Bet on the Yawp

I just got off an unwelcome call this morning from one of my credit card providers, which was paying a clueless telemarketing drone to sell me "identity theft insurance". I guess "credit life" (or whatever euphemism they call it now) isn't selling well enough.

Anyway, it occurs to me that what they call my identity isn't what I call my identity. Also that what I call my identity isn't what anybody else calls me, exactly. To most people who quote or point to me, I'm Doc Searls. To my sister and older family members, I'm Dave Searls. To some of the organizations issuing the identities in my wallet, I'm David A. Searls. To others, David Searls. There's even one with David Searles.

As of today, Google finds 3,210,000 results for "Doc Searls", and 66,600 for "Doc Searles", including this one from Answers.com, which also includes a misspelling of Gillmor Gang.

Do any of these define me? What does?

In two words, my body.

"The mind is inherently embodied" is the first sentence of the first chapter of Philosophy in the Flesh, by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (Basic Books, 1999). Reason and morality proceed from an embodied knowledge of the world, Lakoff and Johnson say. (For example, we produce moral metaphors that equate light and up with good and dark and down with bad because we are diurnal animals that walk upright.)

Identity is embodied. Here's Walt Whitman in Song of Myself.

Urge and urge and urge,
Always the procreant urge of the world.
Out of the dimness opposite equals advance, always
     substance and increase, always sex,
Always a knit of identity, always distinction, always a breed
     of life.

Later he adds,

I know I am solid and sound.
To me the converging objects of the universe
perpetually flow.
All are written to me,
and I must get what the writing means.
I know I am deathless.
I know this orbit of mine cannot be swept
by a carpenter's compass,

I know I am august,
I do not trouble my spirit to vindicate itself or be understood,
I see that the elementary laws never apologize...

I exist as I am, that is enough,
If no other in the world be aware I sit content,
And if each and all be aware I sit content.
One world is aware and by far the largest to me, and that is
     myself,
And whether I come to my own to-day or in ten thousand or
     ten million years,
I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness I can
     wait.

My foothold is tenon'd and mortis'd in granite,
I laugh at what you call dissolution,
And I know the amplitude of time.

Anyway, I think a lot of what we call "identity" is actually naming. The name that appears on my credit and membership cards is one that they assign to me. It's a database record. Of course, it's good for many uses (and bad for some too). But it is not who I am. It is a carpenter's compass within which my august self will not be swept. Whitman again:

It is time to explain myself. Let us stand up.

I am an acme of things accomplished,
and I an encloser of things to be.
Rise after rise bow the phantoms behind me.
Afar down I see the huge first Nothing,
the vapor from the nostrils of death.
I know I was even there.
I waited unseen and always.
And slept while God carried me
through the lethargic mist.
And took my time.

Long I was hugged close. Long and long.
Infinite have been the preparations for me.
Faithful and friendly the arms that have helped me.

Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing
like cheerful boatmen;
For room to me stars kept aside in their own rings.
They sent influences to look after what was to hold me.

Before I was born out of my mother
generations guided me.
My embryo has never been torpid.
Nothing could overlay it.
For it the nebula cohered to an orb.
The long slow strata piled to rest it on.
Vast vegetables gave it substance.
Monstrous saurids transported it in their mouths
and deposited it with care.

All forces have been steadily employed
to complete and delight me.
Now I stand on this spot with my soul.

I know that I have the best of time and space.
And that I was never measured, and never will be measured.

What Whitman describes is the independent variable each of us bring to every equation in the marketplace. It is the autonomous and independent soul (as well as the money and influence) of each customer that the marketplace will respect when we're done working out whatever it is that "identity services" will become.

When that happens, those that issue us cards and enter us in "Customer Relationship Management" systems will be the dependent variables. They will compete for our money, our conversation, our relationships. They will respect us on our terms as well as theirs, for the good of us both.

How we get there? I don't know. I just turn to Whitman again:

Long enough have you dreamed contemptible dreams.
Now I wash the gum from your eyes.
You must habit yourself to the dazzle of the light and of every moment of your life.

Long have you timidly waited,
holding a plank by the shore.
Now I will you to be a bold swimmer,
To jump off in the midst of the sea, and rise again,
and nod to me and shout,
and laughingly dash your hair.

I am the teacher of athletes.
He that by me spreads a wider breast than my own
proves the width of my own.
He most honors my style
who learns under it to destroy the teacher.

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then. I contradict myself.
I am large. I contain multitudes...

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me.
He complains of my gab and my loitering.

I too am not a bit tamed. I too am untranslatable.
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

There's money in that yawp.