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If people cannot argue fruitfully about questions that are part of their identity (and I agree with this premise), then it follows that for one to win political

If people cannot argue fruitfully about questions that are part of their identity (and I agree with this premise), then it follows that for one to win politically (or convert them), the trick is not to convince people that your views are correct, but rather to convince people that their identity is threatened and that them maintaining their current identity (whatever that identity may be—and perhaps vagueness is key here) depends on you winning (or joining your group). Let them fill in the blanks on your views, wherever possible, as the specifics aren’t that relevant anyway. This is what I perceive our political discourse has been reduced to. Maybe it never has been more than that. I like the author’s conclusion that to keep an open mind, don’t make stuff your “identity.” Yet the instinct of many is just the opposite, so that not religion and party affiliation but even the most trivial things are stated as identity: “I’m a coffee person, not a tea person.” “I’m a dog person, not a cat person,” and other such bizarreness. Why are people seemingly so drawn to identifying themselves as anything at all?

deleted 5y ago
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runawaybottle 5y ago
Why are people seemingly so drawn to identifying themselves as anything at all? Sheer scale. There’s so many of us, and everyone is mostly replaceable. Not just in the economy, but in everything. The identity is the one flag in the ground that screams ‘I stand for something’. I’m upset at myself and everyone for bringing back high school into our adult world. The book bags adorned with band stickers, the clothes, the cliques, all making it clear in a superficial way ‘this is who I am’. Like a generation of adult Goth kids - we fucking get it. It just seems like we have to grow up, over and over.
- ttonkytonk 5y ago
  I like to think you got to live as long as one of the Mesopotamian kings before you're really an adult, i.e. 10,000+ years.
lliamander 5y ago
The paradox is that people seem to need a sense of identity. You can't have no identity. And there can be some sort of psychological satisfaction that comes from sharing an identity category with others.
- SyzygistSix 5y ago
  >You can't have no identity. True. But one can become less attached to their identity and learn to be more fluid and less rigid about it. Thinking in terms of what one does, rather than what they are, seems helpful to me.
visualradio 5y ago
Identity is used to automate decision making, so less energy is expended on conscious thought, so less time is spent weighing pros and cons of each alternative for every daily decision. If someone is 'dog person' they have routine where they take dog for walks, with positive effects such as exercise, without having to weigh pros and cons each time it is performed. If someone is coffee person, they do not have to weigh pros and cons of what to drink with breakfast. With politics this is perhaps bad, as we do not want people to make decisions unconciously, we want citizens to weigh pros and cons conciously, so that they are less easily duped. But for other daily activities it is useful to simplify decision making so conscious thought can be allocated elsewhere.
- abecedarius 5y ago
  If this is the explanation then shouldn't we find it weird how intensely factional humans are about identities? How much work marketers put into identifying segments and creating associations? A smart robot would also economize on decisions, but it wouldn't necessarily gang up with other Emacs robots against the vi robots.
  - disgruntledphd2 5y ago
    Well of course it wouldn't because all robots are Emacs robots \s.
- jimkleiber 5y ago
  I appreciate how you framed this and helped me see how identity can help us streamline the decisions we make in what we do. I think identity can have a secondary effect of communicating to others those decisions we've made about what to do. For example, Someone: What do you do? Me: I give speeches. Someone: So you're a speaker? It can be a way to bundle a bunch of actions/beliefs/etc into something that is quicker/easier to communicate to others. For example, as a speaker, I may write speeches, deliver speeches, book clients, travel to different companies, and other actions. The challenges may come in the disagreements we have about which actions belong to which identities. For example, a speaker for some may be someone who speaks at corporations and gets paid for it. For others, it may be someone who gives motivational speeches to schools. For others, it may be someone who speaks on YouTube videos. So for each of those groups, they may hear "speaker" and associate different actions/beliefs/etc. and it can lead to conflict. I know I've seen some of this conflict when I tell someone I have created some Wordpress sites, they can immediately jump into "so you're a coder" and I can quickly think "no no, coders are people who create fullstack stuff, I'm just a tinkerer," etc etc.
pdamoc 5y ago
> Why are people seemingly so drawn to identifying themselves as anything at all? This is biologically preconditioned. We have brain wiring for identifying "Us" and "Them". BigThink put up a compilation video [1] on this topic. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14XSzWT4vI0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14XSzWT4vI0
