What is Blog 5?

 

There is a person who lives in the world.

They wake up but don’t get up. Then, they go to school, where they be with no one. Then, they perform tasks which all include hiding from others. Then, they go home.

This person isn’t very identifiable. What makes this person their own person?

Identity is complicated because it’s not clear what it really is.

I often wonder two things: is one’s identity defined by society? Is it defined by themselves?

Philosophical books, such as the Alchemist or Siddhartha, seem to agree with the latter. In fact, they seem to completely disregard the importance of society, prioritize individuality, and portray common people as inherently worse than the ones who reach enlightenment.

I personally find it a bit immature to have such a superiority complex and disregard the importance of community in ones identity. It surprises me because from personal experience, I hate society. I hate community. I hate these things because they are built on a lie – that you can truly belong in a group. This is not true because it is both impossible for other people to truly understand you, and because other people don’t want to. Communicating with others in truth is just a game. I was never taught this game when I was younger, so I tried to tell people my honest thoughts and feelings. I didn’t know how to react to the things they said because they didn’t really interest me. Nowadays the game is still very hard for me. Most of the time I would rather just give up, as an easier alternative to losing and humiliating myself.

On the other hand, the opposite isn’t much better. I mean, have you actually spent time in solitude? You unfortunately go crazy.

What’s the point of being detached from society? Society is just a human creation and representation of all of humanity. Being around and a part of society is what makes us human. Being away from society makes people less human. They become jaded like Siddhartha, who saw the lives of the merchants and common people as “childlike” and laughed off their trivialities. They start to get angry and blame society for all of their problems. They become prone to violence and less capable of understanding.

Being isolated doesn’t bring you into a higher state of being, it just takes away from you. You become less of a human.

I still don’t know what identity really is. Why do I have to push myself into a tiny box to please people? I wonder if people would still have identities if they had no human interaction at all in their entire lives. Do you really have an identity if it’s not relative to something else? Is identity anything more than a feature to create relationships, like how names are just sounds assigned to call a person?

When someone asks “what kind of person are you?,” I want to rip their hair out and scream at them, but I don’t. The world we live in isn’t black or white, but gray, so I believe it’s alright to not be confident in your identity.