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A song of myself

It seems to me there has been a move afoot lately to question the very soul of identity; to obfuscate the ownership of that once immovable entity I have been taught to address as me -or I, depending on whether or not I am talking to the mirror in the bathroom. I mean it feels as if I have rights to it, but on the other hand, if I do contain multitudes as the poet Walt Whitman seems to think, should they all get a say in it? Who speaks for an anthill? Is it the individuals who live there, or do they merely find themselves housed in a monastery acting out its rites? What claim -if any- should my body have to a personal identity by virtue of the boundaries which define it? Surely I am not merely a garage where various businesses have parked their cars; surely these are not all agents for the garage.

The sheer multitude of cars is part of the problem, I suspect: if several groups use the same facilities, can any of them claim ownership or -without some kind of agreement- should any of them even be allowed to speak for the entire group? Suppose an individual isn’t even aware that there is a group on behalf of which they are speaking? So many questions…

Still, a nation is also composed of a large group of different individuals and a nation claims ownership. A country speaks as if it had an identity… Clearly, context is important, but can an ecosystem ever speak with one voice? Because, you see, I wonder if I am such a system; I’m pretty sure I do contain multitudes: some are members of my own family, some are immigrants, and yet others are merely tourists passing through, swept in by the environment in which I find myself. What are we, the group of us, then?

I suspect we have known for millennia that our bodies are composed of different organs -heart, liver, kidneys, bowels… to list just a few- and given what soldiers routinely saw in battle, this seemed reasonable: each organ had a different job, even if they only had a muddled idea of what that was in the early days. Only very recently did we discover that these organs share a set of genetic instructions unique to each of us. My heart has as much claim to being a valid constituent of me as my liver or my skin. It has never been clear if any of them should speak on my behalf, but at least they are all part of the same family –my family. I can live with that.

We’ve also known for ages about the other things in there as well: the dirty, malodorous and largely unwanted stuff that, like dust and grime, collects from time to time; but that also seemed reasonable -like garbage, we eventually try to rid ourselves of it.

So, right from the start, I thought I had a pretty good idea of just what constituted a me, and what did not: who was a member of the family, in other words. A pain in my chest: my heart acting up again. An itch: well, obviously it’s my skin –‘a place for everything and everything in its place’, as my mother used to tell me when she saw my room. ‘Litter is dirty, G,’ she’d add, as if quoting something that she had been taught by her mother. Dirty was her code word for ‘germs’, and anything containing germs was unacceptable -or at the very least, suspicious and certainly something with which I shouldn’t want to associate for very long -if at all.

So imagine the unease with which the grown-up me regarded the news that each and every one of us had gazillions of germs living it up in our own bowels. And not only bacteria, but viruses, fungi, and heaven only knows what else shared my meals in there. None of them were actually me, however; germs were alien invaders bearing no officially sanctioned passports and so they had no right to be inside me. They were not family; I had nothing in common with them: they were one of the reasons some of us got sick. They were a menace…

And then, contrary to my mother’s well intentioned teachings, I learned that, in fact, they weren’t -not all of them, at any rate. Far from it, they had so cleverly infiltrated the seats of power in our bodies, that no one knew who was actually in command anymore. It was truly unnerving that those accidental immigrants even had a say in my bodily affairs. Put like that, though, it sounds discriminatory –racist, even: somewhere I had acquired sundry microorganisms as chattel slaves to do the work the rest of my organs would not deign to perform and housed them in areas too impolite to mention. Not only that, I’d been taught that, although they were untouchable, nevertheless they were expected to appear on command during scheduled daily rituals like children in the playground when the school bell rings.

In retrospect, I have to admit that I’ve been a little hard on them though. I had no idea the amount of unsolicited work they do for us; they are a complex tribe, constantly jostling each other for food, and no doubt arguing about whose turn it is to send chemicals to the brain, and who should be on digestive duty when all that corn arrives. I’m sure there are also grumblings when a new species shows up and attempts to subvert the resident microbiome, or disrupts things so much that nobody has a chance to pack their bags before being hurried out.

Is it possible that they worry about such things -or more realistically does it even affect them? I’m perhaps attributing a dubious sense of agency to them I realize, but after all, if they fail to adequately provide for immune homeostasis, they suffer along with the body; if they don’t manufacture enough serotonin for the brain, not only can there be an alteration of mood, but the motility of their homeland may also be adversely affected. Actions have consequences.

If you cut down a forest, or drain a wetland, does it not have an effect on its ecosystem? Which portion of that system is able to register a complaint, however? I’m beginning to understand that it falls to whichever part that can.

It was my big brother that stood up for me when I was little; I’m bigger now, though. It’s my turn, I think. Maybe that’s what identity is actually for…

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