Heroes Not Zombies

A couple of years ago I saw this image on the front of a shop in Copenhagen. Uniqueness is an important quality for me. Every single patient I ever treated was unique. Every single one had a unique story to tell me. I feel unique. I see you as unique.

So, what makes someone unique?

Is it your DNA? That’s part of it. There are no two human beings with identical genomes. Is it your face, your eyes, or your fingertips? That’s part of it too. There is scarily effective face recognition equipment already deployed everywhere from airports to security cameras. You can even get access to your phone by having it recognise your face. Iris recognition technologies have been around for some time allowing restricted access to closed spaces, and fingerprinting has a long history in detection work.

So, each of these characteristics can be said to be unique to you, but none of them captures your uniqueness, because YOU can’t be reduced to your fingertips, your eyes, your face, or your DNA. Maybe these features can help to name you….to tell others how to identify you from within a crowd, or a group.

But is this the same as “identity”?

I don’t think so. The reason why I don’t think so is that identification has spilled over from the capture of these physical features to encompass a whole person.

You are not reducible to any of these features, just as you are not reducible to any other “characteristics” such as country of birth, ethnicity, gender, religious belief, height and weight, or hair colour.

You are a person, and a person has a subjective reality, a life of memories, experiences, imaginings. A life of emotions, thoughts and beliefs. A unique, and singular story to tell, which is not, and never can be, the exact same as anyone else’s story, past, present or future.

Our uniqueness isn’t found in our characteristics or our features. It’s found in our connections….the connections which connect the past to the present, the present to future, our selves to other people, our unique set of experiences and life events, the contexts and environments of our existence. It’s found in the invisible nature of our subjective reality, with our own consciousness, our own unconscious being, and our ever changing, ever developing sense of self and person.

I abhor the reduction of a human being to a data set.

Because every human being is unique.