Forever Knowing Nothing

Because I do not know where to start, I figure that speaking of my purpose for choice of title is the best way to go. 

Wisdomless is a term that, after much contemplation, I concluded to say about myself a while after I did an activity to describe myself.  The purpose of the activity was to practice using a new way of organizing your thoughts and by using yourself as the subject matter.  It started with the task of making a concept map during a class.  A concept map is one that features some sort of a core topic like “Discrimination.”  From this middle, circled topic, branches that lead to other circles stem from it to expand on the idea to things like types of discrimination (i.e. class, gender, religion, sexuality, race, and ability) with things that expand from those respective types that may have to do with how it happens, what groups in these types that suffer from discrimination, or other ideas. 

In this activity, however, we were told to do a concept map of our name at the center and to map out who we are, to attempt to expand upon or describe “us.”  I started with a stem from my name to a new bubble called “Affiliations.”  From it I branched to past job positions, previous schools, other institutionalizations, and UCSC.  From the ‘UCSC’ circle, I branched out and started listing my affiliations here; with student senate, residential life, my current job, my major, athletic involvement, etc.  By this time, I had a pretty big set of branching from just the simple topic of “Affiliations.”  I became incredibly frustrated, however, simply because I came to the realization that I really didn’t know how to describe myself other than that which I was formally slated with and those qualities outside of my control.  Those qualities outside of my control would, for the most part, be my biological composition and the conditions in which I have been born into in both the microcosms of and greater pieces of society.

But what is Brian?  I started glancing at other papers (against the wishes of the facilitator) to find that people were  largely describing themselves in two ways.  One was what I referred to earlier, conditions outside our control, and the other was about qualities that these students attributed to themselves.  I noticed then and when people were presenting that it is odd how we do go about to describe ourselves.  Incredibly odd indeed.  Here is why:

Firstly, some women in the class made it a point to say that being female was part of their identity, but no male made any point that they were male.  The same situation applied with race.  Filipino participants said they had a Filipino identity, but no White said they were White.  This was consistent with someone of a minority religion of Islamic and someone who openly stated their bisexuality.  People were speaking of things that were completely outside their control but somehow was what made ‘them.’  Those particular aspects were what made their identity. 

The second aspect was about qualities.  Honesty, work-ethic, athleticism, intelligence, eloquence, sociability, etc.  To qualify them, some would state hobbies that related to those attributes, like painting or sport involvement.  It was terribly interesting to notice the fact that people chose to share the things that they did in order to show what their “identity” was, who “they” were, in order to qualify it.  Although I had done those things to describe myself before, I found that I couldn’t do it then.

I came to this really weird conclusion after this activity had long been over.  As a resident assistant, I am told that I am living in a “fishbowl effect,” where what I say and what I do is being perceived by everyone who is watching me and I don’t know when or how they are looking at me and forming ideas about who I am and what I’m doing here, for them, and for myself.  However, aren’t we all living in a fishbowl effect all the time?  All of us, in our own fishbowls, looking into others and never capable of looking at ourselves? 

How this conclusion has to do with personal identity is this.  Our “personal” identity is something that is not seen by us, but by other people.  We do not deliver our identity with attributes that are in harmony with personal experience and outer circumstance.  The parts of our identity that do enlist our attention are those that OTHER people notice and reflect back to us.  It’s like we obtain a picture of ourselves that is less clear than the picture we see of others, like what we see of ourselves is the murky, distorted, and incomplete reflection we obtain from others’ fishbowls, even though we can see them with good clarity.  The aspects of our identity that is the target of others’ attention, and subsequently of our own, often is that which sets us apart from others as exceptional (whether good or bad), or “other,” in their eyes. 

When we described ourselves to the larger group, we described ourselves in a way to effect distinctions that separated ourselves from the group.  But what is funny is that the “group” at large is what gave us these attributes.  Much of what we know about ourselves is what is perceived by others, things that they couldn’t see in most people that could be see in you or about you.  Much of what we know about ourselves is not what unifies us with the group but removes us, good or bad. 

