05.08.08
On Reinventing Oneself
Essay Week Spring 2008 runs from May 5th to May 9th, 2008. Each day Iíll present a short essay on a topic of concern to me; I have the option of including a pre-essay post giving updates on ongoing life events if necessary. All the essays this week will be here; the LiveJournal is on hiatus while I concentrate here. Some of the elements in these essays may be controversial; I hope, however, that most will be well-regarded and at least read with an open mind. If you have anything to say about them, please feel free to leave a comment; I read them all, even if I may not respond due to time or other concerns. We continue our look at the world with a bit more introspection on the process of personal revolutions, their causes, and most importantly, the end results.
It’s one of the most obvious and banal remarks one could ever make to a friend you haven’t seen in a very long time. “Oh my, you’ve changed so much!” I personally try not to say it, but it still comes out. Change is, in our world, inevitable– and there we go, another insipid and useless platitude. The fact that it’s been told many times before, however, does not make it any less true– just painfully obvious. People change, and there’s nothing that can be done about it. But, the reasons for change are varied, wide, and in my opinion, often quite interesting.
On occasion, people interact with each other. This might shock some folks, of course, but I assure you it does happen. It’s a simple matter of our biology– humans are social creatures, and we like to be with other people with whom we identify on some level. Now granted, we don’t always all get along, but there is usually a point at which a common ground could be located between even two diametric enemies. In reality, the interactions with people who aren’t like us are the ones which prompt us to change, more than dealing with those with whom we agree. Like much of what I’ve talked about this week, it goes back to the concept of memetic propagation.
Richard Dawkins wrote in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene about the concept of memes, which could be considered as discrete thought-objects. Think of a meme as a wooden nickel that can be passed to other people– though unlike an actual wooden nickel, the act of passing it to someone else does not deprive you of your nickel. Rather, it replicates itself when you pass it on, so that where only one person had a nickel, there now are two identical, equally potent wooden nickels. The power of the wooden nickel, in this case, then, varies as functions of its age and dispersion area; as the nickel gets older, it becomes less likely to be passed on successfully, but conversely as it gains widespread acceptance, its relative aging rate is decreased so that it loses power far more slowly than a nickel that hasn’t spread very far. Of course, this itself is countered by the fact that, if it’s fairly widespread, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn’t already have the nickel. Memes are kind of like that.
Of course, a meme is just an abstract concept; using wooden nickels is a pretty shaky analogy. A meme’s propagation is actually a function of more than just its age and dispersion. Even discounting the existence of memetic mutation (the changing of the meme over time), elements like the charismatic presentation of the meme, the perception of the meme, or even just the prevailing culture with regards to change can help or hinder the propagation of memes– it’s as much environmental as it is intrinsic. That’s not really the point of this essay, though it is something to consider when looking at other cultures’ understandings of the concept of freedom of expression (itself a meme).
To illustrate how memetics can influence or spur on personal change, let’s take a look at a hypothetical, very popular cafe in a busy downtown district. Assume for the moment that the cafe specializes in tea, and will serve any kind of tea you want with pretty much any extras you want (within reason). You and a friend walk into the cafe, and the waitress walks over to take your order; you both ask for a cup of Earl Grey (hypothetically, you’re also a Star Trek geek). The waitress asks you what you want in your tea, and suggests sugar, milk, lemon, or a mint leaf. Your friend, having been here before, immediately selects the mint leaf. Now you’re up, and you have a minor dilemma. You’re used to having milk in your tea, but you’re willing to try something new; so, you decide to try the mint leaf as well. Imitation of others is one of the prominent ways memetic propagation leads to individual, personal change, though it certainly is not the only one and it’s similarly not always the best.
As an aside, it’s because of this that I find myself very carefully choosing my words whenever I speak or write about something I’ve done. It’s not really a pretense of self-importance (though, done excessively, it can certainly appear that way), but rather an unwillingness to be considered an authority when I’m really not one. One of my greatest fears is giving advice to someone, with only the best of intentions, only for that person to suffer some atrocious fate directly as a result of my words. So, I suppose, presented with the opportunity to be the final word (on anything I didn’t create– I certainly hope I know the timelines of my stories!) I much prefer to let people who know what they’re talking about answer.
Getting back to change. Human beings see different behavior in each other, and adapt their own behavior to fit as they choose. It’s a fairly common and accepted trait in most of humanity. Naturally this causes problems when the behavior being imitated originates in a work of fiction; if one lacks the proper filters to differentiate reality from fantasy, to differentiate real conflict from play, then one’s media intake and experiences must need be tightly controlled by individuals who do possess that capability. Again, this is getting into a situation– violent media– that I do not feel I need to address right now, as I have done so many times in the past.
