what is a person; mind, identity. .. ..

Nietzsche says, “God is a rough-fisted answer, an indelicacy against us thinkers- at bottom merely a rough-fisted prohibition for us: you shall not think!”  The same is true of the idea that we have a “soul” that gives us our personal identity.  I dispense with the “soul” outright and from the beginning.  It’s a primitive, simplistic, and vacuous idea.  If you believe in this “soul” your philosophy rests upon a foundation stone made of air and you go wrong right from the start.  Such ideas are what lead people to say things like, “People can lose their possessions, but knowledge can never be taken away.”  That could be falsified by a neurosurgeon with a scalpel.  It’s a remnant of the soul superstition that many tend to talk about identifying with the body in a pejorative way.  The general sense is that there is something higher to identify with.  But such thoughts are mistaken, mostly because the majority have never really taken the time to think deeply about such matters.  Theirs is just the default position.  Our “selves” or “souls” or “identities” can be mutilated and disfigured just as surely as our bodies can.  Parts can be cut off.  Parts can be paralyzed or locked inside of us forever.

We are happy when for everything inside us there is a corresponding

something outside us.  -Yeats

A fundamental position that vocal disabled people take is that they have lost nothing that is essential to their humanity.  A paraplegic is just as fully human as any other person, they will say.  Once again, a person can pick and choose, but at what point do we lose something fundamental?  What is essential to our lives?  So if a paraplegic has not lost anything essential, how about a paraplegic with no arms?  Then make him deaf, blind, and mute.  Then paralyze his face.  Has he still lost none of his humanity?  Is he still the same person?  Of course not.

So what is a person, really?  I’ve never found the philosophical problem of personal identity particularly interesting.  In some senses we change over time and in some we stay the same.  The thread that runs through our lives from the time we are babies until we are old and die is as thin as can be.  Many carry around the idea that one can be identified with one’s mind.  This seems to me a point that could be argued endlessly, because it is ultimately a question that will hinge on what things about a human being one chooses to emphasize and value.  I’ll talk more about this in the next chapter.  What I will claim for now is just that many who would purport to hold such a view would quickly run into hot water when questioned.  For my own part, I have come to feel that identifying a person with his mind is simply absurd.

mind?= duch?

To deny this is to deny that personality and the expression of emotions, among many other things, were not important parts of who I was.

            Who will say that running, and jumping, and playing, and doing all of the things I used to do were any less essential to who I was than what I have left?  Than the life of the mind?  Our minds are what distinguish us from other animals but this does not imply that being a mind is all there is to being human.  We often tend to behave in ways that give us the reactions we want from others.  People want to deny this and say that they “don’t care what anyone thinks”, but that’s just false.  If you woke up tomorrow and everyone in the world didn’t like you, you would care.  Something else I’ve noticed is that in many ways we become what others expect us to be.  Marge Piercy perceived this when in her poem, “Barbie Doll” the healthy young girl with fat legs and a big nose was “advised to play coy” and “exhorted to come on hearty”.  It’s an unforgettable poem.  In short, society in part dictates what personalities are available to others based on much that has to do with the way they look.  You may want to say that this is shallow or cowardly or whatever but you’re just not thinking.  People just don’t respond the same to the ugly.  Obese, dirty guys can’t get away with the same behavior towards women as strong, beautiful ones can.  That’s just the way it is and will always be.  I’m not sure I’ve made this point well but I find that when I try to be myself and show my personality like I always used to, those around me often just get very confused and uncomfortable and have no idea how to react to me.  Maybe what I’m trying to say will become clearer later on.

Greg Johnson

14.11.2024

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