don't call me comrade

I am experiencing fatigue. Fatigue so bad that I thought I might fall asleep eating breakfast, fall asleep on bart, fall asleep eating lunch, fall asleep at the grocery store, you get the idea. I even drank a bunch of oj and had a multi-vitamin but that just made me sleepy.

What I want to talk about today, despite my fatigue, is my inability to really get at what I am trying to say.

For example, my last post about my first friend in California really was about more than what I wrote. I have been thinking about the "us" vs. "them" mentality and how naturally people form groups. And how do you know if your group is correct. This begs the question of identity. And do the people that claim me, or insist on being my friend are they creating my identity for me? Am I just a victim of suggestion?

A few things enter into this contemplation. Did you read that article about the popular sleeping drug that causes people to rise from their beds in the middle of the night and ravenously sleep-eat? These people, apparently driven by their animal instinct, devour whatever is in their kitchen in a very unhuman like way, ripping apart packages and cramming food into their mouths. The people that experienced this "eating disorder" (as the drug co. likes to call it) were so ashamed of their behaviour most of them did not accept they were doing this.

The other part of this contemplation comes to us from R.D. Laing and a study he did concerning therapeutic communities that showed a pattern that emerges from group living. First a group sense of euphoria abounds, then ultimately people turn against each other, especially against the leader, and ultimately the leader is ousted from the group and must leave.

It is disturbing that human behaviour is predictable; If our actions are predictable, then where does our identity reside? If we can do things while asleep (even if under the influence of a drug) that we would never do awake, is that really us, if it is not, then who is acting out? A new movie about an amnesiac (Unknown White Male) grapples with some of these questions of identity.

Sophie Scholl: The Last Days, a movie I saw recently, plays into this puzzle as well. The Nazi group-think got a hold of people. The intense pressure of conforming to the majority even though your personal moral compass may tell you the majority is wrong. But then perhaps it is very easy for people to have their moral compass hi-jacked. Indeed some people may not even have one to begin with, or they may use other values as its mores (superiority? hatred? fear?).

So, where does all this contemplation lead us? Is identity constructed by the people and things that surround you rather than from your inside?

I think this is all surfacing for me this week because a group I consider myself a part of is convening in San Francisco. I am not attending. I am boycotting. Mostly because the ideals that speak to my heart are not lived for real by a lot of these people. And I am practicing being something without other people telling me that is what I am.