This is SUCH "Paul Graham" advice - useful mostly to people who sit on top of a hierarchy of power which does not demand any of their personal attention.
I think the good version of this advice is: actively evaluate what is important to you and what you can do to maintain and further it. We are all involved, to one degree or another, in systems and processes larger than ourselves. By definition, our influence on those systems is limited - but we may be able to increase or decrease our influence through work and engagement. It's healthy to reflect on what you are investing your time and energy into and how those investments will impact your life. There is no single right or wrong answer - but you will benefit from forming an opinion!
It's unhealthy to falsely base your self-worth on giant political movements outside your control - but it's equally unhealthy to ignore the impact you experience from the issues of the day. Be reflective in how you associate yourself with things, but no one should pretend that they are not subject to the world (unless, it seems, you're at a "Paul Graham" level of wealth and independence).
What a weird take. None of this has anything to do with wealth or class. It's about avoiding making arbitrary things so dear to you that you are unable to question anything about them, or even have productive, honest discussions about them.
Your "good version" doesn't really make sense to me, and seems to have nothing to do with what the article is about.
It's generally the wealthy and the high class who can pick and choose how much they feel the impact of politics. Most people don't get to choose how large "their identity" is - as others will put them into groups and make decisions based on those groups. This way of engaging with it - which is perfectly sensible from his point of view - it just applies to very few conversations (though, of course, how upset we should get about javascript is one of them).
Since Paul wrote that, people have made so many more things part of their identity, including JavaScript which he points out in the essay was not a particularly identity-charged topic in 2009. With the rise of the frameworks, it has become an identity-charged topic with JS devs now segregated into tribes that insist on using their preferred framework for every webapp they build. It's not about assessing the right tool for the job based on evidence or metrics, it's about a belief system that the tribe's preferred framework is always the right tool for the job.
Ultimately I think Paul was right and I think about this essay a lot. The best solution is to make as few things part of your identity as possible. For JS devs, that means you should be more willing to use a different framework from time to time or no framework at all. Decide what to use based on an objective assessment of what the right tool for the job is, not what's trendy in your tribe.
JavaScript is just wrong example. It very early has become uber-tool, when appear first specification of ECMA-script (essentially same gramma, but was universal language not tied to eny platform or specifics).
But if talk about business, I remember Ford's phrase: "develop product, which will fit expectations of 80% of your clients; 10% will just change mind; 10% will pay additional money for customization".
I think there's an industry trend or career pressure towards being a member of a JS "tribe". Companies don't believe in people learning new technologies, instead they only want people with lots of experience in their specific framework and nothing more.
I've used React, Vue, Elm, Vanilla JS, and some legacy JQuery in production over my last three years of work (along with Next, Nuxt, Gatsby, Hugo, and many others).
I thought that would make me a well rounded candidate with an understanding of different trade offs and an ability to pick up new things. Now that I'm looking for a new job though it seems like most places are looking to hire someone 100% React dev, and my history of framework diversity has become more of a liability than an asset somehow.
In tech, people ascribe you an identity as much as you claim one yourself.
When I am not around, I have been described to people as "A DevOps guy" or "A Network Guy". People then treat me accordingly. But, being human (or an approximation thereof), I am not just one thing.
I often skip the fact that i work in tech in certain circles in the beginning.
Instead i'm just a business consultant, or working with project management.
Probably a bit cowardlike but people really love to put other people in boxes and for a lot of people working in tech means "oh so you're one of those super nerdy people that is naively optimistic about technology, is socially stunted, loves infantile pop culture and has zero sense of aesthetics" as an example.
And not that there is anything wrong with being that type of person (i also have some of those traits) there is very limited elasticity in peoples image of you after you've told what you work with, at least in Scandinavia where "you are your career".
