Blog #11

Both Galen Strawson Natalie Gray’s roommate Lauren argue that the way we put our experiences into context leads to the creation of our identity and life story. In “My Life is not a Story”, Strawson worries that if everyone stories themselves, they become inauthentic. He argues that if we live our life to create a story, we are not being true to ourselves as we are trying to become someone we are not. We are fabricating ourselves, accepting a lie as our truth. According to Strawson, “The narrativists think that this is an essentially narrative matter, an essentially narrative construal of the form of our lives. But many of us don’t even get as far as Larkinian half-identification, and we have at best bits and pieces, rather than a story.” For Strawson, we do not have one overarching identity defined by our past experiences because our memories of them are only a fragment of our recollections. Therefore, our life story only covers part of who we are. In contrast, when Lauren discusses her hiking excursion on the Appalachian Trail with Natalie, she makes it clear these experiences shaped who she is today. For Lauren, “when you’re stuck in the woods for two weeks with ten people you’ve never met, and two and a half of those days you are literally just by yourself, you really really learn who you are because you just have figure out how to do things on your own and I think it really shaped my identity and I did not have a personal identity that I knew about before then” (3:44-4:11). She was able to find her personal identity while alone in the forest because she learned what she was capable of. For me, while I agree with Strawson’s belief that if we live our lives to create a story, we are creating a fabrication of ourselves, I believe that our experiences do shape us and lead us into making decisions that define us, building our own identity in the process. Our identity is made up out of multiple elements and one story does not determine who we are. We are constantly changing and reshaping our identity throughout different stages in our lives as we do not follow one singular narrative.