- coretx 5y ago
  Ehw,no. The ego ( the prime source of identity ) only enters existence when we first encounter another. And even then, it's nature constantly differs, instigated by it's surroundings. In a nutshell, your "Us" and "Them" usually differ from mine and often mutates. Essentially, this makes divide et impera & us versus them thinking even more stupid as we humans have "theory of mind" for a trait. Unlike many animals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_mind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_mind Edit: So it's a cultural rather than biological precondition. ( If a precondition at all. )
  - bildung 5y ago
    I'd say both you and pdamoc are right :) For us being able to develop and change Ego and Alter, we need to have the mental capability for doing so. Which we obviously have, physically. Both Ego and Alter can and do change heavily through life, and thus are strongly affected by culture, socialization etc. They can't change unbridled, though: There are multiple facettes of personality that are pretty stable over time (like in the Big Five model), ignoring traumata etc. And there are limits to our mental capabilities, just like there are for reasoning and other aspects of mind. So, within the pysical borders our bodies give us, Ego and Alter can develop quite freely, heavily mediated by culture.
narrator 5y ago
I was talking with people I consider to be very smart and intellectual. We were discussing the California propositions. They did not want to hear the specifics of the propositions. They only wanted to know which organizations were supporting which propositions. This is what political discourse is these days. Figuring out which team you're on based on what political influencers agree with you. Nobody bothers to understand the issues and argue the merits of those issues. It's too easy to make an ideological mistake that way given how arbitrary and complex the rules are these days.
- XorNot 5y ago
  Why is this a problem? If there's a proposition out there the wording is going to be sufficiently dense that it's not super-likely a casual observer will have a good grasp of it's actual effect, whereas if you're gay and the local LGBTQI support organizations are coming out in favor of a proposition, then it's fairly unlikely this is something you want to oppose. There's a big difference between "this political party supports this legislation" and "this issue-focused group is supporting it". It's putting blinkers on to pretend that legislation is not frequently titled and described in summary terms, which are quite different to the legal, social or physical specifics of what the individual clauses will do and representative organizations provide a very important function by having the time and people on hand to properly understand issues which affect the groups they represent.
  - pjerem 5y ago
    It is not a problem until it becomes a default way of thinking. If you don’t care about a law proposal, yes, why not default to the position of an organization you believe you share opinions with. But if you do care, like it’s a topic that matters to you, or when you do engage in a political debate, it should be your duty as a citizen to have your own point of view and to be ok to change it whenever needed. If you can’t do that, you are not ready for political discussion or debates. And it’s totally ok to answer « I don’t know / I don’t care about this topic » when invited to give your point. « Why should I care? » is totally ok if you think there is something.
  - 5y ago
deleted 5y ago
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slim 5y ago
Identity is the fast mecanism for trust. Where one declares being part of a group by segregating himself from other groups. Thus you can apply to him the aggregated history of his group and decide if you can trust him.
- bellyfullofbac 5y ago
  But.. you apply to them the history as you think this history is, and this might be very different to what they think it is. This is IMO a great source of conflict. This is why I hate "-ism"/"-ists"-labels, because everyone seems to have a different opinion of what particular "-ism" words means. To use an example, Bernie Sanders' "socialism" is about sharing the wealth, meanwhile a lot of his opponents would argue because of the same word, it means he wants to install a Chinese-style dictatorship, or even worse, since it's a word that comes up in "Nazi", this style of fascism is also what Bernie wants. If someone says they're a Black Live Matters supporter, depending on your leanings you might perceive them as wanting more social justice, or as a sympathizer of gangs that burned local businesses. I suppose, then you can decide whether you trust them or not. The problem is, they're probably not an anarchist that likes burning buildings, but your classification might have put them in that box in your mind, and since you disagree with anarchism (oh, look, another -ism), you conclude dialog with that person is impossible, just because they identified themselves as something...
  - slim 5y ago
    absolutely. Conflicts are functional to segregation. It does not work without conflicts.
  - mkr-hn 5y ago
    I stopped identifying as atheist when I realized most religious people I encountered thought that meant I wanted to outlaw their religion. I inadvertently put myself in a box with people who were the main association folks had with that word. Sometimes I want this effect so I can help change impressions. Like: furry and nonbinary. The goal then is to help bridge the gap between stereotype and the real human variety contained by those words.