I have a friend who works on movie productions and everyone always seem to find it amazing and extrapolate all kinds of positive stuff about him, while the opposite can happen with tech and unless i also make some weird underhanded disclaimers like "I'm actually also really into x genre of music and have played since i was a kid" or "well i actually love reading obscure literature", "i actually really like travelling, that's why this career was so great for me" people will just assume i do nothing besides program 24/7 - hyperbole yes but still.
Come on, the dentist is also the dentist... taking those titles to personally imo is a too big identitiy to start with. We know you are all individuals ;)
I've always tried to go with (or steer toward) something like "a problem solver".
I just like to solve problems. Sometimes it's builds and deploys, sometimes it's the network, and sometimes it's the car in the driveway. Give me a few, I'll figure something out.
> In tech, people ascribe you an identity as much as you claim one yourself.
Indeed that is true of most kinds of identity. People will ascribe you racial and gender identities which may or may not match the ones you wish to claim for example.
I think with JS frameworks, it's more a case of moving house using the hatchback parked in your driveway, instead of going out and buying a brand new truck. Or hammering tent pegs with the side of a rock instead of bringing a hammer with you. There's a cost to buying and learning new tools.
That would be an easier argument to accept if people were more honest about it. Or honest with themselves about it and more self-aware that that's really what it's about: not wanting to learn new things or the perception (real or otherwise) of lacking the time to. But too often instead it seems like people rationalize the desire to avoid learning new things by making pseudo arguments that the thing they already like is the best option when in reality it's mostly just a post hoc justification of a preconceived notion.
It seems to be the thing nowadays to be preoccupied with the notion of your own identity, and I can't help but feel like it's just navel gazing. Maybe it's social media and the culture of self promotion, but I find it pretty hollow and uninteresting.
I have a young kid in my family that's fixated with gender and sexuality and they said one day "I just want to get diagnosed so I know what I am," to which I said "It's not what you are that's important, it's what you want to do." That seemed to be an epiphany for them.
Poor kid. He's been subjected to what amounts to child abuse. Sadly, that is the norm.
Some say that we have an identity crisis in part because of our liberal, existentialist, non-committal notions of "freedom". It's also what drives much of the opportunism of FOMO and ADHD. The very notions of sacrifice, commitment, suffering for a good, and devotion repel us (whatever "commitments" we do have are merely emotional phantasms, changing as the wind blows). We reject our familial, communal, ethnic, national, religious commitments -- even commitment to the truth as such -- which we have come to detest as "restrictive" or "oppressive" in favor of a misguided notion of "autonomy"...except that this "autonomy" is achieved precisely by rejecting all that helps us understand who we are from different angles and at varying depths. We become socially alienated and cut off from tradition as such, saddled now with the responsibility of figuring it all out ourselves. What a Herculean task!
Of course, nature abhors a vacuum. The irony is that the abolition of authority and tradition only predisposes us to the tyranny of power. (Incidentally, that's how "community organizing" works: it foments animosity against legitimate authority and its legitimate exercise and then uses it to unseat that authority, whether personal or in the form of tradition, not to "free" people from the real or imagined tyranny of that authority, but to remove what is an obstacle to the power of the dictator who outstrips any of the abuses of his predecessors.) Nobody is easier to control than an ignorant, irrational, atomized human being enslaved to his emotions and to his desires, in a state of fear, disorientation, and disregulation. A man has as many masters as he has vices, spake Augustine.
It is little wonder that, given this crippled and desiccated state, we look for our "identities" in superstition and petty nonsense and in what remains, what is base, as if we were trying to divine the future from tea leaves. We think that the kernel of the "true self" lies hidden in what is base, not in human nature as a whole and what it is ordered toward. Reason is a liar. The orgasm is our beatific vision. Consumption is our creed. Emotion is our revelation.
"Child abuse"? Please, give me a break. This is no different to any kid muddling through adolescence and trying to make sense of their emotions as they grow up. Just because it's about gender and sexuality doesn't make it child abuse.
Doesn't land for me. I'm queer, my identity isn't huge, but it does include queer.
