A QUESTION: "What does IDENTITY mean?"
If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck have feathers like a duck: IT IS A __?___
If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck have feathers like a duck: IT IS A __?___
Hans Christian Anderson taught us this lesson in the famous story of
"THE UGLY DUCKLING"
(**Spoiler Alert**) the ugly part of the duckling was misleading to observers who later discover it is a SWAN.
(Cue the music: dun Dun DUNNNNN!)
"THE UGLY DUCKLING"
(**Spoiler Alert**) the ugly part of the duckling was misleading to observers who later discover it is a SWAN.
(Cue the music: dun Dun DUNNNNN!)
Humans aren't exact duplicate copies of their parents.
The COPY and PASTE contain "mutations".
A mutant version of a copy may have more disadvantages than advantages.
(Sociopath, birth defect, etc.)
Or?
Or maybe a chess wizard, math genius, or outstanding inventor, etc.
It may walk like a Duck, Quack like a Duck, but have feathers like a Swan.
(As that story goes...)
SOCIETY is a large group of humans who instinctively make snap judgments about US and THEM which has been a protective mechanism in the history of families, tribes, and nations.
Pay attention, Students!
It all begins with Aristotle who taught:
"... the IDENTITY of an object is constituted by its properties"
Translation:
(A duck walks duck-like, quacks duck-like, is feathered duck-like, etc.)
Science (Biology) teaches: "An organism has a phenotype and a genotype."
Translation: "A living thing IS what it looks like and what it does
(i.e. observable characteristic) PLUS its genotype: (heritable traits.)
So far what do we know? Are we saying: "IT IS WHAT IT IS?"
No. That's gibberish.
Ant colonies post guards which sniff all who enter for chemical signals which either allow entrance or alert "DANGER"!
This knee-jerk protective instinct works great until it doesn't.
One ant species sends out a trickster who shows up and fails the sniff test and gets carried off and tossed out as a bouncer does with a drunk.
(The trickster keeps coming back! Again and again, until it has rubbed off the molecules of SCENT onto itself and smells like the guards!
UH OH!
The trickster-ant passes the sniff test, infiltrates the colony, and gets the layout for
"nefarious purposes."
(Assassinate the queen and kidnap the pupae to raise as the next generation of slaves.)
ANTS TAKE SLAVES! The mind boggles!
______
Human immune system defense is fantastic at determining
one thing very quickly: "LIKE ME? or NOT LIKE ME".
A foreign substance entering our body has to pass this sorting sentinel's "LIKE ME or NOT LIKE ME" to avoid being attacked and destroyed.
NATURE consists of organisms that can sort correctly or perish.
(Seamless transition alert!)
POLITICS is part of the sorting mechanism.
Politicians are like Trickster Ants.
The would-be elected official bumps into opposition again and again until it smells like "one of us."
If Voters agree a candidate "smells okay", that critter infiltrates our social immune system and begins tampering with everything.
A virus too! It tricks our immune system and carries us off as its slave!
A social movement too! A religion can infiltrate our thinking and carry us off as its slave!
__________
WE LIVE IN A TIME where sorting is NOT being made easy.
WE LIVE IN A TIME where sorting is NOT being made easy.
Definitions are changing of what a DUCK IS or IS NOT.
"Trickster-ants" are everywhere claiming to be just like us and they are not.
Rules are tampered with, policies are re-jiggered little by little unit every member of our species is DEMANDING to infiltrate no matter what they smell like.
WE HAVE LOST our connection with Nature.
We cannot rely on "instincts" any longer for defense.
We are forbidden to sort ducks.
OUR SPECIES no longer IS what it IS.
Good or Bad, right or wrong, this is our landscape.
Adapt or perish is the way into the future.
You don't have to like it - do you?
In fact, how you FEEL about it is your problem.
BE who you are or be who others say you are: that is the choice.
Fit in, sneak in, barge in, break-in, vote in; impeach out, toss out, vote out, shout out ---
it is UP TO YOU.
CHOICE and RIGHTS are now "snowclones."
(Definition: "a multi-use, customizable, instantly recognizable, time-worn, quoted or misquoted phrase or sentence that can be used in an entirely open array of different variants" )
Our IDENTITY has been taken captive and we are hollowed out as slaves to ideology.
Our IDENTITY has been taken captive and we are hollowed out as slaves to ideology.
________
We are the hollow men
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or rats' feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
_________
T.S. Eliot (The Hollow Men)