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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 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?

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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.

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.

Well of course it wouldn't because all robots are Emacs robots \s.

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.

>The challenges may come in the disagreements we have about which actions belong to which identities.

This is where the benefits of using tools like E-Prime, a form of English language that avoids usage of the verb "to be" help me. Thinking about things in terms of e-prime allows me to realize that while using labels as a shorthand for more specific information is convenient, I lose specificity and precision, and begin to think in terms of identity when I use labels and think/speak in terms of what things are, rather than think in terms of what people or things actually do.

Sweet, I'll check it out! I had heard of it but never dove too deeply into it. I have used a lot more of the semantic primes framework, which may yield similar results by parsing phrases into very simple, irreducible concepts. If you like E-Prime, you may like semantic primes :-)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_primes

[Serious]I feel I've wasted so much time weighing pros and cons when someone asks me something like what my favorite animal is, because I never really made these things part of my identity.

I'm not sure people with a readily-available answer for these questions made these things part of their identity, they just use language differently.

For many people, language isn't that much about content, but about signaling affection, social bonds, respect etc. (and of course all the opposites). So "how are you" signals "I care for you", though they don't necessearily want/ are able to work with an honest answer - i.e. the moment of asking is the actual content, and words are just the communication channel.

People who work like this have readily available favorite animals and colors and so on because having these answers is important for maintaining fluent conversation, not necessarily because these things are more important to them. This different usage of language also explains why people often complain about something, but don't want to hear solutions from their communication partner: It's more about bonding by sharing the ups and downs of life, not about searching for a new solution.

And in my experience people working like this sometimes are self-conscious about communication, too, but focussing on the level that's elusive to them: Fearing they are dumb, don't know enough about the topic at hand and so on.

Somewhere I’ve read something in the lines of “I’m not five, I don’t have a favourite color”. I’d go on a limb and say that if this kind of questions is asked you can either take it as an ice breaker and discuss the pros and cons (it makes for better small talk than weather) or answer at random if you don’t actually want to engage with the person.

>> "Somewhere I’ve read something in the lines of “I’m not five, I don’t have a favourite color”."

That comes off as combative and doesn't make any sense. There's no connection between getting older and losing the ability to have preferences. I answer hot pink because it's true, and because it surprises people who think they know everything about me based on outward appearance.

I think it's more about choices being more nuanced as you get older, not really losing preferences. E.g. one might not have a favorite movie, but could have favorite action movie or similar.

Btw, 'hot pink' is the correct answer to the "what's your favorite color" question.

> 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.

That describes a dog owner which is a much more concrete category than "dog person". Not every "dog person" actually has a dog. Even if you want a dog, your apartment might not allow dogs, or you might not have time/money to care for a dog while working.

> That describes a dog owner

You'd think so, but unfortunately, not all dog owners actually care about their dogs.

It also begs the question of why politics is the one field everyone seems to be an expert in - and the true experts in the field are never listened to.

Having the broader population decide geopolitical relationships, is like telling your doctor which cancer medication you should take.

I don't see these things as identities - at least, they don't have to be.

If you own a dog, you should take your dog for walks because you care about your dog, not because you're a dog person and that's what dog people do. If you drink tea every morning, that's a habit or routine - possibly a caffeine addiction if skipping it gives you withdrawal symptoms. You don't need to identify as a tea person for that routine to be useful to you.

I think both habits and identities can be harmful in politics, but identities are worse. If someone questions your habits, you might stop to think about them, but most people become defensive when someone questions their identity.

“...so conscious thought can be allocated elsewhere.”

If at all. If you subscribe to thinking in identity-terms for optimization benefits, don’t you get a whole host of other heuristics and shortcuts to ‘conscious thought’?

For one thing, ‘uncertainty’ can be reduced. It’s this or that. And politically, you can turn uncertainty into us/them.

Add, “curiosity”. That gets in the way of automated/automatic thinking. Always eat the same foods, because what if you don’t like the food you buy/served? Then you go hungry (the classic mother, eat the food I make you or go hungry). Or, you waste other resources.

Automatically you get many other rules and reasoning,

If the food you eat doesn’t upset your stomach, don’t change—-what more do you need?

Why change, it’s all going to the same place in the end.

Unmoved and impenetrable to argument these shortcuts come with other formative logics.

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.

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.

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.

Arguably for most propositions it should be absolutely irrelevant to a gay person what the local LGBTQI support organizations think about it, since most propositions are about other, unrelated issues.

If, for example, gay people would be voting on gig worker law propositions based on LGBTQI support organization recommendations and gun right fans would be voting on housing law propositions based on what the NRA recommends, that (to me) seems like a big problem for democracy, as the issues don't get evaluated on their merits but purely on tribalism.

It would however be kind of weird for an lgbtqi support group, which is by definition supposed to be a focus group, turns out to also advocate for completely unrelated stuff. Then again I’m not gay so I don’t know what lgbtqi support groups tend to do.

> If, for example, gay people would be voting on gig worker law propositions based on LGBTQI support organization recommendations

Gay people don't have to, and often don't, vote based on LGBTQI organization recommendations.

However, if LGBTQI organizations believe that LGBTQI people are more impacted by gig work, shouldn't the orgs be speaking on that?

It seems relevant to me. As long as dismissal for being gay is still possible, workers' rights seem to be very much in scope for these organizations.

[To downvoters: What's the point of having an organization, otherwise?]

There are plenty of reasons to have a strong organization irrespective of whether it does what it says it does.