That alone is enough to make some folks want to do violence to me (I have first hand experience with this).
Telling me to "stop being x" is a bad vibe when x is something intrinsic about me AND the anti x folks hate me just for existing. I just want to live my life.
The point of PG is that to properly reason about X you have to look at it "from outside".
A mental conditioning fogs judgement. "Identifications" are mental conditionings that make you lose intellectual freedom.
An example from other authors:
> For instance, modern education often does much damage when young students are taught dubious political notions and then enthusiastically push these notions on the rest of us. The pushing seldom convinces others. But as students pound into their mental habits what they are pushing out, the students are often permanently damaged. Educational institutions that create a climate where much of this goes on are, I think, irresponsible. It is important not to thus put one’s brain in chains before one has come anywhere near his full potentiality as a rational person
~~~ Charlie Munger
Edit:
just like the mental process described by PG has a strong taste of Popper's judgement on "Marx Hegel and Freud" - a consolidated cultural idea -, the warning against "identifications" has had quite strong proponents. One of them (indirectly but encompassing) is over 2500 years old and "quite preponderant".
> A mental conditioning fogs judgement. "Identifications" are mental conditionings that make you lose intellectual freedom.
Freedom and structure are always in contention as yin-yang, and you're completely ignoring the benefits structure can bring. I'd guess OP finds a lot of value in labeling themselves "queer", in that a lot of things that were ambiguous or confusing become clearer.
"Queer" is a vague identity with political connotations, by which I mean, the gay people who call themselves "queer" tend to be a lot more woke-leftist than the gay people who don't call themselves "queer". It's absolutely an idea and a constructed identity. The facts of the matter are things like sexual preferences and behaviors, but you don't inherently need to construct an identity around them. On the other hand, sometimes you need to be aware that even if you don't identify yourself, you will be identified by others, which you're going to have to deal with.
If you act according to your Real Preference RP, then RP is a fact; if you Role-Play, it is also a constraint.
Edit: there is also a notable third position: when you act from a what you judge a Right Position RP - you do what is right. It must be noted because it may look like an "identification", but it is different in important ways.
The author may be suffering from a form of blub paradox when it comes to how he identifies, which I would assume include white, male, rich, smart, founder, and writer.
It's easy for him to discard "lesser" identities like "javascript programmer" because that doesn't cost him anything.
Wrong assumption. We do not necessarily "identify". All those terms in that list can be fully avoided as identifications. No, it is not normal to be "identified" with any of that.
Not sure what your point is? It's okay to be white (or any other ethnicity), and it's okay to be queer - no matter how many people would tell you otherwise. That doesn't mean you have to take either of these and make it the be-all and end-all of your identity. The difference should be obvious - it was surely obvious enough to PG.
He doesn't tell you to stop being x. The title says keep your identity small, implying he knows it's impossible.
I'm not saying this is true, it's obviously not, but what if we lived in a universe where science objectively found that being queer was an actual disease and could be cured with a pill? This is the science and logic in that universe. So in that universe does your identity then preclude you from having a scientific and logical conclusion about being queer? If you didn't have that identity I would say it would be easier to be objective about that topic in that universe?
This is the thing Graham is talking about. I hope you can see the purpose of the (obviously untrue and just hypothetical) example, despite it being negatively related to your identity. I think it's still possible to disassociate a little bit even if it's an intrinsic part of your identity.
Good point. The essay misses examples of what is an inescapable part of one's identity.
To answer other commenters: sometimes being queer can be as obvious to others as your skin color (because you are holding the hand of your partner, because you are at the beginning of a transition, etc...) and, using PG's criteria, is one of those things that other people will discuss without expertise (sometimes very negatively).
And, even if it is not obvious that one is queer, it is one of those topics where showing that you belong to that group (when you can afford it physically and mentally) is important. Both as a signal to other members (to show them that they are not alone) and as a way to normalize your identity (which, in the longer run and as a group effort, helps a lot to reduce bad reactions).
