Self Identity

This post is a little on the long side, and tends to meander a bit before it gets to the point. But please bear with me - I think (hope)you'll enjoy it. It eventually raises some interesting questions. So pour yourself a drink of your choice, settle back, and enjoy.

I've been an Allen West fan ever since he first appeared on the political horizon. I was thrilled when he was first elected to congress, and disappointed when he didn't get re-elected. Since then I've followed him as he spoke out on various issues, finding myself nodding in agreement much more often than not.

A few days ago he was elected to the NRA's Board of Directors. At about the same time, this image highlighting the difference between the Huffington Post's Editorial Board and the NRA Board of Directors appeared.

One organization preaches the virtues of 'diversity,' yet is composed of all white women. The other is vilified by the media, yet is more of a cross-section of America.

Can you say "Do as I say, not as I do?"

Speaking of diversity, we have this individual, who certainly is a favorite for the gold medal in the Diversity Olympics.

If there’s a high bar for which social justice warriors strive, surely it was set by Britain’s first transgender gay Muslim woman.

Amid the ongoing bathroom wars in America, conservative blogger Brandon Morse took to social media to call attention to Lucy Vallender...

Vallender, formerly known as Laurens before “he” became true to “herself,” is a former British soldier who had a sex operation in 2010 to switch out his male parts for female parts. Vallender would later convert to Islam, saying it’s a “peaceful” religion and take things even further by marrying a Muslim man the ex-soldier met on an online dating site.

Okay, if you look closely at the above image, in the upper left hand corner you'll see the date it was first posted - Sep. 4, 2013. But the fact that the story is three years old doesn't make it any more stupid. Converting to islam because it's 'the religion of peace' makes about as much sense as going to an orgy because you're in favor of chastity.

As for the rest of the story, well, maybe there's been so much of this self-identification nonsense in the news lately that I've just become numb. And here's where we come to the main point of this post.

This article is not satire. It offers a series of philosophical discussion points that I'm sure many people share these days...

So here's the logical question in pursuing the "self identity" trend that progressive society is now exploring. Today's society has arrived at a place where it largely accepts the idea that people can choose their gender. A person can be born as a male, but decide to identify as a female... Can a person choose their race, too?

Put another way, society currently accepts the idea of a person choosing to be transgender. So is it then okay for someone to be trans-race? And if that's accepted, then what about trans-species? Carried to its logical extreme, can a white male human being declare to the world that he's actually a female Peruvian llama?

What if John Doe, for example, wants to self-identify as a "Spotted Owl"?

Or maybe Jane Doe wants to identify as a member of the Delphinus delphis species... the common dolphin. Maybe she can even learn to speak dolphin and order in dolphin at the McDonald's drive-through.

There are, indeed, people who have come to believe they are certain animals. Dennis Avner, for example, believes he is a great cat, and he has undergone extreme biological modifications in an attempt to adopt the shape and structure of a great cat. The following photo is not Photoshopped:

I hope you see the point in this serious discussion. If people can choose to decide to be something which they are not from a physical or biological perspective, then is there any real meaning to concepts like male, female, Caucasian, African or even human?

Even more interestingly, could humans add themselves to endangered species lists by simply announcing they are an endangered species? "I'm Otto the Spotted Owl." The implications for the EPA and the U.S. government would be quite fascinating. For example, to my knowledge, I don't think the IRS can levy taxes on Spotted Owls. So if a person announces they are a Spotted Owl, are they now a "sovereign animal" that's protected by the government in their "habitat" apartment?

Without question, a court judge would denounce a person trying to claim they are a spotted owl. But let's follow the logic here. That judge would say, "You are obviously not a spotted owl. You weren't born a spotted owl and if we run a genetic test on your cells, they would not be consistent with a spotted owl."

Let's take that same test and run it against Rachel Dolezal. Following that test, a court judge would say much the same thing: "You are obviously not black. You weren't born black and if we run a genetic test on your cells, they would not be consistent with an African-American."

Tracking this same logic back to Bruce Jenner, a court judge would also be forced to conclude much the same: "You weren't born female and if we run a genetic test on your cells, they would not be consistent with a female."

From a genetics point of view, then, Bruce Jenner is a male, Rachel Dolezal is white, and John Doe is not a spotted owl. But that's not how progressive society recognizes them, at least not with Jenner. They are recognized according to how they WISH to be identified.

Restated, the question that emerges from all this is as follows:

Should society treat people as they physically are, or as they psychologically WISH to be? In other words, where does freedom to choose collide with the absurd?

I don't know about you, but I think we've already passed that point of absurdity...

In other words, reality now has no meaning because what we're being taught is that there is no objective reality when it comes to people, gender, races and beings. You can decide to be a unicorn, if you want, and who can argue with that? Just don't forget to wear your giant horn. And yes, it's a rainbow-colored strap-on.

This discussion brings up all sorts of important practical questions for society. If people can self-identify their own gender and race, then it becomes immediately obvious that all white people can apply for college scholarships by self-identifying as African-Americans, for example. I'm not condoning this -- the very idea is ludicrous -- yet it's where we now find ourselves in a society that believes everybody can "choose" to be whatever they want to be, despite what they really are.

That's it in a nutshell - "reality now has no meaning."

All this philosophizing has made me thirsty. I think I'll self-identify with several Shiners...