In the world of the politically correct, the Law of Identity has become passé, if not completely meaningless. Yet, without it, we could never understand the world in which we live.
While it’s certainly true that the names we apply to things is somewhat arbitrary, those things do possess a unique identity, in and of themselves – as do human beings. For example, if the round red fruit that crunches when we bite it had always been named an orange, we would not expect it to be tart and juicy would we? Nor would we expect that bit of citrus fruit to crunch when we take a bite of it just because it had always been called an apple.
The names we attach to things have little to do with their identity. In fact, things are what they are regardless of our perception of them; whether tart and juicy or sweet and crunchy. The names we apply simply make it possible for us to communicate with each other about them.
This is the Law of Identity, which states that “A is A and cannot be non-A.” To suppose that a chair is also a car would be foolish in the extreme, yet we see examples of this foolishness almost daily, in the news and elsewhere. For example, a child who points his index finger at another child and says “Bang!” is not, in fact, firing a gun at the other child. His finger is not a gun. He is not trying to kill anyone. He is merely playing. He should not be suspended from school.
Similarly, when an adult who believes in some sort of God also happens to be racist, sexist, or homophobic, we may not, by the use of logic, label all other believers as racist, sexist, or homophobic. While a believer may be labeled a believer, and a racist may be labeled a racist, the Law of Identity dictates that those two things are not necessarily dependent on each other, but exist as separate identities. In this case, they simply happen to be joined in a single person, a person most of us would like to avoid.
The Law of Identity is fundamental to our understanding of objective reality; of the world as it exists in and of itself, without regard to our impressions of it. It is our task as human beings to overcome our limited perceptions of objective reality in order to deal with the world in a reasonable, logical, beneficial manner. In other words, if every pointed finger is also a gun; if every apple is also an orange and every orange is also an apple; if every believer is a racist and every racist must be a believer, then trying to better ourselves and the world we live in is just plain crazy and life is nothing but a free-for-all.
Stress And The Law Of Identity
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