CHAPTER-Two
The Problem of Identity and
Alienation versus Avowal
A non-descript term ; individuality suggests our ideas and feelings, our psychic presence, our topographic point of habitation, and even our yearnings, dreams and desires. The single individuality, like the national individuality, is formed through a series of random and often eccentric accumulations. In the formation of the single individuality, several factors come into drama. One is the cumulative progeny of all these diverse and dissentious forces. A formative and non an unconditioned merchandise, one’s individuality is determined by three factors. First, childhood feelings and aspirations play a critical function in make up one’s minding it. An person has to interrupt off most of his trust on his parents, and go free plenty to go forth place and develop thoughts and purposes of his ain which will give him a distinguishable individuality. How strong the defiance in each person is, and what organize it takes, is the 2nd component in finding individuality. The 3rd component is the Zeitgeist. These call on the young person to develop different qualities in different historical periods. Beside the influence of parents and place, society and Zeitgeist play a major function in determining the individuality of an person. It is non merely the spirit of the times, but besides the biological trait within the character, the interior thrust and motive which every bit contribute to one’s individuality. The Zeitgeist merely acts as a accelerator to trip the latent natural traits within the character of an person.
Our desire for a separate civilization individuality is the progeny of our being alienated from the construct of integrity in diverseness. It becomes a job for the nation-state to suit diverse cultural cabals clamoring for alone individualities: “The procedures of foreign civilization incursion are already presenting a serious menace to our national cultural identity.”
History shows that unreal agencies of making an individuality either through faith or through political orientation are non sustainable.
The alteration in the individuality of an person is on history of his psychic responses and emotional brushs, non ethical brushs. The battle between the two selves- the existent and the idealized- endangers grave psycho-emotional instability when the existent ego is subdued and over- powered by destructive forces, which bring out psychotic disaffection and the loss of existent individuality.
An foreigner is bound to meet transverse cultural contracts which may set him in a bewildering and frustrating state of affairs. This obfuscation is a consequence of what Toffler calls “cultural shock.” Assimilation and soaking up in an foreign civilization “causes breakdown in communicating, a misreading of world, an inability to cope.”
Identity is the projection of the ego. Self-image molds and transforms self-identity. One’s individuality is rooted in the civilization in which one lives, and therefore disaffection from the civilization leads to the loss of one’s socio-cultural individuality. The impulse to place with the present stimulates one in the pursuit for individuality, which operates at public and private degrees. The individual’s disaffection from the society is the manifestation of his quest for the ascertain of his individuality. Thingss otherwise taken for given appear confusingly self-contradictory when we seek a principle behind them. It is the impulse to detect a principle in the transitivity of the objects around us that leads the anomic ego in its pursuit for individuality.
The characteristic characteristics of a individual autumn into two wide classs: physical and psychological. Each of these characteristics is capable to alter. Personal individuality opinions are made on the footing of these features. Bodily continuity of memory serves as the justification for the devising identify opinions about individuals. These continuities are our justification for imputing individuality to individuals. However, any effort to specify personal individuality in footings of these continuities may be an act of futility. Bodily continuity is frequently interpreted as spatio-temporal continuity. Personal individuality is something ultimate and undecomposable. This statement comes from the thought that our ordinary construct of a individual is something whose integrity is in it univocal. Perceptible continuities, such as bodily continuity, are the lone means to grok personal individuality, which is more than these continuities-physical or psychic. The fanciful individuality we ascribe to individuals every bit good as to things are merely a “fictious” 1. The individuality with which we are concerned is the re-identification and continuity of things through clip and alteration. It is spatiotemporal continuity. The nature and cognition of our self-identity is reflected in all our sincere memory-statements. Self-identity is self-knowledge. The true nature of personal individuality in self- individuality, non in another individuality. Identity in general is taken to be “a relation between things which is known to be at one clip, a thing which is known to hold existed in another time.” [ 1 ]
The individuality of a individual may be established on groundss. John Locke describes personal individuality as the “sameness of a rational being” [ 2 ] A rational being can see itself in different times and topographic points, and can cognize of its individuality through clip, merely by agencies of that consciousness which is inseparable from believing and rooted to it. A individual knows his individuality in footings of memory, or what Locke called the continuity of consciousness, is but one of the standards of set uping personal individuality. Hume, on the other manus, after holding reasoned that everything that lasts beyond a minute is merely a “bundle or recollection” of quickly altering perceptual experiences, concluded that the individuality we ascribe to individuals is merely a fabricated one.
Our feelings of objects are different at different minutes ; so on o object of one minute can be the object of another minute. Hence individuality can non be inactive. It is dynamic and transient. This explains the logic of the transitivity of individuality. Since every thought is derived from some feeling, so must be the individuality of the object, of which the thought is an thought. Butler, like Locke, gave consciousness or memory the premier importance in his history of personal individuality. He was instead rightly of the sentiment that consciousness or memory of our past actions and experiences gives us the really sense of our individuality through clip, and assures us of our individuality.
It is erroneous and unsound, nevertheless, to infer anything about the individuality of things from the nature of the feelings, from which the thoughts of the object are derived. For case, The feeling which 1 has about one’s composing tabular array may non be uninterrupted ; it may be interpreted by some other feelings and thoughts. But does it do one’s composing table discontinuous and numerically different at different minutes? Since memory gives us the sense of our individuality, bodily considerations tend to be ignored, and frequently seem to be inessential. But this is an simplism. For when one considers whether he is the same individual who did such and such, and this has an indispensable mention to his organic structure, which, hence, has a function to play. Further, there may be possible state of affairss when 1 may doubt who one is and in such a instance one has to trust on what others say about us-one’s other individuality. But what others say depends, preeminently, on their opinions about one’s bodily continuity- and this is merely what is losing in Hume’s history of personal individuality. Had there been no possibility of there being other individual, the inquiry of one’s ain individuality wouldn’t arise. Personal individuality is something intrinsic and can be known merely by one’s being witting of it, or by intuiting one’s individuality with a past ego. In our consciousness our individuality is unfailingly met with. The existent ego can merely be an object of idea, non of cognition. It flows hence that the existent nature of our individuality is intractable and cryptic. William James does non believe in the being of a individual ego. What we call our “selves” was constructed by him as a series of momentrary or fugitive egos, each one which transmits all its consciousness to its replacement ego. That all “adopts” its ain consciousness as its ain, and in its bend transmits its ain consciousness together with what it had adopted from its earlier ego. And so on.
