I have some good news and some bad news. The good news is positive and perhaps encouraging to all of us. This good news, I submit, might help us preserve our dignity and worth in our galaxy. It helps us celebrate ourselves as unique beings.
The bad news, on the other hand, is shocking and disturbing —provoking anger and, for a time, even personal despair.
Let’s start with the bad news.
I believe I have discovered something utterly unsettling and frankly demoralizing about myself. My studies, life experience and the testimony of others have caused me to accept an incontrovertible fact. Namely, the surprising realization that I, Marzio Manderioli, have very little to be proud about and virtually nothing that I can take credit for, in my life. Absolutely nothing.
It has come to my attention that I can’t claim to be unique or outstanding in any way. The very things that I would point to in order to prove my uniqueness and specialness on this earth, have been acquired either genetically or socially and environmentally. To think of any of my talents and abilities as my own doing is a mere delusion. Virtually all that I am I have received from another source.
My spiritual sensibilities? Witnessed in others and appropriated. My political leanings? Inherited from my family and influenced by university professors and stubborn friends. My sense of humour? Nicked it from my mother, brother and aunt. My ability to draw? I learned to draw from my father and watched my brother excel at it. I also have a cousin in Italy who is a superb painter and art teacher.
My sense of fashion? Call it “frugal Bohemian” but largely an imitation of my peers and a response to ubiquitous marketing. My morality and principled living? Catholic and Protestant inculcation thrown in with some parental spice. My altruistic tendency? Learned and coerced over decades of parental and societal pounding. My flair and zest for living? A carbon copy of my mother, aunt and their cousin. My love for music and musical talent? Largely a response to the enthusiasm of my immediate family and the examples of accomplished musicians in our family tree. My honesty and sense of fairness? Stolen from my father. My cheerful disposition and good manners? Blame dad and a host of relatives.
This list is virtually endless. At every turn I find a terrible, disappointing truth: everything about me can be explained or linked to biology, genetics, heredity and persistent socialization.
But what of my free will? Surely because I call the shots in my life, I am entitled to some recognition when I get things right? Apparently not. Current scientific findings appear to disprove that human beings have a free will at all. Activity in the brain normally connected to a particular decision or behaviour has been detected seconds, perhaps minutes, before an individual considers and acts out the behaviour. Scientific research now seems to support the notion that individuals do not actually have a free will as had been supposed.
This is tragic news indeed. My identity as an autonomous agent on this earth is an utter and complete sham. My life could be a proverbial ship afloat on the ocean, but I am not as much the captain as a deckhand or lowly crew member with little influence on the journey or the destination.
Wow. Okay, so what’s the good news?
The good news is that we humans can still claim a genuine uniqueness, if only in an indirect way.
We are not the authors of our talents and abilities. We are barely the architects of our own characters. But we are unique filters of experiences and we can respond to events and others in unpredictable and unprecedented ways.
So while it is correct to say that everything we are and do has been taught to us, given to us or is part of a genetic code, the sum of all our parts serves to make us into new “cosmic concoctions.” And we are completely distinct from one another. The galaxy has little hope of reproducing a perfect rendition of each one of us because the variables involved are patently infinite.
Like my mother, I love music, pistachio ice cream and avocadoes. But unlike my mother, I like some heavy metal rock and I worship the comedy of George Carlin. Like my father, I am principled, ethical and likely to keep my commitments, but unlike my father, I am a lapsed Roman Catholic and I distrust big government.
This list, it turns out, is also virtually endless. Let’s call it our personal weirdness. The ingredients that make up all of our lives have a predictable source and they follow known trajectories, but how they intersect, intertwine and influence each other results in something truly original.
I think that’s great news! I have little to be arrogant about because I am not the origin of anything. But I can celebrate myself because I have become something that is unlikely to be repeated, ever! I am a genuine and utterly unique weirdo. So are you. So is everyone.
Remember the famous bar scene in Star Wars, where all manner of creatures was present?
Yup, that’s us! Let’s have a drink and celebrate!