Sometimes when reading Ayn Rand, I will read something that seems true, but fairly trivial or unimportant to my particular life. This was generally true when it came to her description of the law of identity. I first read the entry in the Ayn Rand Lexicon on the law of identity sometime in the 1990’s:
“To exist is to be something, as distinguished from the nothing of non-existence, it is to be an entity of a specific nature made of specific attributes. …A is A. A thing is itself.” (Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged, as found in “The Ayn Rand Lexicon” http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/identity.html)
I didn’t see why saying “A is A” had any importance whatsoever. Of course a thing is itself. So what? How is it useful to go around stating the obvious?
About thirty years later, I have at least some inkling of why this formulation is important. The following true story from my life will hopefully give some concrete evidence for the practical benefits of keeping the law of identity in mind in one’s daily life.
I have three shoehorns. One of which I keep in my car, mainly so that I can change into a pair of wingtips I like to wear when I go dancing. (I also typically keep the wingtips in my car.) The shoes are narrow, and difficult to put on without a shoehorn. (I have narrow heels.)
I try to keep the shoehorn in a specific place in my car, so that I always know where it is, and don’t misplace it. Unfortunately, earlier this summer, my car had to go into the auto repair shop for quite an extended time. I have another, older vehicle, a Chevy Trailblazer, which I have been driving in the meantime. When my car went in the shop, I put my wingtips in the Trailblazer, along with the shoehorn.
The layout of the Trailblazer is different from my regular car, causing everything to be out of place, including my shoehorn. Back around early to mid-June, I could not find the shoehorn one day. I searched everywhere I could think to look in that old Trailblazer for the shoehorn, but I could not find it.
I finally gave up on my search and was starting to think I’d have to buy another shoehorn. I usually keep two in my regular vehicle, but the other one was still with that car, which was in the shop. I keep my third shoehorn in my home so that I can put my work shoes on. Since I was busy with other things, I never got around to buying another shoehorn. (I just made do with almost completely unlacing my shoes to be able to fit my feet into them, which is rather time consuming and inconvenient.) A couple of weeks later, I looked down in the front passenger side floorboard of the Trailblazer, and there was my shoehorn. I had searched that area, as well as under the passenger seat, even getting out a flashlight to illuminate dark areas. I had not seen the shoehorn, and yet there it was, lying in plain sight.
I joked to myself that this shoehorn was like the “ring of power” from “The Lord of the Rings”.
This reference may take some explanation for those who are not familiar with those books. In the Tolkien series, an evil magical ring that gives people invisibility and various other powers, is described as having a sort of “will of its own”:
“Gandalf explains that a Ring of Power is self-serving and can ‘look after itself’: the One Ring in particular, can ‘slip off treacherously’ to return to its master Sauron, betraying its bearer when an opportunity arrives.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rings_of_Power#Powers
In other words, the ring of power has its own agenda, and you will lose it, and someone else will find it when it so chooses. In the novels, Bilbo Baggins finds the ring after another character, Gollum, loses it. Basically, the ring decided it was time for Gollum to lose it, and for Bilbo to find it.
A few weeks later, I went on a vacation, and packed the same shoehorn in my suitcase. Guess what happened when I got back from my trip? I could not find the shoehorn again. I had only taken one suitcase, so if I had brought it back with me, the shoehorn had to be there. I gave the suitcase what I thought was a pretty thorough search, but I could not find it. Thinking again of the ring of power, I started to give up on my search for the shoehorn. Then I explicitly thought:
“Of course, I’m just joking with myself. The shoehorn has a specific nature. It’s not magical, because everything is what it is, and nothing more.”
Explicitly thinking this way led me to the following additional thoughts: “What is the identity of the shoehorn?” I started naming its characteristics or attributes in my mind. I thought: “It’s small, and it’s dark. Both of which make it easily misplaced and easy not to see, given the nature of the human eye.”
I also thought: “What is the identity of my suitcase?” I then started thinking about its attributes. It has one main compartment, and it has two smaller, pouch-like compartments with zippers on the outside. I had checked all three of those locations, and the shoehorn wasn’t there. Then I remembered one other thing about the nature of my suitcase: It has a detachable, somewhat clear, zipper pouch about 10 inches by 5 inches in size. This pouch attaches on the inside main compartment of the suitcase, at the top, by a pair of snaps. I use it to hold toiletries, like my toothbrush. I also keep items in there that I always need, even when I’m not on a trip, like a toothbrush and toothpaste. In other words, there is always some stuff in this small plastic pouch that could obscure something like a shoehorn from my vision on a cursory inspection. I didn’t think I would have put the shoehorn in there because it isn’t a toiletry item. But, I decided I should check it out, and guess what I found?
I believe that this rather mundane example illustrates an important point. Sometimes you have to mentally summon the law of identity, expressly, in order to banish incorrect thinking. In my simple example here, I had “half-jokingly” thought the shoehorn had some magical or mystical properties that made it incapable of being located by me. As a result, I think I started to give up on my search for the shoehorn. It’s like that mystical thinking demotivated me to look for the shoehorn, because I was falling into a pattern of thinking that the shoehorn was somehow intrinsically incapable of being found.
It wasn’t until I willfully re-asserted a “mental framework” that was more rational, with the law of identity, that I was able to think clearly about where the shoehorn could be.
Just like everything else, the human mind has a specific identity, or nature. Part of that identity is that it can develop incorrect thinking patterns or habits, that are detached from reality. In this case, I was falling into the thinking habit of believing my shoehorn was somehow inherently without identity, and therefore unlocatable by me. By mentally summoning the law of identity in my mind, and rededicating my mental attitude to that principle, I was able to develop a specific methodology or plan for locating a lost item. Adhering to the law of identity led to my eventual success in finding the shoehorn.
I would add that adhering to the law of identity doesn’t guarantee success. Sometimes you can do everything right, and factors beyond your control make victory impossible. It might have been the case that I had somehow lost the shoehorn in my hotel room, and left it there. In that case, it would have been unrecoverable. But, by thinking of its specific nature, I was able to better exhaust the possible scenarios under which it was still in my possession in the sense of being lost in some other item of property of mine, like my suitcase. Adhering to the law of identity allowed me to banish any “mystical based” thinking, which thereby maximized my chance of success, even if that chance of success wasn’t 100%.
The law of identity is more than a mere tautology. It can be the difference between victory and defeat. (Or, between putting on my shoes and going barefoot.)