeing our parents flap and scream at a house spider, or perhaps a television show or film featuring a rather nasty eight legged critter; all spider related events might influence us as we grow up.  Evidence might be the varying extents of fear people feel toward spiders; some are terrified so that they can’t move, others merely don’t like to see them in their home.  Also, many of us aren’t afraid of spiders at all; does this mean we have lost that instinctual fear?

  I personally do not like the idea of Nature and this is why; it reduces the idea of free will to a bit part player.  You are who you are because of everything that has come before you were even born and that will define who you are whether you like it or not.  You have brown hair because your father did, you are likely to have heart issues because it runs in the family, you will enjoy spy novels because your grandfather did, you will be afraid of cats because your mother and her mother were also afraid.  You can see the trouble in this way of thinking I hope?

  How far can we think Nature shapes us before we hit the wall of determinism?  Free will be damned, we are cursed or blessed to our fates.  And fate would be the right word, along with destiny or fortune.  You do not have a choice in the matter, it’s already been decided.  Does that frighten or comfort you?  It terrifies me.  That the course of my life is to a certain extent set in stone.  If I wanted to become a scientist, would my talent for science be nothing more than a dominant gene?  What if it were recessive?  Would I be resigned to fail in all my ambitions?

  There’s an interesting idea:  Failure is a recessive gene (not a statement, just a cute turn of a phrase).

  Nature or Nurture, part of me will always be angry and un-resigned to any fate or determined way of life.  Rage against the dying of the light said Dylan Thomas in a poem to his dying father.  Do not accept your fate.  Create it.  You once looked in a mirror and said “that is me”.  You created yourself once, isn’t it about time you did it again?