You're also conflating unchangeable characteristics (such as skin color, or sexual orientation) and some feeling of group belonging. We would certainly find it a bit weird if someone felt that they "belonged" in a valued group merely due to, e.g. having light-colored skin, and expressed a need to "show off" that specific fact about themselves to others. That's key to the "identity" distinction PG is making here.
At the risk of being wildly misunderstood, you can still choose to minimize your "queerness footprint" in public discussions. You can let your experience with that inform your opinions without making it into An Issue that you are queer.
It's not easy, but it's possible and I think a lot of our perception of people "at the top" being uniformly a particular profile is partly a reflection of the fact that people who get good at not making their identity into An Issue are the ones who get more tolerance in public spaces. I think this gets misinterpreted by many people as "That person is not queer" rather than "We don't know. They haven't actually said and it is a private matter anyway."
> You can let your experience with that inform your opinions without making it into An Issue
Right, and that's exactly the point of the article that I think a lot of people aren't getting here. Even the things that you "objectively are" need not be these "core self-image" things that can lead to blind spots and a lack of ability to have reasonable discussion. But it's certainly understandable when something like that does become core, especially when someone has experienced discrimination or oppression because of it.
> I think this gets misinterpreted by many people as "That person is not queer" rather than "We don't know. They haven't actually said and it is a private matter anyway."
I think the "that person is not queer" often comes from a place of frustration that the person "at the top" isn't using their position and status to help normalize being queer (or whatever the marginalized group is). And that not doing that is essentially hiding and trying to fit in (and, further, "denying who they are"), in order to attain and keep those "on the top" benefits and status.
Personally, I think it's not ok to expect someone to become an activist (or at least publicly acknowledge who they "are") just because they have position and status, but I can understand why it's frustrating when someone doesn't.
I wonder if people ask themselves, "am I a good artifact of criticism?"
Obectively, your identity is a set of meaningless reflections you have cohered into a narrative that centralizes your subjective experience. Subjectively, your identity is a story you protect and use a constant process of retroactive continuity to moralize and preserve it.
They are both artifacts of language, which is not a substrate or the real that persists when you are gone. Your identity is chosen. The value of an axiom like spiritual faith is that your choice can come from the reflection of something objective, persistent, and compassionate, instead of the reflections and artifacts of the language and meaning you have been presented with - often as a yoke. Be what you choose, not what may have happened, and especially not what someone who wants something from you tells you.
If your identity is the artifact of dialectic materialism, you have already accepted that you are a subject, working off an indenture in the name of earthly material justice, in pursuit of redemption from an imaginary critic who will never yield. I believe we have choice. Let one thing into your identity, and the rest becomes obvious, imo.
My view is that having a "small identity" is basically impossible in any practical sense. Many issues are inherently subjective, and even for issues that are (philosophically speaking) objective, actual human individuals rarely have the time or the access to data to form a genuinely objective view. We all use heuristic thinking, all the time, which is inevitably massively biased by all kinds of things related to our dispositions and prior experiences (aka identity).
The danger is when you make the fiction of "not having an identity" a big part of your actual identity, which can make you even more blind to your biases than everyone else.
I think a much more productive route to being a more effective thinker is to accept you have an identity just the same as everyone else - and invest time and effort into interrogating what that identity is and what biases and blind-spots it might lead to. This is still far from perfect, of course.
You can also just not take a stance on many things. I feel like a lot of the things we feel strongly about, and often end up as parts of our identity, just... don't really matter. For things where you do need to take a stance, perhaps because there's a decision that needs to be made, there's still a difference between holding a loose opinion (that you allow to be challenged, and are willing to change your mind in the face of new evidence or a better argument), and making that opinion a part of your very core (where you will just stand firm and ignore all criticism).
Your identity is not fully in your control but not fully out of it either. One can make a conscious choice to “find a tribe” or to not do that.
