Identity and its perception

A realistic vision of the identity should make obvious that the concern about it appears only after contacts between more localized identities, after drifting towards what I name “obviously me” and “me, but not you” ways of expressing it. Those living in an undisputed localized point of view don’t have concerns of this kind. They simply have an identity and a mental image (taken for granted) about it, the latter mirroring the former, but not being equal to it. The concern about the right, the true, the pure identity appears when a multicultural environment challenges and overcomes the presumed truth, righteousness and purity of that mirroring.

As for the identity itself, it results from the need for a structure to organize the social life. The fuel that makes such a structure work is the people’s confidence in its ability to face any challenge, in order to be something worthy to struggle for. Hence the structure must be considered coherent from the synchronic point of view and flexible from the diachronic point of view. It has to maintain convincingly a system of all the values, meanings and conventions at a given time and also to face any unexpected challenges of the reality and to integrate any novelties or to make the passages required by internal changes that appear inevitably, as the time elapses.

I owe to Ferdinand de Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics the notions of synchronicity/diachronicity and the understanding of the social system’s units not as a nomenclature, but as meanings that give value each other by contrasting each other. However, regarding how such a structure works, there is a big difference between a linguistic structure and a social structure. Where in the former it is arbitrary the way a synchronic grammar is organized, the phonetic segments are delimited and the path the diachronicity has, in the latter there is the responsibility of how goes on the life of the social group that employs it and ultimately of its survival (5). Being used as an interface to interpret the raw reality, to create mental images for enabling the decision making process, a social structure involves the inherent responsibility brought by every deed made from its point of view. The speech, as the counterpart result of the language, does not have this inherent responsibility. An indirect responsibility comes when considering the speech as a deed, but then, of course, the responsibility is only on the social structure employing the language. The consequences of a speech are determined in its creation by the culture of the one who utters it and in its perception by the culture of the other(s) who witness it (6), consequences not depending on the language itself, on its grammar and phonemes.

The language structure is used to communicate, the social structure is used to interpret the reality, to live socially (with the language as the main tool of a social life). As in Saussure’s example of the chess game: there is the synchronicity of each chessman’s value, made meaningful by its position on the board and there is the diachronicity of the changes that occur in an intelligible manner. Only that from the point of view of the language structure the movements are spontaneous and fortuitous, while from the point of view of a social structure there is an intention of the one who makes the move, intention resulted from setting goals, reasoning inside that system of values, in order to relate to the reality. Both types have the ability to create a meaningful framework, but the language works alone, is free in its creation of meanings, while the social structure is in a relation with the raw reality. From the responsibility brought by this relation it results also the relation between any individual and the deeds he/she does from the point of view of such a structure (since living socially is the natural way of life of the people). A social structure has the ability to create a world of meanings, understandable by a human mind, but it depends on the people how they perceive it and employ it to live in the real world. This supposes to have an opinion about why it is used a certain set of meanings, values, conventions, why a particular one and not another particular one (the synchronic view). Also an opinion about how it works the system, how the changes may occur in time, eventually, why it is supported a certain way of dealing with changes (the diachronic view).

To make clearer what I mean by a particular set of values and a particular understanding of how it works the system, for example, a Romani singer from the Balkans expects to be perceived from the point of view of four different worldviews: the Romani one, the elite and non-elite European ones (ultimately they seem to have the same identity fundamentals, but the current identity issues presented at the article Rom-Gypsy, the reality vs. the image produce two worldviews) and the Turkish one (7). The raw reality of what they sing, how they perform, how they live off-stage, what they say in mass-media, this reality is processed and made meaningful for a human mind by these four local types of cultural engines (8). If the fuel is the confidence of the people that the system works, then the engine is the way they understand the cultural structure, the particular architecture from their minds, the way they put it at work.

The history of every person, of every smaller local cultural area adds and continuously modifies details in a cultural structure, making it unique for every individual or group of people. However, it should not be forgotten that all this continuous tuning is based on and happens inside the realm of cultural meanings and values kept alive by the fundamental, basic core of the worldview (synonymous with a level of self-sufficiency). For example, in the sense of the cultural cores highlighted by the relative purity rules of the Romani people. The Romani castes are oriented towards the local society, with names from local languages, as if that local society would have a Desi cultural core. This not being true, it appears obvious the existence of different systems of basic values (9).

