What Makes Me, Me?

The science of individuality

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Over the past few years I developed an, though superficial, interest in science. Or, better yet, an interest in scientific concepts which can later be re-evaluated philosophically. Essentially Richard Feynman’s worst nightmare.

That said, this week I’d like to take a different approach to my usual format. Instead of underlying the philosophical implications of my interests first, I want to go over a science paper I found on Fermat’s Library (best website of 2021). In it David Krakauer and his colleagues examine what it means to be an individual, on both a molecular and animal level. They endeavor to uncover a more natural, objective way to identify biologically different beings, and in the process create a metric for quantifying individuality based on the intrinsic characteristics of each specimen.

There is no denying that the concept of individuality is a central issue within modern culture. Since our attainment of self-consciousness, individualism has played an incredibly strong influence on human life. To trace back where our sense of self originated would be a great feat, if remotely possible. For now we’ll have to be satisfied with a broad overview of where life, in general, began.

Some 500 million years ago life only existed on the ocean floor. Existence was defined by strange, blob-like creatures, all of which defy our current imagination. These multicellular organisms, though vastly important, soon went extinct without leaving a trace. How did those soft-bodied animals come to be? How did they develop, how did they reproduce? To biologists today, their fossil remains give little, if any, indication of individuality. Though they all played their separate roles in activating life on earth, they, to us, lived in such hybridity that any distinction is largely impossible.

To this day, nature has a careless disregard for boundaries. For example, bacteria share and exchange genes, viruses use host cells, worker bees can be non-reproductive members of a much larger “super-organism”, etc. Even human-beings contain as many commonplace bacterial cells as we do “self-cells” (such as the microbes in our gut).

According to Krakauer, being able to make clear distinctions and categorizations is of the utmost importance for scientific identification. When disentangling complex symbiotic relationships within a community, ecologists need to be able to recognize individuality. For example, on a more human level, molecular biologists should be able to pinpoint which genes are responsible for which traits and neuroscientists need to know when neurons in the brain act as one entity when producing a stimulus, etc. (An interesting parallel between singularity and a collective whole is how a bundle of neurons are required to fire together in order to govern our daily actions and create our so-called singular individuality).

Today’s working definition of individuality sounds more like a “collection of things” rather than one, coherent thing. Though a “collection” of things might sound paradoxical when thinking about individualism, to Krakauer and his team that is the very point. To them, individuality needs to be seen as a verb, not a noun. At the core, an individual should be looked at as something which persists stably and dynamically through time. To be oneself does not mean to be a fixed object or thing, but a flowing pattern in a constantly moving river.

Looking at individuality as a constantly changing entity on a temporal level feels both counterintuitive as well as entirely intuitive. In hindsight we know that we change daily. The person I thought to be three months ago doesn’t quite align with the person I woke up being today. Yet there is a continuous thread which connects both Shifra’s that has little to do with my distinct facial features or voice.

So, what makes me, me? In his paper, Krakauer states it’s being a coherent whole throughout time. Unfortunately, in today’s age, coherency is difficult to maintain. With ease one can construct and reconstruct their personality online. The constantly moving river mentioned earlier can thus be compared to the continuous flux of the online world which hinders any effort at constructing a consistent identity. Everyday the heterogeneous aspects of our life intermingle with the masses.

To go back to psychology, according to Abraham Maslow healthy individuals are those who are self-actualizers. Self-actualization involves the life-long process of expressing our unique inner potentials and talents. These people are autonomous and non-conformists. They enjoy the company of others but they do not rely on them. They have numerous hobbies which further elevate their individuality. They have their own inner compasses which guide their life, rather than restrict them. It is important to underline that self-actualizers are not immune to negative emotions or thoughts, however, these emotions are not stimulated by petty worries, but by what Maslow calls the “real problems” of life. The existential and universal problems, such as good and evil, death, and suffering. Furthermore, anxiety does not hinder the self-actualizer as it does most people, but protects them against greater pain.

“I could describe self-actualization as a development of personality which frees the person from the deficiency problems of youth, and from the neurotic (or infantile, or fantasy, or unnecessary, or “unreal”) problems of life, so that he is able to face, endure and grapple with the “real” problems of life (the intrinsically and ultimately human problems, the unavoidable, the “existential” problems to which there is no perfect solution). That is, it is not an absence of problems but a moving from transitional or unreal problems to real problems.” (Abraham Maslow, Against a Psychology of Being).

If Maslow is correct, then our individuality lies within the fabric of our resistance against the masses. We ought to take a step back from our online persona which stagnates our ability to understand ourselves outside the judgement and influence of others. As Krakauer postulates in his paper, to be an individual means to be temporal. It means to be a dynamic yet stable entity over time. If we let ourselves be defined by the image we create of ourselves outside of ourselves, we will always remain a stagnant, two-dimensional, superficial body without purpose.