Most Fundamental Identity?

I thought this was an interesting question.

What is your most fundamental identity? How do you put yourself together? The question only makes sense from a biosemiotic perspective, with light to the developmental transformations of meaning that occur within the human being from conception onwards.

Biasing begins from the get-go: the people who come together to conceive you.

Then comes the gestation period itself, which is largely a bidirectional communication from the mothers mind to the infant and from the growing temperament of the infant to the mother. External reality itself in turn encompasses the mother's mind, who receives different sorts of interactions which produce different neuro-ontological effects.

In any case, chance is always there, but so is constancy. The mothers personality is probably consistent in its form, and so the form of her experience has predictable effects on the canalization of neurological development.

At birth, the pregnancy itself can usually qualify as a traumatic enough stressor to control direction of development, largely a function of how the mother feels in going in to it, which itself is promoted/enhanced by relationships with enlivening and comforting others. Another control parameter is C-section or vaginal birth, as its now known that vaginal birth covers the baby in his/her mothers bacteriome, thus transmitting to the child important symbiotic structures that aid the ontogenesis of the child, presumably through helping the child to digest food (the bacteria migrate from the baby's external body to the gut), as well as to build up an antibody defensive system against the negative bacteria in the mother's environment.
Asthma has been strongly associated with C-sections and a stressful early life environment, so that when they occur together the bodily system often made vulnerable is the lungs i.e. the body accidently attacks its own tissues, implying a dissonance within the self-organizing systems of the body.

It is the first two years that the body's respiratory sinus arythmia appears to be originally patterned, thus conditioning future development according to how the brain regulates its body i.e. moving, flexion, which is "coded" in breathing and heart rate. Because of this, how we hold ourselves inevitably speaks to our interpersonal histories. There's no point, really, in trying to hide from something that is, as they say, "natural".

Once identity begins to form, the child's plasticity begins to reify around the relational/social "tasks" of its living in the world. People become the most-sought-after objects of interest. Play is the instinctive modus operandi, but it can be severely compromised if others in the early environment do not respond to the infant or child's cues to play. Because "reaching out" is itself an extension of self and identity into the Other's perception, a non-requited action will become "naturally de-selected" from the infants self-experience, inasmuch as its presence portends a negative response (expectancy) from the other.

By the teenage years, the transformation and kick-starting of the testosterone or estrogen systems changes body's and minds, particularly the male mind, which is coaxed by his testicles to "pursue" the female other: the "reward". The cultures that we currently exist within heavily subsidize the male ego with feelings of invulnerability, so that the whole teenage and early adult male life is expected to be about having fun and "winning" - whether the winning be "chicks" or business, or even body.

By the time most people reach adulthood, they have their identities reified by their relationships with others - familial, extra-familial and organizational. A person, for instance, involved in many different organizations (corporate business, government agency, NGO, institutional, etc) will be formed/structured by the culture that obtains within that particular human community, so that his truths become more and more symmetrical with the ones of the people he lives with.

So in a world like this, what is the most fundamental identity? I can picture a gnostic person saying: the whole/pleroma. Since this idea basically conflicts with a reality where interaction generates/shapes the nature of a creatures semiosis i.e. from the very sensorimotor affective ground from which they judge/evaluate things, its value for human living is basically null. The problem is, because people - like all animals - are structured by dissociative processes - living life in this mode necessarily is one big trick played on your self by an opportunistically optimistic ego that derives much of its affective power from the affirmative actions of other like-minded others in their environments.

So jumping into some metaphysical fantasy about a void is an illusion and a delusion, as Humans are shaped by the semiosis of particular interactions (in terms of symmetry dynamics) they have with other humans.

So, what is the proper identity state given the picture described above? Should it not be that of a human being? That is, shouldn't I seek to be what my species necessarily embodies in teleodynamism? Purpose and need is animated in our experience: it tells us about our nature. Since all humans are creatures of the same teleodynamism (same structural laws), every one of us should identify with what it means to be a person living in a world with other people who are subject to the same existential and psychodynamic conditions that I am (meaning, same ultimate vulnerabilities, though different relative vulnerabilities) and who is relying on his interactions with the world to either enforce and/or update his beliefs about how things work.

