Do you know your identity - beyond external descriptions?

Aristotle taught, “Know thyself.” That classical precept stands as the cornerstone of mental health and consequently life itself.  Knowing who one is determines what one will do. Agere sequitur esse. Action follows being. Knowing oneself determines one’s relations. If you know who you are, then you will know who you want to be with.

One can answer this question in a scientific, empirical or existential way with biology and history - your DNA and family tree. Those include sex, race, ethnicity, IQ, physical abilities or challenges, emotional profiles or temperament and even pre-neurotic tendencies or predominant passions of sensuality, complacency or timidity. Ancient labels e.g. Sanguine, Choleric, Phlegmatic and Melancholic or more contemporary classifications from Myers-Briggs e.g. Extravert, Intuitive, Thinker, Perceptor describe these innate tendencies, preferences, styles and interests.

From the innate to the external or environmental are other factors that can define or form who one is. It is based on wealth, heritage, education, culture, class, caste, nationality, religion, economic system and socialization. From the view of forming the person, it can be simplified as nurture.

Finally, the “will” or self-determination can make one all that one can be – overcoming natural handicaps and situational obstacles. One can change nature and nurture to some extend and become whoever one wishes to become. But that displaces the answer from who are you to whom did you become?

Another way to approach this is philosophically i.e. from ultimate causes unlike science that consider immediate causation. One will consistent essences rather than particular existence. Cogito ergo sum. I think therefore I am. I am not a rock but a rational life. Then, I have the seeds of eternity planted in my desires – an indication that I am to live forever and because of that, I transcend my bodily shell. I have a spiritual component in me. That spark is a trace of my beginning and eternal existence.

Who am I? A spark from an eternal flame meant to sparkle forever. A being higher than dolphins and chimps because I share something divine. I have a name, a unique identity. I am a creature but unlike whales, I share the life of my Creator and to Whom I shall eventually find myself. Now I have an idea – as Plato would explain how we recall our perfect selves in that world of ideas.

What works is to combine the essential with the existential. That will bring some concreteness to ground the abstraction, a body to house the spirit. Who am I? An incarnate spirit, born with specific DNA, nurtured with historical experiences and have becoming and is still becoming by personal choices.   I am a divine ripple.

To sound an alarm, Gen. McChrystal sacrificed his career - in vain.

Photo:  Those who fail to learn the lessons of history are bound to repeat them.

How did Gen. McChrystal ask his president for help?  Not effectively.  But he saw no other way, not with the bozos who were managing the war.  The politicians did not care about the level of effort or the reality of their schedule.  They wanted to bring the troops home just in time for the presidential election.  Gen. McChrystal sacrificed his career to sound an alarm but it was ignored.  A president with military experience would have done at least a double take when he sees a galant soldier fall on his sword.  But an arrogant lawyer just doubles down.

"Obama set another misguided deadline -- this time to begin an American withdrawal from Afghanistan by July 2011. Whether the president realizes it or not, he is going to have to abandon that deadline as well -- and the sooner he does so the better. The Guantanamo deadline only cost him some momentary embarrassment; the Afghanistan deadline could cost us a war. ...As Missouri Sen. Kit Bond put it, if the withdrawal date stands, Obama is "setting [Petraeus] up for failure." The deadline is more than a tactical error; it is a strategic miscalculation that undermines almost every element of our efforts in Afghanistan."
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Repeal Obamacare by women who know that it's a hoax

Obamacare will fund more abortions.  That only helps the abortion industry and their political supporters.  It uses women as chopping blocks and their babies as raw meat - both victims is this business of taking sacred life.  It is an unconscionable practice in the USA but it is permitted by laws and funded by taxes. Because greed has no limits, it will not stop.  It will continue as the industry targets little girls by handing out condoms to 6 year olds - condoms that are broken.  Hear the women themselves and act to save our daughters.