The real meaning of "identity": Pattern, by K.J. Parker (Book 2 in the Scavenger Trilogy)

 I have found K.J. Parker to be a reliable author, but this novel was somewhat disappointing.  Nevertheless, let's see what we can wring from the second book in the Scavenger Trilogy.  The world-building is a little inconsistent, the plotting slow, and the whole thing seems like a detour, but Parker does manage to build to something intriguing by the end, with the continuing story of the amnesiac-probably-god of the apocalypse, Poldarn.

The first book followed "Poldarn" as he awakened in a ditch, with no memory.  He got caught up in a series of misadventures in the northern provinces of an empire which is regularly raided by mysterious people from parts unknown, who burn villages to the ground after taking whatever they want.  The main character acquires the name, "Poldarn," which is the name of a god, based on a scam run by the first person he meets, wherein they roll into a village, he pretends to be the god, Poldarn, and they fleece the town for whatever they have.  Except that he probably is Poldarn.  Anyway, by the end of the first book, Shadow, craziness happens, a lot of people die, and Poldarn learns that he is actually one of the mysterious raiders.  He gets on a boat (not actually an ark) headed for their faraway island, the end.

Pattern picks up with Poldarn back at the raiders' home, where he tries to integrate back into their society.  The troubles are as follows.  First, he still doesn't really have most of his memories.  Second, they are sort of telepathic.  They read each others' minds, and rely more on that than verbal communication.  That also structures their society.  Since they are constantly reading each others' minds, they don't need to tell each other what to do, or ask, they just know what they should be doing, having a telepathic consensus, and Poldarn can neither read their minds nor have his mind read, leading to issues.  Once his grandfather dies, though, he becomes the head of household, which is hard enough without any knowledge of their society, more still without the telepathy.  Then add the following.

During the games after his marriage, there are some combat rituals, and Poldarn is a) terrifyingly skilled, b) instinctive, and c) uninformed about how it all works.  So, he winds up beating the shit out of everyone, including his best/only friend.  Then, a volcano erupts, causing more problems.  Through improbable intervention (Poldarn is the god of the volcano too), Poldarn redirects the lava flow away from his homestead.  And towards that of his friend's.  After the beating-the-shit-out-of-him-at-the-wedding incident.  Violence escalates, mass destruction ensues.

The book is a bit of a slow burn, so to speak, and really, it is rather plodding for about 3/4.  The telepathy-based society of the raiders also seems like a poor fit next to the empire, where there is no obvious supernatural stuff at all, unless you count the eery parallels between "Poldarn" and the Poldarn mythology.  So, there are some misfires here, but the escalation at the end actually is impressive, and it raises some interesting questions about... "identity."

Who are you?  This is the Vorlon question, from Babylon 5.  If someone asks, who are you, you will respond with your name.  If you give that reply to Sebastian from Babylon 5 (who is actually Jack the Ripper), he will torture you.  Wrong answer.  What's the right answer?  According to Lorien, the first being to achieve sentience in the Babylon 5 universe, there's never a good answer.

Regardless, in any normal, human context, the answer to who are you? is [YOUR NAME].

Identity.  Define the word, "identity."  In mathematics, the additive identity is the term that, added to any value, returns that value.  The additive identity is zero.  The multiplicative identity is the term that, multiplied by any value, returns that value.  The multiplicative identity is one.  The identity matrix is a square matrix with 1's along the diagonal, and zeros elsewhere.  I can keep going, if you want formal, mathematical definitions.

In socio-political terms, what is "identity?"  Identity has come to refer to a set of demographic markers with political significance, most importantly but not limited to race, gender (but not sex, because sex is now a verboten category), maybe-religion, and the general set of politicized characteristics that determine where you are in a power hierarchy.  That is your "identity."

Which is strange, because that means my identity is "cis-het-white-male," which is the same identity as about 36% of the country, by rough estimation, or somewhere around 119 million Americans.  Hence, the description is hardly descriptive.  Hardly identifying, as it does not distinguish me from 119 million other Americans, which fine, no snowflake am I, but why call that "identity" if it merely groups me with 119 million or so Americans, making no distinction between us?  Categorizations and groupings can be useful, but is "identity" the best word to use for that?  If Sebastian asked me, "who are you," and I replied, "cis-het-white-male," it would make the wokies very happy, but Sebastian would not accept the answer, nor should he.  It is an even worse answer than my name.  The intersection, as it is termed, has information, both of its own nature and to permit Bayesian updating, but the lack of specificity means that calling the intersection "identity" is to misuse the word, identity.