The only truly appropriate state is one that grows from scientific knowledge about the nature of human evolution on a 4.5 billion year old Earth, in a universe that exploded into being 14.5 billion years earlier. When the human as a phenomenon on Earth becomes an identity state for a person, race is in fact transcended, as a more complex sort of knowledge constitutes your sense of what you are vis-à-vis reality at large. As astronauts have said - when you see the Earth from up above, national differences seem so petty and meaningless, given the sort of awe-inspiring beauty given to us to observe, explore and discover in a universe which, as the internet and the electrical grid has shown, has all sorts of interesting possibilities in store.

To answer the title, my most fundamental identity is an image. I see it every time I wake up and open my eyes, I see it right now as I type this out, I see an image of light that reveals the world around me. That is who I (and everyone else imo) am on the most fundamental level, light.

a reply to: Astrocyte

It's that thing that starts with fertilization, persists for a while, and ends with dissolution. Beyond that no one has a fundamental identity.

a reply to: Astrocyte
That is a profound question, you opened another can of worms... what is the definition of definition? Why define in the first place? How much value do we ascribe to a label, a description, a comparison or a differentiation? Why do we have values?... can something fundamental be arbitrary?

Does a dolphin or an acacia tree have a sense of identity? Do they need to?... I don't have an answer but I found this:
iep.utm.edu
plato.stanford.edu

a reply to: Astrocyte

www.philosophyexperiments.com...

What is your most fundamental identity?

Well, just personally; it would have to be my sense of self.

Just my day to day self; me today which changes with time. Sometimes grumpy, sometimes happy, or tired or feeling good.

Just depends on the day really.

I once had a sense of being different things; a martial artist for instance. But nowadays, that idea of being a martial artist feels like I was wearing a constructed personality. It was fun to be a martial artist, and it was character building, as too learning a skillset.

The same with the philosophical/spiritual, to identify as anything in particular in that direction is, for me at least, a construct.

Actually, now that I have explored the concept of identity, I would have to say; I don't have an identity, I am me.

(After thought)
I just got told off by a young lady from the other-side. She told me I am wrong in thinking I have no identity as such. She said; "You're my Albert".

So another aspect to identity; how others perceive you.

originally posted by: Astrocyte
I thought this was an interesting question.

What is your most fundamental identity? How do you put yourself together? The question only makes sense from a biosemiotic perspective, with light to the developmental transformations of meaning that occur within the human being from conception onwards.

Biasing begins from the get-go: the people who come together to conceive you.

Then comes the gestation period itself, which is largely a bidirectional communication from the mothers mind...

'Materialism/physicalism' is a long obsolete theory.

Existence = the complete Universe = Nature = Reality = Consciousness = Truth = Love = 'Self!' = God = Brahman = Tao = ... etc....
ALL INCLUSIVE!!
'One'!

All boundaries and limitations that form 'identity' exists in/as 'thought/ego'. Your basic 'identity' is an imaginary being, only existing in 'thought/ego'!
Beyond 'thought/ego, there can be no limitations of 'identity'.
We become Universal, the sum total of all 'identities', and so much more! *__-

a reply to: namelesss

All boundaries and limitations that form 'identity' exists in/as 'thought/ego'. Your basic 'identity' is an imaginary being, only existing in 'thought/ego'!
Beyond 'thought/ego, there can be no limitations of 'identity'.
We become Universal, the sum total of all 'identities', and so much more! *__-

I am familiar with esoteric thinking. However, ego (the sense of "I am") and self (the sense of "me") are what we are; the I am me. Without this sense of I am me a Being cannot exist.

If we ever loose this sense of I am me, we would cease to exist. Would not that be a true death?

. . . a drop of water returned to the ocean, can never be retrieved again unless it somehow grows a sense of self and separates itself.

. . . methinks the point of living is to develope a sense of self so we can be.