Hail Lambpoonies!
Please enjoy an older essay on identity and what a giant waste of time it all is. Every generation annoys itself and others with the question of identity and Hindi wisemen wish they would just stop it already.
Identity is a hot topic these days.
It seems fashionable to unashamedly wail about authenticity and other abstractions as if they are matters of any import. I haven't seen so many half-naked people crying about the self since visiting Delhi. Of course, the gurus in old Hindustan weren’t interested in figuring out who they are. They already know that, and it is the problem.
But what do they really know about it? They've only been pondering and developing that idea for 2,500 years or so. The American method, with a couple centuries behind it, is to ignore all of that and turn to social media for answers, instead. The idea is ancient wisdom derived from centuries of experience is no match for the collective wisdom of two billion idiots born yesterday. I question this but also see a raw math behind it that still doesn't add up.
Still, I'd like to see Gotama Buddha sign up for a Threads account if he was so smart. But he can't. He's dead. More than dead, really. He's gone. Entirely. Nirvana isn't a place, you know. It isn't Christian Paradise. It is the void. Also, he didn't have the Instagram account needed to sign up for a Threads account. Even a twenty-five-century dead dude knows that way lies madness. Needing to create an account to create another. Accountception.
He probably gotta glimpse of things to come. This is what fueled his desire to not-exist, to extinguish himself forever, to invent the Do Not Resuscitate order and apply it to samsara. That's the never-ending wheel of rebirth.
Not us Americans, though. We don't value wisdom much. We never saw a dull, stupid thing we didn't immediately love while pretending it is alive, conscious, and useful. We need those around us to tell us who and where we are. We can’t be trusted to figure it out ourselves.
Looking at you, Mr. President.
It has always struck me as odd one would care about identity so much. Either to absolutely reject or to wholly embrace it. I have a legal identity, but only for legal things. I try not to involve it with illegal things. Or anything fun. In the real world, where the State's cold, dead hands haven't yet reached, I came to grips with being a dick years ago. No further identification is necessary. This is that story.
When I was younger, I didn't know who I was. I assume, based on my peers’ shenanigans, they didn't know who they were either. The dumb boys, anyway. The majority of girls seemed to know who they were. But the ignoramuses didn't know who I was at all.
The only thing I learned from those ladies was how to quietly ignore social polyps by looking anywhere else. This technique has served me well when dealing with my own health issues. It has also served me well with questions of identity.
I turned to my parents for aid but my queries as to who and what I was were frustrated. “You're Rob! My talented, smart, infuriating son!” This sort of abuse may play well on the Hallmark Channel but I wasn't having it. I wasn't even convinced they'd met me, with all that unconditional love. They are entirely blameless for all of this.
Teachers were a bit closer to the mark. “You're the worst student in my Honors Geometry class and the best student in my Scripture class. I wish you'd apply yourself to the former and stop teaching me about the latter.” Priests have a weird sense of humor. And sexuality. Officially asexual, of course. But... well, you know. Still carrying on that ancient Greek tradition no matter the law. Not with me, though. They weren't into bad boys.
I had a high school guidance counselor, too. But there was no way I was taking any advice from one of those. I'd rather be abused by a priest.
Quite in character, I determined I would go about learning about myself the same way I learn everything else. Stupidly and with very little forethought. It is my way. So, I completely gave up trying to reason it out.
Instead, I got around to living the life I had. Girlfriends, getting arrested, getting expelled, getting a bank account, making sure it stayed empty, getting gonorrhea, getting parking tickets, train hopping, etc. Pretty standard milestones in everyone's life I imagine.
I dove into what people refer to as subcultures. I embraced none of them wholly. I couldn't.
The fascists were gross, and the antifascists were barely better. They all just wanted to fight and anyone who didn't was an ignorant wanker who was also probably a fascist. But the bad kind of fascist. The kind that is fascist for the wrong reasons. They were both too sure of themselves to be anything but completely vapid. And violent. Their conversations were always strangely abstract, too. Something smelled. They both seemed like religions encouraging people to murder.
