IDENTITY

Classification and identification are nothing more than paths of separation. Your I.D. identifies you as you, not me. That is a form of separation. For the sake of certain legal complexities, one can see how identification is necessary. How else could we determine exactly who committed the crime?

But there is another side to this, a downside, that needs to be considered. Some argue that crimes are virtually created by such separations. If we were all truly equal (especially in the economic sense), it is hard to imagine that crime would not be somehow affected (and positively so) by such a state of equality.

The very idea of more suggests, ipso facto, the idea of less. The haves create the have-nots – of necessity, logical necessity. If there were no haves, there would be no have-nots. The rich create the poor, simply by becoming rich in the first place. In the same way, by definition, laws create crime. (And it is usually the haves who are seated in the legislatures where the laws are hatched. The system has also made that reality inescapable.)

Our obsession then (and it does indeed seem to be an obsession) with identification seems to spawn certain deleterious effects by its very practice.

The whole thing seems even more unfortunate when we consider what a head game it is. I have mentioned before (probably more than once) that your name is not who you are. It is merely a handle of sorts, a convenience that makes communication a little easier.

The same is true of your social security number, driver's license number and so on. As a matter of fact, you just might be surprised, if you were ever to set yourself to the task, at how extremely difficult is to determine exactly who it is that you are. Trust me, you will not find the elusive you, no matter how hard, long, high or low you search.

What you will find is what you are, and once you do that, at the very same moment, you will also see that there really is no who. There is only what. You will see that "who" is only an idea constructed of words.

We have a very strong tendency to believe that just because there is a word (in this case "who"), that there is a definite thing (or object) that corresponds to that word. There are many examples that can be provided that clearly demonstrate that this simply is not true. For example, consider this word:

four-sided triangle.

The word is very real. I've put it on the paper (or, in this case, the computer screen). But can you even imagine such a thing? It doesn't take more than a nanosecond to see that you can't - in spite of the fact that the word exists. The mere existence of the word, therefore, is irrelevant. The same may be said of the word "who." Just because the word exists, and it most certainly does, as a handle, just like your name, doesn't mean (necessarily) that there is a corresponding thing it can match to.

But don't take my word for it. Go ahead. Start the search. See if you can discover who you truly are, the real you, or whatever you choose to call it. If you do succeed, I would love to hear about it. I'd love to hear you describe exactly who you are.