rjbwork 5y ago
>Why are people seemingly so drawn to identifying themselves as anything at all? IMO, not enough meditation or psychedelic use. On his podcast sometime this year, Sam Harris said something to the effect of "Why am I so sure that we are capable of moving past these politics of identity? That one does not have to so strongly, or at all, identify with their gender or race or country? Because I know that one does not even have to identify with the face that stares back at them in the mirror." This is a large part of the benefits of meditation and psychedelic use. The dissolution of the ego, the relinquishment of the seemingly strictly intertwined brain and body, the expansion of the consciousness beyond the self. Whether these experiences are actual reality or simply temporary perceptual illusions is somewhat immaterial to the benefits gained - namely a much more zen and less identity fraught mental modus operandi.
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  I agree on the help of meditation and maybe psychedelics to reflect on yourself and reach some consciousness. "Because I know that one does not even have to identify with the face that stares back at them in the mirror" But in my experience, this would be the point, where psychonauts start loosing the connection to physical reality. Because sure, my face is not my identity. But it reflects very strongly my physical identity/reality. So if your mind does not make a connection with the face it sees in the mirror, then I would start to worry, as then your mind and body is already quite seperated.
- harryf 5y ago
  From my own experiences with meditation and - strangely - doing stand-up comedy as a hobby, this is very true, although I don't have experience with psychedelics. I have a slightly different view of ego though. For me ego is a tool that no doubt had some evolutionary purpose. When my "ego is pumped" I tend to be highly active, motivated, confident and able to solve problems (or hunt for food in evolutionary terms) but once those problems are solved, the ego can be discarded for a time. From doing stand-up comedy, when you "bomb" (the audience doesn't laugh) it's extremely traumatic for the ego. I look at it now that afterwards I need to "reboot my ego" and in doing so, some ideas or things that I saw as part of my identity get discarded in the process. At this point, having bombed quite a few times, it feels like an accelerated learning process and it becomes less traumatic the less invested I am in my identity. Meanwhile - connected to the article - what's interesting to me is I think most people have a "tell" (poker term) when they are over-invested in some identity or idea, and that's when they say "I believe X" or "I believe Y". In my experience that's an indicator that they have accepted some conclusion or point of view, without having examined all the evidence that makes the conclusion valid. I think we'd do better with encouraging people to say "I don't know" more often than "I believe" e.g. "What happens after we die?" ... "I don't know" seems better than "I believe we go to Heaven"
hooande 5y ago
Identities are the basis of social communities. The idea of "The more labels you have for yourself, the dumber they make you" is correct. But it ignores the fact that there is a minimum number of labels that all socially adapted humans must use to identify themselves. These labels can be religious, political, hobbies, character traits, etc. You may label yourself as an "intelligent person" or a "hacker". Other people might choose to label themselves as a "dog person". It doesn't matter what the labels are. Everybody has to choose some number of labels and stick to them, at least for a while. The labels are what allow people to accomplish social tasks and form societies built on trust. Keeping your identity small by using few labels is good advice. But it's important to recognize that the labels are like an oil that keeps the machine of society running
- brnt 5y ago
  I make an effort to not say "I am X" but "I prefer X". I think it helps me automate decisions as pointed out above (I just have coffee in the morn) but does not make it sound or feel like any weighty major life decision, and therefore might make me feel slightly less predetermined (on occasion I might prefer tea!). Similarly, a younger me considered myself smart, now I prefer to think of myself as someone who is pretty good at using logic. Being able to say: "you can too!" seems more productive than saying "you're dumb and just don't get it". It has also lead to succesfully questioning some of my own preconceptions (why would I exclude myself from logical analysis?), while being criticized for 'being smart(ass)' feels more like an attack.
- SyzygistSix 5y ago
  One can still label one's self in terms of things they do rather than what one thinks they are. Rather than label one's self (or others) as "intelligent", one can think in terms of they are a person who takes time to be thoughtful/analytical/measured/takes tim to view all sides of a situation. Rather than think "I am a hacker", one can realize that they mean hacker as a shortcut (label) to mean they engage in DIY projects, or like to ae software, or like to automate things, or like to deconstruct software to find vulnerabilities, or like to deconstruct technology to use it for originally unintended purposes. Labels are convenient and useful but it is important to realize they are only a shorthand and that they can cause confusion or hurt as much as they help.
