The wonky Tree (3)
I have met a lot of people who are permanently on the defensive. Sometimes about their competence at work, other times about their appearance, other times about their ideas. Once or twice about other aspects of their alleged "identity", e.g. national or ethnic origin, or more strangely still, the presumed fidelity of their spouse, or the sacred put-uponness of their entire gender, or some such thing. It makes me sad.
I should be permanently on the defensive. After all, whatever angle I hold the mirror at, whatever aspect of myself I choose to look at, what is reflected back is a vulnerability, a potential source of shame or embarrassment. There's nothing about me that strikes me as good enough: nothing I can be proud of or assertive about. But I'm not permanently on the defensive. I have the instinct, all the wiring is there, and sometimes it seems to quietly hum to life in the background, just to show it's still operational if needed. Its presence allows me to recognize the same machinery in others. But no. I don't cling to any alleged defining aspect of my "identity" as my personal Little Bighorn. I don't actually care that much about the thing in question. If I woke up tomorrow with a different name, skin colour, sex and national origin, I'd just shrug and get on with it. No doubt I'd have a few surprises on hitting the road, but I wouldn't expect the experience to be at all traumatic. More like just one of those practical jokes life has a habit of playing on you. There've been plenty already. It might even be a bit of a lark, if I was given, e.g. a new sex to play with.
But no. None of these things matter any more (if they ever did) as much as knowing where the bathroom is and where the coffee is kept.
This is why I want to stress that your "identity", as the term is used in that ugly ideological backwater known as Identity Politics, isn't you. Unless you want it to be, anyway. I don't.
See. I think it's far healthier and more conducive to happiness if you see yourself as a unique individual, not as a mere generic confluence of a small number of rather boring variables. In a way I suppose it's ironic that they chose the term "Identity Politics" to denote the practice of taking away people's identity by reducing them to a list of check-boxes - gender, ethnicity, orientation, age, income, social class, profession. Ironic, and not very nice.
I said earlier that people are not all that different. That statement, for me, covers a number of angles, including genetics, instincts, all the basic factory settings we come with. Once you start drilling down on the listed variables, "identifying yourself", you are, again ironically. even less different from your fellow inmates in whatever intersectional cell you end up tumbling into. The point of living, surely, is to do something new and utterly original with all of that. To resist categorization. To become unique.
If you are over six years old and have not led a disturbingly sheltered life, you have probably achieved this already. But if you are still being defensive about things that don't matter, that might indicate you have not yet become fully aware of this. Maybe working a bit more on your conscious sense of uniqueness might help.
It starts with your history.
I should be permanently on the defensive. After all, whatever angle I hold the mirror at, whatever aspect of myself I choose to look at, what is reflected back is a vulnerability, a potential source of shame or embarrassment. There's nothing about me that strikes me as good enough: nothing I can be proud of or assertive about. But I'm not permanently on the defensive. I have the instinct, all the wiring is there, and sometimes it seems to quietly hum to life in the background, just to show it's still operational if needed. Its presence allows me to recognize the same machinery in others. But no. I don't cling to any alleged defining aspect of my "identity" as my personal Little Bighorn. I don't actually care that much about the thing in question. If I woke up tomorrow with a different name, skin colour, sex and national origin, I'd just shrug and get on with it. No doubt I'd have a few surprises on hitting the road, but I wouldn't expect the experience to be at all traumatic. More like just one of those practical jokes life has a habit of playing on you. There've been plenty already. It might even be a bit of a lark, if I was given, e.g. a new sex to play with.
But no. None of these things matter any more (if they ever did) as much as knowing where the bathroom is and where the coffee is kept.
This is why I want to stress that your "identity", as the term is used in that ugly ideological backwater known as Identity Politics, isn't you. Unless you want it to be, anyway. I don't.
See. I think it's far healthier and more conducive to happiness if you see yourself as a unique individual, not as a mere generic confluence of a small number of rather boring variables. In a way I suppose it's ironic that they chose the term "Identity Politics" to denote the practice of taking away people's identity by reducing them to a list of check-boxes - gender, ethnicity, orientation, age, income, social class, profession. Ironic, and not very nice.
I said earlier that people are not all that different. That statement, for me, covers a number of angles, including genetics, instincts, all the basic factory settings we come with. Once you start drilling down on the listed variables, "identifying yourself", you are, again ironically. even less different from your fellow inmates in whatever intersectional cell you end up tumbling into. The point of living, surely, is to do something new and utterly original with all of that. To resist categorization. To become unique.
If you are over six years old and have not led a disturbingly sheltered life, you have probably achieved this already. But if you are still being defensive about things that don't matter, that might indicate you have not yet become fully aware of this. Maybe working a bit more on your conscious sense of uniqueness might help.
It starts with your history.
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