My identity is in danger.
For years now, I've been grappling with the idea that I may not be as well-defined a person
as I would have hoped.
There's this strange sense within me that the constituent parts of who I am don't all
necessarily belong to me.
And if that's the case, which parts of me... are me?
I blame the book Annihilation by Jeff Vandermeer for putting me through this, but I think the
idea's always been lurking somewhere in the back of my mind.
The story presents of vision of self-identification I've never seen anywhere else.
As I recall the way that the strange setting blurs the lines of distinction, allows the
genetics and psyches of different species and individuals to flow together, I can't
help but feel as though I too am perhaps a little less... individual... than I'd like
to believe.
It's an easy way to feel-perhaps something we all experience at some point.
But I've been having a hard time finding the words for it.
So, instead, I'm turning to a symbol: The Ancient Greek Chimera.
Everything I've been feeling about this strange, fractured, multifarious sense of identity
resides in this one creature.
It is the incarnation of our patchwork selves.
And I think it's time to confront it.
A big thanks to Curiosity Stream, and our new streaming service Nebula for making this
video possible!
Also, a big thanks to all our Patreon supporters as well.
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We have a weird relationship with myths.
Over time, we share them less and less in the form of stories and more and more in the
form of reference points.
They become touchstones used to invoke certain meanings and ideals.
Sometimes the symbolism of the myth even starts to supersede the original story, until it's
taken on a life the original storytellers never intended for it at all.
That is the chimera to a tee.
If you look back to the tales this thing is from, you're not really going to find much.
Most of the big, popular sources-like Hesiod's Theogeny, Ovid's Metamorphosis, The Fabulae
of Hyginus, Apollodorus Volume 1, and The Iliad by Homer-really just throw it in there
as an aside.
It's monstrous.
It's got three heads.
It breathes fire.
In the front it's a lion, in the back a dragon or a serpent, and the rest is goat.
Pretty dangerous.
Causes a lot of destruction.
Its mommy was Echidna, and its daddy was Typhon.
It's siblings with the Lernean Hydra and Cerberus.
It comes from Lycia.
There.
All you need to know about it for the purposes of the story, and not a drop more.
They bother to tell you this so that when the hero Bellerophon slays it, riding gloriously
on the back of Pegasus, you know just how dangerous it was for him to square up against
this monster.
And that's pretty much it.
In the old texts, the Chimera is more or less just a matter of bragging rights.
But I think there's something in that, actually.
The fact that these great works only mention the Chimera as a point of reference could
mean that it was already a powerful symbol and a well-known figure in oral tradition
before these stories were ever committed to text.
In fact, it appears much earlier in visual art, like pottery.
So, it wasn't just popularized by famous works; it was already there in the Greek collective
conscious.
Something about this idea must have been resonant to people, and I'm not convinced that any
one part of it-the lion, the dragon, the goat, the battle with Bellerophon and the pegasus-is
what moved them.
I think what makes the chimera so meaningful is the fact that it's an amalgamate monster-something
made up of a bunch of different creatures.
You're probably not going to be surprised when I tell you that this is far from the
only monster of this variety.
These have turned up throughout world history, and are pretty much everywhere in some form
or another.
The Assyrian Lamassu, the Persian Manticore, the Egyptian Sphinx, the North-American Jackalope,
the Chinese Kirin (Qilin), the Indo-Pakistani Unicorn (yes, that's most likely where it
comes from)-all of these have the same stitched-together quality as the chimera.
Some are a little more harmonious, some a little more chaotic, but they all fit the
bill.
Even common depictions of angels are really just human beings with the wings of birds.
So... they're sort of in this grouping.
Human-kind has always created these patchwork beasts.
In that way, the chimera is far from unique.
But somehow, perhaps owing to the all those romantics who drew their inspiration from
Greco-Roman sources, "chimera" is the word we use here in the West to describe all of
them.
Maybe it's not the term we use in every case, but if you were to use it to describe a hybrid
creature of pretty much any variety, I truly doubt anyone would correct you.
In fact, the term "chimerical" has historically been used to describe anything fantastical
whatsoever.
Even dreams.
Which I guess makes sense, because, when you think about it, what are fantasies and dreams
if not combinations?
Amalgamates of our ideas and experiences?
The most stunning manifestation of this, though?
The term has even reached into modern science, where it's used to describe the phenomenon
of living creatures whose bodies contain cells with genetic material from more than one organism.
That's right, biological "chimera" are real-although they tend to be a touch less monstrous than
all the other forms I've described so far.
These are twins who absorbed their sibling in the womb, fish who melded into the body
of their mate as a part of their normal reproductive process, folks who've had organ transplants,
even different plants that have been grafted together.
With the advent of CRISPR/Cas9 and all the resulting gene-editing technologies out there,
the world is fast becoming a more chimerical place.
But more interesting than all the many classifications of chimera is how we as sentient creatures
with our own sense of identity feel about them.
What do they do to us when we come up against them?
Well, I think we can begin to find an answer by looking at some reactions to them, both
in media and practice.
The way they're depicted in our art-the way we plan for a future involving them-tells
us a lot about how they're situated in our collective psyche.
One famous example, the source of countless memes, comes from the anime Full Metal Alchemist.
In this world, a chimera is any alchemical combination of animals.
Normally, they're just kind of wild beasts, but one alchemist manages to create an intelligent
talking chimera.
Unfortunately, he does it by fusing his daughter and her pet dog into this... sad... sad thing...
Although the daughter and dog are still technically both there in a different form, for all intents
and purposes, they're as good as dead.
You can find another pretty striking example in the 2010 film Splice, although...
I am not one-hundred percent sure I can recommend you watch the movie.
Just... take it from me, it's an interesting case.
It's about a secret part-human hybrid creature grown in a lab.