These situations of more self-sufficient cultural cores living side by side appeared later in human history. The initial natural way of developing a social life was to coalesce on a local basis in a common framework any meanings, conventions resulted from the local history of the contacts with the local reality. Why a certain way of considering distinctions of meanings and not another way, this question could not appear, given the local singleness of a self-sufficient cultural core. Instead what was particular in the local structure was considered as general and the background mechanism of the structure was not perceived as such. Hence the particular way a society creates cultural values and social relations was not considered as one among many such possibilities a human society would have available to use, but the one and only possibility.

Not understanding how the system works, for the people from such societies the meanings available at a certain time appeared as a nomenclature, as a list of pre-existent concepts. By bestowing the perception of self-sufficiency on the local society’s synchronic concepts instead on its overall mechanism, the relation with the reality was perceived as a relation with those “pre-existing” concepts, by considering them as the reality. The people understood it as a relation with some finite objects, rather than a relation with a mental social structure capable of creating an infinity of meanings, mental objects, if managed accordingly by subjects who know how it works. Consequently, they perceived their identity as an object, rather than as a subject, they considered themselves made from concepts, rather than their creators.

In the background, the mechanism of upholding and adapting social meanings continued to work, but at a different level. Since, in practice, it became obvious that the understanding of the cultural meanings as pre-existent could not really explain everything, it developed a less conscious area, a spiritual level, to deal with the real coherence of the social life, expressed by religion (and later also by arts, as they separated from religion). Gods and other spiritual beings with identities reflecting and counterpoising the human ones appeared at the junction points of the social structure, managing its general coherence and continuity. After this transfer of the main responsibilities, the people, with their profane identities, could live as finite beings in a World preserved as intelligible by the spiritual identities (10). The way the two types of identities share the social authority and power, the way they relate to each other (submission, love, friendship, trickery, neighborliness etc.), the degree of distinction between them, these specific features were usually determined by the particularities developed by each local culture. Acting inside such an organization of a local social structure, the main concern of the people is to provide for themselves, to negotiate their individual/group position in the society (11) and to keep an equilibrium in the relation with the spiritual area.

Given this focus on the local cultural concepts as “hard” notions, the diachronic point of view is considered as a continuity of the set of those visible cultural concepts. Usually, the time is perceived as cyclical, always repeating the same tradition, with periodical holidays that reenacted the beginning of the World, as codified in the local culture. The people counted on this tradition as their unique source of group and individual identity, of stability of their worldview, hence perceiving the externally visible features of their cultural engines (employed to make the reality understandable) as if they would have been made of hardware, not of software.

Here too, in this imagined human conquest of the diachronicity, the spiritual area, with its externally visible spiritual identities, had the ability and the background responsibility of keeping the system working, in a manner beyond the understanding of the profane people. It has also to deal with the changes that keep occurring, of course, originating from both internal and external sources. A particular organization of the local culture may be flexible enough to include them, otherwise it has to undergo a reorganization with an eventual reshaping of the spiritual identities or to become assimilated, to start using the cultural core of another culture, if the use of new features with external origin cannot be integrated in the current framework.

On the other level, unaware of the existence of the cultural cores, from the profane point of view any novelty becomes integrated in the local worldview by relating it with notions already existing, by understanding it through them, by looking for similarities among them. Every time, the solution for making understandable something previously inexistent in the nomenclature was to create a continuity from the established notions already available, to expand step by step the trust the local society bestowed on the latter. This does not concern only the notions that receive a verdict of acceptability, but also those deemed as unacceptable or anything in between these extremes. Unacceptability, rejection, this is change from the previous position of inexistence, they are from a certain point in time a part of the local worldview. Later, no matter the verdict they received, they will be part of the established nomenclature sought as a profane authority in dealing with changes and novelties. From a profane diachronic point of view, it is important a step by step continuity, a thread, in order to keep the World understandable. Then it is the job of the spiritual area, if necessary, to reshape the architecture of the system of notions for accommodating the changes, to modify profane verdicts in order to keep the structure working, making decisions seeming to come out of nowhere (from the point of view of the profane diachronic thread), but having so much authority.

