Howdy?

A Discourse on Etymology, Identity, Reality, and Essaying

Howdy? 🤠

And did you know that term—“howdy”—traces back to the 16th century English query “How do ye do?”

Seriously— how are you? I hope that you are thriving, and not just surviving. But even if you are just surviving, I’m honored that you’re visiting here now :)

And who are you, if I may ask? (Cue The Who’s ‘Who Are You?’)

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But wait— “Who are you?” is a pretty loaded question, isn’t it?

Are you supposed to respond with what you do for work to pay bills? (Are you a Student, an Electrician, an Artist, a Coder, a Baker, a Banker, a Rocketman, and so on? But what if you have multiple jobs? Or what if you cannot find work? Or what if you are not able to work? Or what if you do not want to work? Who gets to define ‘work’ anyway? Why is bill-paying a thing, too?)

Are you expected to answer with what you do for fun? (What if you have fun working? What if you want to have fun outside of work but can’t seem to find the time? What if you are able to carve out time for fun but have a hard time enjoying various activities? What if you don’t like to have fun? What if the idea of fun distresses you? Is ‘fun’ only done with other people, or can you do it by yourself? Is ‘fun’ a thing you have to strive towards, or does it happen to you somehow?)

Or are you feeling pressured to say something about your goals and dreams? (Do you want to finish that test and pass that class? Do you want to get that score so you can get that certification? Are any of these things you deeply desire to do, anyway? Or are these things you feel more-or-less forced to do because of societal status quos? Even if you did get to accomplish those things, would you—fundamentally—change? If you don’t get to accomplish those things, would you—at your core—be any different?)

If you respond with what “you” do for work to pay bills, you might finish telling me about that and then feel like you had forgotten to say something more about your “self”.

If you respond with what “you” do for fun, you might pause and then wonder— aren’t you still “you” even when you’re not having fun?

Then again, if you respond with sharing about “your” goals and dreams, you might simultaneously be wondering— wouldn’t you still be “you” regardless of whether or not your goals and dreams come to fruition?

Perhaps you’ve noticed how I’ve started putting double-quotation marks around the terms “you”, “your”, and your “self”? This is no mere accident on my part. I think I’m trying to propose that you are more than your imagination of your “self” :) But let me try expressing this point another way.

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Once upon a time, legend has it that Theseus (a Greek hero) had a ship that kept getting renovated. In his reflection on Theseus’ life, Plutarch (a Greek historian) stated that “the vessel became a standing illustration for the philosophers in the mooted question of growth, some declaring that it remained the same, others that it was not the same vessel.” Relatedly, within this Oklahoma State University article, Noah Levin recalls the following: “Thomas Hobbes introduced a further puzzle, wondering what would happen if the original planks were gathered up after they were replaced, and used to build a second ship. Hobbes asked which ship, if either, would be the original Ship of Theseus.” In like manner, I would like to ask: have you ever thought about your “self” as being like Theseus’ ship? Are you still “you” even if you need to wear glasses? Are you still “you” even if you lose a limb and if you get a cast or prosthetic limb? Is Jango Fett still “Jango Fett” even when he is cloned so that Boba Fett eventually emerges? Is Sarah Walker still “Sarah Walker” even when she experiences memory loss of her years with Chuck Bartowski? Are you still “you” with or without a social media account and a corresponding online incarnation of your “self”? And are you still “you” even if you go through minor and major changes? (Cue ‘Changes’ as recorded by Hugh Laurie— a piece which sounds remarkably like the hymn ‘What A Friend We Have In Jesus’.)

Once upon another time in November 2006, California’s La Jolla was the site of a symposium entitled “Beyond Belief: Science, Religion, Reason and Survival”. Eventually, Dr. Vilayanur S. Ramachandran (a cognitive neuroscientist) works up to sharing an anecdote about a patient with a ‘split brain’— when asked about whether the patient believed in God, the story goes that the ‘left hemisphere’ was inclined to say “no” whereas the ‘right hemisphere’ wanted to say “yes” (here’s a video of this anecdote). Though Dr. Michael Egnor—a Pediatric Neurosurgeon who writes for Mind Matters— retorts that “split brain surgery causes subtle disabilities of perceptual integration, but does not ‘split’ consciousness in any meaningful sense.”, the dozen authors of ‘Split-Brain: What We Know Now and Why This is Important for Understanding Consciousness’ think that it is worthwhile to note how “The view that consciousness is split in a split-brain has significantly impacted cognitive neuroscience at large.” While the debate between Doctors Ramachandran and Egnor proceeds, we are still faced with several seemingly important questions. What does a “normal” consciousness look like? What might an “ab-normal” or “para-normal” consciousness look like? How can we tell the difference between what might be “normal”, “ab-normal”, and “para-normal”? How can we discern between which people are “abled” and which people are “dis-abled”? Are these terms even helpful? Who’s defining these terms?

