Influence and identity

 I am interested in how humans form a sense of identity.

In some of us, it comes through family, tribe, nation. It comes through the religions we absorb as part of our culture. Identity is formed by the political parties, civic organizations and sports franchises we support. It’s formed by the literature we read with reverence.

All these things influence us. One of the themes of this collection of notes is how these forces shape us, turn us into something we identify as us.

And so I’m interested in people who make a thoughtful effort to escape the usual influences. I’m interested in hermits. That includes the early Christian fathers and mothers who fled to the desert. It also includes the Buddhist hermits who live in the mountains of China today.

I’ve been compiling a list of memoirs of hermits — books that might give a sense of what people who made a thoughtful effort to escape the influence of the surrounding culture learned.

It’s a narrowly focused kind of memoir. And the genre suffers a common complaint: The books end up being about something other than what it’s like to try to escape the gravity of the culture. Catholic hermits, for example, often write at length about Canon 603, the religious law that puts hermits within the context of the church. It’s possible for a well-meaning hermit to set out to write a book about the experience of escaping the influences of the culture and end up writing a book about the politics of Canon 603. You can also find books by naturalists who set out to replicate Thoreau’s experiment at Walden Pond who end writing tirades about the failure of environmental movements.

I’m interested in stories about experiences that lead to wiser ways of living.

Those books are hard to find.