What is identification? When does it take place? What's wrong with it?

Identification begins at an early age . As soon as we got our name, it seems inevitable that we identify ourselves with it.
If s.o. calls my name and years has passed since, I still have this feeling that it is my name, some recognition that I am called upon.
I know that I have to know my name, the place where I was born, the place where I live; but do I have to identify myself with my family, my country, etc…
It seems to happen automatically, naturally … but I wonder whether it might stop. Has it sthg to do with our thinking? Is thought responsible for identification? Is identification the reason why I exist?

Thought is a ‘material process’. The ‘you’/‘I’ in this case is a product of the process and doesn’t actually exist outside of it. The brain’s identification with this process limits the brain. The psychological thought becomes the ‘authority’ and occupies the brain stopping its further development,e.g emptiness, and keeping it rooted in the past?

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The brain has been kidnapped and held hostage to the pressures of the society it belongs to. This kidnapping and hostage status begins when the brain is undeveloped and unable to understand what is happening.

We think of the brain as my brain, your brain, etc., because human society is all about invading, plundering and seizing control of natural processes, and at the most basic level, this comes down to each one of us seizing control of the human brain by making it personal, more owned and possessed than free, “mine”.

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Why doesn’t this undeveloped and SUPPOSEDLY kidnaped brain, unable of understanding what is happening, start questioning everything instead of accepting everything it is told, if I may ask?

The same reason cheetahs don’t decide it would be better to stay still rather than run quickly to catch their prey?

PS. We don’t accept everything, we are programmed to choose the “best” data (from the most authoritative, or succesful source) and reject that which contradicts it.

May I ask what “decision” has to do with what I asked?

May I ask what kind of programming a 2 year old has to choose the “best” data and reject those that contradict it?

And if (s)he really is programmed to follow that pattern, how does that supposed programming not prevent him/her from questioning everything?

If the word “decision” is causing confusion, maybe I should have said : The same reason cheetahs don’t start staying really still rather than running quickly to catch their prey?

Evolutionary biological/neurological programming

The same as for cheetahs and their prey instinct.

Our ignorance of what may lie ‘outside’ of our ordinary reality is the result of our conditioning. For example, we have named everything in the world, you in your language, me in mine… but nothing actually ‘has’ a name. We believe things have names, but they don’t. It doesn’t come into question.

Because, as I said, it isn’t developed enough to question things, being completely dependent on its parent or parents.

Are you trying to tell us that the brain of a 2-3 year old lacks any curiosity, including anything his parents can tell them?

Hmm, interesting! :thinking:

Curiosity: interest leading to inquiry
Merriam-Webster Dictionary

No. I’m saying young children don’t question the way their parents feed, shelter, and instruct them because they are too dependent on them.

Oh, it’s not very difficult to answer that!

I bet that a 2-3 year old child full of curiosity would have asked you the same question after hearing your reasoning… surely because his brain is not developed enough to question deeper things :wink:

Have you ever been a child?
Did you have other friends as a child?
What did you talk about without parents around?

The human brain kidnapped by identification.

We are born with the ability for our brain to be kidnapped. It is the human superpower, on which depends our knowledge and power.

And which is the reason for the conflict and confusion between my beliefs and yours. Why it seems to be so important for us to determine whose delusion is superior.

This is the dictat of narrative. Which begins with our childhood abandon to the authority of success, charisma and groupspeak.
Why I will fight any narrative (and those that speak it) that deviates from the one I first identified with.

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So the brain kidnaps itself… Why?

Because it has proven to be a succesful mechanism for fitness of the species - it is an evolutionary trait.

Thanks to this extraordinary ability for cultural learning we now consider ourselves to be the most intelligent primates.

This ability to copy and integrate the mannerisms of authority figures, is what really sets us apart from chimps and bonobos for example - by a very long way - in other types of intelligence : spatial awareness, logic etc we are on the same level.

Alright. Trump, Kim jong un, Mother Teresa etc. But inwardly isn’t it ‘psychological thought’ that is the “authority”? The ‘center’? ‘Me and mine?
Is that the ‘dilemma’ facing the brain: to be ‘me’ or to be what? Nothing? If it’s fear, can the brain get past it? See that being dominated by the past is stagnation?

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Why does the brain deceive itself?

We (the human being) do not identify with our self-identity or self-image at every moment of the day. If I see a lost child, for example, I do not immediately think that I, “Huguette”, am seeing him. A famous scientist who embraces the woman he loves is not at that moment the famous scientist. To me, one CAN see a lost child or embrace a loved one without self-identification being activated by the mind. There is (or can be) a moment in which I perceive the child (let’s say), with no movement of self-identification. And in moments where the psychological i.d. does respond and is active, there can be awareness of that activity, so that the identification, the me, the self, the image has no authority.

In my view, Dan clarified it when he said “nothing actually ‘has’ a name”. In my understanding, the lion does not identify with the concept or word “lion” in order to roar, hunt, kill, sleep. He has memories but they do not form a self-identity.

It is my understanding that there are many moments throughout the day where I’m not aware that I am the holder of a particular passport or passports, nationality or nationalities; where I’m not aware of my self-image, gender, childhood, social position, fictional persona, languages that I speak, my medical or other conditions, my family or personal history, my accomplishments, failures, shameful deeds, remorse, my likes and dislikes - and so on. The list of things one identifies with as part of “me” is huge and fluctuates. Those identifications come to the fore in a multitude of circumstances, but they are not all constantly present and observable at every moment. Outside of the identification, there is no constant, actual “me” which has an autonomous existence, like the body has until it dies. When memories and images are activated in reaction to some psychological prodding, the conditioned mind at once gives continuity to the image which has been put together through time as “me”, which is the psychological time of the psyche, the artificial identity which cannot be directly observed as the body can be.

As I see it, more or less.

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Good to see you back Huguette. Rational thinkers are a rare and necessary breed indeed in these parts. Ahoy!

I am replying to your comment, I might even challenge what you say.

The apprehension and excitement that you feel as you prepare to read a response to your post, is not accompanied by an image of yourself Huguette as you might consider yourself to be. This does not mean that you are not present, being affected and strengthening the conditioning of the you that feels so real.

We identify with our ideas, they are like our children, how will people respond to my children? And the ensuing roller coaster of emotional and intellectual reactions feels so real, is really me. And as this process in action I further confirm my importance and reality.

The child I see, the partner who loves me, all confirm the person I am and what I know.