Fragility of identity, martyrs, and maidens

Identity is a complex construct. We think it’s fixed, set in stone, but that’s not the case at all. Take the foreign accent syndrome when people, for whatever reason, wake up sounding like they are from some distant part of the world. A British woman with no links to China wakes up and speaks English with what sounds like a Chinese accent. She doesn’t look Chinese at all, yet people, consciously or not, start associating her with China. The woman plays the recordings of her voice to people. It helps at first but, slowly but surely, she’s seen as an outsider, even a foreigner, by people who know how absurd it is, yet they just keep treating her differently. They can’t help it. At some point, after, say, weeks and weeks of resisting, even the woman starts wondering if, just maybe, she has some Chinese heritage, maybe she just needs to accept her Kafkaesque karma. That’s how her identity begins to erode, or evolve, if you prefer, When a certain idea of how you should be, how you must be, is constantly reinforced by people around you, drilled into you, your identity is going to start showing cracks, eventually. No need for torture, no need for some complicated brainwashing.

Gaslighting does the trick.

A similar process, just on a much wider scale, happens with defeated nations, groups, and suchlike. A new reality is imposed upon the defeated, and, after resisting the imposition of the new socio-political order, the defeated and emasculated enemy has no choice but to accept and adjust to whatever vision the victor has for them. Every defeated enemy breaks eventually, it’s only a matter of time and pressure. The victor could, of course, just kill the defeated party but why waste so much potential? Nazi-German scientists had to work for the U.S. after the Second World War. It was a much more expedient move than just killing them. The victor often deletes any kind of history of the defeated that he doesn’t like and any social rituals and ceremonies reminding the defeated of their greatness are forgotten or mockingly recreated to be a source of shame and humiliation rather than glory.

What would be the biggest identity test and challenge? Knowing that one is going to reincarnate with one’s memories intact, incarnate in another reality to make matters even more convoluted, knowing that the role in that future life is going to be dramatically different and not in line with one’s expectations at all. Sure sounds like a cruel and unusual punishment to me. The kind of punishment only God could come up. Maybe the punishment is because of hubris, maybe something else, who knows. Knowing that other life is coming would be like waiting for one’s existential execution, so to speak. Then, when one incarnates again and can finally speak, and starts talking about reincarnation, well, how would that help? A new family and a new social circle likely wouldn’t have a clue about such things, nor would they care, or would just laugh it off and chalk it up to an overactive imagination. As such, one would be alone with all the revelations. One would need to adjust to the new social role and status, likely doing so through gritted teeth. Reincarnation would indeed be a drag, possibly in more than one sense of the word. Small pockets, dancing, say, the cha-cha, all the status privileges of the past life gone. How long would the original identity resist the psychological barrage of the new socialization? Not something to wait with bated breath for.

Now, on a lighter note, if IDF women were involved in the pager explosions or engineering the killing of Nasrallah, then the Hezbollah leader and his fighters are now in hell, since that’s what they had believed (getting killed by a woman means hello hell). Nasrallah and his eunuch entourage won’t be enjoying the perks of martyrdom aka their beloved 72 maidens (though I did read it’s actually not what the original texts say). No rest for the wicked.

Then again, maybe Darya Dugina is one of the 72 maidens pleasing someone in hell now. She’s also a martyr, correction, only her twisted fellow Z-patriots think so. Two (maiden and martyr) for the price of one. How sweet. Must be popular in some prison in hell. How do we know she died a maiden? Well, her deranged daddy couldn’t resist bringing up her ”maiden-ship” at her funeral. That, there, is reason enough to see what crazies we’re dealing with.

Scarily similar to jihadis. It would be comical, stand-up material, if it wasn’t so tragic.