one2three4 5y ago
To keep your identity small is probably akin to becoming a small Buddha. Identity is even a dominant political trend in itself. "Identity politics". I agree with the premise of the post. I just cannot see how it can be done. I think it's better to learn to accept differences gracefully rather than minimizing the identity surface. It's also my way to test people and communities. Try to disagree on something they consider basic. They way they'll treat you shows who they really are.
- SyzygistSix 5y ago
  >I just cannot see how it can be done. Learning to think and communicate in terms of what people and things do rather than labels, i.e. what they are, has been helpful for me.
lbriner 5y ago
Maybe a major issue with politics in the current western view, is not that it is identity-based but that it is a large atomic decision. You either get everything from the Repuplicans/Conservatives/Right-wingish or everything from the Democrats/Labour/Socialist/Left-wingish. It is much easier to identity as broadly one wing or the other, so I will tend to vote one way even if some of my party's policies are terrible and some of the oppositions are great.
- confidantlake 5y ago
  Well put. And there are so many issues that it takes a lot of effort to even understand them all. So often you just say, well I care about / identify with my party on issues a, b, c so I vote for them. Issues x, y, z that I know little about I will support the party line because if my group says that is the way to go then that is the way to go.
MrBuddyCasino 5y ago
This is a good explanation of the famous Carl Schmitt quote, which I didn't found intuitive at first: “The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy.”
xyzelement 5y ago
// “I’m a dog person, not a cat person,” and other such bizarreness. Why are people seemingly so drawn to identifying themselves as anything at all? This is a powerful concept. When I studied yogic philosophy, the teacher pointed out how our language biases us towards identification. "I am hungry" in English reads like a statement of identity, whereas "j'ai faim" in French for example means "I HAVE a hunger". The hunger exists but it doesn't define my identity. This identification is a lie. If you stop drinking coffee and start drinking tea, you are still 100% you, plus you have evolved (whatever information caused you to switch your preference must be new to you) This gets into self limitation very quickly. "I AM bad at public speaking" means you don't try. "I don't HAVE public speaking skills" leaves room for choice to improve. There are a few things that are core values to who you really are. Those are important. Your choice of beverage isn't.
- jasode 5y ago
  >"I am hungry" in English reads like a statement of identity, whereas "j'ai faim" in French for example means "I HAVE a hunger". The hunger exists but it doesn't define my identity. >This identification is a lie. If you stop drinking coffee and start drinking tea, you are still 100% you, Your analysis of "I am hungry" is incorrect. In this case, the "am" is acting as a linking word and not about identity. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copula_(linguistics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copula_(linguistics) Or put another way, "I am hungry" can be thought of as a shortened version of "I am [currently having feelings of] hunger". If the more verbose sentence is not about identity but sensation, the shortened version is expressing the same idea.
  - xyzelement 5y ago
    Interesting tidbit. I guess I didn't argue linguistics with the teacher because I appreciated the larger philosophical point this was trying to teach. As an aside (not not saying you were doing this btw) whenever there's an analogy, some percentage of people will try to argue the analogy directly rather than try to understand the concept it's attempting to communicate.
  - Izkata 5y ago
brightball 5y ago
Putting it in terms I’ve seen used in sales training, people proactively respond to fear rather than personal betterment. From a sales perspective it becomes phrasing: “This will cost you $5,000 over the next 3 years if you don’t buy.” Vs “You will save $5,000...” People purchase something like 60% more often when using the fear inducing “cost you” phrasing. From a political standpoint, everything is driven by creating fear of the other party. Did you know that Republicans are all racist bigots who want you to be poor? Did you know that Democrats are all lazy, naive communists who want to control everyone’s lives and will bankrupt the entire country while taking away your guns so you can’t protect your family? Did you know Libertarians are all anarchists who want complete every man for himself chaos with no roads? It’s always “fear of other” marketing.
jogjayr 5y ago
> Why are people seemingly so drawn to identifying themselves as anything at all? I think pg actually has another article (can't find it now) where he discusses hacking identity to ingrain positive behaviors. For example making "I'm a 3 workouts/week person" part of your identity. If that's you, skipping a day in the gym is a serious blow to your identity and self-image. It worked for me.