I believe this essay argues that one should make a conscious choice to avoid tribe affiliation (even if that affiliation is only in your own head) in order to be a better thinker.
I guess I'm arguing that a conscious choice not to find a tribe just leads to unconsciously finding a tribe instead.
Maybe the real answer is both, though - try to consciously avoid tribal thinking, but also acknowledge that it's likely to creep in anyway, and be aware when it does.
"If people can't think clearly about anything that has become part of their identity, then all other things being equal, the best plan is to let as few things into your identity as possible."
No thank you; I do not want to live in a passionless society. Unlike the claims of the article, people can and do have reasoned discussions about both politics and religion.
Maybe better advice is to not take on as identities things that you just took over from other people without questioning. Also know what the other side is thinking before deciding what belongs in your identity and what not. There are things that you should believe because you are you. There are also things that should be firmly rejected. It actually takes a fair bit of living before one knows things definitively. But there is also the danger of being too open minded. One can be so open minded that ones brain falls out...
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I think the good version of this advice is: actively evaluate what is important to you and what you can do to maintain and further it. We are all involved, to one degree or another, in systems and processes larger than ourselves. By definition, our influence on those systems is limited - but we may be able to increase or decrease our influence through work and engagement. It's healthy to reflect on what you are investing your time and energy into and how those investments will impact your life. There is no single right or wrong answer - but you will benefit from forming an opinion!
It's unhealthy to falsely base your self-worth on giant political movements outside your control - but it's equally unhealthy to ignore the impact you experience from the issues of the day. Be reflective in how you associate yourself with things, but no one should pretend that they are not subject to the world (unless, it seems, you're at a "Paul Graham" level of wealth and independence).
Your "good version" doesn't really make sense to me, and seems to have nothing to do with what the article is about.
Ultimately I think Paul was right and I think about this essay a lot. The best solution is to make as few things part of your identity as possible. For JS devs, that means you should be more willing to use a different framework from time to time or no framework at all. Decide what to use based on an objective assessment of what the right tool for the job is, not what's trendy in your tribe.
It's not really about "the right tool for the job". It's about protecting and promoting the tribe's investment.
But if talk about business, I remember Ford's phrase: "develop product, which will fit expectations of 80% of your clients; 10% will just change mind; 10% will pay additional money for customization".
I've used React, Vue, Elm, Vanilla JS, and some legacy JQuery in production over my last three years of work (along with Next, Nuxt, Gatsby, Hugo, and many others).
I thought that would make me a well rounded candidate with an understanding of different trade offs and an ability to pick up new things. Now that I'm looking for a new job though it seems like most places are looking to hire someone 100% React dev, and my history of framework diversity has become more of a liability than an asset somehow.
When I am not around, I have been described to people as "A DevOps guy" or "A Network Guy". People then treat me accordingly. But, being human (or an approximation thereof), I am not just one thing.
Probably a bit cowardlike but people really love to put other people in boxes and for a lot of people working in tech means "oh so you're one of those super nerdy people that is naively optimistic about technology, is socially stunted, loves infantile pop culture and has zero sense of aesthetics" as an example.
And not that there is anything wrong with being that type of person (i also have some of those traits) there is very limited elasticity in peoples image of you after you've told what you work with, at least in Scandinavia where "you are your career".
I have a friend who works on movie productions and everyone always seem to find it amazing and extrapolate all kinds of positive stuff about him, while the opposite can happen with tech and unless i also make some weird underhanded disclaimers like "I'm actually also really into x genre of music and have played since i was a kid" or "well i actually love reading obscure literature", "i actually really like travelling, that's why this career was so great for me" people will just assume i do nothing besides program 24/7 - hyperbole yes but still.
Can anyone relate?
I just like to solve problems. Sometimes it's builds and deploys, sometimes it's the network, and sometimes it's the car in the driveway. Give me a few, I'll figure something out.
