uniqueness, identity

I guess I had in mind to write something about the way I was feeling, and set about to add a blog to my facebook. Turns out you can only reference a blog somewhere else. So, I've gone through this rigor and now I have a blogspot thing. As I set up the account, I was asked what domain name I wanted [whatever].blogspot.com. I picked becomingguru, as this is a name I found to be available on gmail (so I assumed it to have some uniqueness), and it was a representation of my feeling at the time. Turns out, it's taken. So, my hope for a piece of uniqueness in the world is dashed.

I have had this type of discussion on occasion. Once, the problem was refined to something like: if two people of exactly the same genes could be plugged into the matrix, so that they could, in fact, effectively be at the same place at the same time, would they do all the same things. If they did, would they be the same person.

So, now, the problem presents itself as an identity problem, perhaps. I have no idea how to solve the above problem, by the way. So perhaps there is some other way to approach it. If people have consistent desires (I know, big assumption, and needs definition too), then maybe we can make a claim about wanting to be unique, and therefore, this uniqueness must exist. This is problematic to argue as well.

But, even if we believe that such desire can be an argument for uniqueness, can we be sure that we really want it, or more important, is uniqueness important? I had a discussion with a friend recently who suggested that we are all just playing roles and fulfilling functional roles with one another. This suggests that there is a set of qualities which stand at your person-to-person interface, which define your interactions with another person. You have a handful of interactions which you can call on and get particular results. If this is the case, then someone with the same method signature can be dropped into your place, and your world will go on without you. I find this suggestion to be depressing. She feels it to simply be "the way things are"

So, back to the problem of identity, and why people like people. I find it interesting to consider a posited interaction: "Do you like that person?" "I like what they do for me." We would all (I think) say that this would be considered a shallow relationship. Yet, is this not exactly what is proposed by the "functional relationship" suggestion? Most people would consider this relationship lacking. For some, I guess, this applies to all relationships and causes the anticipation of life to simply be bland.

I continue to hope, however, in some kind of self. Something which makes me different from you, and gives me substance beyond what I have or can do for you. I hope that you have this quality too, so that, as we grow and change and communicate about life, that there is something of someone else which I can really touch. I want you to be something, perhaps so that I am not alone. I'll have to think about that one. And I want to be something to you.

If we're all just performing functionally for the things we want, then we're all just rats being taught a maze so that we can get the food at the end.

And I guess there are a lot of people who believe this, cognatively, anyway. But I think that it's no way to live. If there is any desire, if there is any truth, then there must be self. Self to drive the desire, self to recognize the desire, self to realize the fulfulment of desire. How can there be fulfillment of desire without self? If I am only driven by external forces, how can I feel anything internally?

So, I guess I've arrived at a claim to answer the question of the title: we must be unique - not because this is in itself useful, necessarily, but because we have to have it to be human.