How is it that when I wake up in the morning, I know who I am?
With that question, I am getting at a particularly unknowable philosophical problem: the question of personal identity. How indeed do I come to identify myself not just as a human but as a particular human described by the name Greg Howlett?
Are modernist philosophers correct when they assert that personal identity is a mental container of sorts that holds and categorizes experiences? Or is identity connected to (maybe equal to) the soul concept found in most religions? Perhaps it is material in nature and related to DNA? Is identity found in the energy in the brain of which thoughts are composed?
Here is an associated line of thought: is my personal identity connected to this particular body? Could my identity be associated with another human body perhaps born in a different time and place to different parents? For that matter, could I have the same identity if I were born to the same parents but with slightly different DNA? If I were a female, could I still have the same personal identity (albeit with a different name)?
While I am not dogmatic, I tend to believe that personal identity is indeed connected to a particular body with a specific material/non-material makeup. In other words, you and I had exactly one shot each to exist. The stars had to align exactly right.
If I am right, it is a remarkable thing that you and I even exist. What if your parents had attended different schools and never met? What if they had just fallen asleep in front of the TV on the night you were conceived? What if your mother’s parents had not happened to live in the same town? What if distant relatives had never immigrated to America?
If you open that can of worms, my existence is tied to a miraculous chain of events that go back through history. For example, would I exist if Pope Clement had granted Henry VIII his annulment and England had stayed Catholic? Not a chance. That event affected innumerable events after it that led to the founding of the USA and the particular circumstances of my parents meeting each other.
Some events in history are even more mammoth in scale, affecting not just billions of personal identities but entire civilizations. I want to discuss one of those events today: consider what would have happened if things had gone differently when the Spartans fought the Persians at Thermopylae about 2,500 years ago.
Here is the story. Around 480 BC, Persia under King Xerxes was preparing to invade Greece.
Greece, as we all know, was a democracy, with flaws and warts similar to the ones we see in our democracy today. It was a loose coalition of cities similar to the states in the US, and sometimes there was little loyalty between them.
Persia’s general strategy was to buy these city-states off and they did it very successfully. By the time this event took place, very few Greek states were holding out against Persia.
One of those remaining states was Sparta.
Sparta was unquestionably a remarkable place by any standard or time period. The obsession of Sparta was war. Children were the property of the State from birth. Males were taken away from their parents and lived in dormitories, rigorously (and brutally) trained in the art of fighting, both psychologically and physically. Those that didn’t make the cut were ostracized if not eliminated. Those that survived the training became long-haired super-warriors; they were efficient and brutal killing machines that were fearless in battle and would not hesitate to lay down their lives for their city. Likewise, women were trained to be breeding machines and used to breed more warriors.
For these reasons and many more, Sparta was probably the earliest significant example of a communist state in history. In fact, the communistic aspects of Spartan life would influence Plato’s communist beliefs that he laid out in The Republic a century later. Plato’s communist views in turn helped lay a framework for Marx and modern communism.
Suffice it to say that most of us would find Spartan (and Platonic) communism quite abhorrent with its breeding programs and such. I am not focusing on this communism to defend it, but rather because it is an interesting part of the story.
When Persia came calling in 480 BC, they brought anywhere from a few hundred thousand to a few million soldiers with them. From the start, the Greek armies were far outnumbered, and even more so as its cities defected to the other side.
The Greeks found themselves in a desperate position and started looking for a place to make a stand. The place they chose to make this stand was a small mountain pass called Thermopylae.
The Greek navy was powerful, and they believed that if they could hold their own on water, they would force Persia to have to move through this tight pass on land if it wanted to invade the main part of Greece. They also knew that the pass could be somewhat defended with just a few soldiers.
When the Persians arrived at Thermopylae, they found it defended by three hundred elite Spartan warriors. Those Spartans knew they would never leave that mountain alive. In fact, following Spartan custom, they were chosen for that battle because they all were already fathers and their bloodlines would not end on that battlefield.
The Persians initially engaged with their normal strategy: they tried to buy the Spartans off. When that failed, they sent word to the king of Sparta (Leonidas) and demanded that he surrender his weapons.
His response? Molon Labe (come and take them).
Over the next three days, all three hundred Spartans died one by one. But as they did, they managed to kill 20,000 Persians. It is one of the most remarkable feats of battle in any period of history.
And while the Persians won that battle, the Greeks rallied at the bravery of the Spartans, and though hopelessly outmanned, drove Persia out of Greece for good within a few years.
I really like that story partly because I see those three hundred Spartans as defending more than a mountain pass or even Greece. No, they were actually defending the start of western civilization.
They did not know it, but they were defending Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, all of whom would soon be born and would function as pillars for western thought. Make no mistake about it; if Greece had lost the war, western civilization would be very different today (if it would even exist at all).
Of course, that is just the start of the impact of that battle. Those Spartans were also indirectly defending America because almost certainly, America would not exist, at least in the way we know it. American political philosophy traces back to those Greeks too.
And to take things further, if my theory of personal identity is true, you and I would not exist either.
In other words, those brave, communist Spartans were indirectly defending you and me.
That is an interesting thought.