This approach to the diachronicity makes also highly impossible the understanding of the background cultural cores’ existence, when more of them happen to live side by side, contrasting each other in an obvious manner. Most usually, the cultural differences between them, the novelties that they bring to each other, imbued with a perceived otherness, when arriving in the other area, they suffer a process of altering their initial meanings as a result of this step by step profane continuity, by making connections and ties with the receivers’ current nomenclature. In the end, nothing really new arrives to them, to make them understand the relativity of their worldview. While, from the point of view of the original area, whether they receive a positive or a negative value, the novelties undergo a process of trivialization.

In the receiving culture, the novelties will either be successfully assimilated, included in its worldview (12) or will prove its specific structure as inflexible, determining further the people to adopt the cultural structure of the novelty’s origin. Either the notions change their initial meaning or the people change their initial identity. Even in the latter case, there is at first a trivialization, they or their descendants will understand later how the notions on stake are used in a cultural structure, when they will slide and they will start using the other one. Hence, even when changing a particular structure with another one, if using the step by step continuity, if focused on the nomenclature, it can’t be seen the relativity of both of them. Simply, after some time the other nomenclature will become obviously the valid one, without an insuperable need for a serious explanation of the change (if it is observed the change).

In practice, in real life, as long as there is not some sort of assuming responsibilities by the people in a (semi-)conscious manner inside the social structure, their self-sufficient cultural cores are also not individualized and the fundamental differences between adjacent communities tend to fade. Usually, situations that bring together populations living apart for a long time (like migration, overcoming of previous topographic barriers, population growth etc.) may bring side by side an obvious bulk of cultural differences.

The situation changes when there appear human civilizations, when the history of known and notable events takes the place of the anonymous prehistory. It is not yet well known what determined this change, but it is suggested that it was the local necessity to organize a much more complex society in certain areas (13) that triggered a more conscious human involvement in the functioning of the social structure. For those involved in organizing and shaping a local society, the focus moved from a physical survival in an environment with limited resources to finding ways (political, cultural) of clarifying and expressing the coherence of a society beyond the personal relations and the local community. Individuals begun to work with the potentialities of their societies’ social structures, to create social values, to make decisions and, implicitly, to assume responsibilities in the functioning of the structure. There appeared political and cultural constructions expressing a local coherence, constructions that created another level for the social life. This level deals only indirectly with the environment, its focus being the social structure and its ability to make the World understandable (14).

It was a breakthrough, without a possibility to return (15), once acquired the comprehension of the possibility of employing cultural values for creating local social architectures without an immediate, direct usefulness (but so resourceful in making an understandable framework of the World and for the human ability of setting goals, of mobilizing groups of people). Through these public mental constructions the social life obtains a broader perspective, its potentialities can be practiced. The previous unidirectional way of bestowing identity from the local social framework to the individuals is replaced with an interactivity, by adding the possibility for the individuals to shape, to influence the framework. The latter is expressed, is visible through the details resulted from the way the individuals choose to create, use or challenge values and meanings inside it, while the former, through their deeds, obtain an identity inside it, thus they become a “somebody”. The public events resulted from their deeds, if altering in a way or another the relations in this framework or the framework itself, are shaping also their public identity.

This determines a different perception of the individuality, since a full-fledged social architecture that exists for its own sake is a concrete construction based on the initiative, on the creativity of individuals. Without individual initiatives there wouldn’t appear and continue in time such constructions.

However, this involvement of the people in the functioning of the social structure did not mean that it appeared the question why a certain way of expressing cultural meanings and not another way. The involvement is limited to political and cultural applications of the social structures, the structure itself is used by individuals, but in an unofficial, indirect manner. The creations of the structure are still perceived as a nomenclature, as static, endorsed as a tradition, thus the responsibilities of the people are limited to the particular way of providing details for a certain social construction. Hence, it remains a separation between a profane and a spiritual area, in order to keep the structure working.

This limited responsibility makes an obvious difference between erudition and intelligence, between the knowledge of cultural meanings as a nomenclature and the understanding of how it works the structure that supports them, gives them life. The intelligence keeps alive public mental constructions as political or cultural applications of social structures. It supports the continuity or the recovery of their organization, giving hints about how the system works, and it comes with solutions when uncertainties appear. As a result of the limited responsibility, the intelligence is also limited to the understanding of how it works a particular local structure, not the structure in general. Thus it is not organized itself, usually it depends on the experience and/or on the intuition of every person. And it tends to remain at an unofficial level. When somebody has an intelligent ideas, does something intelligent, the subsequent creation or change is officialized as part of the current nomenclature, as an object for erudition. In such a social organization, the intelligence has no public authority, first it has to become subject for erudition.