Indeed that is true of most kinds of identity. People will ascribe you racial and gender identities which may or may not match the ones you wish to claim for example.
Deleted Comment
I have a young kid in my family that's fixated with gender and sexuality and they said one day "I just want to get diagnosed so I know what I am," to which I said "It's not what you are that's important, it's what you want to do." That seemed to be an epiphany for them.
Some say that we have an identity crisis in part because of our liberal, existentialist, non-committal notions of "freedom". It's also what drives much of the opportunism of FOMO and ADHD. The very notions of sacrifice, commitment, suffering for a good, and devotion repel us (whatever "commitments" we do have are merely emotional phantasms, changing as the wind blows). We reject our familial, communal, ethnic, national, religious commitments -- even commitment to the truth as such -- which we have come to detest as "restrictive" or "oppressive" in favor of a misguided notion of "autonomy"...except that this "autonomy" is achieved precisely by rejecting all that helps us understand who we are from different angles and at varying depths. We become socially alienated and cut off from tradition as such, saddled now with the responsibility of figuring it all out ourselves. What a Herculean task!
Of course, nature abhors a vacuum. The irony is that the abolition of authority and tradition only predisposes us to the tyranny of power. (Incidentally, that's how "community organizing" works: it foments animosity against legitimate authority and its legitimate exercise and then uses it to unseat that authority, whether personal or in the form of tradition, not to "free" people from the real or imagined tyranny of that authority, but to remove what is an obstacle to the power of the dictator who outstrips any of the abuses of his predecessors.) Nobody is easier to control than an ignorant, irrational, atomized human being enslaved to his emotions and to his desires, in a state of fear, disorientation, and disregulation. A man has as many masters as he has vices, spake Augustine.
It is little wonder that, given this crippled and desiccated state, we look for our "identities" in superstition and petty nonsense and in what remains, what is base, as if we were trying to divine the future from tea leaves. We think that the kernel of the "true self" lies hidden in what is base, not in human nature as a whole and what it is ordered toward. Reason is a liar. The orgasm is our beatific vision. Consumption is our creed. Emotion is our revelation.
That alone is enough to make some folks want to do violence to me (I have first hand experience with this).
Telling me to "stop being x" is a bad vibe when x is something intrinsic about me AND the anti x folks hate me just for existing. I just want to live my life.
A mental conditioning fogs judgement. "Identifications" are mental conditionings that make you lose intellectual freedom.
An example from other authors:
> For instance, modern education often does much damage when young students are taught dubious political notions and then enthusiastically push these notions on the rest of us. The pushing seldom convinces others. But as students pound into their mental habits what they are pushing out, the students are often permanently damaged. Educational institutions that create a climate where much of this goes on are, I think, irresponsible. It is important not to thus put one’s brain in chains before one has come anywhere near his full potentiality as a rational person
~~~ Charlie Munger
Edit:
just like the mental process described by PG has a strong taste of Popper's judgement on "Marx Hegel and Freud" - a consolidated cultural idea -, the warning against "identifications" has had quite strong proponents. One of them (indirectly but encompassing) is over 2500 years old and "quite preponderant".
Freedom and structure are always in contention as yin-yang, and you're completely ignoring the benefits structure can bring. I'd guess OP finds a lot of value in labeling themselves "queer", in that a lot of things that were ambiguous or confusing become clearer.
If you act according to your Real Preference RP, then RP is a fact; if you Role-Play, it is also a constraint.
Edit: there is also a notable third position: when you act from a what you judge a Right Position RP - you do what is right. It must be noted because it may look like an "identification", but it is different in important ways.
It's easy for him to discard "lesser" identities like "javascript programmer" because that doesn't cost him anything.
Wrong assumption. We do not necessarily "identify". All those terms in that list can be fully avoided as identifications. No, it is not normal to be "identified" with any of that.