I was angry, but not that angry. The world doesn’t owe me anything. So when the world was gross, I just took it in my dopey Gumpian stride and moved on. I figured I'd just jam out to music instead of beating anyone up at all. Less sweat.
The goth kids were weird but all right. The music sucked, though. Why get some horrible, depressed song stuck in your head when punk rock and reggae were available? Authority Zero is killing it lately, as an example.
I mean, listen to this. If this doesn’t make you want to move one way or another, if just to flip it off in a panic, you are dead, and I cannot help you. No one can.
See the contrast. Other than providing a solid recitation of the days of the week akin to the ABC Song, The Cure’s Friday, I’m In Love cognitively crippled an entire generation into a socially acceptable depression. What a bunch of wankers. Make people happy, damn it! Or at least make them think thoughts. They’re going to feel feelings on their own, after all. They don’t need your help with that!
The new wave kids were nerds. So close to it but refusing to see the point of energy in the music. It seemed manufactured. Polished. Ready for prime time. But I wasn't. I can jam to I'll Stop the World, though. Song is great.
There were Juggalos. Just say no, kids. This is your brain on Faygo, etc.
I met and loved (most) the skinheads. Salty bastards in boots and suspenders, hair cut short so no one could mistake them for hippies. Mostly decent. There's a stigma due to riotous, racist skinheads out there and lazy journalists. But on average, skinheads are no more racist than your typical college professor. And less than some. They’re mostly just about reggae and cool haircuts. Unlike hippies, who are into bad music and horrible haircuts. Skins are AntiHip. But no to them, too. Another club to deny.
The closest to adopting someone else's identity I ever came - which is what someone does if they say they are something other than themselves - was punk rock. These guys moved, man. The music. Dear gods the music! Strung Out is better every year.
We ran together like wild, drunk animals, but without the safety net of a Kennedy's legal team. We stole, we fought, we screwed when we could and otherwise behaved rather poorly all things told. Jesus loves the little children, but he passed us over. We made life seem loud and lively, all while doing our rocksteady best to kill ourselves to a proper tempo. This was it, I thought to myself. If I was going out, it'd be to a proper beat finally. No whining. Stop thinking, Robert. Go live.
We had it all. Gay kids, boring-ass straight kids, homeless kids, commies, socialists, nihilists, back country rednecks, atheists, and all the rest. We didn't care. We had a token trans kid, too. Just the one, though. We weren’t interested in blasting passed our quota. Capital hadn't yet latched onto gender dysmorphia as a viable revenue stream just yet in the 90s. Seems a big business by now. Telling kids to be miserable and how the world hates them when it doesn’t. The great secret is the world mostly doesn’t care.
I had my pack of angry lesbians keeping me somewhat straight. I had a Katherine, a couple Lisas, even a Rainbow (no joke, her parents were abusive on many levels) to round out our flying circus. They called me a breeder. I called them fags. And we smiled genuine smiles shared with friends who loved each other no matter the language.
There were a few man-haters, one in particular. Her conversations were always strangely abstract, too. As if the man in front of her was somehow one of the good ones but she still really wanted to invest in open sexism. She assumed a lesbian identity from the outside, rather than crafting her own, and it was obvious she’d done so. I lost respect for her, and I was happy to see her flabby backside when she left to go fingerpaint or whatever man-hating dykes get told to do for fun.
They basically raised me whenever I wasn't at home. I loved those dykes so much. I would crash at their place as often as they'd allow. They had those Toaster Strudel things, and I could be fairly certain I wouldn't wake up in their mouths. The lesbians’ mouths, I mean. Not Toaster Strudels. Just don't ever fall asleep with your boots on. A story for another time.
I loved all these folks. Because we all loved beer and (mostly) just let people live.
But something was wrong within my Parliament Punkadelic. A nagging suspicion clawed at my brain stem. An anxiety of sorts but without option for medical solution. Believe me, I tried. So much acid. So much. And I will never touch DMT ever again.
