Why Are You?: A Sense of Identity

By Antonio Barquet

Why we make certain choices and where the motivation to make those choices comes from is essential to the understanding of our sense of self. This book helps us understand those mechanisms and how they are modified by interior and exterior forces.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Sep 30, 2014
• ISBN: 9781496942265

Antonio Barquet

The author has been a physician for thirty years and has dealt with issues of life and death. Influenced by Buddhist training, he has tried to understand the dynamics that influence our lives and our choices as they apply in daily life. He has used this insight to help his patients deal with chronic diseases and understand why they make certain choices. He currently practices in Florida.

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© 2014 Antonio Barquet, MD. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 09/29/2014

ISBN: 978-1-4969-4227-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-4228-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4969-4226-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014917165

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Contents

Dedication

Preface

Chapter 1   Why Do We Have a Sense of Identity?

Chapter 2   Development

Chapter 3   Universal Fear, Universal Desire

Chapter 4   Affective Fuels

Chapter 5   Social Fuel

Chapter 6   Religious Fuel

Chapter 7   Intellectual Fuel

Chapter 8   Material Fuel

Chapter 9   Emotional-Sexual Fuel

Chapter 10 The Future

Dedication

I dedicate this book with a lot of love and affection to the following individuals:

Dr. Alberto Iglesias, a teacher, mentor, colleague, and friend; a humane physician whose dedication to his patients is outmatched only by his compassion. His teachings sharpened my mind to the point of the scalpel.

Rev. Joshu Sasaki Roshi, the Zen master and Buddhist who first opened my mind to the relativity of the self.

Dr. Oscar Moreno, a mathematician, friend, and colleague who introduced me to Buddhism.

Rev. Oscar Mendez, SJ, RIP, a spiritual counselor, priest, and humanitarian, thanks to whom I met my wife.

Rolando Amador, SQ, RIP, a friend, gentleman, and true intellectual.

Ruben Rabinski, PhD, RIP, a friend and gentle soul.

Preface

Cherish the elders—once they’re gone, they’re gone forever.

— Anonymous

This book is written not for this generation or for the next generation. It is written for generations to come that will be so tired of violence that they will try to transcend it.

This is not meant to be a judgmental book. On the contrary, I will point out the dangers in passing judgment. Some people may feel offended by some of my concepts, but it is not my intention to offend or disparage anyone. Rather, it is my intention to point out the need for compassion, understanding, and tolerance. If anyone is offended by some of the concepts, please accept my most profound apologies. Nevertheless, it behooves those who are offended to find out why they feel that way. More likely than not, they will see that their offense goes directly to the mechanisms I propose in this book. If that is the case, I have hit dead center on my argument.

Readers should feel free to accept or reject any part of my proposals or even the whole book. I offer here just one of the different models of ego integration that exists. Readers should use whatever part they think might help them become better persons and disregard the others.

Readers may be left with a sense of uneasiness after reading the book. That is normal; we are holding a mirror to the sense of self, and this makes our egos uncomfortable. That sense of uneasiness has been my companion for the last forty years, and I have learned to embrace it.

Chapter 1

Why Do We Have a Sense of Identity?

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The development of general ability for independent thinking and judgment should always be placed foremost, not the acquisition of a special knowledge. If a person masters the fundamentals of his subject and learns to think and work independently, he would surely find his way and besides will better be able to adapt himself to progress and changes than the person whose training principally consists in the acquiring of detailed knowledge.

—Albert Einstein, tercentenary of higher education in America, New York, October 15, 1936

The first question we need to ask ourselves is why we have a sense of identity. Leaving God and religion aside (I’ll discuss those topics when I discuss religious fuels), it makes sense to think the sense of identity serves an evolutionary purpose. We shall use the terms sense of identity, self, and ego interchangeably, though differences exist between them. When it is appropriate, I will clarify the difference.

Many years ago, during my training as a physician, I was living in Miami during my residency. My mother had just passed away, and I inherited her pet, a miniature schnauzer with a cantankerous personality. I also had a large Labrador with the sweetest disposition of any animal I’ve met. When I brought the schnauzer home, I could tell there was friction between them; the schnauzer frequently tried to bite or show his teeth to the bigger Labrador, which, due to its sweet nature, retreated. I tried making them friends for several months and thought they had gotten used to each other.

One day, I went to the hospital to make rounds, and in an overconfident moment, I left them together in the backyard. When I returned, I found the schnauzer dead with bite marks on his neck. I was heartbroken since it had been my mother’s dog and one of the few things that connected me to her. I had no doubt the miniature schnauzer had instigated the attack, and since I was not there as a moderating influence, the Lab responded by killing it. The schnauzer had probably acted out of instinct, without regard to self-preservation. Why had the smaller animal not realized the larger animal had the advantage? This led me to explore this behavior in more detail and try to understand how the sense of self or identity played a role in survival. The word self-preservation precisely describes a sense of identity that offers an evolutionary advantage.

A sense of self allows an organism to define its physical boundaries and thus allow it to determine whether another organism is smaller or larger—whether it can eat that organism or should flee from it. A primitive sense of self has been shown by some researchers in animals as diverse as dolphins, which can recognize themselves in a mirror; in some primates; and even dogs, which can recognize their owners in photos.

At a more profound level, the sense of self serves as a force to unite society not in terms of the species but in terms of ideas. A sense of identity in an individual allows for identification, a process that allows for that individual to introject ideas or behavioral patterns that may help him or her and the species as a whole survives. When we see a movie hero save a damsel, we desire to be like that hero and subconsciously or consciously adopt the mannerisms, behavior, way of talking, and other characteristics of the hero. This process of identification allows individuals in society to associate themselves with others in terms of ideas or behavioral patterns. Though we’re all humans, we tend to group ourselves in terms of shared ideas or beliefs. This is advantageous in that if a group of individuals has a successful survival strategy that depends on certain ideas or behavioral patterns, others in contact with that group may adopt those successful survival strategies. With a higher level of intelligence, this process becomes more sophisticated and complex.

This process of identification also suggests that the sense of self is not fixed like a stone but is pliable and continuously adapts to its environment since such flexibility offers an evolutionary advantage—unsuccessful survival behaviors are discarded in favor of effective survival patterns. Thus, the self is not fixed, rigid, but pliable and adaptable.

The sense of identity allows for the process of identification, and this process modifies the ego to allow for adaptability not in terms of genetics but in terms of ideas. This is probably one of the main survival advantages it offers organisms. I think this process is ongoing in our species and in other species; it is more developed in humans than in other species due to brain capacity but is probably being developed in other species albeit at a slower pace. Consider a computer, which