FWD: I really shouldn't have taken LSD as an adolescent (slightly paranoid)

[KXX4493553 at aol.com]

Thema:        Re: a real character
Datum:  18.08.01 21:21:00 (MEZ) - Mitteleurop. Sommerzeit
From:   krystalkel at EEE.ORG (Kelly Thompson)
Sender: NETDYNAM at MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU (NetDynam / Network Group Dynamics 
Mailing List)
Reply-to:   NETDYNAM at MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU (NetDynam / Network Group Dynamics 
Mailing List)
To: NETDYNAM at MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU

.  James wrote:

I had even argued that maybe there was no such thing as identity.
 I was trying to come clean and put in a good word for the position I had
been arguing against  --admit that while I entertained the "myth of
identity" as a philosophical possibility

The "myth of identity" somehow struck me in the moment as quite accurate.  I
wonder, at what rate does the "average" person have the myth of their
identity severely and extremely challenged?  For some reason, being the
terminally unique person I like to think I am, I have this image of
"metropolis" identities: the millions, like robots, going through "lives of
quiet desperation," not knowing they don't really exist but somehow
suspecting it...(mind, at some level I do know I *am* one of these millions
[minions])

Take any one of us; strip us of all common elements, place us in a
completely foreign environment with no familiar reference points, at the
same time take away any illusions that the so-called self as we knew
ourselves existed...and see what happens to the "sense of self."  Now, what
comes to mind, perhaps, is a Vietnam vet in a POW camp isolated from any
other vets....don't many turn to "God," or their roots or their identity as
patriotic Americans to survive?  But is that real or a myth that makes one
appear to be real in order to survive?

Ok.  Let's take away that as well...the subject/object of the experiment
will be denied any familiar myths, illusions, roles, or beliefs.  Then what?
What remains?

Perhaps, I guess, the "soul."  The essence, I would hypothesize, of a
"person."  Which would be absent of all "identity." (Remember, I
hypothesize.)  Therefore, perhaps we can define "identity" as "context."
And "identity" comes from "context" alone.  When stripped of "context,"
"identity" ceases to exist.  A new possibility arises...does one exist
absent of community?  (No man is an island...if a tree falls in the forest
and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?)  But is my hypothesis
strictly contextual?  i.e. context - dependent?  In which case, my
hypotheses are meaningless as they do not exist except in ....well, ....in
the context of culture?  Where does the possibility of "soul" come from, if
not culture?

I really shouldn't have taken LSD as an adolescent.

Kelly


Kurt-Werner Pörtner