deleted 5y ago

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runawaybottle 5y ago

Why are people seemingly so drawn to identifying themselves as anything at all? Sheer scale. There’s so many of us, and everyone is mostly replaceable. Not just in the economy, but in everything. The identity is the one flag in the ground that screams ‘I stand for something’. I’m upset at myself and everyone for bringing back high school into our adult world. The book bags adorned with band stickers, the clothes, the cliques, all making it clear in a superficial way ‘this is who I am’. Like a generation of adult Goth kids - we fucking get it. It just seems like we have to grow up, over and over.

ttonkytonk 5y ago
I like to think you got to live as long as one of the Mesopotamian kings before you're really an adult, i.e. 10,000+ years.

lliamander 5y ago

The paradox is that people seem to need a sense of identity. You can't have no identity. And there can be some sort of psychological satisfaction that comes from sharing an identity category with others.

SyzygistSix 5y ago
>You can't have no identity. True. But one can become less attached to their identity and learn to be more fluid and less rigid about it. Thinking in terms of what one does, rather than what they are, seems helpful to me.

visualradio 5y ago

Identity is used to automate decision making, so less energy is expended on conscious thought, so less time is spent weighing pros and cons of each alternative for every daily decision. If someone is 'dog person' they have routine where they take dog for walks, with positive effects such as exercise, without having to weigh pros and cons each time it is performed. If someone is coffee person, they do not have to weigh pros and cons of what to drink with breakfast. With politics this is perhaps bad, as we do not want people to make decisions unconciously, we want citizens to weigh pros and cons conciously, so that they are less easily duped. But for other daily activities it is useful to simplify decision making so conscious thought can be allocated elsewhere.

abecedarius 5y ago
If this is the explanation then shouldn't we find it weird how intensely factional humans are about identities? How much work marketers put into identifying segments and creating associations? A smart robot would also economize on decisions, but it wouldn't necessarily gang up with other Emacs robots against the vi robots.
- disgruntledphd2 5y ago
  Well of course it wouldn't because all robots are Emacs robots \s.
jimkleiber 5y ago
I appreciate how you framed this and helped me see how identity can help us streamline the decisions we make in what we do. I think identity can have a secondary effect of communicating to others those decisions we've made about what to do. For example, Someone: What do you do? Me: I give speeches. Someone: So you're a speaker? It can be a way to bundle a bunch of actions/beliefs/etc into something that is quicker/easier to communicate to others. For example, as a speaker, I may write speeches, deliver speeches, book clients, travel to different companies, and other actions. The challenges may come in the disagreements we have about which actions belong to which identities. For example, a speaker for some may be someone who speaks at corporations and gets paid for it. For others, it may be someone who gives motivational speeches to schools. For others, it may be someone who speaks on YouTube videos. So for each of those groups, they may hear "speaker" and associate different actions/beliefs/etc. and it can lead to conflict. I know I've seen some of this conflict when I tell someone I have created some Wordpress sites, they can immediately jump into "so you're a coder" and I can quickly think "no no, coders are people who create fullstack stuff, I'm just a tinkerer," etc etc.

