Recovering a fundamental right and freedom

Being What You Want: problematic kataphatic identity vs. potential of apophatic identity? (Part #9)

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The points above make it clear that the "individual" -- however such is understood by the person in question -- is confronted by a range of frameworks. Many of these are effectively both aggressive and invasive -- when they are not seductive -- in furtherance of unknown agendas.

Those responsible for individual frameworks take no responsibility for their relationship -- or lack of relationship -- to other frameworks. They freely deprecate any frameworks other than their own. This leaves the "individual" in deep quandary in endeavouring to arrive at some degree of coherence in comprehending who or what it is possible to be.

The individual might then legitimately ask to what extent any understanding of identity is "misappropriated" -- a form of "identity theft" in modern parlance.

In conventional terms, it it therefore instructive to note the basic affirmation of freedom of belief in the preamble of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and specifically in Article 18:

Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest its belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance;

However, given the unresolved challenges to the nature of individuality, it is unclear how anyone is to understand who "everyone" is in those terms. Further possibilities are highlighted through an experimental extension of the format of that declaration to the rights of disciplines and other collective modes of thought and activity, as well as to personal rights, namely the rights a person should permit their own roles and all their own modes of thought and activity (Universal Declaration of the Rights of Human Organization an experimental extension of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1971).

Especially intriguing in the case of Declaration (and of its experimental extension) is Article 30:

Nothing in this Declaration may he interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.

It might be inferred that the "individual" is free to engage in any form of reframing of identity or sense of reality provided this does not impact on "others".

In the reality of a world characterized by a high degree of disaffection, alienation and unrest, "individuals" are already reframing themselves and their world in unusual ways beyond any collective understanding. People "reinvent" themselves and their public persona. This may be done temporarily with the assistance of drugs. Whilst their right to do so is implied by the Declaration, it is a right that "individuals" have to seize for themselves -- carpe diem. It is not something that can be given.

Curiously, however, the rapid increase in invasive biometric identification (in parallel with the "battle for hearts and minds" to protect democracy), is accompanied by a rapid decrease in the "availability" of those identified -- "I am not available". This may be exacerbated by the degree of media violence by which children are now deliberately nourished (Anthony Horowitz, The Dark Knight tells us more about adults than it does about children, The Guardian, 9 August 2008).

With respect to framing individual identity, there is a curious parallel to the historical territorial phenomenon of the enclosure of the commons whereby a piece of land owned by one person, but over which other people could exercise certain traditional rights (such as allowing their livestock to graze upon it), was fenced (enclosed) and deeded or entitled to one or more private owners, who would then enjoy the possession and fruits of the land to the exclusion of all others. In this sense aspects of a person's identity have been kataphatically "fenced off" by right of certain authorities, restricting or forbidding any other understanding of it.

Such considerations relate to the tragedy of the commons, to be understood as a psychosocial trap associated with conflict over finite resources between the interests of the "individual" and those of the conventionally defined common good. To what extent does the capacity of the "individual" to reframe social reality (as suggested above) structurally doom the collective resource through over-exploitation?

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