Great essay! All these new identities that have appeared in recent years make me think that it is precisely because these people--by which I mean progressive Anglo-Saxons--have no longer a sense of belonging (insofar as they reject traditional identities grounded in nationhood or biology or traditional family values), yet, clearly, consciously or unconsciously, they long to belong, and so they end up inventing all kinds of bizarre, often pathological, new identities. The irony is that these new identities are much more tyrannical than the old, traditional ones.
Excellent point, I've noticed the same thing myself. The desire to belong coupled with fear of being shamed by a group or lack of one's own values/principles makes people particularly vulnerable to this problem.
There is no "bad" or "better" identity, objectively speaking, only a menu of more or less functional illusions to select from. The racist, the cultist, the ideologue, the reformer, the "black sheep", you, the author, and me, coincidentally listening to Die Antwoord's Age Of Illusion, are functional equivalents, each optimizing for psychic stability under improvisational constraints. Some illusions boom into decorative bubbles, others bust into decorative rubble: whichever way the neutral wind blows, we creatively (re)construct our lives in medias res -- in the middle of the action. As a behavioral nudge, "you should feel bad" applies narrative pressure where erring humans persist in their sunk-cost (his)stories. If that's a sweeter deal than "may all the wasps you wronged fly in your children's specific direction", they'll take it and work to protect their fractured meaning-structure with a fresh cast paraded for I'm-with-them signatures. Will that cure anyone of their need for "toxic" identities? What if they already switched meaning suppliers, escaping to a less policed corner of their collectivized conscience? Anything you practice, including self-deception, you will eventually master. Every narrative prosthesis is an amputation in time, but even a legless man must walk. When you weigh the old losses that didn't immobilize you against the new gains that lock you in place again, what remains? And who's walking? I'm fortunate enough that the best part of me is the one I'm sitting on, but I'll try to keep my thumb out of your business.
Even the reverence for cognitive dissonance, as a path to "growth", presents coherence as preferable to contradiction, which is itself a "bad", because linear, story assuming a constant rate of change. You can sneak in the mythic "pursuit of truth", dress it up as a hero's call to "abandon identity", but not without wearing one or several higher-order identities like a goofy, velcro-fastened cape. Rigid humans rarely function without rigid stories; where one story stops working and is suddenly diagnosed as "toxic", another one quietly slips into the bloodstream with the same liberating effect as an upper chasing a downer. Different rush, same high of "truth" -- and however much you think you've broken free of that meaning-structure, you did so by reallocating belief capital for more, not fewer, pills. The heroin addict? Now hooked to self-improvement. The ideologue? Joined a meta-cult of "free-thinkers". The "self"-dissolver? Built a holy shrine to "non-self", and even he is still invested in a system that rewards monk mode with euphoria. Do you administer small doses of illusion early on, knowing you'll have to detox for life? If it's relief now, copium later, and the mix is sweet enough, then, like any addict, you'll have to convince yourself that it's fine for you to keep ingesting it. After all, you'll be able to quit before the fatal hit, right?
How many highs will you chase? How many poisoned years will you consume? Different identities, same marketplace: disillusion is a brand like any other and the only, truly dangerous brand isn't the false one, but the rigid one. The one that would rather break you in half than bend for the small mercy of breathing space.
What remains, if you survive your involuntary pilates sessions, is increased balance and decreased tension. Forget "purity", "truth" and "flow". There is no final, fluid, "self-actualized" state. My hungry stomach still growls, my empty wallet still weighs. My broken heart still sings. Whatever brand of scaffolding I choose, it will be revised endlessly by the same nervous hands connected to the same body I was born with, neither of which care what my brain believes, so long as I survive the next session. Time and gravity mercifully erase all our drafts, leaving only the memory of our colliding hungers for meaning. The rest is conversation and neither does the world care what conversation it's tagged in: we negotiate ourselves into language, into stories, into fictions that keep us moving, and me, shrugging at all the blueprints for "better" because they dodge a more serious question -- which "bad" illusions can you carry that won't eat you alive? Which of your illusions survive contact with what refuses to be illusion? Which rigid illusions, if any, remain negotiable when reality's rubber band inevitably snaps back?
The racist myth collapses because biology has a habit of spawning inconvenient humans. The cult collapses because entropy -- an engineer's idea of death knocking -- hacks every sealed door into welcoming cold drafts. The productivity addict eventually meets a burned-out body that quiet-quits and clocks out without notice. Are these people morally worse than you, than me, if their models collide more violently with the same terrain? If "better" is a costume word, when does "viable" finally fit? Can it be judged in the same mirror that flatters you on good days, and lies to me on bad ones? Or do you carry it, like a pebble in shoe, telling yourself that it's a personality quirk until your limp becomes the narrative and your mutinous body votes for your blistered feet?