Everyone seemed to have an opinion on what a bloody punk was or was supposed to be. I'm not into that. I was into the Dead Kennedys. That meant cynical satire and ideas about who should be what and why were deeply boring. Supposed to be, ought to be, should be, these are phrases with nothing to do regarding reality. There aren’t groups of people running around out there, there are only individual people. The forest is made of individual trees and without that fact, the forest is a sad visit.
I don’t know any single thing turned me off from collectivism entirely. If there was any mob, or group, or any bunch of blokes I wouldn’t mind running around with, it was punk rockers. But taking a thing already existing and applying it to myself felt wrong. I can’t really justify this on any rational grounds. I’m just real jealous of my own mind. It’s mine. You can’t have it. Unless I give you permission, which I do not. Not unless you’re really funny. Forcing someone to laugh is like hijacking their mind.
What I am is an anarchist. But I don’t generally say that, since people tend to view that as membership in an anarchist club of some sort. No club. I don’t like clubs. I use the term for myself in my own way. It mostly means I’m not in any old stupid club. I’m in a stupider club of one. Actually, that's not true. I've been a card-carrying member of the Richard Cheese Fan Club for like… forever. I love that man.
It also means a lot of the liberating ideologies you hear about, like working against discrimination in the workplace and culture, eventually lands at my table. You may not be anarchists yet, friends. But the logical outcome of liberation is anarchism. Don’t let it scare you. It doesn’t mean your favorite authoritarians will simply leave government and be replaced by people uninterested in governing. Power-hungry wanks will always trouble us. The idea they won’t is nuts. Hah! Can you imagine?
There is no utopia. The closest anyone comes is through death according to like… all religions with legs. It’s not looking good for a stateless society, I’m afraid. Not optimal, but it remains the case.
My friends and family likely have an identity for me in mind. Perhaps a skinhead, maybe a punk, definitely an irritant. And I don't mind. You can call me whatever you like. I've always enjoyed the name Susan, if you're lost for one. But I do respond to Rob almost immediately.
The point to all of this is you must create your own identity. If you insist on being an individual person, anyway. As mentioned before, if you don’t figure out who you are, the world will provide an identity to assume, and it will not be you. The alternative to assuming your own individual identity is to be consumed by someone else’s. Someone without your individual experience. Someone who is probably dead, too.
A mob will always welcome you. Whether to join them or to be eaten. They are the collective.
I do not care if you call yourself a liberal, or a conservative, or neuro-divergent, or neuro-normy, a Satanist, a pantheist, or anything at all. I want to know what you think. Not what you are. What you are is a boring question. It isn’t real knowledge.
They say the difference between a religion and a cult is as follows. In a cult, a person manipulates a bunch of other people through fantastic lies and strange metaphysical hogwash claiming to be the truth of the world. In a religion, that guy is dead. This is a fun joke, close to the truth of the matter. A religion requires an institution and institutions require transitions between generations. So, once that guy dies, another takes his place. A mass movement is a religion.
As a consequence, I see countless dragons spewing fire, unconcerned for me as an individual. I let it go outside a comment here or there. They don't need my help nor do I feel like slaying them. I don't feel like becoming them. Not anymore.
That well wasn't poisoned. It is poison.
The only acceptable form of identity to me is what we do, not what we think we are. “That’s me on the street with a violin under my chin, playing with a grin. Singing gibberish!”
What we are is boring. We’ve been what we are for millennia by now. What we do is much more interesting.
We call what goes on over social media a conversation.
But everyone knows it more closely resembles freshly neutered wolves baying and/or spaying at the moon. True believers in this or that try to one up each other by demonstrating their faith. Their performances become more extreme by the day.
This doesn't seem conversational. It's more like determining a winner based on volume. Of voice, not proponent. The number of adherents doesn't matter. But volume creates the illusion it does. It seems more like a mega church, mixed with a night club, producing a self-hate crime. And everyone must have a bloody opinion on who deserves hate the most. It is expected of you.
