Know Thyself – Introduction

The Crisis of Identity and the Return to Being

We live in an age where identity is everything, and nothing. It is affirmed, debated, deconstructed, weaponized, and endlessly remade. To belong or to be excluded, to find one’s “true self” or to reject the very idea of a fixed self; these now lie at the heart of how we live, love, fight, and suffer.

Yet beneath the surface, something deeper is happening.

The crisis of identity is not merely cultural or political. It is not just about gender, race, belief, or body. It is a metaphysical crisis, a rupture in our understanding of what it means to be.

Modernity told us we are free to become anything. Postmodernity tells us there is no true self at all. Between these, the self is stretched thin, dissolved into anxieties, masks, contradictions, and a desperate need to be seen, while never being certain what is being seen.

But what if identity is not something we create, but something we uncover?

What if the self is not a project, but a presence, an eternal appearance in the Structure of Being?

This series takes its name from the ancient imperative inscribed at Delphi, Know Thyself , not as a moral slogan, but as a metaphysical calling. We will argue that today’s confusion is not just the result of cultural failures or technological excesses, but the inevitable contradiction of a world built on becoming, contingency, and the belief that Being can be nothing.

And this contradiction is not the end; it is the beginning of a deeper unveiling.

We will move from the confusion of self-making to the recognition of eternal identity, from fragmentation to necessity, from anxiety to presence. Each article will explore a different domain where identity is being contested, redefined, or lost, and show how, through the lens of the Structure of Being, we can begin to see what has never ceased to be true.

Not as an opinion. Not as a belief. But as the necessary truth of what is.