IDENTITY — How do you know who your people are?

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(Edited)

It's taken me many years to even consider this question. In the beginning, I thought I had no one. In my depression, I forewent the thought of my family as "my people" and I decided there was nothing tying me to them. We tend to form arbitrary groups and to see people outside of it as "the other".

Me -> My family -> My neighbourhood community -> My regional community -> My national community -> My continent -> The Earth, etc.

It's to the point where if there were a movie about an interdimensional war, aliens and humans would probably get along to fight "the other side", even when aliens are traditionally human's enemies just by the fact that they are an outer group.

How do we form our feeling of identity?


Photo by Kevin Delvecchio on Unsplash

I often see statements like the following:

How much blood has to flow until everyone realises we're all one people?

Then I start wondering: What makes us one people? Are we all really one people? And I come to the inevitable conclusion that there is no hard fact set in stone that anyone belongs anywhere. We simply are, and all identity is arbitrarily formed by our minds. There wasn't a divine commandment telling humanity to be allies. That doesn't change the fact that we are humans, all evolved from the same genes and sharing more with each other than with any other species.

But that's where the problem comes. We are one because we share more with each other. But once we close the circle a bit more, we share more with our inner circle than with other humans. We are then one continent against all others. Then, one country against all others. Then one community, one family, and down it goes until we are one with the people closest to us. And even then, we can close the circle further and say that we are individuals before we belong.

Where do we put the line to what we are? And do we have to place a line?

To avoid misconceptions, we must avoid preconceptions. Having to place a line is one of these. However, then we'd fall onto another pitfall and start speaking like the good ol' Stirner and say "identity is a spook". If nothing ever matters, we might as well commit suicide, but we don't because things matter to us, and thus we bounce back into picking. Once we understand that identity is arbitrary, it's on us to choose our identities and to place our loyalties.

I decided to place my loyalty in my family and myself, above all else. Not because of a piece of knowledge (because all knowledge of the subjective is bound to capriciousness) but because I felt like it. I like them more than anyone else. Others will surely pick differently and decide to take other families, or remove all concept of family and act as one with humanity. Others will get rid of all identity and live for pleasure (hedonism).

In the end, no one is wrong, and no one is right. We simply are, and all identity is but ideas in our heads, not that this makes the identities any less real. In fact, it makes them more real. If all identities belong in our heads, then any identity you pick is as strong as any can be, and that gives it validity and strength: if you decide on a size for your identity circle, and a place for your line, then that's what it is, and no one can take it away.



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3 comments
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My people are all the people. I do my best to expand my 'identity circle' to include all humans and even the whole biosphere. It seems to me that outgroup stigmatization is one of the more insidious causes of strife and abuse in the world. I say this because it stems from trying to come together, which on it's face seems like a compassionate course of action.

"If nothing ever matters, we might as well commit suicide..."

I'm quite nihilistic and I've heard heard basically this before. Every time it seems like a non-sequitur to me.

Life taken to be without meaning or value seems to me to be life considered honestly and without delusion rather than a reason to kill yourself.

"Not because of a piece of knowledge (because all knowledge of the subjective is bound to capriciousness)..."

I take a similar, though more nihilistic stance. It seems to me that the fundamental uncertainty and mystery in the world have shown to be utterly indelible. We struggle so passionately to explain the most direct and elementary aspect of existence, our consciousness. Though some of the greatest minds in history have leveled every weapon against the hard problem of consciousness it's proven invincible and we've no greater insight than we ever had into how internal experience springs forth from physics.

We've no idea what "breathes fire into the equations" as the late Stephen Hawking put it. I don't see that changing, at least not any time soon. My reaction is epistemological nihilism.

"In the end, no one is wrong, and no one is right."

Couldn't agree more.

Interesting post.

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(Edited)

I made a continuation that I had planned. Coincidentally, it answers some of your questions. I will try to address some of your points, though I agree with what you say in part.

"If nothing ever matters, we might as well commit suicide..."

I'm quite nihilistic and I've heard basically this before. Every time it seems like a non-sequitur to me.

I've reached that point of decision-making. I saw myself as nothing more than a floating bit of reality, irrelevant, accidentally placed here. There was so little, and I was so frustrated, that I asked myself "what am I doing in this place suffering when I could just leave by killing myself? It's not like there's some absolute morality tying me to life". But then I realised that it's not only that there is nothing tying me to life, but there is also nothing implying that the only way out is by killing myself. In fact, in the absence of the absolute, I realised, I am the absolute, and I have desires.

By my own hand, I became God, and my desires became law to the world around me. To myself, they are ever-changing like my perception, but given that nothing ties me to anything else, I might as well follow that impulse, which is very pleasant anyway. Curiously, the impulse takes me to make meaning where there is none; it's the most entertaining thing out there that is balanced enough not to saturate my senses.

some of the greatest minds in history have levelled every weapon against the hard problem of consciousness it's proven invincible

Personally, I see consciousness as a secondary effect of having a brain. If the brain has to perceive in a certain way that is what we describe as consciousness, then it simply does. There is nothing stopping a brain from having a consciousness except the lack of conscious activity (synapses and all). I don't see anything mysterious to it; I just find it curious that people generally attach divine charges to it when it's so mundane.

It seems to me that outgroup stigmatization is one of the more insidious causes of strife and abuse in the world. I say this because it stems from trying to come together, which on it's face seems like a compassionate course of action.

Given the lack of an absolute, even though I agree with you that creating separation is an insidious cause of strife and abuse, there is no foreign morality to impose a halt on my desire to benefit whom I perceive as my own (primarily me and mine), and there is nothing to stop my desire from fulfilling itself as reality. I also see no value in compassion short of self-satisfaction. Designing identity separations is by intent domineering, since that is what I find entertaining.

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