Keep your identity fluid

When I first encountered the idea of keeping your identity small, I found it resonating. To loosen an attachment to the rigidity of an identity feels natural to me. Likewise, to assume an identity and wear it on your sleeve feels unnatural to me. Either way, my personal relation to identity isn’t something to be projected onto society writ large. There’s something distinctly human about identity, something fundamental to our programming that makes it particularly sticky. Plus, I don’t think “detach from your identity” has much appeal in an age of personal branding.

Instead, I’ve come around to the idea of keeping your identity fluid. Identities are useful to humans. It’s how we cooperate, form tribes, and build trust. It’s how we, as social creatures, invent unique relations to each other. Should I encounter a stranger at a bar, we might relate to each other on the grounds of growing up in California, or on the grounds that, regardless of where we grew up, we both found our way to Colorado. We might find common interest in culture, music, or sports (however unlikely). In short of any commonality, we might at least raise a glass to our shared love of a cold beer on a summer evening. The point is that in order to interact with each other, humans instinctively reach for common ground to stand on, like a drunken TCP handshake with which to establish mutual connection at our local bar.

To quote Amartya Sen:

In our normal lives, we see ourselves as members of a variety of groups—we belong to all of them. A person’s citizenship, residence, geographic origin, gender, class, politics, profession, employment, food habits, sports interests, taste in music, social commitments, etc., make us members of a variety of groups. Each of these collectivities, to all of which this person simultaneously belongs, gives her a particular identity. None of them can be taken to be the person’s only identity or singular membership category.

We choose our identities based on what is useful in a given moment. To be fluid with your identity is to increase the odds of meaningful connection which, in spite of our technological capacity to connect with anyone and everyone, seems to be something that our current moment is lacking.

Aside

Identities have a dark side. The above quote was taken from Sen’s book, Identity and Violence. In it, he argues that the flattening of our diverse identities into singular identities is easily manipulable and often weaponized. It’s fertile ground for conflict whereas plurality of identity serve as seeds for harmony.

The main hope of harmony in our troubled world lies in the plurality of our identities, which cut across each other and work against sharp divisions around one single hardened line of vehement division that allegedly cannot be resisted.