But it does speak to a strange situation, and the root of the problem I’m looking at. Changing how one behaves– the interactions with and between the self and the outside world– the result of such change can be beneficial or detrimental to the overall existence of the individual. Furthermore, memetic mutation can alter the behavior being imitated before it is imitated even once, due to differing circumstances between the meme originator and the meme receptor. And once behavior is changed, the actor can regress to previous behavior for any number of reasons. What it really boils down to is that changes are not necessarily diametric flip-flops of positions, nor are changes always precise mimickry, nor are changes always permanent in the individual.
The point of changing behavior is not simply a hard-coded genetic mandate. Intellect causes humans to have self-awareness, and it is this capacity for reflection and self-analysis which prompts changes in behavior. When a human being realizes that his or her behavior is not in his or her best interests, or is not beneficial to some external goal that the person values, that human is now, on some level of consciousness, open to the idea of changing that behavior. The alteration of behavior is rooted in our capacity for intelligence and also in our own desire to change or to adapt.
In order for behavior to change, the person must notice the desire for change. Done in small doses, the change can be gradual and almost imperceptible. But, every once in a while, an individual will see in himself or herself a need for sweeping, drastic changes, and will make an attempt to change large portions of his or her habitual behavior at once. This is what I mean by “reinventing” oneself, but that is only one half of the process, the most visible half. That is the effect. The cause is also a change in one’s methodology of self-analysis.
I’ve spoken, at length sometimes, about how I have styled myself a writer since the completion of the first draft of Inconsequential (over a year ago). What is of interest is that I’d downplayed the descriptor until the draft’s completion. When I undertook self-analysis in late 2006– at the traditional time of the end of the year– I saw that I considered the descriptor as part of how I identified myself, but I did not feel that I had a real “right” to bear that adjective. That, in essence spurred me to complete the draft. Completing the draft reinforced the descriptor, which itself affected how I continued to reflect upon myself and my behavior. Later on, it would be the strong descriptor of “writer” that spurred me to complete not just the first draft of Harvesting Blueberries, but also to initiate the rewrite process.
At some point, I acquired the descriptor of “writer”. I could have easily dropped it at any time; there have been many descriptors I’ve held in the past that I’ve dropped. Instead, I saw that it was a descriptor I wanted to maintain, and that my current set of behaviors was not conducive to keeping it. So I changed. The reinvention in this case was from “non-writer” to “writer”. While it was not nearly as drastic as, say, quitting one’s job as a CEO to become a world-class fly-fisherman, it was still a significant enough shift in behaviors and self-analysis, over a relatively short span of time, to be differentiated from a gradual process.
Now, as I said, people can choose to drop descriptors. That’s a change in behavior, as well. If one takes on a descriptor, or makes a choice to change behavior, then there’s lessons to be learned if things go wrong. I don’t automatically consider a change in position to be a detriment in character or a lack of decisiveness. If it happens repeatedly and often enough, then, yes. What I think a change in position indicates is that the person probably had a good reason for changing their position. As I’d said on Tuesday, the change itself tells me very little, but rather it’s the context and the circumstances surrounding the change which will tell me more about the person under scrutiny.
Change is a result of learning, either learning yet to be done or learning that has been done. I do not believe that there is such a thing as having learned too much, nor do I believe that that which has been learned is safe from scrutiny. The founding principle of the scientific community and the scientific method, the cornerstone of the technological processes on which our society relies, is that principles must be constantly tested and reaffirmed. The law of gravity is constantly undergoing change in its understanding, and in what causes it, even if the gravitational constant of Earth is always going to be 9.8 meters per second squared. Likewise, people must constantly re-evaluate what they’ve learned and what they know to be true in the context of the evidence they’ve gathered since then.
Zen Buddhism has a concept of discontinuity between the past self, the present self, and the future self. The future self is the you that has yet to be born, and is not the you that you are now. The past self died with the moment in which it existed, and is no more the you that you are now than the future self is. The past self’s actions are only memories, the future self’s actions are only plans. Both are only abstractions of the mind held by the present self; “existential fictions” in a sense, which– while they can have an effect on the behavior of the current self– are not the current self. The only self that exists is the self that exists in the present moment. Thus, what can’t be counted on is the knowledge that the past self has– it can be used as a starting point, but it needs to be updated and refreshed every now and again.
I feel, actually, that our lives are the process of us constantly re-evaluating our world. I think that the moment we start taking the world and the things we know for granted– the moment we lose the ability or willingness to be surprised– we lose a significant part of ourselves. If we’re so jaded, if we’re so cynical that we can’t accept the wonder of discovery and the true pleasure of learning something new– or rediscovering something we’ve forgotten– then there really is no point to life. I’m glad I abandoned a large portion of that grudge against the unknown, but I still know I’ve got a long way to go.
Of course, knowing that I’ve got a long way to go– and being not just happy about it, but genuinely giddy– takes me a fair distance along that path.