4.14.07

One of the most commonly cited criterion for personal identity is memory. If the individual remembers doing something (let's call it task B), it is most likely that he is the same person as the individual who performed the remembered activity or task (task B). Furthermore, if the person who did the remembered task (task B) remembers something PRIOR to that task at the time during which the task is performed (let's call this prior task "task A"), it is most likely that the prior event (task A) was also experienced by the same person, and therefore all three events (task A, task B, and present-time existence, which might be called "task C") happened to the same person.

Having dinner with my family tonight, and getting to know uncles for the Nth time whom I have gotten to know many times in the past, I thought about this notion, for I felt almost like an entirely different person interacting with them, and I interacted with them almost as I would with total strangers, just because of the amount of time that has passed since my last encounters with them, and because of the amount of mental and emotional growth that I have undergone in the time that has since passed. There is something that is not unfamiliar, though, about interacting with them. It is something that has nothing to do with memories of past discussions or meetings, and additionally nothing to do with any knowledge that I might have about the person (or lack thereof). It is more of an intuitive thing, probably much like the memory a child has of its mother for the duration of its life, even if it doesn't see its mother for an extended period of time. It's almost a comfortability. Perhaps it's the result of some kind of ESSENCE that my family members share: something that might be attributed to genes or shared memories or "nurture" of a like ilk. Or perhaps it is due to certain forms of unconscious/ subconscious emotional memories that I might have regarding my respective uncles, of which I am consciously unaware. Whatever it is, I felt this evening that I was a stranger for every concrete reason (that is, I wasn't up-to-date on news about their lives, etc.); but something of a more constant nature persisted beneath that, which made interacting with my uncles nothing short of comfortable, and nothing shy of familiar. It's this thing, this bond that I can't really explain, which makes interactions with family members different than interactions with peers or friends or acquaintances.

The word "criterion" comes from the Greek word "kritereon", which is linked to the word "krites", which means "to judge". To go off on a complete tangent, allow me to note that it interests me that one of my favorite slang terms from my home town, "critter", or "crit" ("crits", in the plural form, used to describe an individual of a sketchy nature who is up to some kind of most-likely worthless pursuit, sometimes used in reference to someone who is sketchy in an almost endearing manner), is close to this word, both phonetically-speaking, and also in its spelling; and the word is only used to describe someone upon whom the speaker is shamelessly passing some kind of judgment. So the very term with which the judged are described is very close to another word that actually MEANS "judgment" itself. It seems oddly appropriate.