Culture, Home, Identity and Purpose: or CHIP for Short

♫Hi ho hi ho hi ho, we're heading out to the punk rock show.
Colleagues and friends condescend with a smile, 
But this is my culture man, this is my home.
The dark huddled masses gather at the gate, 
The doors at 7, the show starts at 8.
A few precious hours in a space of our own, 
And when the band comes on, the only thing I really know:♫

Four Simple Words - Frank Turner

The whole sentiment is there right now.... I want nothing more than to be physically somewhere in my 20's dancing at the punk rock show. I want to be able to do it without the pain and aches and horribleness that always happens to me afterwards in my middle-aged body. But that isn't really what this post is about... what this post is actually about is culture and identity and home and purpose. Or maybe my lack of connection to any of those things right at this point in time. 

I was messaging with Elsie Gee the other night, and she mentioned something about "identity and purpose" after seeing a show with those themes running through it. She said she found it "thought provoking." My response was that it should be -"those are powerful words"...  Since saying that I have found myself coming back to it over and over again, my thoughts trying to make sense about why I do find those words so very powerful and what the hell my identity really is. 

The thing is, any identity that I can come up with for myself is entirely entwined in the other three portions of CHIP. Culture is a huge part of my identity, at least I think it is. That culture is weather-beaten and rock-formed in the land that I came from. I haven't lived there in seven years now, but when asked where I am from, my answer is always Newfoundland, if I answer a survey and they ask my country of origin, I always choose "Other" and type in Newfoundland. So I am culturally informed in my identity which is intrinsically tied to my home. 

I am still trying to make sense of what that means.  

Does that make figuring out the answer to my identity my purpose? I might need to drink some more to be able to continue this... 

(24 hours and a few drinks later...)

Again, I am trying to come to grips with identity... it is a word that encompasses so much and yet I am unable to accurately define it in personal terms. There is racial identity, sexual identity, gender identity, political identity, social identity, religious identity, cultural identity and so many more. Each one means something different to each person and yet they are all tied together in this concept of personal identity. How can one word be big enough to encompass all of those concepts? How can something that is ultimately so personal be reflected in a simple pairing of words? 

I guess it comes down to the age old question of "who am I?" A question with no easy answers, and I guess, nor should they be easy. People are far too complex to just become a simple definition. Every is a culmination of the stories that have made up their lives, for good or bad. From the moment of consciousness, or perhaps before, a part of who we are is crafted by the environment that we exist in, that our parents existed in, and it becomes indelibly tattooed onto the souls of our beings, whether we like it or not.

Maybe that is why Judith Butler's early work resonates with me so strongly - ignoring the academic word games that she used to play with Zizek and others - her theory was that gender is performative .. this does not mean that gender is a conscious performance, but rather that gender is informed by everything that comes before it, The second that a doctor declares a baby girl or boy, there are centuries of traditional concepts that are immediately unconsciously applied into what being a boy or a girl means, long before the person has the opportunity to decide for themselves what they understand it to mean.

I think it goes beyond gender as well, though gender concepts certainly play a large role in what a self concept of identity can mean. I think all of identity is performative, to one extent or another. All identity is tied up in where you came from, where you cut your metaphorical teeth. Tied up in prefabricated concepts of home, of purpose, of love, of sex, of life... until you can eventually decipher the actual individual that is hiding in the middle of all these pre-informed concepts and finally become the person that has been inside yourself. 

Think about it... I was raised by liberal parents, and have become a feminist, even though society tells me that my gender is male. My sexuality is straight, if I have to pick a category, but I believe that all humans should be equal, regardless of gender or sexuality or creed or colour. But if I were born to another family, in another environment, I could have been racist, sexist or any other of the current negative connotations that run around my brain. If my parents had not been liberal (small l liberal), I would not have been raised with the values that I have. I could have been homophobic, ultra-right wing conservative, or anything other than I am today. I am informed by what came before me, as my parents were as they were before them and so on and so on...

We are all informed by the past, and with any luck, we are not doomed to repeat the mistakes that came before. 

So where does culture fit into this? 

My culture comes from a large island with a small population. Born and raised in an artistic world, came of age in a time of desperate unemployment, arriving at puberty just as the first phase of punk rock was dying and the birth of hardcore was beginning. Music completely informs my concept of culture, my concept of politics, my concept of person...

♫I'm all lost in the supermarket,
I can no longer shop happily,
I came in here for the special offer,
guaranteed personality... ♫

"Lost in the Supermarket" - The Clash

My concept of culture is  bound up in the middle class to poor, to working poor back to middle class again. I just happened to be fortunate enough to have been raised in a time and place where those concepts could be readily expressed through art and music and... tribe...

I have no official tribe... I am a Caucasian lad and by definition, a part of the majority where I came from. But I never really fit into that majority. I felt disenfranchised even when I was a child and that feeling only got worse as I hit puberty. It took a little bit of time, but eventually I found the people that I felt at home with... not that it wasn't rocky but the rockiness was somehow a part of it all. Some of those folks are still good friends today, some have disappeared off my radar, some have crossed my path in a not so nice fashion and some have shrugged off this mortal coil, but all of them have left a mark and were a part of me becoming who I am today. And later still, I found another tribe, on the edges of the tribe I was living in, and those people have become my heart and soul and family. Scattered the earth over but as much a part of me as my own blood relatives, and as important in my understanding of identity and culture and self as any other influence I have had in my life.

That may mean I am just really fucked up.... but I think it is more than that :) 

I guess that brings me to purpose.... and here I am a little at a loss... what is my purpose? Why am I here? I don't actually care about leaving any sort of legacy. I care about trying to be a good person, about caring for my friends and family and my fellow human beings. I want to be a better person... I want to provide security and shelter and love and safe-haven for my friends and family , I want them to be relaxed in my company, knowing they can rely on me... but is that my purpose? That is my desire... So do we as people have a purpose?

That is a harder question. Those who have belief will tell you that our purpose is tied up in some god's will. I don't know about that. Those who are fundamentally scientific will tell you that our purpose is a part of the larger ecological chain... I am not sure about that either. I am unsure if there is an actual purpose out there for us. I fell that those who have artistic talent have an actual purpose, I think that those who have the ability to teach have a purpose, I feel that those who have the ability to create have a purpose, that those who are good parents have a purpose.... but what do I have? I am not a musician, I am not an artist, I am not a teacher... I am just a guy - a jack of many trades but a master of none... I don't fit nicely into any category or box... so what purpose do I have?

That question may be the one I am searching for the answers to...