But don't worry, friends. If you're not sure who you are, strangers on the internet have no trouble telling you. They are not and cannot be correct. But they certainly feel like they are and that's all that matters in a shout down. It's a matter of faith. A faith firmly rooted in fanaticism. The oldest western tradition there is. Their best piece of evidence? Studies Say Clickbait News Articles. A little of the old SSCNA. A classic acronym for a classic fallacy.
I once read a study saying studies don't change anyone's mind. By the end of it I wondered who they thought they were fooling. I can't be captured by such a silly little thing like that.
I recall being a bright-eyed young man signing up for a Facebook account so long ago. I had visions of worldwide free speech dancing in my head, alongside the pretty lady wanting my social media details. She also danced in my head. And that's what we got for a time. It was amazing. I fomented revolution in no less than eight different countries from the comfort of my air conditioned little one bedroom apartment. It cost me nothing and brought me joy.
But social media isn't like that anymore. These free speech pioneers have checked out or cashed in on an increasingly locked down platform. They do not care about free speech. They care about advertising revenue. No doubt, some dullards don't see a difference. Don't be that dullard. Advertisers are some of the most censorious pricks available these days.
The thing about restricting speech is it more limits learning. That's the point, of course. Those who censor - when caught and have to admit it - will claim they're trying to minimize harm. They are epistemologically greedy enough to believe this. To prevent speech, one must necessarily believe they already know enough on a subject to turn away any further discussion. This is ancient evil and not remarkable on its own. Fanaticism is, once again, the oldest western tradition there is.
Over time an intolerant minority made itself more heard. And over a further time, an equally intolerant minority worked against it. This is not a left or right wing thing, or any other limiting label. It cuts horizontally across the entire, chubby penguin. Just like evil cuts straight through the heart of every single human being.
But between these two groups, both utterly obsessed with defining themselves in opposition to the other, the free exchange of ideas hit the mat.
These folks were concerned ultimately with something they called the authentic self. Finally, we return to India. This idea is an inversion of the tabula rasa blank slate delusion. The idea we are a blank canvas at birth and are made entirely of our environment.
In contrast, the authentic self supposedly screams you were born this way. Often to hip hopping electronic dance music. Rather than being produced from your environment, your environment is utterly inconsequential. These ideas are so different. And yet not. Just like racists and antiracists are both wrong due to sitting and spinning on the same racialist axis, so are both these ideas.
It is obvious our environment forms us in fundamental ways. It is also obvious we are born with some innate characteristics. I don’t pretend to know which are what. But much misery is the result of fanatically pursuing one or the other exclusively.
Being born with your identity, though? Hell no. I wasn’t born this way. I was made a monster by loving dykes and Jello Biafra. Still, there is something in me that rejects even this premise. It assumes I had no innate control over it. But I absolutely did. I likely had a hand in the crafting of my character.
I’m probably just selfish. You can be, too, without all the negative social aspects one usually associates with that term. Well, unless you've given up on being you. The idea you can be authentic and a member of some group someone else dreamed up is contradictory to me. You're not authentic if you've categorized yourself in accordance to someone else’s ideas. Unless you’re authentically a robot.
Nor can you tell someone else what they are. Not without a jury of your peers and a dude in a black dress with a hammer, you can’t. Even then, you're limited to Guilty or Not Guilty. I'm never quite sure if I should smash binary thinking or not.
That seems to be a binary choice. Yes or No. And if I go in either direction, I’ve made one of those choices. That is how reality works. One either does or one does not. Exceptions apply. Because life is wonderful and full of real people with no time for grand proclamations regarding how life works.
But I'll be gods damned if vapid, philosophical inversion doesn't produce more clicks than a Gotama Buddha quote. And I do mean way more. On an unrelated note, please feel free to Like and Share this thing.
Fantastic piece, Susan. 🤘
Fn hate the identity shit.