The concept usually praised as intelligence in fact is just its visible results, the relation with the intelligence as the life blood of political/cultural constructions, remains an indirect one. There may be identified catalysts in the local space and time for an intelligent intervention, however, the intervention itself, from the local point of view, comes out of nowhere. The fact that it stems from and it is suited on the local unheeded structure makes it to be accepted subsequently as part of the nomenclature. The main concern of the official point of view is to preserve the coherence of the nomenclature, by finding a continuity (whether positive, accepting the past, or negative, rejecting the past) from the already established notions, by keeping a thread, in order to make a comprehensible mean of bestowing authority on the novelty or on the change.

This shapes also the vision about time. The events that influence, alter the local social architecture are perceived as individualized (as a result of their consequences), but they are imagined in a succession on a static vision of time, considered as a thread based on the authority of a beginning, then continuing indefinitely. As if nothing intelligent enough may happen to question that authority. And, since the intelligence is limited to the pre-requisites of that beginning, every event may be successfully integrated in the thread until, eventually, something else happens to those pre-requisites.

Once it occurs the breakthrough, the passage to the great idea that people may imagine public mental constructions beyond what they perceive as the local environment, nothing stops individuals to challenge the particularities of those constructions. Especially when, in this case, the people’s idea about their society is not a theory anymore, but it is practiced and any inadequation to reality may become more salient. And the limitations resulted from the nomenclaturization of any intelligent intervention make sure that after some time the intelligence will be useful again. This relation between individuals’ intelligence and the publicly accepted erudition is a never-ending story, every time there is room for changes, improvements, as long as the cultural meanings are perceived as something finite, as a nomenclature.

The motivations that produce historical events may stem from a personal and/or public interest, may be directed towards a political and/or cultural sphere. Many times, the individuals or groups of people who manage to produce historical events, to make the local public constructions look different, involve also their public identities in the process of nomenclaturization of the historical change. If they are successful, their identities, perceived as the source of the change by the others who are in the realm of erudition, are considered as its embodiment, as a guarantee for the continuity. And the initiator, most usually, is ready to accept this, since for him/her too the intelligence remains at an unofficial level. If the novelty assures a political and/or a cultural coherence of a public mental construction, then there appear visible threads that keep this coherence. They are the official visible faces of the real unofficial continuity of the local social structures, doubling them (as presented above in the description of the origin of the Roma and Jews) as a result of the understanding’s limitations only to how it works a particular local structure, not the structure in general.

In general, in a civilized society, it is good to be in the shoes of the person or group of persons who started and keep preserving the coherence of the local construction or to have some sort of a positive relation with them. This, in the case when there is no disagreement with the way it is envisaged this coherence. If others have other vision, they have to come with something intelligent (16). The one who has the best understanding of how it works the local social structure continues the main unofficial thread (the “underground” one as presented before), by starting another visible-type thread, by reorganizing the nomenclature. Eventually, the former preservers of the local coherence may survive for a while; but, if they don’t come with something that would give a better expression of the local structure through their point of view and they stick to the nomenclature from their times of glory, as the time elapses, their nomenclature will appear more and more soulless, it will become obvious there will remain nothing to struggle for.

This fine balance that has to be maintained in such a social organization between the praise for the own nomenclature and the understanding of the functioning of the own social structure appears also pertinently at the contacts between more civilized cultural cores. The own nomenclature is the immediate, visible expression of the way a certain civilization assumes responsibilities in creating public mental constructions and of their benefits, but it has no value if it is not supported by the background unheeded structure. As different civilizations, as a result of their different histories, have differences in assuming such responsibilities, what in the previous case was a competition for the best official expression of a single self-sufficient structure, in this case it is a relation between more unheeded self-sufficient social structures. As a result of their invisibility, this relation is unorganized, unclear, the communication is slow, tending to end in interpretations different from the original meaning. It mostly depends on the strength of the own structure, on the self-confidence that it gives, in order to preserve the personal coherence in a multicultural environment. Thus, an important boost is a local numerical preponderance of people belonging to the personal social structure, in a geographic space made meaningful for centuries by that structure. On the other hand, being in diaspora tends to create a pressure, and the usual response of the people with such background is to focus on the own nomenclature as the only visible source (for them) of continuing their usual way of life. As described above, on long term, this leads to assimilation. Sometimes, groups living in diaspora may end, as a result of this pressure, in becoming more conservative than the main society from their homeland. From their point of view, this is even something that has to be praised, but as the time elapses, the new generations will find that nomenclature more and more meaningless, when compared to the local social structure (17).