pdamoc 5y ago

> Why are people seemingly so drawn to identifying themselves as anything at all? This is biologically preconditioned. We have brain wiring for identifying "Us" and "Them". BigThink put up a compilation video [1] on this topic. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14XSzWT4vI0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14XSzWT4vI0

coretx 5y ago
Ehw,no. The ego ( the prime source of identity ) only enters existence when we first encounter another. And even then, it's nature constantly differs, instigated by it's surroundings. In a nutshell, your "Us" and "Them" usually differ from mine and often mutates. Essentially, this makes divide et impera & us versus them thinking even more stupid as we humans have "theory of mind" for a trait. Unlike many animals. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_mind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_mind Edit: So it's a cultural rather than biological precondition. ( If a precondition at all. )
- bildung 5y ago
  I'd say both you and pdamoc are right :) For us being able to develop and change Ego and Alter, we need to have the mental capability for doing so. Which we obviously have, physically. Both Ego and Alter can and do change heavily through life, and thus are strongly affected by culture, socialization etc. They can't change unbridled, though: There are multiple facettes of personality that are pretty stable over time (like in the Big Five model), ignoring traumata etc. And there are limits to our mental capabilities, just like there are for reasoning and other aspects of mind. So, within the pysical borders our bodies give us, Ego and Alter can develop quite freely, heavily mediated by culture.

narrator 5y ago

I was talking with people I consider to be very smart and intellectual. We were discussing the California propositions. They did not want to hear the specifics of the propositions. They only wanted to know which organizations were supporting which propositions. This is what political discourse is these days. Figuring out which team you're on based on what political influencers agree with you. Nobody bothers to understand the issues and argue the merits of those issues. It's too easy to make an ideological mistake that way given how arbitrary and complex the rules are these days.

XorNot 5y ago
Why is this a problem? If there's a proposition out there the wording is going to be sufficiently dense that it's not super-likely a casual observer will have a good grasp of it's actual effect, whereas if you're gay and the local LGBTQI support organizations are coming out in favor of a proposition, then it's fairly unlikely this is something you want to oppose. There's a big difference between "this political party supports this legislation" and "this issue-focused group is supporting it". It's putting blinkers on to pretend that legislation is not frequently titled and described in summary terms, which are quite different to the legal, social or physical specifics of what the individual clauses will do and representative organizations provide a very important function by having the time and people on hand to properly understand issues which affect the groups they represent.
- pjerem 5y ago
  It is not a problem until it becomes a default way of thinking. If you don’t care about a law proposal, yes, why not default to the position of an organization you believe you share opinions with. But if you do care, like it’s a topic that matters to you, or when you do engage in a political debate, it should be your duty as a citizen to have your own point of view and to be ok to change it whenever needed. If you can’t do that, you are not ready for political discussion or debates. And it’s totally ok to answer « I don’t know / I don’t care about this topic » when invited to give your point. « Why should I care? » is totally ok if you think there is something.
- 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

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slim 5y ago

Identity is the fast mecanism for trust. Where one declares being part of a group by segregating himself from other groups. Thus you can apply to him the aggregated history of his group and decide if you can trust him.

bellyfullofbac 5y ago
But.. you apply to them the history as you think this history is, and this might be very different to what they think it is. This is IMO a great source of conflict. This is why I hate "-ism"/"-ists"-labels, because everyone seems to have a different opinion of what particular "-ism" words means. To use an example, Bernie Sanders' "socialism" is about sharing the wealth, meanwhile a lot of his opponents would argue because of the same word, it means he wants to install a Chinese-style dictatorship, or even worse, since it's a word that comes up in "Nazi", this style of fascism is also what Bernie wants. If someone says they're a Black Live Matters supporter, depending on your leanings you might perceive them as wanting more social justice, or as a sympathizer of gangs that burned local businesses. I suppose, then you can decide whether you trust them or not. The problem is, they're probably not an anarchist that likes burning buildings, but your classification might have put them in that box in your mind, and since you disagree with anarchism (oh, look, another -ism), you conclude dialog with that person is impossible, just because they identified themselves as something...
- slim 5y ago
  absolutely. Conflicts are functional to segregation. It does not work without conflicts.
- mkr-hn 5y ago
  I stopped identifying as atheist when I realized most religious people I encountered thought that meant I wanted to outlaw their religion. I inadvertently put myself in a box with people who were the main association folks had with that word. Sometimes I want this effect so I can help change impressions. Like: furry and nonbinary. The goal then is to help bridge the gap between stereotype and the real human variety contained by those words.

