I come from a faction that believes knowledge, like any other material commodity, is elitist in nature. This includes intrinsic knowledge (intuition), factual knowledge, conceptual knowledge (understanding), and arguments on both sides of any debatable issue. In other words, I am not speaking of or even touching upon the concept of "education;" just the arbitrary collection of all possible forms of "knowledge." That said, one either knows or doesn't know, just as one either has or doesn't have money. By the same token, how and when we apply knowledge/make decisions based on what we know is as diverse (and possibly nonsensical) as how and when we choose to spend our money. Factual knowledge comes and goes like money in the ideal checking account; conceptual understanding stays (and gains interest) over time like money in the ideal savings account. People who flaunt their knowledge are about as despised as those who flaunt their monetary possessions. Further corny parallels aside, here's my tl;dr point on why knowledge is relevant in this post:Knowledge, especially in the form of conceptual understanding, is deterministic*.
* So far, in nearly every context I have ever come across the idea of determinism, it is mostly always a wrong or refuted idea by scholars in their respective fields (eg. technological determinism; environmental determinism), and it makes sense. In short, [blank] determinism is the (99.9999% likely wrongful/poorly supported) belief that whatever goes in [blank] is the sole factor/driver of change in the world as we know. (eg. technological determinism = NEW TECHNOLOGY DRIVES CHANGE IN HUMANS; environmental determinism = HUMAN NATURE AND HISTORY ARE ENTIRELY SHAPED BY THE LANDSCAPE/ENVIRONMENT) The common fault of both ideologies is that they ignore all social factors of change that humans are so very capable of. If interested in more details, contact me for term-paper-level rants.
I feel comfortable saying this because 1) no possible social/fluid influence counterexamples are possible on the individual level I deal with here (please correct me if you disagree), and 2) any possible such counter elements, such as morals and/or irrational belief, are included in my definition of "knowledge."
The above statement in bold largely means: Our decisions are shaped by what we know. A decision we made, or a moral standpoint we once had in life, are all prone to change as new knowledge is introduced into our life database. Taking this back to the money parallel, here's another example: While all permutations of what we choose to buy with $20 may not change when we gain another $20 and now have a total of $40 in our hands, the mere fact that we now have an extra $20 introduces a whole new set of permutations on possible buys, which, compared to the original given amount of money, is a whole new and different set of permutations. That new and different set of possible choices/decisions we make, with the gain of new knowledge, is what makes knowledge deterministic.
I don't know how many readers I just lost with the above jargon (which, for my faith in humankind, I swear really was not jargon, and in other words hopefully no one was lost), but let's try to move on to my real point now that I've laid out some background assumptions. On to the perception of the self:What is identity? Are we just a collection of personal memories, and the aforementioned knowledge, with all capability to do/decide based on that collective knowledge deterministically? Separate from our physical bodies? For the purposes of my position on this post, I'm tempted to say yes.
So, if so, what do others see in us? What causes others to look at the Jing now and say, "Holy heck, she's changed so much since Stuy" just because, most noticeably, I wear different clothes now? Even if I feel like the same entity inside, not a bit "changed," there are those who would say I'm a completely different "person." Of course, there is no blame; human perception of each other is ~60% how we look, ~30% how we sound, and only ~10% what we actually have to say...unless we're on the internet. And even then, people are still likely looking more at the images of this post rather than at my actual words, especially upon first glance.
Then, what then, about those people who know me perhaps a bit more, and realize that some deeper opinions and general philosophies I once held (concerning appearance, at least in this instance) have changed? To that, I say Knowledge is deterministic; I simply know more now, and have adjusted myself accordingly to a certain new permutation I deem most logical and personally acceptable, based on/in accordance with my identity by memory and self-perception. In no way do I feel like an alien being because I retain what I know, what I remember.
Lastly, there are those who argue that identity is performative (*cough* Jarek), that it is what we do (and have done) instead of what we think but don't act upon in our heads. To that, I say Screw you. Things like gender, or other elements of who we are/how we define ourselves are performative, undoubtedly, but there is no way that the self, in its (our) entirety, is all performative. (The whole is greater than the sum of its parts, yadda yadda.) To say we can be judged/identified by our outputs only is to reduce us to the same level as functional machines: all product and no process. If this were so, no knowledge in life would be relevant beyond factual data; no conceptual understanding would be relevant or needed. However, to others, who don't have Majical Machines of Mystical Majickness that can see our every private thought/epiphany, our outward expression of identity is all they have to work with. In which case...I'll have to refer back to my last paragraph.
Sigh. And here's an awesome song for those who stuck around and read everything.
