“It is in our power to have no opinion about a thing, and not to be disturbed in our soul; for things themselves have no natural power to form our judgements” ~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, Book 6

And yet, like the majority of her generation, she found herself vastly incapable, albeit unequivocally yearning to put into effect that particular pearl of wisdom, for while the forging of opinions appears to be an ineluctable foible of human nature, even if widely acknowledged as bearing testament to the extraordinary evolutionary strides of the mammalian brain, it is inarguably one of the most limiting, if not altogether incarcerating traits with respect to the width and breath of life experience, the act of gratuitously articulating those opinions – typical of the freedom of speech so aggressively championed by the human species – with ever more harmful repercussions in an increasingly polarized world, one that is constituted by the mushrooming of an even larger number and variety of sub-divisions of the human race, somewhat reminiscent (especially for those endowed with vivid imaginations) of terrorist cells, and similarly founded on what are largely self-indulgent commonalities – usually distinguished by strident persecution complexes – in addition to the involuntary subjugation of individuality to an indoctrinated herd.

When a homosexual friend of hers had suggested she attend the kick-off session of season one of a ‘gay’ literature festival, she had not only been unable to harness her incredulity but was even more unwilling to tutor her reflexes, all but shouting at him of the gross absurdity, divisiveness and societal havoc wreaked by such type of minority initiative, or to be more precise, insurgence.

After all, she hissed, at the end of a feverish retaliatory diatribe during which she had characteristically forgotten to breathe and by consequence was nearly choking as she spoke, are you not a human being before homosexual? Why must your sexual preferences define you for Pete’s sake?

The latter, a rhetorical question that helped pave the way, after a somewhat frenzied and digressive introduction, for the real crux of her essay to emerge, and that was the dilemma, or rather double-edged sword of having an ‘identity’, for in reality, it is no more than a self-portrait painted uniquely for public viewing, one that remains static and overtime bears little resemblance to a self that is (and must be permitted to be) in continuous transformation; as American transcendentalist philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson famously posited in his essay titled ‘Self-Reliance’ emphasizing the need for each person to steer clear of conformity and false consistency,

“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines”

Moreover, she thought aloud, how many of us ever try to define ourselves when alone, unless in the throes of some kind of existential crisis, or its more prevalent and far less noble successor, the crisis of irrelevance, for rather than examining the relevance of life with respect to the inevitability of death, the perpetrator of the latter is consumed solely by the relevance of self with respect to his or her ‘neighbor’…

…In isolation, one is rarely, if ever, compelled to posture, pretend and hold oneself to, or against the standards, tenets and expectations of either interlocutor or audience, and in those increasingly rare and precious moments, one finds oneself blissfully free of both the constraints and demands of opinion and identity.

As 2022 Nobel prize winning French female author Annie Ernaux wrote in her book ‘Les Annees’, i.e. ‘The Years’, prior to the 1960’s, the matter of identity pertained to a simple identification card tucked away inside a wallet. Thereafter, she writes, it became central to the navigation of life, something one had to ‘possess, discover, conquer, affirm and express’…alas, even in tone and tenor, her description betrays an intrinsic belligerence in the consummation of an identity, whether it be individual, collective or national.

That very belligerence, or in other words ‘weaponization’ was central to her discourse, and the most pitiable, not to mention counter-productive, at the level of the successful individual, for that person habitually becomes prisoner of a public identity which in turn makes him or her vulnerable to audience, circumstance, cancel culture and most crucially, mortality; in this era of the quick, easy, inexpensive and ceaseless self-promotion that is afforded by social media platforms, there is very little chance of retreat and respite from a public identity, the ensuing spiritual impoverishment unstoppable in light of the indelible digital footprint that has become a hallmark of the 21st century…indeed, it might be fair to say that today, it is inconceivable to live in a world where no-one knows your name.

In the two years that had come to be christened post-pandemic, she had watched many of her prosperous friends and acquaintances, increasingly held hostage by their public identities, become more and more distant from any semblance of integrity and basic niceties (other than with those who enjoyed equal or greater prominence and were able to help sustain or advance social and professional positions) while they scramble to recover the recognition they had enjoyed prior to being made indistinguishable from everyone else; bold and brilliant acts of charity, more often than not mounted by way of confession and in the hope of deliverance, were hardly substitute for simple courtesy and expressions of please and thank you in the course of daily encounters and affairs…as actor, author and sparkling Paris based social media personality Koel Purie, whilst calling to account the members of the fashion fraternity in one of her inimitable Instagram soliloquys, said: “you’re just making clothes, so be nicer. Stop taking yourself so seriously, you’re not sending someone to the moon or curing cancer” …

At the level of the collective, the matter of Identity is far more pernicious, for it provides both sense and place of belonging not only to the destitute, upon the promise of safe harbor, but also to those who have neither been able to garner attention nor find anchor within themselves, provided each of the aforementioned surrender independence of mind and yield to the dogma of any one of a number of so called, self-appointed ‘special interest’ groups.

But perhaps the most divisive and dangerous of all, by virtue of sheer scale and for all its well-meaning original intentions and accidental sins, is national identity, an inarguably open call to arms against all ‘others’, its primary pillar an unconditional fidelity to a country irrespective of its vices and crimes against, or just petty cruelty & exclusion of fellow human beings; democracy, dictatorship, religious pluralism, totalitarianism, secularism etcetera, are mere semantics today, for nowhere within the existing framework of identity is there an allegiance to humanity and the dignity of life, where all lives – not just black or Muslim or Jewish or Russian or Ukrainian or mine or yours and so on and so forth – matter, and take precedence over and above all else, and unless the youth of today open their eyes and hearts and intervene, people will continue to divide, rule, cancel, exclude, pillage, rape and plunder, until the human race as we know it effectively becomes extinct, and the ‘augmented man’, or transhuman, endowed with neurotechnology and divested of what remains of conscience and empathy, reigns supreme … once again, she couldn’t help but recall the words of British mathematician and philosopher, Bertrand Russell –

“People seem good while they are oppressed, but they only wish to become oppressors in their turn: life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim”