There is a concept I work with on a
daily basis which is badly misunderstood. It is the concept of
identity. Part of my job is acting as gatekeeper for people's
medical records. In that role, I have to verify the identity of the
person I'm talking to.
The assumption that modern society
makes is that identity is something concrete. That there is, in some
sense a way of proving that one person is that particular person and
nobody else.
There isn't.
I possess a few pieces of paper that,
when presented in the proper way, will allow me to behave as if I'm
legally the person I have always (well, almost always) claimed to be.
But there really isn't anything that
proves I am who I say I am. There are some people who will stand up
and say that's who I am, and that's the ultimate meaning of what we
think of as identity. Whether it's family, friends, or an expert
stating that my documents are all in order, it's other people
agreeing that I'm me that's important.
I'm not talking about an internal sense
of 'who am I' here, obviously. I'm talking about identity in the
cultural sense, where one takes on a particular role and is
recognized as being a particular person, with the rights and history
associated with that person.
Everything we think of as proof is
simply ways of causing people we don't know to accept that we are who
we say we are. For most of history, that didn't require any kind of
proof unless one was claiming to be nobility. For the average person
to prove who they were in, say, the 13th century, they
pretty much had to get people they knew to speak on their behalf. If
they knew you as John Woodcutter, and would say as much, then you
were John Woodcutter.
Even though you'd been born Nathan
Carter three villages away.
The point is, who you are considered to
be by society at large is only who you are able to convince people
you are. Every form of proof that you can come up with can be faked,
gamed or stolen. Identity isn't any deeper than a couple of pieces
of paper and some other humans supporting your case (or rejecting
it).
This is, oddly enough, one of the basic
initial threads of the Lensman
series, by E.E.
'Doc' Smith. One of the great early pieces of space opera, and
founder of many of its tropes. What was the biggest problem the cops
had in policing the solar system? Proving they were cops.
Anyway, a bit of a ramble, but then,
this guy Michael, I mean I, yes, it's definitely me typing this,
anyway, he tends to pontificate a bit, so it all works out.
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