The Oak Sleeps in the Acorn (James Allen)

It is the first day of November and trees have let go most of their cover and leaves. It is time to be tree again – naked, unassuming but full of promise.

Because indeed the oak sleeps in the acorn, as James Allen wrote in A Man Thinketh. Because the memory of what we have done or produced defines who we are.

… I periodically re-read works which once affected me. Not only because I am eager to discover what I have missed during previous readings, but also to uncover how I interpret ideas as I change. It is both a re-discovery of the written works and a discovery of my-self.

So, I re-read a bit of Hume and a bit of Locke. These philosophers have helped me ask the questions for which I seek no answers, since these all pertain to the notion of identity. Indeed, in my humble and amateur way, over the past half a century I have been faced with notions of identity that have shaped my actions. And they have shaped my writings in books, articles, blogs and on numerous tortured pieces of paper that never graduated to becoming published.

Because the oak sleeps in the acorn.

Because there is no “I” in identity.

Because I was told that I can only recall and act upon my own experiences. No one else’s.

And therefore personal identity is defined by personal memory alone.

… Locke shaped entire generations of philosophers with his statements about memory and identity. And Hume criticized our believes in causality so radically that even as a researcher I often stopped to think if causality was indeed a normative concept or a human translation of the senses we harbor within ourselves, during our short passage.

But, I never sought answers. Because I grew up with the notion that “regret” is an illogical construct. 

Because one can really never regret given that one is never the same person as when an act or thought was undertaken. Man is variable in time and space. The memory of a past act is based on the consciousness we had on that very moment of the act. When consciousness changes in time and space, that memory becomes irrelevant to our present consciousness. We thus cannot regret that act-memory. It is unfair to the memory of that act!

If our consciousness changes, should we also expect a change in our self- identity?

… The relationship between consciousness, memory and identity is dictated by our spacial impulse to be what we are. Not necessarily who we are.

We are acorn with a promise of an oak tree. But we are not an oak tree.

So, when do we become an oak tree? Or even more importantly a forest of oak trees?

In other words, group identity. Is it the sum of self-identities that change over time? If so, then historical causal relationships cannot exist in a group because if acorns become oak trees with random frequency, unequal probability, and exposure to changing environments, then the memories of their experiences is different. Each acorn recants its experience differently.  So, how can these dissimilar recollections of memories add up to a group identity, which suggest uniformity and uniform conforming to normative attributes?

… I have always been amazed by the above concepts within the context of Quantum Mechanics. Consider Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. It says that the momentum and position of a particle cannot be simultaneously and precisely measured because by the time the momentum is measured the position is less specifiable. In fact all wave-like elements adhere to this Principle.

So, if Hume and Locke were contemporaries of Heisenberg how would they view the sub-particle theories affect their thinking? Would they see a grander Principle that affects the memory and consciousness move (wave-like) through time and space like sub-atomic particles do? Would there be support for the concept of identity for not being a singular happening during the life of a person but a series of self-consciousness changes that in turn change identity itself? Is there a universal principle that best describes all movements in nature as identifiable only one point at a time and subject to change over time and space? 

It is the first day in November and the wind makes dead leaves dance in the street.

November 1, 2017

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2017