I'm not saying this is true, it's obviously not, but what if we lived in a universe where science objectively found that being queer was an actual disease and could be cured with a pill? This is the science and logic in that universe. So in that universe does your identity then preclude you from having a scientific and logical conclusion about being queer? If you didn't have that identity I would say it would be easier to be objective about that topic in that universe?
This is the thing Graham is talking about. I hope you can see the purpose of the (obviously untrue and just hypothetical) example, despite it being negatively related to your identity. I think it's still possible to disassociate a little bit even if it's an intrinsic part of your identity.
Deleted Comment
To answer other commenters: sometimes being queer can be as obvious to others as your skin color (because you are holding the hand of your partner, because you are at the beginning of a transition, etc...) and, using PG's criteria, is one of those things that other people will discuss without expertise (sometimes very negatively).
And, even if it is not obvious that one is queer, it is one of those topics where showing that you belong to that group (when you can afford it physically and mentally) is important. Both as a signal to other members (to show them that they are not alone) and as a way to normalize your identity (which, in the longer run and as a group effort, helps a lot to reduce bad reactions).
It's not easy, but it's possible and I think a lot of our perception of people "at the top" being uniformly a particular profile is partly a reflection of the fact that people who get good at not making their identity into An Issue are the ones who get more tolerance in public spaces. I think this gets misinterpreted by many people as "That person is not queer" rather than "We don't know. They haven't actually said and it is a private matter anyway."
Right, and that's exactly the point of the article that I think a lot of people aren't getting here. Even the things that you "objectively are" need not be these "core self-image" things that can lead to blind spots and a lack of ability to have reasonable discussion. But it's certainly understandable when something like that does become core, especially when someone has experienced discrimination or oppression because of it.
> I think this gets misinterpreted by many people as "That person is not queer" rather than "We don't know. They haven't actually said and it is a private matter anyway."
I think the "that person is not queer" often comes from a place of frustration that the person "at the top" isn't using their position and status to help normalize being queer (or whatever the marginalized group is). And that not doing that is essentially hiding and trying to fit in (and, further, "denying who they are"), in order to attain and keep those "on the top" benefits and status.
Personally, I think it's not ok to expect someone to become an activist (or at least publicly acknowledge who they "are") just because they have position and status, but I can understand why it's frustrating when someone doesn't.
Dead Comment
Obectively, your identity is a set of meaningless reflections you have cohered into a narrative that centralizes your subjective experience. Subjectively, your identity is a story you protect and use a constant process of retroactive continuity to moralize and preserve it.
They are both artifacts of language, which is not a substrate or the real that persists when you are gone. Your identity is chosen. The value of an axiom like spiritual faith is that your choice can come from the reflection of something objective, persistent, and compassionate, instead of the reflections and artifacts of the language and meaning you have been presented with - often as a yoke. Be what you choose, not what may have happened, and especially not what someone who wants something from you tells you.
If your identity is the artifact of dialectic materialism, you have already accepted that you are a subject, working off an indenture in the name of earthly material justice, in pursuit of redemption from an imaginary critic who will never yield. I believe we have choice. Let one thing into your identity, and the rest becomes obvious, imo.
Dead Comment
The danger is when you make the fiction of "not having an identity" a big part of your actual identity, which can make you even more blind to your biases than everyone else.
I think a much more productive route to being a more effective thinker is to accept you have an identity just the same as everyone else - and invest time and effort into interrogating what that identity is and what biases and blind-spots it might lead to. This is still far from perfect, of course.
I believe this essay argues that one should make a conscious choice to avoid tribe affiliation (even if that affiliation is only in your own head) in order to be a better thinker.
Maybe the real answer is both, though - try to consciously avoid tribal thinking, but also acknowledge that it's likely to creep in anyway, and be aware when it does.
Bad framing. More like, "be aware that you may have unchecked sides". There is a difference.
No thank you; I do not want to live in a passionless society. Unlike the claims of the article, people can and do have reasoned discussions about both politics and religion.