We’re going to start off a bit differently today, dear reader. Instead of narrative or metaphor, I’m going to throw two rather academic definitions at you:
Essence (noun): the totality of properties of a given phenomenon that when altered require us (whomever us may be phenomenologically) to agentially cut the phenomenon in question differently.
Es-sense (noun): epiphenomenal sense; the act of sense-making via agential cut when applied to the self. Breaks in es-sense lead to reconceptions of identity.
You’ll notice that this definition is at variance with both ‘scholastic’ i.e. popular and platonic conceptions of essence. That is because those conceptions are wrong. Our souls, our essence cannot be reduced to floating balls of light ready to be flicked into a patronus or sucked from our chest by a dementor’s kiss. Nor are our essences immutable, fix, and permanent forms, as Plato would have us believe. Rather, essence is context-dependent. I, for instance, don’t much care what my passport number is but the British government considers it to be an essential part of who I am. Changing my passport number wouldn’t cause any breaks in my self-conception whereas the immigration services couldn’t conceive of me any other way. It’s all relative, dear reader.
Es-sense is about sense-making. It is about the way we construct and conceive of our relationships with the outside world as well as the way others perceive the same. This means that essence is necessarily mutable.
Few ordained rabbis, Navy SEALs, physicians, or practitioners of any other number of professions commonly considered to be callings would contend that their vocation is not part of their essence, who they are. Yet they were not always rabbis, soldiers, or doctors. Rather, at the moment of ordainment, graduation, and licensing the way they relate to the world, the way they are perceived by others, and the way make sense of their lives have changed. Their es-sense has been reconstituted. We are not immutable balls of light, but rather souls that mold themselves to meaning.
A key factor in the molding of es-sense is ability. Each of us is a river of ability with tributaries large and small. And just as rivers nourish the ecosystems and communities which surround them ability is our lifeblood. It sustains us and fills us with vitality (while unfulfilled capacity leaves us hungry). The exercise of ability allows us to find meaning. When the exercise of an ability is so deeply ingrained in who we are that to change our dominion over that ability we alter the way we make sense of our relationship to ourselves and the world around us (and vice-versa) it is an essence ability.
The idea of depth is also an important concept here. Depth of an ability (es-sense or otherwise), of the entanglement of phenomena, of agency, the grooves worn by flowing water over time hold phenomena together for a moment in time. These phenomena can be the conception of self and other; of the collective habits we call norms, culture, and society, the enactment of an ability as part of one’s es-sense; and so on. The deeper the grooves, the agential cuts, the more deeply entwined phenomenon X is in our epiphenomenal sense; the totality of properties which when changed require that ever-present us to agentially cut a phenomenon differently. The deepest agential cuts around ability are essence ability.
Though essence ability is a novel concept academically – though it is a key element of my academic thinking – it is sprinkled throughout both history and pop culture.
One illustrative example is Batman (I told you I was a geek, dear reader). You might be muttering to yourself that Batman is a superhero, which hardly qualifies as having an ability. My question for you is; what is Batman’s superpower? Highly refined use of technology? Extreme, even reckless, bravery? Incredible agility and motor skills? Wealth? There is nothing super, as in supernatural, about those abilities. Rather, his skills combine to give him an essence ability so pronounced as to be on par with a superpower. That’s why he can roll with the Justice League.
This idea is at the core of both essence ability and the Theory of Everyone. Each of us has affinities and capacities that can be refined and channeled like tributaries flowing into the mighty river of self, of es-sense. Each of us ought to recognize and value our ability and find value in the ability of others. Those abilities found at the white-hot center of who we are, abilities that most closely align with our affinities, are essence abilities.