In certain circumstances it became obvious that the nomenclature is not the ultimate reality, that the alternation between the unofficial intelligence and the official erudition cannot maintain every time the social coherence, thus appearing other worldviews. Meaningful contacts between more social structures, each with its own self-sufficiency, casted serious doubts about this perception of the nomenclature. It took groups of people out from the position of “undisputed, unquestioned me”, as a result of the pressure to give a coherent answer to the simultaneous existence of different sets of nomenclature. If the doubts’ emergence resulted from the confidence of the people that the codification of their nomenclature at a certain time embodies their identity, the drift was towards the “me, but not you” approach to identity. If it resulted from an immediate loss of confidence in the nomenclature, the drift was towards the “obviously me” approach to identity.

The former type of interaction creates a single framework for more social structures. The groups of people that have used to keep alive these structures choose to codify their each nomenclature for identification in the new framework, which, on long term, becomes the new social structure for all those groups. The relation with the previous unheeded social structure is lost, starting a continuous quest for “catching” the perfect expression of their identity through this codification, until it is recognized publicly that this is a circular history, the same patterns are repeating again and again, without any hope for catching the perfection. It appears a discordance that somehow resembles that of a cultural minority after some generations of believing in their original nomenclature, while living their daily lives in the local social structure, generating a mismatching overlapping. For such a minority, the way out of the deadlock is to recognize that they became assimilated in the local social structure and to accept officially its nomenclature. For people with “me, but not you” approach to identity the way out is not so simple, since it does not exist a part of the population remaining in the area of “undisputed me”, to use its readily available nomenclature. Every group part of such a framework becomes involved in a codification, every set of nomenclature loses its link with its social structure, the new social structure resulted from the framework is equally foreigner for each codified nomenclature. They have to consider this seemingly faceless social structure, to reconnect with it without the usual intermediation of a nomenclature. Until they find a solution for this reconnection, the previous habit of codifying those initial nomenclatures is refined in a set of relative purity rules. These rules are an effort to behave as if nothing happened, for minds that do not believe anymore in the fixed, static positions of the social concepts.

On the other hand, the other type of interaction appears when a group, in contact with another group whose social structure enjoys a local and temporal prevalence, does not have from the very beginning the continuity of its usual nomenclature. The pressure determined by the others’ prevalence impedes the resumption of their own nomenclature. This problem impedes further the passage to the others’ social structure, because it cannot appear the usual step by step continuity at the level of the nomenclature. To consider directly for use the others’ nomenclature, the only available locally, this makes obvious that it does not fit their own social structure. Thus, there remain in the same space more self-sufficient social structures and for those caught without a nomenclature to make the World understandable it appears obvious that their identity does not reside in the nomenclature itself, but in something vivid behind it, an “obviously me”, when compared to the vivacity of other social structures.

As already said, these are my preliminary views about how it happened. As for the visible effects of what happened, it is notable that these changes of worldview did not suppose an immediate understanding of how it is possible a conscious assumption of responsibilities in the creation of meanings inside a social structure. The responsibility rather drifted towards the use of sets of purity rules to support a coherent life. In both cases it would have been necessary more than that to become obvious how it functions a social life. From the structural point of view, the clarification happened only on one of the two perspectives of the social structure, the “obviously me” drift clarified the role of the social structure synchronically, but continued the static view diachronically, while for the “me, but not you” drift the clarification was diachronically, continuing the synchronic nomenclaturist view. While the static worldview considers that its particular synchronic nomenclature and diachronic thread are the only possible, the former approach accepted that there are possible more sets of nomenclatures, while the latter accepted that there are possible more threads.

