Who are We? Our Identity?

Who are We? Our Identity?

• Name                                                     :    ABC PQR XYZ
• PAN Card/SSN Card Number          :   ABC_123_ XYZ_789
• Bank Account Number                     :    BAN######
• Employee ID Number                       :    EMP######
• Passport Number                               :    PAS######
• Customer Number                             :    CUS######

That about sums it up. That’s who we are. A series of alphabets and digits – a patently human-unfriendly but highly machine-readable code representing our “real” selves. Our sense of ourselves, our complex notions of who we are – is deluded at best, and nothing but a mirage at worst. Our humanity reduced to bits of scrambled information circling data-centers around the globe, where supercomputers read, catalog, index and store us in vast databases of potential tax-payers, potential consumers, potential home-loan seekers, potential travelers and potential corporate slaves (aka Employees). All this of course with the purpose of luring us to the comforts of this world, tempting us with the trappings of luxuries, and gently nudging us into a cycle of consumerist desire. An edifice of civilization and democracy has been constructed – on the surface it’s as smooth as polished glass, as shiny as the glint of a Diamond – but peer beneath the layers, probe a bit deeper and it proves to be no more than an elaborate ruse – a gargantuan façade tricking us all into buying a vision of life imagined by others – by Corporations, where we are one among the sea of hypnotized consumers – the more, the merrier.

That’s our identity in this world. We might wish to believe there’s more to it than that. And we might even buy our own versions out of the necessity to survive, to console ourselves that our lives add up, that we matter, that it all makes some sense. And to us, to our small circle of family, friends and loved ones – it all does make sense, we do matter. But make no mistake, this is how the world sees us. This is our identity as perceived by the real world. For the world, all we are and all we ever will be – is numbers – bits and bytes, pieces of facts, tidbits of our lives – with which they will tailor, customize and cater their advertisements and their billboards and their cars and their clothes to continue the feeding/buying/selling frenzy. Out of the millions thronging the world, we are but another speck. All in All, we are Another Brick in the Wall.