rjbwork 5y ago

>Why are people seemingly so drawn to identifying themselves as anything at all? IMO, not enough meditation or psychedelic use. On his podcast sometime this year, Sam Harris said something to the effect of "Why am I so sure that we are capable of moving past these politics of identity? That one does not have to so strongly, or at all, identify with their gender or race or country? Because I know that one does not even have to identify with the face that stares back at them in the mirror." This is a large part of the benefits of meditation and psychedelic use. The dissolution of the ego, the relinquishment of the seemingly strictly intertwined brain and body, the expansion of the consciousness beyond the self. Whether these experiences are actual reality or simply temporary perceptual illusions is somewhat immaterial to the benefits gained - namely a much more zen and less identity fraught mental modus operandi.

hutzlibu 5y ago
I agree on the help of meditation and maybe psychedelics to reflect on yourself and reach some consciousness. "Because I know that one does not even have to identify with the face that stares back at them in the mirror" But in my experience, this would be the point, where psychonauts start loosing the connection to physical reality. Because sure, my face is not my identity. But it reflects very strongly my physical identity/reality. So if your mind does not make a connection with the face it sees in the mirror, then I would start to worry, as then your mind and body is already quite seperated.
harryf 5y ago
From my own experiences with meditation and - strangely - doing stand-up comedy as a hobby, this is very true, although I don't have experience with psychedelics. I have a slightly different view of ego though. For me ego is a tool that no doubt had some evolutionary purpose. When my "ego is pumped" I tend to be highly active, motivated, confident and able to solve problems (or hunt for food in evolutionary terms) but once those problems are solved, the ego can be discarded for a time. From doing stand-up comedy, when you "bomb" (the audience doesn't laugh) it's extremely traumatic for the ego. I look at it now that afterwards I need to "reboot my ego" and in doing so, some ideas or things that I saw as part of my identity get discarded in the process. At this point, having bombed quite a few times, it feels like an accelerated learning process and it becomes less traumatic the less invested I am in my identity. Meanwhile - connected to the article - what's interesting to me is I think most people have a "tell" (poker term) when they are over-invested in some identity or idea, and that's when they say "I believe X" or "I believe Y". In my experience that's an indicator that they have accepted some conclusion or point of view, without having examined all the evidence that makes the conclusion valid. I think we'd do better with encouraging people to say "I don't know" more often than "I believe" e.g. "What happens after we die?" ... "I don't know" seems better than "I believe we go to Heaven"

hooande 5y ago

Identities are the basis of social communities. The idea of "The more labels you have for yourself, the dumber they make you" is correct. But it ignores the fact that there is a minimum number of labels that all socially adapted humans must use to identify themselves. These labels can be religious, political, hobbies, character traits, etc. You may label yourself as an "intelligent person" or a "hacker". Other people might choose to label themselves as a "dog person". It doesn't matter what the labels are. Everybody has to choose some number of labels and stick to them, at least for a while. The labels are what allow people to accomplish social tasks and form societies built on trust. Keeping your identity small by using few labels is good advice. But it's important to recognize that the labels are like an oil that keeps the machine of society running

brnt 5y ago
I make an effort to not say "I am X" but "I prefer X". I think it helps me automate decisions as pointed out above (I just have coffee in the morn) but does not make it sound or feel like any weighty major life decision, and therefore might make me feel slightly less predetermined (on occasion I might prefer tea!). Similarly, a younger me considered myself smart, now I prefer to think of myself as someone who is pretty good at using logic. Being able to say: "you can too!" seems more productive than saying "you're dumb and just don't get it". It has also lead to succesfully questioning some of my own preconceptions (why would I exclude myself from logical analysis?), while being criticized for 'being smart(ass)' feels more like an attack.
SyzygistSix 5y ago
One can still label one's self in terms of things they do rather than what one thinks they are. Rather than label one's self (or others) as "intelligent", one can think in terms of they are a person who takes time to be thoughtful/analytical/measured/takes tim to view all sides of a situation. Rather than think "I am a hacker", one can realize that they mean hacker as a shortcut (label) to mean they engage in DIY projects, or like to ae software, or like to automate things, or like to deconstruct software to find vulnerabilities, or like to deconstruct technology to use it for originally unintended purposes. Labels are convenient and useful but it is important to realize they are only a shorthand and that they can cause confusion or hurt as much as they help.

one2three4 5y ago

To keep your identity small is probably akin to becoming a small Buddha. Identity is even a dominant political trend in itself. "Identity politics". I agree with the premise of the post. I just cannot see how it can be done. I think it's better to learn to accept differences gracefully rather than minimizing the identity surface. It's also my way to test people and communities. Try to disagree on something they consider basic. They way they'll treat you shows who they really are.

