THE SCAFFOLDING OF IDENTITY

 Much of my thinking comes from reading papers like this one in the Journal of Infant, Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy.  Entitled cumbersomely “Identity Narrative and its Role in Biological Survival: Implications for Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy” and written by Andrei Novac, Margaret C. Tuttle and Barton J. Binder, it’s a good version of a cluster of thinking you can get on a search engine if you enter “Identity Narrative.”  

They represent a convergence of thinking about the molecular operation of cells and the poetic composing of stories about how humans live.  The task is not easy and it has many small steps but I’ve been following for years so I learned them a bit at a time and have tried to share as I go.  But people are not really prepared.

Part of the problem is that previous ideas have such a strong grip on us — partly Christian, partly Freudian, partly French philosophers like Derrida, and partly concepts from other cultures.  Losses of prestige and authority are involved.  I most often align with Foucault but have not really studied his thought.

Loosely speaking, one concept from Freud seems to endure, which is the distinction between the conscious and the unconscious.  In molecular studies of how brains operate, it is known that there are two kinds of memory.  One is the scaffolding built by the infant, even as its brain gestates into operating within the body of the mother, subject to her physical and emotional structure, and then after birth until about age 3 when the child can walk and talk, sharing with that mother while learning words and movement.  This is protein molecules forming circuits, links, loops, and storage. It is neither mystical nor the product of a supernatural entity.

“Proteins are large biomolecules, or macromolecules, consisting of one or more long chains of amino acid residues. Proteins perform a vast array of functions within organisms, including catalyzing metabolic reactions, DNA replication, responding to stimuli, providing structure to cells, and organisms, and transporting molecules from one location to another.”  (Wikipedia)

The physiological basis of the unconscious identity is produced in this direct way by the availability of quality food and the resources the culture have given to the mother.  Both are ecological and they interact with each other.  Thus the bison meat-based diet of the Blackfeet was of high quality in this dimension, allowing full development of the DNA potential.  Now that commodity food is mostly starch and sugar, the basis of scaffolding is limited.  The culture often comes from television rather than the mother, equally limited and not eco-relevant.

This is as true for almost everyone else in the country.  We have noted how uneven the necessary elements are available and we have even noted the cultural "justification" for limiting resources for some people.  We are an unequal society that betrays democracy, the equality of votes.

Separately from this highly guarded and conserved pattern in the brain, and developing along a different path with different proteins and concentrated function locations, is an entirely different version of internal learning that is described as “plastic,” not because it is slick and in primary colors, but because it can be changed.  We all work in this sense of memory every day as we learn new things. Writing on this level allows us to see how we develop in the process that is living.

Given that we exist in a materialist culture that teaches us at a way so deep that it is partly in that original scaffolding of the brain, capitalism — defining everything in terms of money or the equivalent — controls every thought unless we combat it by learning alternatives and unless our scaffolding allows it.  (I like the term of "scaffolding" though some people use others' more scientific words, like "intrinsic.")

In a sermon, thinking along these lines, I asked for someone in the congregation to give me a dollar.  Several people offered them freely.  I chose one and set it on fire.  Everyone was electrified and several rose to stop me.  But I had prepared an ash tray and held the scrap until I couldn’t anymore.  “This was only a piece of paper,” I pointed out, "But any of you would be willing to buy me a cup of coffee of even more value which I would destroy by drinking instead of burning up.  Why is that?”  The answer was close to being in the scaffolding.

“Give me to be beautiful within and for me let outward and inward things be reconciled together.”  (Socrates)  This is what writing is to me, a reconciliation of the amazing and even disturbing things I’m learning with deep convictions, a life pursuit that is either enriching or possibly threatening, one worth recording in print where it can be shared by others.  In the best work, it may become something timeless and memorable.  

Even in the attempts that don’t quite succeed, the thoughts I write may be helpful to two groups that I value highly.  One is “boys at risk,” the huge population of young males who cannot find a way to exist because of the breakup of the families, the pretense of not being at war, the changing of the dynamics of fertility through generations, and the lack of occupations.  Some have scaffolding that was damaged even as they gestated, and others had a strong beginning that was later smashed by circumstances they were too young to understand and barely survived.

The other group is the Native American population that is still being affected by the same cultural forces, stranded between what was deeply in their flesh and brains as scaffolding we might call religion or spirituality, versus the demands of capitalism controlled by other people.  Even the advantage of venture capitalism has been prevented.

The ability of creating and making accessible this level of writing is greatly enabled by writing on a computer and posting on the Internet.  It is quiet, accessible, separated from writing as product, and rarely even acknowledged by those who purport to “teach writing” as though constructing a commodity in five easy steps were really writing or anything deeper than a driving wish for profit.

The other major advantage of writing this way on a blog is evading institutions, which is why it’s not ministry, a function of organized religion.  I am free lance, both words, unowned and pointed.  But there are people who want to own at least the operating system, the machinery, the transmission lines, the political impact. That's all they can see. 

These two subcultural groups feel endangered, which is realistic, and as a result many are invested in being covert.  In the beginning they believed that “nobody knows you’re a dog.”  But now that’s less reliable and a writer must take hostile forces into consideration, using avatars and noms de plume, which irritates those invested in control.  I picked up the Socrates quote from reading “The Charioteer” by Mary Renault, who wrote about her issues by displacing them onto young men whose sexual desire was for other young men in a time when the penalty for gays in England was the death sentence, though they didn't seem to think women could be gay.  Sometimes she displaced the narrative to another historical time and place.

I don’t feel the need to do this, partly because my “scaffolding” is so old-fashioned and idealistic, even straight, that few people “get” it anyway.  They’d rather urge me to make money and use better photos.  Nevermind.  I’ll soon be on my way.  I'll leave a lot of print -- all over the world due to blogging so much.