The absolute purity rules, as an expression of the “obviously me”, appear after the collapse of the initial undisputed and localized opinion about the World. They result from the fact that there is discontinuity in the nomenclaturized opinion about the World, but there is continuity in the opinion about the Self. It is understood at the synchronic level how the existence of the cultural meanings depends on a structure, but the diachronic level the “obviously me” is still interpreted in the previous unquestioned style, as keeping the tradition, the continuity of a single thread. It is understood that the cultural meanings can be created irrespective of the particularities of a certain nomenclature, they can take the shape of an infinity of nomenclatures, because it is not the nomenclature what really matters, but something else, which, if not considered properly, the cultural meanings would lose all their values. This something else is considered through the static diachronic point of view, the only part that remains from the initial localized worldview. While in that undisputed initial view the synchronic cultural values had a social authority through the concept of nomenclature, in the “obviously me” approach, the choice of using certain cultural values from the infinity of possible selections is let entirely on the authority of the static diachronic view. Its popular expression, a certain thread that continued a tradition, now disconnected from its relation with the details of a certain nomenclature, becomes The Thread, an abstract construction, beyond any synchronic detail, bestowing its authority (derived from a presumed right beginning) on the World and on the right choices of cultural values from so many opportunities.

Regarding the public expression of such a worldview, among the two known approaches that managed to construct successfully a public life through the perspective of “obviously me”, the Jewish one clarified the relation with the World from a static perspective, while the Japanese one used its geographical isolation to have a public Thread, avoiding in the same time this public static clarification. In the latter case, the Imperial Household of Japan is the embodiment of this Thread, as a source of authority, but not involved in the details of the Japanese society. In the former case, the Moses’ reform brought to the public conscience the existence of a spiritual Identity that ensures the coherence of the World. The separation between the profane and the spiritual area is emphasized more than ever, as a result of this authority in choosing the right direction. The beginning of Jewish Torah/Christian Old Testament describes well this worldview, when presenting the World as created by Somebody who, as a last creation, brings in the profane, practical sphere something resembling Him, a being who, in his turn, receives the right to name and give a public cultural value to anything already created by that Identity. In both cases (the same as in the Romani case that until now did not find a public expression), the absolute purity rules are an effort to preserve the coherence for people that see the infinite possibilities of imagining the World. Before they believed naturally in a certain static worldview, afterwards they had to believe, understanding their social life as keeping a correct way (hence the absolute feature of these purity rules).

The relative purity rules, as an expression of “me, but not you”, appear after the collapse of the initial undisputed and localized opinion about the Self. They result the fact that there is discontinuity in the perception of the Self as a thread, but there is continuity in the opinion about the World. The “me, but not you” approach to identity is the expression of losing that unquestioned status of the previous image about the Self. It is understood the possibility of a simultaneous existence of more threads and the fact that the identity does not depend on the details of a certain thread assumed by an individual/group. The personal thread is perceived as relative, determining the appearance of the relative purity rules, in order to keep the order in a vision about the World, where every ideal is perceived as a specialization, as a niche. These rules are necessary for preserving the appearance of the validity for each of the simultaneous ideals (hence their relativity), to create semi-consciously for them a space of uniqueness as it was in the times of “unquestioned me”.

Both types of purity rules express the perception of a problem, for the absolute ones at the level of the World ("what is my place in the World"), for the relative ones at the level of the Self ("who is really me?"). Among the populations using such purity rules, there appeared two cases of public statements about the nature of these problems, materialized in the Abrahamic and Dharmic religious views. They express with static cultural tools a worldview that does not have a static stability, inquiring into the truth, the reality of such a static social life. The Abrahamic view comes with a vision of the perfection that may be present in the static World, while the Dharmic view states that any perfection is confined only in the minds of those who imagine it, seeking a way out of this partial vision, searching for a direct relation with the reality.