SyzygistSix 5y ago
>I just cannot see how it can be done. Learning to think and communicate in terms of what people and things do rather than labels, i.e. what they are, has been helpful for me.

lbriner 5y ago

Maybe a major issue with politics in the current western view, is not that it is identity-based but that it is a large atomic decision. You either get everything from the Repuplicans/Conservatives/Right-wingish or everything from the Democrats/Labour/Socialist/Left-wingish. It is much easier to identity as broadly one wing or the other, so I will tend to vote one way even if some of my party's policies are terrible and some of the oppositions are great.

confidantlake 5y ago
Well put. And there are so many issues that it takes a lot of effort to even understand them all. So often you just say, well I care about / identify with my party on issues a, b, c so I vote for them. Issues x, y, z that I know little about I will support the party line because if my group says that is the way to go then that is the way to go.

MrBuddyCasino 5y ago

This is a good explanation of the famous Carl Schmitt quote, which I didn't found intuitive at first: “The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy.”

xyzelement 5y ago

// “I’m a dog person, not a cat person,” and other such bizarreness. Why are people seemingly so drawn to identifying themselves as anything at all? This is a powerful concept. When I studied yogic philosophy, the teacher pointed out how our language biases us towards identification. "I am hungry" in English reads like a statement of identity, whereas "j'ai faim" in French for example means "I HAVE a hunger". The hunger exists but it doesn't define my identity. This identification is a lie. If you stop drinking coffee and start drinking tea, you are still 100% you, plus you have evolved (whatever information caused you to switch your preference must be new to you) This gets into self limitation very quickly. "I AM bad at public speaking" means you don't try. "I don't HAVE public speaking skills" leaves room for choice to improve. There are a few things that are core values to who you really are. Those are important. Your choice of beverage isn't.

jasode 5y ago
>"I am hungry" in English reads like a statement of identity, whereas "j'ai faim" in French for example means "I HAVE a hunger". The hunger exists but it doesn't define my identity. >This identification is a lie. If you stop drinking coffee and start drinking tea, you are still 100% you, Your analysis of "I am hungry" is incorrect. In this case, the "am" is acting as a linking word and not about identity. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copula_(linguistics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copula_(linguistics) Or put another way, "I am hungry" can be thought of as a shortened version of "I am [currently having feelings of] hunger". If the more verbose sentence is not about identity but sensation, the shortened version is expressing the same idea.
- xyzelement 5y ago
  Interesting tidbit. I guess I didn't argue linguistics with the teacher because I appreciated the larger philosophical point this was trying to teach. As an aside (not not saying you were doing this btw) whenever there's an analogy, some percentage of people will try to argue the analogy directly rather than try to understand the concept it's attempting to communicate.
- Izkata 5y ago

brightball 5y ago

Putting it in terms I’ve seen used in sales training, people proactively respond to fear rather than personal betterment. From a sales perspective it becomes phrasing: “This will cost you $5,000 over the next 3 years if you don’t buy.” Vs “You will save $5,000...” People purchase something like 60% more often when using the fear inducing “cost you” phrasing. From a political standpoint, everything is driven by creating fear of the other party. Did you know that Republicans are all racist bigots who want you to be poor? Did you know that Democrats are all lazy, naive communists who want to control everyone’s lives and will bankrupt the entire country while taking away your guns so you can’t protect your family? Did you know Libertarians are all anarchists who want complete every man for himself chaos with no roads? It’s always “fear of other” marketing.

jogjayr 5y ago

> Why are people seemingly so drawn to identifying themselves as anything at all? I think pg actually has another article (can't find it now) where he discusses hacking identity to ingrain positive behaviors. For example making "I'm a 3 workouts/week person" part of your identity. If that's you, skipping a day in the gym is a serious blow to your identity and self-image. It worked for me.