Identity Is Comprised Not Only

¶ … identity is comprised not only of internal characteristics but also of external characteristics. One is a product of one's place and one's time in both the micro and macro scale. On the macro scale, one is formed by the geo-socio-political situation of one's particular time in history, the particular place on the globe that one happens to be situated, and one's larger society that one lives in. On a micro scale, one is influenced by all those details intimate to him: the family orbit surrounding him, the culture that he grew up in, the experiences that happened to him and so forth.

Neuroscience, indeed, claims that one's brain is both 'embedded' and 'embodied' and in this way finds it almost impossible -- if not impossible -- to escape one's surroundings. One's brain is 'embedded' in that one is socialized into certain ways of thinking. Although some drastically transform their lives, going opposite (sometimes) to their socialization, these developmental traces of socialization linger and impact the individual's perception and, consequently, action on many significant matters, most of them unobserved by him.

Secondly, the brain, too, is 'embodied' meaning that mental heuristics compel the person to choose that which he is decidedly comfortable and familiar with, rejecting that which is alien, hence threatening to him. Socialized in a certain way and living in certain times, the person interacts with familiarity, and generally chooses views that reinforce his beliefs rather than those that go counter to them. This is called my-confirmation. A similar characteristic is that called naive realism where the person instinctively believes that he is right and the other wrong. The 'embeddedness' of the brain leads the person to think, hence act, in a certain way. To change either of these would be going against nature. It is in this way that the person's extraneous environment has an inseparable load in shaping his personalty and identity, and one can only know aspects of the self and the reasons for his character were he to become acquainted with -- and familiarly acquainted with -- the other's environment. That often means living in it, but goes far beyond. One has to travel each part of the way in the other's footsteps really experiencing the climate as the other does in order to form an opinion.

Many historical narratives flounder precisely because they lack this familiarity with the protagonist's environment. Not having lived there, historians can only take certain often contradictory details and play around with them deciding which to select and which to omit, but meantimes many more important pieces remain potentially unknown and the innuendos of the place and time -- the actual pieces behind the narrative details remains concealed and inaccessible to the historian. Event's in place and time are part of a conversation. They are contextual and naturally linked to innumerable other places that are, likewise, colored with contextual elements. To know them all means to live them. Which obviously the historian cannot do.

The difficulty that the historian faces and the many stories that, therefore, result in tantalizing incompletion can be exemplified by two symptomatic tales: the mysterious death of Silas Deane and the mysterious death of Mary Rogers.

Some deaths have always remained mysterious but these particular two had a web f details that to get to know them, historians would have to travel back to the past in order to do so. Both had contradictory and contextual pieces underlying their stories and inn both cases the reason for death and/or the murder remained unknown.

Silas Deane was a rags to riches story and a riches to rags story. Betrayed by the American compatriots whom he helped, he languished in England in his climactic years, poor and lodged by a prostitute aided by a former student, until he died on a sea voyage back home. His death was mysterious in that shortly before his death he demonstrated signs of both depression and optimism.

Reasons for his depression were unclear. His optimism may have been due to the fact that he had prospects on the horizon.

Why then did he commit suicide, as details seemed to indicate? Or was he killed by his friend who was a double spy? There are numerous details of his life that will forever be unknown since they remain beyond our lens of experience.

Another story that is riddled with mystery is that of Mary Rogers.

In 1841, Mary Cecilia Rogers, a 21-year-old beautiful Connecticut-born girl disappeared from her mother's new York City boarding house. Three day later, her body, badly bruised and mutilated, appeared in the Hudson River. The murderer was never found. Rumor speculated that she was either killed by a lone rapist or raped by a gang of murderers. Gossip continued, and it was later asserted that Mary had died in a botched abortion. It was the innkeeper who provided this alleged report as result of Mary's deathbed confession, but the details of the story remained unclear and the mystery continued to swirl with her death remaining unsolved.

The intrigue and mystery of the story resulted in Edgar Ellen Poe's tragedy of the "The Mystery of Marie Roget." Roger's death further became a cause celbre due to the famous politicians and journalists who visited her cafe (these included Fenimore Cooper, Washington Irving and Edgar Allen Poe) and dwelt on her murder.