  1. To silence valid criticism & gag public opinion. 
  2. To take advantage of a splintered population of
  insignificant and disorganized clusters and interest groups
  & gain legislative / political power.
  3. To steer discussion & policy directives toward
  boondoggle initiatives so that there is semblance of
  progress but very little to show in the way of actual
  positive outcomes - outcomes deemed not core to the said
  group's world outlook.
  4. To bully lawmakers into shaping public policies in the
  hopes of creating a moat so big, that it effectively
  shields said organization from any incursion, for decades
  to come.

Basically all organizations - in the current highly polarized atmosphere - want to concentrate power within themselves for use as currency for various objectives - whose motivations are not necessarily what they appear on the surface. No matter what the organization is, the more powerful it is the more of these things it engages in, by virtue of just being powerful.

I can certainly understand making political decisions based on the recommendation of political organisation you trust.

But often an organisation will have multiple goals, some of which you find more important than others; and they'll evolve their stances over time, to stay relevant in a shifting political climate.

So giving your unwavering, uncritical support to a single organisation is only a little less naive than giving the same support to a single political party.

I don’t think it would be surprising in many places that alt-lifestyle folks would find more discrimination in traditional work areas and have specific interests in gig props.

But I’d agree there are probably domains where the interests don’t really intersect.

> 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.

Let's agree to disagree on this. I think it is a bad assumption to think that activist organizations actually "represent" the larger associated community. It is much more likely they they are advocating for the ideas of the vocal leadership of the organization and not for the membership or the larger associated community.

Because organization always conflate many ideas and interest together and on top of that organization and their idea changes with time.

For example Props 16 in California wanted to amend the state constitution by removing the article that sated that the state doesn't make any difference between different sexes/colors/sexuality.

Depending on how you place yourself regarding recent identity politics movement, you can be LGBTQI and prefer a state that doesn't discriminate because it's progressive or a state that discriminate because it can enact affirmative action.

I think that kind of works for negative case - if something is supported by Amazon, Nestle, or Chinese Communist Party, it's probably not something good for the people of the world.

Not sure about the positive case - I guess if EFF supports something, it is more likely it might be good?

This is easily demonstrable to fail. Amazon, for all intents and purposes, supports the EV revolution, should we oppose it? The CCP invests massively in PV panel production, should we oppose PV ? I can find counter examples even from Nazis or the communists.

I think there is no easy win here. If you even remotely care about an issue, you should do a minimum effort to read about it from multiple sources. e.g. for American politics, I found that the quickest way to gauge where an issue stands is by reading at least CNN and Fox, because they are diametrically opposed, so you can kind of guess where the middle ground is. Reading more neutral and informed pieces could come later on, if I really want to dive in.

Great point. I also like that you look at both CNN and Fox. The one thing I would add to it is to look at additional sources. Ie for health information, look at journals, cdc ect. For economic issues, look at the BLS ect. Oftentimes the truth lies there and CNN and Fox just have shallow interpretations of it.

Unfortunately people are required to take positions on an inordinately large amount of issues by social pressure and also by participatory politics at several levels.

Just staying moderately up to date with the issues is a full time job, which most people cannot afford to perform alongside their running commitments.

Most people just outsource their thinking on most issues to a shaky trust structure based on moral myths, and feel righteous and enlightened about it.

Reminds me of an SMBC comic on "Quantum Hypocrisy": https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/gedankendouche

// “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.

>"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)

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.

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.

This understanding is also closer to Spanish's "ser" and "estar" - both get translated as "am"/"is", but "ser" is for identity and "estar" is for state.

I absolutely love that Spanish uses different words to describe a temporary state vs a permanent state.

"I am sad" absolutely should use a different word than "I am from California," and English gets it wrong by combining the two.

You may be interested in E-Prime, "a version of the English language that excludes all forms of the verb to be".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-Prime

I have found E-prime really helpful to me as a tool to ingrain the habit of thinking of things and people in terms of what they do, rather than what they are or how we label them.

This tidbit on language sounds deep and insightful, but it really isn't. French people and culture have just as many issues with identity and identity politics. If not more so.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_groups_in_th...

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

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.

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.

> 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

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

Edit: So it's a cultural rather than biological precondition. ( If a precondition at all. )

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.

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.

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...

absolutely. Conflicts are functional to segregation. It does not work without conflicts.

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.

> I stopped identifying as atheist when I realized most religious people I encountered thought that meant I wanted to outlaw their religion.

After thousands of years of exactly the reverse, that's rather rich, don't you think?

The vast majority of atheists would be perfectly happy to be left alone to their own devices. But in the United States at least, they are considered second-class citizens.

If someone is so biased that they become angry at the simple mention of a very abstract philosophical stance like atheism, is it really a good idea to placate them by pretending you are something else?

> If someone is so biased that they become angry at the simple mention of a very abstract philosophical stance like atheism, is it really a good idea to placate them by pretending you are something else?

I'm not sure what you mean by abstract here: does the idea of a very abstract philosophical stance that it has no (or little) effect on other people or the world?

I don't feel strongly one way or the other re: the truth of existence, so it didn't feel like I was the right person to defend the label.

There was no placation. I like effective communication. They accepted me well enough once I chose to really say who I was rather than lean on inaccurate labels.

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

>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.

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.

>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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

>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.

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.

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"

It’s easy to pretend your physical characteristics don’t matter when people don’t discriminate against you based on them.

And yet, here's you doing it to him - discounting the argument based on his physical appearance. A truly brilliant way of disproving your own point.

I don’t think you comprehended my comment. It had nothing to do with op’s physical appearance. Try rereading that with the lens of “you” not referring to the op but instead a person trying to follow this guidance as a minority in a super oppressive location.

It's about learning to not automatically do that to others.

Just replace psychedelics with stoner music (or whatever makes you stay in trance), you dont need to use always substances.

Writing helps sometimes, specially at late night when you begin to lose taboos and feel more talk-ative.

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