I really like the concept of individuation, which speaks to a process of becoming individualized, distinct, unique, recognizable. Individuation is the opposite of assimilation, homogenization, blending in. Individuation is the moth that emerges among caterpillars. It’s the flower growing from a crack in the pavement and the volcanic island rising up from the ocean. It is the development of the individual from its surroundings.
Individuation can describe the evolution of your work, such as your writing, research, etc. When you hear a song and recognize the performers by their sound, that is an example of their individuation. It is the same if someone is described as having their own voice or their own vision.
Individuation can also describe the evolution of your self as a distinct person. It speaks to the development of features, characteristics and traits that distinguish you from everybody else.
The psychologist Carl Jung described individuation as the process of forming the self by integrating the conscious and unconscious mind. Cartoonist Gary Larson poked fun at the concept when he depicted an endless colony of identical penguins and one anonymous penguin singing, “I gotta be me! Oh I just gotta be me!”
As your individualism develops, you become recognizably different from other people and from the way you were in the past. It’s fundamentally a process of self-transformation. Paradoxically, the new you is simultaneously the same as the old you, and it is also different.
Consider Schrodinger’s cat. Physicist Erwin Shrodinger hypothesized that his cat in his box had a 50 percent chance of being alive and 50 percent chance of being dead. Unless someone verified its actual state by opening the box to peer inside, the cat existed in a paradoxical state of being both categorically alive and categorically dead. How could it be both alive and dead? It couldn’t. And yet, without verification, it was. That’s the paradox.
So it is with people. As you change, you hang onto some of your personal elements while letting go of other elements.
You may think back to how you were in a certain chapter of your past and say, “If I knew then what I know now, I would have done things differently. I was a completely different person back then. I am no longer that person today.” Sure, you’re speaking rhetorically, but your description does contain some literal truth.
Anatomically, all your cells replace themselves every seven years, on average. Some regenerate faster, others slower, but all cells eventually die and are replaced. Are you the same person at the beginning and the end of your life? Are you the same person at age 100 as you were at birth? None of your cells remain from the original constellation that made up the original version of your physical self.
If you change all the original components of something, can you say it is still the same thing? The ancient Ship of Theseus, named after the mythical Greek king of Athens, endured centuries of service at sea, all the while having various components replaced as they wore out. If you were to replace every plank, nail, rope and sail until there remained not one single part of the original ship, would it still the Ship of Theseus?
You may decide it is the same ship even after all the repairs. But could it really be the same ship if literally every part is different? Alternatively, you may decide it is no longer the same ship. If that’s the case, could you pinpoint the specific moment when it became different? Did it cease to be the Ship of Theseus when you replaced its mainmast or its rudder or its anchor…? It is and it isn’t the same Ship of Theseus. It is a paradox.
The same question applies to anything that undergoes comprehensive change over time. If you step into the same river on two different years, is it really the same river? Every drop of water is different.
Are the Chicago Cubs who won the World Series in 2016 the same team as they were when they won it in 1908? What makes a team the same? Is it the players? None of the 1908 Cubs were even still alive in 2016.
You may argue that so long as these things maintain a continuity of identity, they remain the same even as their components change. That’s a valid argument. By this logic, the Ship of Theseus is the same throughout time, as are the river and the Chicago Cubs.
Even though you change over the years, others see you as the same person. You retain your own name, your same birth date, the same color of your eyes. Your fingerprints and palm prints are the same today as they were when you were an infant. After your adult teeth develop, your dental records preserve your identity. The government considers you to be the same person at every age as indicated by your social security number. Your DNA remains the same all throughout your life.
Your conscious sense of selfhood is also preserved throughout your life. Sure your body has changed since the time you were a child, but you still remember what it felt like, for instance, when you played with your childhood friend in your childhood home that day when you were wearing those blue shoes and the sunlight streamed through the curtains and highlighted the texture of the fabric on the couch. You still have that memory, that experience. You still have these things, as well as all the accumulated experiences that make you the person you are today. They serve as a testament to the continuity of your identity.
Whatever your age, there is a movie that has the exact same length as your life, and that is the movie of all your experiences recorded in real time and captured in the surveillance camera of your consciousness. You may regard yourself as different from the person you were when you were a child, but you are the same character in the movie the whole time.
After all, what makes you the person you are if not your experiences and memories?
One of the reasons it’s so agonizing to see people succumb to Alzheimer’s is their apparent loss of memory. As dementia becomes more pronounced, their unique character seems to fade and with it, their resemblance to the person you once knew. As their memory slips away, so too does their personhood. They no longer have access to the experiences that shaped them and forged their uniqueness. Their life movie becomes out of focus and indiscernible. The loss of memory is the opposite of individuation.
The most beautiful sunset I ever witnessed was in the mountains near Roanoke, Virginia. I remember being awestruck by the power and the beauty of this vision, and it conjured a visceral feeling that I can remember today, 20 years later. Ironically, if you ask me to describe specific details of that sunset, I honestly cannot remember. The emotion stayed with me all these years, but the visual details have faded from memory. Regardless, that experience is part of my life’s movie.
It was the same with a glorious double rainbow I once saw in northern Texas where half of the rainbow-within-a-rainbow extended to the horizon on my left and the other half extended to the horizon on my right. It was the same as when I saw the Northern Lights one night in Canada. Their spooky, parambulating curtains of light kept me transfixed and dumbstruck. They conjured memories of the other beautiful skies I had seen in Virginia and Texas.
These were all moving experiences in my life and they helped to shape the person I am today, someone with a wonder, respect, and adoration of the natural world in general and the sky in particular.
Getting back to the concept of individuation, the events that cause you to become the person who is highly differentiated from others and the person who is highly differentiated from the person you once were, those events are your unique experiences. Your accumulation of experiences – and the memories they create – are the brush strokes that form the colors, textures, and unique characteristics that define who you are.
The question is, how do you go from the person you are now to the person you will be in the future?
Or, asking different but more interesting question, how can you consciously affect the process that determines the person you will become? How can you actively link your current self to your future self? How can you navigate your individuation?
These are the questions we’ll explore in future posts.