The idea is captured in this iconic scene from Good Will Hunting in which Matt Damon’s character, the troubled genius Will Hunting, tries to explain his essence ability:
He can just play. That sentiment captures the heart of essence ability. Will Hunting’s intellectual abilities and intuitive understanding of complex mathematics are essential to who he is. This is demonstrated throughout the film, initially becoming clear when Hunting cannot help to solve complex equations posted on a chalkboard in an MIT hallway where he is working as a janitor. Overcome by the magnetic force of his ability Hunting feels compelled to solve the equations although he has no external motivations to do so and despite any risks touching other’s work might pose to his job and parole. Magnetic because, phenomenally, Hunting is impelled to solve that equation the way an electron is drawn to stable formations
Additionally, Hunting’s essence ability is put into stark relief by the turmoil that ensues when he is estranged from his affinities either by circumstance or choice. This includes the violence and chaos of his youth and his arrest for assault in the film’s opening scenes – a time when he has yet to find an effective way to channel his ability flows – and extends to his personal relationships. Hunting’s essence abilities are so pronounced and apparent to others that his rejection of them causes conflict in his closest personal relationships. Chuck, Hunting’s closest friend, argues with Hunting when he expresses his desire to continue working construction and live a “normal” life. Chuck, in fact, hints at one of the foundations of an ability-centered society when he chastises Hunting saying that Will doesn’t owe it to himself to pursue and develop his essence abilities but rather, he owes it to Chuck. An ability-centered society turns on the interdependencies and interoperabilities of all ability. We all owe it to each other to develop our abilities to the fullest in order to weave the fabric of a more cohesive coexistence.
Naturally, I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t include some Hawking . Consider this clip from the Theory of Everything:
In this fictionalized scene Hawking presents his solutions to “unsolvable” problems. That Hawking has solved the unsolvable is a clear demonstration of his essence abilities for complex physics and mathematics in combination with creativity. However, that isn’t news to anyone with a cursory understanding of Hawking’s biography. What stands out about the scene is the joy the expression of Hawking’s essence brings not only to Hawking himself but to everyone around him. When we express our essence abilities our hearts can sing, we can reach our land of the soul and better the lives of all around us in the process.
The real Hawking’s story mirrors this expression of joy and celebration of essence. As an ALS patient Hawking looked at his diagnosis not as something that fractured his essence but rather used it as a springboard to consider the nature of himself. Hawking lived a life of the mind, a life of his essence. He chose to undergo a tracheotomy and persist in expressing his essence, finding joy in doing so through public appearances, teaching and writing. We should all be so lucky.
Some might say that Hawking’s essence was negated, broken, or in-abilitated by his diagnosis. Some would be wrong. Firstly, because Hawking’s essence was not bound up in the physical but rather in the intellectual – physics and math – and familial – fatherhood. And, perhaps more importantly because essence is not like the floating ball of light the dementors suck from their victims in Harry Potter, it is not an immutable seed that lives inside us. (Not only is there no scientific proof corroborating the physical instantiation of the soul but also no such incarnation is necessary to believe in the idea of a soul, of essence, of life after death.)
In fact, the continuity of Hawking’s legacy through the recent publication of Thomas Hertog’s On the Origin of Time–the release of which engendered book-publication excitement in me rivaled only by that I felt waiting for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows–makes clear that the product of our ability persists beyond on bodies. More on that in a later post.
Finally, dear reader, I wouldn’t want to leave you bereft of an extended metaphor; so, picture if you will for me a river. A great big river. The Colorado in spring after the snowmelt, the Nile snaking an emerald trail through vast desert, the Yangtze pouring through Three Gorges. Zoom out. See the rush of all that water carving up continents, admire the depth cut into the stone’s memory. Look again. Notice the tributaries flowing into the river. Some are nascent, trickles of rain finding new paths down the slopes. Some are hearty, fulsome flows, powerful of their own accord whose only trace of smallness comes from their position beside the mighty river. Some a tired trickles of streams no longer nurtured by their sources, whose waters have been diverted by action or inattention.
Now I want you to play plumber. Put your hand on the tap and close a tributary. Choose a minor one and you change the river slightly. Its substance has changed but not in a way that the things the river touches are likely to notice. But, choose an important tap to turn off and you alter the river’s relationship to everything around it. You change the river’s essence. Imagine our river sees itself as a roaring beast of a body of water, replete with rapids, untamable. If by closing the tap you silence the roar and tame the rapids the continuity river’s self-conception has been broken. If you let the taps gush you unleash the river’s essence freeing it to sluice and splash from snowpack to shore.
In order to live joyful lives and build ability-centered societies we must open our taps and embrace our individual es-sense and essence abilities and learn to recognize those of others. What are your essence abilities, dear reader? What joy can they bring you and others?