Again, who are you? Notice that phrase— “who” followed by “are” and by “you”. For fun, maybe take a look at this ‘English’ Stack Exchange forum or this Quora forum concerning some historical reasons for why this phrase is used. (Having served as a 7th grade English Teacher, I feel obliged to share that—in this context—the “are” in the query “who are you?” is functioning as a ‘Second Person’ Singular.) But while we might be curious about the possible justifications behind the formulation “who are you?” and about why we may not tend to say “who is you?”, it seems interesting to observe the plural-sounding (rather than singular-sounding) design of the phrase “who are you?”. Perhaps this observation takes us back to square one— you might feel pressured to say all sorts of things about your output even if you may not be quite sure who “you” might be at your core. But even if “you” could reduce your “self” to something like an “atomic” core, what if there was still more of “you” to analyze?

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Way back when, Democritus (a Greek philosopher) had thought that the cosmos could be perceived in terms of parts and that the smallest parts were utterly basic, indivisible, and irreducible “atoms”— but, as Union University notes, scholars (like John Dalton, J.J. Thomson, and Ernest Rutherford) came along and proposed that the cosmos was far more intricately composed than how preceding generations had dared to imagine. For quite a while now, scholars have been talking about 3 “sub-atomic” particles— namely: Protons (which carry Positive electrical charges), Neutrons (which do not convey electrical charges), and Electrons (which carry Negative electrical charges). Further still, scholars—such as Dr. Steve Agnew (who writes for Discrete Aether)—would be quick to add that “Photons and Neutrinos fill the space in between matter accretions.” Time fails us to delve deeply into Quantum Physics and such, but we may perhaps feel compelled to agree with Dr. Albert Einstein — for, at one point, he seems to have expressed that “The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.”

Anyway, I have been working up to this point: just as “sub-atomic particles” are a topic of discussion in circles of physicists, so also “sub-personalities” seem to be a topic of discussion in circles of psychologists. According to a Huffington Post contributor, “Sub-personalities, in transpersonal psychology, are personas or pieces of the whole of the overall personality, which have a life of their own, beliefs, thoughts, feelings, intentions and agendas.” Likewise, within his article on ‘Subpersonalities’ (1974), Dr. James Vargiu concisely suggests that “There are in each of us a diversity of these semi-autonomous subpersonalities striving to express themselves.” In a similar manner, Rev. Paul Vander Klay frequently likes to suggest that a given human person will feature a “consciousness congress” (see 35:33 within ‘Consciousness and Spiritual Bodies: Consciousness and Conscience Conference’ [2022]). Relatedly, too, Jonathan Pageau has been quick to point out that—though it seems like there must be something that holds a being together—“how to contain a being is not obvious” (see 3:36 within ‘Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy Exist’; also, consider Cameron Dixon’s piece on ‘Santa Claus as the Hypostasis of Christmas’).

