One of the six characteristics of consciousness as formulated by Julian Jaynes in his work The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind is that of narratization: a story that we tell ourselves of how we got here, where we are going, and why towards that end. In addition, his notion of consciousness is that it is essentially lexical, linguistic, and metaphorical in character; our self-concept, our ideas of who we are, are in fact linguistic models we use to analogize the body physical into a mental metaphor, and it is language that facilitates this process through its ability to represent physical concretions with mental, symbolic abstractions.
Identity then is a narrative subroutine written in natural language, and in this way it becomes possible to speak forth identity and program a persona out of whole cloth through the force of the Word alone; this is the sense of the Logos and the famous declaration, "In the beginning was the Word," where all of reality was spoken forth through the utterance of language. This is the Western, Greek, and Abrahamic view of the primacy of language and of symbolic realism.
> As a result of embodying the waiter-narrative, he lives inauthentically because he can only act in a way that fits with the role. The narrative he follows gives him a limited understanding of himself [...]
This is why it is of paramount importance that one minds the language and narratives they use to describe one's self, for every utterance ascribed to one's persona circumscribes and limits it, setting it off on a fixed trajectory instead of maximizing optionality (see also pg's Keep Your Identity Small: "the best plan is to let as few things into your identity as possible" [0]). You are neither a waiter, nor a parent, a child, an athlete nor a hobbyist [1]:
The principal disadvantage of symbols is that we confuse them with
reality, just as we confuse money with actual wealth, and our names
about ourselves, our ideas of ourselves, with ourselves.
... and this Eastern non-identification with symbolic content is the rejection of narrative identity espoused by TFA.
The advent of postmodern social media has given rise to a new form of "hyperreal identity" now, where it becomes possible to publish language that literally creates personas and identities with no basis in physical reality. Confusing symbols of self with the actual self is not only easier than ever, it is the default mode of existence in the digital era, and one's avatar or social media profile takes precedence over the person themselves - a "simulacrum of the fourth order." One must be careful of the media they use to carry the language and narrative of their identity, because all messages are constrained by the medium they inhabit, and if the language of one's narrative is constrained, so too is their self-concept and their identity; we have progresses from "the medium is the message" to "the medium is your identity."
Identity then is a narrative subroutine written in natural language, and in this way it becomes possible to speak forth identity and program a persona out of whole cloth through the force of the Word alone; this is the sense of the Logos and the famous declaration, "In the beginning was the Word," where all of reality was spoken forth through the utterance of language. This is the Western, Greek, and Abrahamic view of the primacy of language and of symbolic realism.
> As a result of embodying the waiter-narrative, he lives inauthentically because he can only act in a way that fits with the role. The narrative he follows gives him a limited understanding of himself [...]
This is why it is of paramount importance that one minds the language and narratives they use to describe one's self, for every utterance ascribed to one's persona circumscribes and limits it, setting it off on a fixed trajectory instead of maximizing optionality (see also pg's Keep Your Identity Small: "the best plan is to let as few things into your identity as possible" [0]). You are neither a waiter, nor a parent, a child, an athlete nor a hobbyist [1]:
... and this Eastern non-identification with symbolic content is the rejection of narrative identity espoused by TFA.The advent of postmodern social media has given rise to a new form of "hyperreal identity" now, where it becomes possible to publish language that literally creates personas and identities with no basis in physical reality. Confusing symbols of self with the actual self is not only easier than ever, it is the default mode of existence in the digital era, and one's avatar or social media profile takes precedence over the person themselves - a "simulacrum of the fourth order." One must be careful of the media they use to carry the language and narrative of their identity, because all messages are constrained by the medium they inhabit, and if the language of one's narrative is constrained, so too is their self-concept and their identity; we have progresses from "the medium is the message" to "the medium is your identity."
[0] https://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJYp-mWqB1w