Chaos in us: Are we who we are?

Indhu Kanth

Humans are getting tagged with different identities throughout their lifetime. We act in
various roles as Homo sapiens sapiens, social animal, labor, resource etc. We are a collection
of atoms, designation of genes, product of memory and lot more. All that constitutes of us
took birth long before we did and predefined us the way we are. But we still do things we feel
or we love to which are still independent of all the above. This paper tries to find how much of
us in us is actually us.

We inherit various traits from our ancestors, the genes design our functions and thats
gets passed on from one generation to another. And thus genes do have the potential to influence
in the making of us. Or is it not. Various studies had been done on this to explore the role of
genes. They found out that social support availability may be influenced by genetic factors.
Empathy, stress, optimism, self esteem and pro-social behaviour all of these are a play of our
genes. There are both external and internal factors deciding on our behaviour. Cultural
tendencies evolve and affect the environments in which genetic selection occurs and so particular
psychological and behavioural outcomes of genes may occur only under specific environments
and experiences. There are genotypes of many polymorphisms in us associated with
psychological tendencies called as gene variants .So here are both the inputs of external and
internal factors to give stimulus and activate the gene so as to make us act in a particular way.
Eugenics and Epigenetics try to explore and advance into alterations of these gene sequences so
as to bring out new and desired characteristics. So these genes are subjected and vulnerable to
changes and so we seem to be in the control of our genes. But we are not exactly our parents.
This difference broadens our search for other parameters that dictates what we are.

Lets suppose imagine a case of person forgetting everything the next minute. Its very
hard for him/her to learn about himself/herself and moreover to believe in what others say about
him/her since every next minute he/she forgets that. So consistently he/she keeps forming and as
well as losing his/her identity in this process and thats solely because of absence of one
important thing- Memory. For self-recognition, to identify oneself among many, one has to have
a memory of himself/herself. There are various theories on how far memory relate with identity.
One states that memory over time is enough to constitute identity as it is both a necessary and
sufficient condition of self but others argue on the point of different perception of the same
memory in different situations makes both the memory as well as identity to be a fluid concept.
Also it was found that a single gene can influence how clearly you recall emotionally intense
memories. And so genes have an upper hand as it can control the level of remembrance. And so
these two- genes and memory together defines us. Yes they do but not completely.

At times, we tend to do things because we wish to. This will factor that doesnt seem to
relate to any pasts effects on us helps in understanding more of what we are. Do our thoughts,
perception and understanding indeed builds us. So our conscious will to perform an action which
is independent of our genes and memory gives an extra edge over our self-understanding. But
there were various studies on the origins of this conscious will and they found out that conscious
decisions are preceded by unconscious processes which implies that decisions are not made
consciously but appears as a conscious illusion. And so if we are not making our decisions, what
happens at the unconscious process. Is it interplay of all of the above or there is something
further.

Thus so far we found out that consciously what we think about ourselves is not
true since we do find a unique self to us and we do understand us independent of genes and how
we were before. But this consciousness about ourselves is itself said to be a result of unconscious
process and so we are struck in a labyrinth to find ourselves, to identify something thats a part
of us and not all these and that must be intangible.

All that we do is with our conscious but this consciousness is itself taking place
unconsciously. Its not easy to define the endless factor. First it appeared like our consciousness
is a because of the way we are and we do things consciously because we do think of its
consequences before getting into action. But now it appears like we ourselves are a result of our
consciousness. The origin of this consciousness in us and about the consciousness of us in us is
as mysterious as the evolution of this universe. Also we see that in each case, there are
exceptions, there are dissociative identity disorders, memory losses, peoples genes have been
modified and yet they act and they do act consciously.

Conscious or not we do things because we are not an entity of one single thing. We are a
chaos of collection of parameters that functions in their own ways to build us into what we are
and still let us see something more than all these about ourselves.