The Real World and the Self: Deconstructing Identity and Choice

When the Roman emperor Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon and entered enemy territory, he famously declared, “The die has been cast.” This phrase implied that from that moment onward, battle was his only option, and, in this sense, its outcome had been predetermined. I believe (though I’ve never seen this interpretation elsewhere) that he refered to the die belonging to the Greek/Roman deity Decuma/Lachesis—one of the three Fates, who, according to the myth, determined the course of each person’s life by casting a die. Whether or not this interpretation is accurate, the phrase serves as a fitting metaphor for the Greco-Roman view of fate as a predetermined and immutable destiny, a thread through which we are all bound to travel (another image drawn from the myth of the Fates).

But, that view is nonsense. Fate isn’t predetermined. At any moment, Caesar could have chosen to retreat, surrender, spend the day fishing by the Rubicon, or pursue countless other options instead of fighting. We all have access to paths that can change the entirety of our life for seconds. The reason Caesar dismissed those paths wasn’t that he was incapable of going through them, but because if he had, then he wouldn’t be Julius Caesar i.e. he would destroy the narrative that is himself. His identity was tied to the narrative of a bold, decisive leader; would Caesar still be Caesar if he had retreated?

In much the same way, each of us faces countless choices that could radically alter our fate. Yet, we rarely consider most of them, because we feel that choosing certain paths would cause us to lose our sense of identity.

The concept of the self, like identity more broadly, is a personification of what is interpretable (through the default interpretation). The memories, beliefs, and knowledge that make up who we are. Any thought, habit, or urge outside this narrative isn’t truly part of the self. This isn’t because those thoughts or urges are rarer, better/worse, or less characteristic or ourselves than the rest, but because they fall outside the established narrative.

1. The self is not who you are, but who you aspire to be—your projected goal, interpreted through the default interpretation. The self does not exist in W.

We are defined by what we identify with. When we tie our identity to a particular idea or dogma, our sense of self is tied to its validity. If that idea is challenged, our identity feels threatened.

This is why people cling so tightly some of their beliefs: unlike ordinary, empirical ideas that can be proven wrong, the self resists such challenges, leading to so-called “inner conflicts.”

1. All inner conflicts (or conflicts with ourself) are essentially conflicts between different sets of goals, each of which requires a different interpretation of reality. For example, believing that A ⇒ B and perceiving the world through the lens of A and B entails one role for us, while believing that X ⇒ Y and seeing the world in terms of X and Y entails another. The common thread between these views is that each requires a role for us, as neither would exist otherwise. In this sense, there isn’t just one self (M), but many interconnected selves (M’s).

Having memories makes these conflicts especially prevalent, because in order to abandon a given interpretation, you must also drop the memories, associated with it and we cannot drop our memories without dropping “ourselves”. However, our new memories are associated with a diffent interpretation which we also cannot abandon.

The Societal Perspective

It is often said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. This saying embodies one of the main postulates of all human societies — in just a few words, it captures both the function that people have in society (making the world behave uniformly for everyone) and what society does with those who refuse to conform (labeling them as “insane” and thus excluding them).

In reality, this principle is false. In fact, the opposite is often true. For example, if I experience something that brings me positive emotions (e.g., eating a delicious meal), I would expect to feel the same way if I repeat that experience. However, this rarely works. When you eat a tasty snack and feel pleasure, many factors contribute to that feeling—your hunger, the time of day, what you ate earlier. Each event is connected to every prior event, going all the way back to your first perceptions before birth. Every experience influences your current experience, whether you’re consciously aware of it or not. Similarly, in the universe, it’s inaccurate to say that one event simply follows another. rather, everything follows from everything else. Sane people should be aware of this complexity (e.g. that having a second sandwich is not like having the first one for a second time) so a more fitting definition of insanity might be—doing the same thing over and over and expecting similar results every time.

You might argue that my example is simplistic (e.g., that anyone in their right mind knows when to stop eating). However, the reality is that most of us don’t know (or we know in theory but not in practice). Even this basic fallacy is something we struggle to grasp, and it illustrates the point. Thoughts like “more is better” and the aforementioned definition of insanity are inherent flaws in how we perceive the world. These truisms hold society together.

As actors always play roles for an audience, we cultivate our self—our default interpretation — in sync with the society we live in. Society is also why we remember the things we do. If we forget, someone else remembers for us. If we want to change our self, society may deny us that right. It is society, not the individual, that creates the default interpretation of reality, implanting it in our minds through memory.

Using this view, we can understand cultural conflits with the same framework we explained self conflicts — every society has it’s way of interpreting reality, which maintains order and having a different way of interpreting reality (even if you don’t want to impose it on anyone) makes you a menace to that order.

And memory plays an important role in societal consciousness: here it’s enough to remember Orwell’s saying that who controls the past, controls the present. Memory is what underpins the very concept of a particular people, or of the whole human race as a whole.

References

For more on the recursive nature of the self, see Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter.

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