Pyrpolizer wrote:erolz the ancient Greeks had this proverb
ου με πείσεις καν με πείσης spelled ou me peiseis kan me peiseis
== You will not persuade me, not even if you persuade me; I will not be convinced against my will
Now that is an idea that I find interesting, intellectually stimulating and could and may well lead me to write 'reams and reams' in response to it. Such gems are all to rare for me here generally so thanks for that.
I am, all fairly recently it must be said, coming to understand that saying in very new and different ways to how I have for the first 50 years of my life. I am starting to understand that expression of individuality is a basic common human urge and desire, stronger even than say the urge to procreate. Thus the fear of this being 'taken away' or 'stolen' or 'tricked' from you is also a generic human fear, one that is in part what defines us as humans. Fear of death, fear of isolation / loneliness and fear of denial or theft of unique identity, all basic human fears that we all share. Before recently I used to think the saying above was a great summary of what I often experienced at the hands of others and such experience would often lead me to frustration. Now I much more understand that it is a common and essentially valid fear, that we all experience and 'know', me no different to others. Which in turn has led me to understand that for the previous 50 years or so when I thought what I was trying to achieve was in essence to do my best to try and 'prove' my identity (view , opinion etc) is more right than someone else, what I was actually trying to do was make my identity and the uniqueness of it known to the universe.
The way in which we, all of us, me included often, deny others an ability to express their unique identity, which we all have a drive and urge to do, simply by imposing a false binary simplification on the universe that is not a reflection of reality and without any intent to deny others their expression of their identity, is becoming increasingly clear to me in terms of others doing it to me and me doing it to others. I am by the day getting closer to a clear and consistent world view that this false imposition of a binary dichotomy on a universe that just does not work that way, is the root of the bulk of all conflicts over things like 'identity politics' and may well be related to the vast majority of conflict generically.
Sticking with identity politics for now. Take an issue like 'gender identity'. I think much, probably the bulk, of the 'tension' around the issue of 'gender idendtity' is down to the way insisting the universe is such that gender is a binary thing, not just in how people consider it themselves but at a 'physical level'. That there are only in existence two states possible that of male and female. Yet we know the universe is more complex and wondrous than this. In other species and also in humans. From hermaphrodites to castor semenya to countless other examples of physical ambiguity between the two binary (and false) states of just male and female. I think once you accept that the reality is that there is in fact a spectrum of 'states', of 'unique identities' that range from the two polar extremes of male and female and that most but not all people are in or place themselves at each the polar extremes, then things become a lot 'easier'. That it is the denial of the ability for someone unique to be able to express their unique identity because we all say, for convince, there are only two states possible. The practical problems of accepting a universe where even gender is a matter of degrees and not binary polar opposites, like which toilets people can or should use and how many there should be, are tiny and almost certainly surmountable once you take out the inherent denial of someones identity and ability to express it by 'binarising' what is a spectrum.
Or take 'race identity'. I had a fascinating discussion with a good friend of mine about the experience of being 'mixed race'. I am mixed race in the sense that my mother is English and my father was Cypriot. My friend is also mixed race but unlike me he is also much more visibly 'other' than I am against the backdrop of living in the UK. That is to say principally his skin was darker than mine to a degree that visually alone in the UK he would be identified as 'not white' or 'black' in a way that was not the case for me. It took some time, in an atmosphere of being able to talk sincerely without fear that close friendship can allow, to 'wheedle out' what were the commonalities of our 'mixed raceness', which we we very similar on and what were commonalities of our experience of 'blackness', 'or growing up in the UK in the same time period and being visible more black than just white', which we were not similar on. It was clear his experience growing up in the UK at the same time as me (we are within a year of each other age wise) were markedly different from mine, yet on the scale of 'mixed raceness' we were in very similar places on that spectrum. His experience of brutal overt racism at the hands of a teacher at the age of 7 was something of a degree and intensity leagues greater than anything I ever experienced. Yet there still were elements of 'mixed raceness', which we both were to a very similar degree on any scale of measurement of such a spectrum, that were totally common and shared between us to a similar intensity and frequency over time and place. Things like feeling like not belonging to one group or the other. To many other people from each of the poles (in my case english to cypriot) I was not 'one of them'. Not really British to many Brits and not really Cypriot to many Cypriots. Our commonality of 'mixed raceness' existed and was real but took time and effort to disentangle from our relative experiences of 'black / whiteness'.
This in turn led to me to a more mind boggling realisations but that would require a book to properly explain, which I may actually be in the process of trying to write, for what that is worth. Anyway enough for now. Thanks for your thought provoking post Pyrpolizer. I appreciate it, even if no one else does.