Over the course of the film, as the experiment spirals out of control in violent and... other...
uncomfortable ways... the scientists responsible have to grapple with the ethical questions
surrounding it.
It's part human, so doesn't it have some intrinsic rights?
Can they really just put it down as if it were some rampaging beast?
Funnily enough, lawmakers have been posed with very similar questions in the real world.
There is actual legislation surrounding this topic.
The Human Chimera Prohibition Act of 2005 (yes that is a real thing!) details some very
interesting ethical findings around the topic.
Its says that: "serious ethical objections are raised to some types of chimeras because
they blur the lines between human and animal, male and female, parent and child, and one
individual and another."
It also says that: "respect for human dignity and the integrity of the human species may
be threatened by chimeras."
And the bit I find most interesting: "the uniqueness of individual human beings is manifested
in a particular way through their brain and their reproductive organs/cells."
Who could have ever guessed this was something the human species would need to take so seriously?
Well, I guess I do too.
I can't blame you.
There seems to be something fundamentally troubling about this idea.
A natural fear that in the combination of selves... there is also a loss.
The physical form may still be there in some way, but the distinct identity is no more.
I think it is safe to say that we generally have some pretty complex feelings about this
whole thing, and it's not terribly hard to see how they manifest themselves.
What is a touch harder is finding the words for it.
Why does it have this effect?
Why do we react in the way that we do?
Well, fortunately for us, someone's already figured that out.
In his book "Oneself as Another," French philosopher Paul Ricoeur employs the Latin terms "ipse"
and "idem" to describe two aspects of identity.
Ipse, he says, is the distinctive self, what sets one apart from all others.
Idem, on the other hand, is the categorical self; what allows one to identify themself
as a part of a group, such as species or culture.
We identify ourselves both as one unique, distinctive entity, and through the ways in
which we are the same as those around us.
And through all its various forms, the chimera confronts us with a violation of both.
Think of the original, Greek monster, or the biologically engineered one from Splice.
What is it?
A lion?
A dragon?
A goat?
What is she?
Human still, in some way, or something altogether different?
In the combination of species and forms, the idem vanishes.
These creatures can't identify as a part of any of the groups to which their individual
parts belong.
Rather, they belong only to one confused category: the chimera.
And think of the artificial versions of this, too.
Graft chimeras in the real world; that poor creature from Full Metal Alchemist?
Are they still themselves in any capacity?
How much of the flower needs to be grafted over before it's no longer recognizable as
the plant it once was?
How can you be identified as a singular, distinctive person when you share a body and a mind with
someone else?
The ipse is imperiled... or dead.
Of course, this is mostly fantasy.
No one's ever going to journey into Area X from Annihilation and start to slip out of
their gene pool.
For the foreseeable future, precious few are going to be genetically augmented into artificial
chimera.
Even fewer will be born that way.
And as long as you aren't an angler fish or a plant, you're not liable to just up and
blend with someone else on the fly.
So, this is all a just a foil to our experience as intelligent beings, right?
Something fictional to make us reflect on what's real?
Well... not exactly.
Physically, almost none of us will ever have to worry about these things.
This is true.
But psychologically, our ipse and our idem are far from perfectly-defined.
We are the product of all the people we've ever known and their influence on us.
We harbor a multitude of selves, each for different occasions, different circumstances.
We are brimming over with conflicting ideas and desires and impulses that have come from
sources outside of us, and we're picking up more all the time.
If this is about identity-the concept we have of ourselves-then the strange reality is that...
we are all... sort of... chimera.
This is what I was trying to find the language for after reading Annihilation.
Beyond a simple comparison to something we aren't or that we would dread becoming, we
can see in the chimera a mirror to what is inside of us.
They are a confrontation with that strange, awkward multifariousness which complicates
any notion of truly understanding "who you are."
So of course this monster endures.
Of course we have an affinity for something that can reach past the protective layers
of self-concept... and touch the patchwork soul within.
And... that would be where the video ends... except...
I have more to say.
This is a really interesting topic to me, and when it came time to trim down the script...
I couldn't quite let it all go.
I had to keep a full version of the video out there somewhere.
It seemed right.
Luckily, there is a place where we can share that stuff.
Where we don't have to worry about streamlining our content so that it's a perfect fit for
attention spans and algorithms.
I'm talking about our new streaming platform, Nebula.
Youtube is a weird place for educational content.
It's hard to be as honest and open as you want to be while trying to satisfy the algorithm
and trying to dodge some kind of terrible fate like channel-wide demonetization.
So, a bunch of us educational creators got together and made our own platform where we
don't have to worry about all of that.
You can find all our videos there ad-free, and full of additional content we normally
have to cut out for Youtube.
Including the extended version of this video.
And we're not the only ones.
The same is true for so... many... other... amazing creators.
It's a safe haven for the material we wish we could share here.
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For this video, I actually sourced a bit of my information on biological chimera from
one of their documentaries, The Genetic Revolution, which is an incredible detailing of the advancement
of modern gene manipulation.
I also learned a little bit more about the nature of myths and legends with their documentary
Monsters and Myths.
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Before we wrap up, I'd like to give a quick thanks to all the helpful humans who support
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All those words you see scrolling in the background of these videos?
Those are actually the names of our Patreon maintenance crew, without whom this show would
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And I mean that in more than just a financial sense.
Our patrons are actually part of our production process.
During research, our patreon maintenance crew joins us for live, private Discord streams
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It's an amazing time, and actually extremely productive.
In fact, we have one our patreon engineers to thank for some of the ideas in this video:
I-Prefer-The-Term-Antihero, the phrase "we are all chimera" was ingenious.
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And... that's it for this video!
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Until then, thanks for watching, and keep making stuff up!
I'll see you...
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Bye!