I’d make a comparison to exemplify these two approaches towards the perfection. Sometimes after the second destruction of the Temple from Jerusalem (in the 1^st century CE), it appeared among Jews the religious commandment to let somewhere in the house a part of the wall not whitewashed, to symbolize the imperfection of the World as long as the Temple does not exist. Among Roma it is the habit of leaving a part of the house unfinished or at least unfurnished, otherwise, it appears the fear that something bad will happen to the family from that house, they can even die because of such bibaxt (inauspicious state). Compared to the undisputed, unquestioned times when a certain localized perception of a house was just a house, in the manner the local people understood it, these two points of view have serious doubts about the perfection of any localized understanding of the concept of house. For the former, the solution is to rely on the thread of the spiritual Identity that has the perfect vision of anything existing in the World. For the latter, there is the status-quo of the relative purity rules reminding that any perfection is just an ideal state of the mind, having no connection with the real World, as long as there are not available cultural tools to relate directly with the World as it is. In the former case, the separation profane/spiritual is perceived at its strongest level, in the latter, these two static areas are considered ultimately the same (as expressed in the Sanskrit saying tat tvam asi – “you are that”).

Regarding the religions that stemmed from the initial Abrahamic and Dharmic public statements, the Christianity in the former case, and the non-Desi Buddhism in the latter, religions that have no idea about the two identity drifts and the purity rules, they are personal understandings of quick solutions for the issues of these two public religious views, of course, bearing the responsibility of their proposed solutions. Their focus is on what is visible in these initial publicizations, they are not interested in what determined them, dealing only with the concept of God, respectively liberation, great ideas that make people think and inquire (in this sense, the Islam being an outsider’s perception of God).

I notice the resemblances of the absolute and the relative purity rules when compared to the notions of introverted and extraverted of Carl G. Jung. However, it seems that I arrived from another path to a point where there are visible some similarities of external features, I’ll address later this issue in detail (in my presentation they are also related to the notions of diachronicity and synchronicity).

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(5) This primary concern for one’s own group defined the human social life until very recently. The circumstances and the broader understanding brought by the modernity make more and more obvious the necessity of considering one’s group as a part of the World, interdependent with the rest of the World. This interdependent view would require some serious changes of paradigms, since the localized ones, even when looking like respecting the rest of the World, they still tend to impose the local particular worldview, “the others really matter if they talk to me from the point of view of my worldview”.

(6) In fact, consequences appear even when not understanding the language.

(7) For the last, especially when singing in Turkish, expanding the base for a potential Turkish public from the Turkish minorities in the Balkans to the society of the modern Turkey and Turkish minorities living elsewhere.

(8) I chose this example for its complexity, however, everywhere for every Romani person there is available at least a duality of the ways for understanding the reality, one native and the other(s) of the local non-Roma. It depends on the person, on the history of the local broad society how well it is known in depth the functioning of these cultural engines (including of the native one).

(9) The example of the Romani singers was from the point of view of the absolute purity rules, this one is from the point of view of the relative purity rules.

(10) The creation and, eventually, the destruction of the World are also among the responsibilities of the spiritual identities.

(11) As much as there were developed the distinctions of individual positions in a given society.

(12) Eventually with some other directions of development, if it is surpassed the initial trivialization, if they become productive, successful in the new cultural area.

(13) For example, the theories from Arnold J. Toynbee’s Study of History about the beginning of the civilizations or the concept of “hydraulic civilizations” from Karl A, Wittfogel’s Oriental Despotism.

(14) I want to emphasize that here I don’t use the word environment as a counterpart for reality, but for expressing the immediate external pressure for physical survival. Besides, the reality includes thoughts, worldviews, it depends on the people if they see them as reality, as they are, or from a certain point of view.

(15)To be written…

(16) This description concerns the changes in the nomenclature as a result of disagreements regarding the right expression of the local structure, but of course, someone may simply replace the other one as the preserver of the coherence, if the vision of this coherence is repeatable, it is not too much personalized (in fact, this is the most usual case in history).

(17) The modern world is a case of a multicultural environment where there is not much left to preserve the self-confidence, hence every local society turned to their own nomenclature as the only visible hope for the preservation of their cultural coherence. Among other results, this identification of the nomenclature as the identity produces situations like those in the Balkans and Russia. There, the local societies cannot find the way to their own social structure, because they are diverted by the identification of their identity with the most visible and praised nomenclature, that of Western Europe. Instead of being self-confident and expressing themselves the way they are, they have to imagine themselves as compared to that nomenclature, with the choice of either copying or rejecting it (more about this issue in the article Rom-Gypsy, the reality vs. the image).