Who the Hell are You?

I'm going to take a brief break from my obsession with race, culture, class and the revolution, dear leader, to turn my attention to  . . . metaphysics?  I think the term applies in this case.

Anyways, the questions under consideration are:

1) Is it truly possible to know another person?

2) Can we ever really know ourselves?

The basic argument is as follows: Let us say I have a hammer.  It was my father's and his father's before that.  When my father had it, the handle broke and he had the handle replaced with a new one.  Since it's been in my possession, I've had the head of the hammer replaced.  Is this still my grandfather's hammer?  Well, yes and no.  I still refer to it as my grandfather's, because it has attached to it a sentiment of identity - but clearly it is not the hammer that my grandfather used.

In the same way, our own bodies are being replaced without our even being aware of it.  Cells die all the time and are replaced (that dust you sweep and vacuum from your floors: that's your skin).  You have grown up (and in my case, out).  You have gone through major transformations, so on the one hand, you are still you.  On the other, you are physically a completely different person - not you.

Finally, you have also changed your mind - if you are like me, you have changed some pretty fundamental beliefs about life and God and who you are.  So, even your self, your mind, your identity is malleable and if it hasn't changed yet, it most likely will.  So, you are not even you in the sense of identity, of the fundamental sort.

And what does it mean to know somebody?  To know their habits, their likes and dislikes, to know how they will react in any given situation - to know their future, on some level.  But if we are liable to change to be completely different people, how well, really, can we know each other?  Never mind the fact, that we know each other based on our actions, not our thoughts.  The interior world is forever hidden and in shadow, even if we attempt to "open up" and let others in, it is only possible by being mediated through the outside world: actions and language (the best and worst of communicating mechanisms - that hides as much as it makes plain).

And can we really know ourselves?  I've already suggested that we can't even identify what we mean by ourselves.  But to press the point, and make it a little less abstract, we put on acts and then convince ourselves that our acts are our reality (but it's an act, right?), we have ideas that we can't make sense of, can't express, can't find the right words for.  So, fearless reader, the question remains . . . who the hell are you?