Yet consider the phrase, "this is who I am," or some variation thereof.  Who, or merely one trait among many, providing limited information and hence limited specificity?

Sebastian will not accept your intersection as your identity, but of course, while Babylon 5 was the height of anti-racism and diversity politics in the 1990s, times change.

Who are you?

There is an old argument that the self is the unbroken chain of memories.  The problem with that claim, of course, is the number of breaks and reconstructions of memory.  The continuity of self?  This can, eventually, get very navel-gazey.  True amnesia, of the movie plot variety, is rare at best, and is mostly a fictional notion.  Memory is faulty, of course, but the idea that you can be bonked on the head and wake up without knowing who you are, is basically bullshit.  You may have brain damage, and forget some things, you may develop memory problems, but the amnesia plot is a work of fiction.  Pattern, though, is a work of fiction, and while we must remember what works of fiction are, they can at least pose philosophical questions.  What would you be without your memories?

In the first book, Poldarn runs around the empire encountering people who knew him, and while he cannot manage to get any direct answers out of them, they clearly do not have high opinions of his moral fibre.  He's trouble, and he's dangerous.  Yet, throughout the first book, he seemed to try, and more than anything else, it appeared as though trouble found him, while his knack with a sword got him out of the trouble that kept finding him.  As we get to Pattern, take him to a more pastoral, if not precisely idyllic setting, and trouble still occurs.  Why?

Poldarn does not go out seeking it, and to some degree, there are misunderstandings, yet you can also watch him make clear mistakes likely to lead to trouble.  Consider, for example, his improbable success redirecting the lava flow.  Yeah, sure, it's a fantasy novel, whatever.  There is a point at which he looks over at where the lava flow might go, and he sees another settlement.  He decides, oh well, it won't hit the house, and they'll have time to react, and I don't know them, so who cares?  As you read that, you know that it'll come back to bite him.  Sometimes, you don't know that an act will come back to bite a character, but this time, even though you are willfully suspending extreme disbelief about redirecting lava flow, you are also shaking your head and saying, dude.  What the fuck?  This will come back around.  And several of his own household die in the attempt, after which he realizes that he could just have picked up and moved, and built another house, so he got people killed, for absolutely nothing.

Like I said, trouble.  Trouble did not find Poldarn, he barreled forward, got people killed, and started a blood feud.

Who was he before he lost his memory?  A reckless lunatic, who went around getting everyone killed, either by his own sword, or by stirring up shit.

Who are you?  An unbroken chain of memories, an unbroken chain of consciousness?

A set of traits, predispositions, tendencies, hard-wired into you, hard to change?  Such that no matter what, you tend towards them?

The metaphor used throughout the novel is blacksmithing.  You can take a chunk of steel, melt it down, form it into a spring, and temper it.  Expand it, contract it, it will snap back to the memory that you have imposed on it.  Melt it down, and you wipe away its memory.  You can make something new, and different, but as soon as you temper it, the memory is imposed.  Whatever you do to the steel, it will snap back to the imposed memory.  That is who you are.

Poldarn does not remember anything, or not much, anyway.  Yet, whatever he does, either he creates trouble, or trouble follows.  Either way, it is there.  Why?  Who is he?  His name doesn't matter.  The name is not who he is.  Some apocalyptic god?  Sure, why not.  What matters is that no matter what, there will be destruction.  He looks at the settlement, belonging unbeknownst to him to his friend, Eyvind, and he says oh, fuck it.  The lava must flow.  Memories or not, there is destruction and reckless disregard, when all he had to do was move his household, and build somewhere else.  Not one person had to die.

But that's not who Poldarn is, snapped back to the tempered position.

That's not his identity.

What's yours?

Vernon Reid, the title track from his solo album, Mistaken Identity.  What, you were expecting The Who?