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Perhaps it would help to refer to some stories? Have you ever seen the animated movies in the “Inside Out” franchise? If you haven’t, Sharon DeVries has offered the following summary within ‘You Are More Than The Sum Of Your Parts’— in these films, “the audience is privy to seeing inside the mind headquarters of the main character Riley, which is made up of several emotions: joy, anger, sadness, fear, and disgust.” Sharon Devries goes on to point out that this franchise owes much to the “Internal Family Systems (IFS) model of psychotherapy which was developed by Richard Schwartz in the 1980s”. Or: have you ever seen the ‘Doom Patrol’ TV series and took note of Crazy Jane’s character? In the process of publicly sharing that he had received a Dissociative Identity Disorder diagnosis, Kael K. Martin had praised Crazy Jane’s character as being “refreshing”— and added that “a common experience for those with DID is an ‘inner world’”. Being that sources like McLean Hospital have proposed that “mental health and mental illness are states of being that are on a spectrum”, it seems important to consider: how are psychological health and illness distinguished from each other? Just as we might think that fallacies cannot function without pre-existing verities, is it not the case that language about psyche-related “dis-order” seems to logically imply the existence of psyche-related “order”? So what if we are all micro-cosms, and what if fractals are everywhere? What if we are all bound together by what Fr. Richard Rohr would praise as the “Unitive Mystery”— or by what Dr. Rudolf Otto would have hailed as the “Mysterium Tremendum et Fascinans”? If we—along with Dr. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin—feel “the overwhelming immensity of things and their wretched disassociation” (1921’s ‘Science & Christ’), might we also be “acutely conscious […] of the tremendous need for unity that continually drives the universe further ahead, and of the fantastic future that awaits it.”?

Once upon yet another time, the ancient Greeks liked to dwell on this phrase— “Γνῶθι σαυτόν” (meaning: “know your self”). And doesn’t the quest for self-knowledge seem to involve asking radical questions about epistemology (i.e. The Brilliance asks: “How Do We Know?”) and ontology (i.e. the study of being)? Aren’t we compelled to ask: what is “Reality”? It seems quite tempting to enter into a discourse about the pros and cons of Theism, Deism, Process Theism, Skeptical Theism, A-Theism, Post-Theism, Ana-Theism, Pan-Theism, Pan-En-Theism, Pan-Psychism, A-Gnosticism, and so on (e.g. I had wanted to make a passing mention of Dr. Josh Rasmussen’s article on “The God Inside: A New Theory of the All in All”), but perhaps we should sit with what seems to be a more pressing question— can “Reality” be explained or defined?

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Therefore, we began by considering the word “howdy?” and we have worked up to marveling about existence(!)— and what for? After all these years, I still do not know how to introduce my “self” 😅. And, after years of attempting to learn blogging via https://deopatriaelitteris.wordpress.com/ , I am still unsure about how to best craft an introductory post. Even after earning an A.A. degree in Music and a B.A. degree in Literature and Writing Studies, I am still(!) hesitant when it comes to composing and writing. But maybe my shyness and slowness is ok? After all these years, I am still processing this quote from Asha Dornfest— “I think new writers are too worried that it has all been said before. Sure it has, but not by you.”

From what I can tell, the etymology of ‘write’ includes such connotations as ‘tearing’ and ‘scratching’— and it seems that the Middle English ‘Scracchen’ came to signify the relieving of skin pain through scraping. Casting aside whether or not ‘perfect’ or ‘good’ writing is possible, I think writers are supposed to be healers and that writing is supposed to be therapeutic. (Indeed, I think that challenge equally applies to all artists.) While I do have a bit of respect for modern conventional writing formats like MLA, APA, and Chicago Style, I am in love with a far older connotation of essay (and play) writing as open-ended explorations which seek wisdom. (I suppose that I’m a bit like Mr. Montaigne in that “My style and my mind alike go roaming.” With Montaigne, too, I am almost always thinking— “Did I forget to look at something?”) I may not be a concise communicator, but I feel that I must write to recalibrate my psyche— to soothe my aches and to seek joy. Hopefully, I have at least established that I delight in pursuing awe and wonder— and I would love for you to join me :)

Let’s keep asking questions, shall we?

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{In the next post, I am thinking about sharing some thoughts related to this excellent post from Dr. Richard Beck— https://experimentaltheology.blogspot.com/2011/10/four-reasons-why-im-church-of-christ.html . Therein, Dr. Beck was seeking to answer the question “Why do I like the Churches of Christ?”. Although I might try my hand at responding to the same question, I anticipate that I will wander off into contemplating this other question— what does it mean to be a Christian? I hope you’ll tag along!}

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P.S. Thank you for being you and thank you for reading! ♾️ 😎 🖖🏻 🙏🏻 ♾️ 

P.P.S. Consider checking out my debut on Soundcloud— it’s called “Wonder” :)

P.P.P.S. I’d love to connect! Here is my LinkTree!

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