Sometimes, identities are something that we choose- the article is focused on people choosing a psychiatric diagnosis as an identity but there are a lot of other identities people choose, based on their work, hobbies, where they live, etc.
For example, I am a programmer. It’s an identity I have, based on both my work and hobbies. It’s a useful shorthand for me to share some information about myself and find other likeminded people.
People don’t always choose their identities either. A lot of people have an identity imposed on them. When society creates an identity around something that applies to you, it might be impossible to avoid it even if you want to, and embracing it may be a necessary survival strategy.
I don’t think it’s a matter of desperation that people cling to them. In some cases it’s a matter of pride, people want a way to claim their membership in a group and show their values and things they care about. I think we all do it, but some people are aware of it or do it intentionally more than others. In other cases, like I said, it’s not a choice. People may desperately want to not have a label imposed on them but they can do little to avoid it.
For example I'll never say "I'm a programmer" in a mixed social gathering of people I don't already know. It's a total conversation killer for anyone who isn't a programmer (i.e. most other people) and I really try to avoid bringing it up at least until I have found something else in common with the person I'm talking to.
And in general, I think people who make $IDENTITY the main feature of their personality will have difficulty outside of that one social group.
That can be true, and I think it's particularly common with imposed, rather than adopted identities. In fact, people having particular ideas about you that aren't necessarily true is the reason a lot of imposed identities exist in the first place. There's not a lot you can really do about it. I suppose you can try very hard to not identify with anything, but that's not always an option, and even when it is it would be a very lonely existence.
> And in general, I think people who make $IDENTITY the main feature of their personality will have difficulty outside of that one social group.
Another way of saying that is that people who aren't well rounded will have trouble in a lot of social situations. I agree with that, but I don't think it's a problem related to having identities so much as it is someone restricting themselves to a single focal identity.
When you bring up "being human", you're including everyone else in the good and bad things you attribute to being a human - which is likely to create awkwardness and generate a lot of feelings, most of them not very nice.
> I don't really understand why they react the way they do - it seems like a culture issue.
I'll dissect it with precision in order to assist you in escaping this particular social and mental trap.
Human social communication absolutely depends on fundamental shared assumptions.
Examples:
Murder is fundamentally bad
Literacy is fundamentally good
Even more fundamental than those:
Everyone literally has a head on their shoulders
Virtually everyone has a face on their head
Everyone is human
Whatever else your or anyone's unique thoughts or self-categorizations, those assumptions must exist or people won't want to engage with you.
Trying to bring them up as a point of discussion will place you in the range of "too weird" to "too crazy" to speak with.
In your specific case, I'd personally take the opener as a type of conversational manipulation. On top of being highly weird, because its an absolute assumption. Parallel to the type of thing that door to door salesmen say.
That is, they pose a question that they know 99% of people will feel compelled to agree with in order to force further conversation. That's you, with this opener.
Personally, I love not answering such questions from door to door sales people that are used to almost 100% compliance.
I give sales people the time of day who instead take a simple and sincere approach.
People are giving you a bad reaction because its a shared unspoken assumption, and because they are feeling manipulated. So, they feel manipulated by someone who is being very weird.
In contrast, introversion, age, and astrological signs are not shared assumptions. They are new information that therefore can be a socially acceptable substrate for further conversation.
Try talking to people about themselves, using simple questions and sincerity. It has a high success rate.
>you'd think everyone would agree with this label
"We identify with the same label" isn't the important part. What is important is that the other person can place you somewhere.
Labels are a tool, of communication with the rest of society, of expression.
If you're part of any group (or set of groups), you're either less or more of an individual, depending on how you look at it, both of which can be viewed normatively as good or bad.
Because to exist in any society you need to figure out what you are in relation to that society. If you can't answer "who am I", how could you figure out "what should I do with my life".
Identity itself is neither good or bad, but it is inevitable. The labels are just short hands to communicate an identity.
Hasn't this always been true? think what's changed is the labels and identities being selected between, rather than the actual underlying dynamics. We are social animals, so it seems sort of natural that we'd devote a lot of mental effort to understanding ourselves in the context of other people.
I agree that it's no way to live.
as someone who has a bunch of adult friends getting autism or add/adhd diagnosed, there is an immediate phase of “all of my problems are caused by this”, followed by “how do i cope with this”, and finally “this is just helpful context for me”.
there are quite a few that get stuck on one of those phases, but largely most people loop back around to a more reasonable view.
This cliche phrase definitely takes me back!
The problem here is of course that gods aren't capable of solving this kind of problem anyway; an external, instrumental purpose ('God made me to do X', or 'God created me to have Y effect on the world') isn't meaningful in the way people want intrinsic or subjective purposes to be anyway.
In that sense religious institutions provide the same kind of earthly, banal, limited meaning that hackerspaces or secular charities or sports clubs or families do. But they're not any better at making existentialist yearnings well-formed than anything else is.
I also don't think all that is necessary to explain the phenomenon at hand. That account is way too broad.
Imo the drive here is more narrative; it's about making the stories of our lives make sense— often in the simple sense of making them unsurprising. Discovering a diagnosis can be very cathartic, and can (partially) explain lots of patterns and events from one's past. It also brings some relief because it tells us that we are not uniquely defective in our failings and points us towards examples of others who have managed to succeed or survive despite the same ailment. And it gives us a vocabulary for identifying similar people from whom we can learn and in whom we can find solidarity. All of those things being are rewarding and/or useful.
Different sides of the same coin.
I'm not religious btw, this is just what I see.
Calling it "a hole" even, is stretching the metaphor too far. People have needs, and religion has often been used to fill that need, as has nationalism, and occupations, and any other thing. But there isn't a single "hole", and that hole doesn't have a "shape". There's just people who have needs, and ways people have tried to fulfill those needs.
A person can choose their religion now, they can label themselves according to what they believe in. For many in the West religion is a kind of loose political or ideological club. For many, religion and identity is found and chosen from within. "it's the real me", "I have found the meaning in my life by this chosen identity".
But it has not been this way forever, and in other (non-Western) parts of the world it's still another way.
The other way is to have your identity defined from above or outside you. For most people who we were, our identities were defined according to our position, where we lived, what our father did, what the culture was. Your father named you. To be "real" you would behave according to what identity had been given to you. Ultimately God is above everything and with regard to identities, symbolically represents this top down giving of a meaning of life.
I guess it's making the hole bigger than trying to fill it with something else.
Edits:
a) I suppose that some older religious people who were "born into it" might be more towards identity-from-outside.
b) It would work with non religious people in identity-from-outside cultures. Stereotypical examples: a farmer in rural China, a salaryman in Japan or a peasant in 17th Century Germany. Or a culture where children are encouraged to "do their best" with what they have at hand vs "find themselves" with things they might discover.