I think about that every time someone tells me that I am humble.  It is probably one of most difficult compliments for me to accept simply because the act of accepting that compliment makes me feel like I am invalidating what was just said of me.  I think about that when I hear it because I acknowledge that I cannot tell people that I’m humble because they have yet to perceive that of me.  By trying to effect a certain picture of ourselves to the group, we end up creating an image to them that is counter to what we would hope.  They then perceive you in a way that is different to the picture you try to paint of them of yourself.  Self-portraits and autobiographies are never wholly accurate and are biased.  We don’t share to people the negative traits we have, especially since most people don’t tell us what those are.  I now am adamantly opposed to the idea of telling anyone any “self-acknowledged” trait that I possess because it feels as if you are trying to impress upon new individuals what took time to be determined by others about us.  I feel that a good point of neutrality about my character is more important to establish than trying to push or sway their thoughts into a light that I want them to see me in.  Perhaps they’ll find it themselves, or maybe I’m not even what I perceive myself to be, so then at least I can await to learn more about myself from their reflections onto me.

So then what does that leave me to talk about when trying to speak of myself?  I still give my affiliations.  I’m not sure why.  I’m overtly formal, so that may be the reason.  But the problem is that it feels pretentious to do just that.  I could talk about one of the big six, which were listed in the first paragraph when I spoke of discrimination.  People use that for their identity.  But that’s exactly what I referred to as those qualities which are out of my control.  It’s what participants in this concept map were actively using to define themselves.  But no one used any word that would describe themselves  for a characteristic if, for that characteristic, they were part of the dominant culture of that part of the big six.  They only gave what set themselves apart from being one in a dominant culture.

There are many things that we can use to define ourselves.  We have qualities that are both oppressed and are the oppressors, but it is the identities that are targeted for oppression that we hold on to ever so dearly.  Someone who is middle-class, male, heterosexual, White, fully able, but Jewish, will probably adhere to their Jewish identity more than their maleness, straightness, or whiteness.  The reason for not focusing on any other quality is because they have probably never been called a hetero or, more-or-less, economically sound.  They just know that people have noted and set them apart, in a way, for their Jewish-ness and so they have incorporated that into their identity because it is something that is said that makes “them.”  It’s almost like our identities are just becoming that which does not make “us,” but what makes us “different” from those that currently surround us.  We don’t know what we are, but we know what we’re not, because our minority characteristics have been identified as not being what is more widespread or dominant.  It’s so funny how carefully we speak of and seek to make others aware of those things which sets us apart simply because, in a way, we are not really self-aware.

We speak of computers becoming dangerous one day because they could become self-aware, that they realize that one exists as an individual being.  But, in a way, we only know that we exist, we only know that we are, because we are told that we are and are that way.  “I think, therefore I am” becomes “I’m told I think, which I’m told means I am.”  Our existence, along with our identity, is determined, acknowledged, and qualified by others, not by ourselves.

So where does that leave me?  Soon after, as I fumbled through a binder to locate said concept map again, I looked carefully at it and wanted to find something that was me.  It also had to be what I was, but it had to be applicable to me for my entire life.  Now that’s a challenge.  Qualities can change about you.  Hobbies can change.  Affiliations can also fade or evolve.  I wanted something incredibly pure in its simplicity and static in that it will not need to be altered through out a “dynamic” life.   I first thought of the word naïve, but that implies to me that I am subject to only doing wrong or making mistakes, that I do not know and will only learn through failure.  But you learn things from positive and even neutral events too!  I just knew that I wanted something that would imply that I would always have something to learn.  I thought about how, with age, comes wisdom and how, with each passing year and with each passing day, we obtain more wisdom than what we had during the previous time-frame.  However, relative to that previous point of reference, we did not have that new product of wisdom.  Relative to that point in the past, we lacked wisdom.  We were wisdomless. My Microsoft OneNote document is telling me that it isn’t a word, and that makes me happy enough.

I am wisdomless.  I will forever be in a state of obtaining wisdom but will simultaneously be lacking the fresh package of wisdom that is, indefinitely and currently, in a constant state of hashing, printing, delivering to, and opening  inside my mind.

As that is where, I’m told, its destination is.