The Extreme Claim

“But there are things that happen between a man and a woman in the dark – that sort of make everything else seem – unimportant.”

- Tennessee Williams


He never would have accepted that. It is precisely the sort of statement that enraged him. It privileges the physical. It supports a worldview in which the primitive is not only tolerated but venerated. It defends those choices made of desire and which too often came down against him.

I see it differently. I have learned humility in the face of such compulsion; have seen the insignificance of plan and protocol and protestation. Ethics wilt and reason falters when presented with the grand, biological imperative.

He is gone and gone. Robert Pirsig, when writing about his own former self, used the third person. He spoke of a ghost, named Phaedrus, with whom he was once acquainted. It seems appropriate in that the gulf is adequately wide to consider these separate persons but disturbingly melodramatic. It’s reminiscent of the Extreme Claim.

The Extreme Claim, a tool of metaphysics, states that we have no reason, or no special reason, to care more about our future selves than any other numerically distinct self; that the currently cognizant ‘You’ has no connection to potential, future ‘Yous’ aside from occupying the same space. There is no logically defensible reason to exhibit greater concern for those separate entities than for the billions of other separate entities.

A similar argument could be made concerning ancestral selves; that the many identities you have held in the past have no true connection to your current identity; that the developmental thread that seems to link these selves is convenient construction. There is no schema of identity capable of encompassing all these divergent personalities, experiences, and behaviors.

I was a very different person once, sure. Or persons, I suppose. There’s shame, regret, sorrow, and bitterness. What there is also is a strange sort of pride felt for the mad intensity of those periods. Though I am pleased with the direction things have gone, and would choose this self over other, prior selves, I want very much to be perceived by means of that impossible schema. It is for this reason that I feel the need to reveal portions of my past. I want to receive credit based on my current value and also my previous values. That isn’t how it works, though. You just end up being a guy who can’t let go.

Part of me yearns for the vitality and certainty of those prodigal years, especially the boy who would have spit on Stella. He would only have seen the weakness. He would only have thought of himself. Representative of feminine scorn and abasement, brain between her legs and legs about the Cretan bull.

I see it differently.