Who am I?

Quite a simple question but, how simple is the answer? Can you answer it about yourself?

We are often under the impression that no one else could know us as well as we know ourselves yet, most cannot come close to truly answering this question. Although we all think we can. If it is in thought alone, that can't be the answer for there is much of us that is hidden from our thoughts, no matter how deep we look.

Some will take a feeling perspective and assume that what they are is how they feel about what they are but, just like thoughts, feelings come and go like the clouds in the sky yet, we are still us, aren't we?

Have you sat and tested who you are? How can you know?

Maybe this question is truly an unanswerable so what we do is limit its scope and answer other questions instead such as, what we do, how we behave, what we think we are. Again, to answer even from this limited view means to omit massive amounts of information including what happens when circumstances change. Even the battle-tested haven't seen every fight.

Perhaps it is similar to a quote from the movie The Bourne Identity,

Jason Bourne: I can tell you the license plate numbers of all six cars outside. I can tell you that our waitress is left-handed and the guy sitting up at the counter weighs two hundred fifteen pounds and knows how to handle himself. I know the best place to look for a gun is the cab or the gray truck outside, and at this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Now why would I know that? How can I know that and not know who I am?

We can know what we have done, know what we are doing and perhaps even predict what we will do in the future yet, what makes you you, and why are you any different from me if I do exactly the same things? If we are just the sum total of our behaviours up until this point, is there a point?

Part of the human condition is our self-awareness and our ability to Assume that we are part of a system much larger than we ourselves can ever know. We can understand the struggles we face and have the ability to consider that it all might be futile, that no matter what we do, it is meaningless. Our ability to think larger, predict the future and imagine changing it is tempered by our questions of why bother.

We don't want to consider these elements of life, the grey realities that may never provide a clear view of what we should do or, where we should go so, we cover them over, turn a blind eye. We create illusions and delusions that what we do is meaningful, that their is a higher purpose and a larger reason to our very existence without ever being sure that it is true.

Some see the lack of certainty as crushing, I see it as freeing. this doesn't free me from responsibility though, quite the opposite. It ties me to doing the best I can in any given moment and motivates to push a little harder in the next instance. Instead of maximizing myself, I look to embed into a community instead.

This is all assumption based but I figure that we are designed to be socially connected and evolving to communicate for cooperation. Self-maximization is not in the best interest of that evolutionary drive that has been pushing for two million odd years or more and to assume that I am more aware than nature's unaware perfection would be to deny that I am a product of that very system.

This evolutionary drive has taken us a long way together and even though some will argue against its wisdom, to break community from evolution would be to spiral into eventual non-existence, extinction. We might never know the real answer as to who we truly are and are unlikely to ever find out why we are here but, the further we move together, the closer the answers come.

The endpoint is always in the distance but along that road, the greatest discoveries are yet to be made and the greatest of which can only be made with a building upon of what we collectively know and collaboration with those who are trying to find their own path within the crowd.

People try to separate philosophy and science but, they are inextricably linked as the question one raises, forces the other to look for answers, the breakthrough of one will raise more questions for the other to consider.

So, for the scientists out there,

Who are you?

 
Taraz
[ a Steemit original ]

The picture is of my daughters feet when she was in the intensive care department just after she was born. I care so little for my own life but, at that point I really realized how much community matters and that regardless of what I think of life, mine is a part of the evolutionary journey too.