The bones will always win. Only your flesh is still yours. The emperor of your mind must wear his fictions lightly enough that when the world asks, "Why aren't you naked?", he can still flash a crooked thumb and keep spinning on himself. With any luck, he'll create enough gravity to attract planets that conspire to pull him away from his center, on his way to orbiting new problems, temporarily, alive.
For real. Check the article I linked to in that section, it's appalling. And I've seen many other such cases. Seeing such blatant identity politics in such a wildly counterproductive place has caused me to avoid joining meditation groups I've otherwise been interested in.
One wonders if these people have ever understood Buddhism. Either they never understood it--which is very likely--or else their hypocrisy trumps their knowledge of Buddhism, in which case, they haven't learned anything from Buddhism.
Exactly. I lived in California where I used to go to Yoga several times a week, and that environment too has been corrupted. As you say, the types of people who tend to do Yoga are high in compassion and agreeableness--almost always women.
Love this, Jake! The entire essay is a case in point. Touché.
Thank you Michele!
Wow this essay blew me away. So thought provoking and articulate. I am probably going to read this several times!
Thank you so much! That’s so nice to hear!
Absolutely wow! Loved this.
Thank you!
I cannot judge the correctness of this philosophy of life because I lack the will to truly try to live it.
Great essay! All these new identities that have appeared in recent years make me think that it is precisely because these people--by which I mean progressive Anglo-Saxons--have no longer a sense of belonging (insofar as they reject traditional identities grounded in nationhood or biology or traditional family values), yet, clearly, consciously or unconsciously, they long to belong, and so they end up inventing all kinds of bizarre, often pathological, new identities. The irony is that these new identities are much more tyrannical than the old, traditional ones.
Excellent point, I've noticed the same thing myself. The desire to belong coupled with fear of being shamed by a group or lack of one's own values/principles makes people particularly vulnerable to this problem.
There is no "bad" or "better" identity, objectively speaking, only a menu of more or less functional illusions to select from. The racist, the cultist, the ideologue, the reformer, the "black sheep", you, the author, and me, coincidentally listening to Die Antwoord's Age Of Illusion, are functional equivalents, each optimizing for psychic stability under improvisational constraints. Some illusions boom into decorative bubbles, others bust into decorative rubble: whichever way the neutral wind blows, we creatively (re)construct our lives in medias res -- in the middle of the action. As a behavioral nudge, "you should feel bad" applies narrative pressure where erring humans persist in their sunk-cost (his)stories. If that's a sweeter deal than "may all the wasps you wronged fly in your children's specific direction", they'll take it and work to protect their fractured meaning-structure with a fresh cast paraded for I'm-with-them signatures. Will that cure anyone of their need for "toxic" identities? What if they already switched meaning suppliers, escaping to a less policed corner of their collectivized conscience? Anything you practice, including self-deception, you will eventually master. Every narrative prosthesis is an amputation in time, but even a legless man must walk. When you weigh the old losses that didn't immobilize you against the new gains that lock you in place again, what remains? And who's walking? I'm fortunate enough that the best part of me is the one I'm sitting on, but I'll try to keep my thumb out of your business.
Even the reverence for cognitive dissonance, as a path to "growth", presents coherence as preferable to contradiction, which is itself a "bad", because linear, story assuming a constant rate of change. You can sneak in the mythic "pursuit of truth", dress it up as a hero's call to "abandon identity", but not without wearing one or several higher-order identities like a goofy, velcro-fastened cape. Rigid humans rarely function without rigid stories; where one story stops working and is suddenly diagnosed as "toxic", another one quietly slips into the bloodstream with the same liberating effect as an upper chasing a downer. Different rush, same high of "truth" -- and however much you think you've broken free of that meaning-structure, you did so by reallocating belief capital for more, not fewer, pills. The heroin addict? Now hooked to self-improvement. The ideologue? Joined a meta-cult of "free-thinkers". The "self"-dissolver? Built a holy shrine to "non-self", and even he is still invested in a system that rewards monk mode with euphoria. Do you administer small doses of illusion early on, knowing you'll have to detox for life? If it's relief now, copium later, and the mix is sweet enough, then, like any addict, you'll have to convince yourself that it's fine for you to keep ingesting it. After all, you'll be able to quit before the fatal hit, right?
How many highs will you chase? How many poisoned years will you consume? Different identities, same marketplace: disillusion is a brand like any other and the only, truly dangerous brand isn't the false one, but the rigid one. The one that would rather break you in half than bend for the small mercy of breathing space.
What remains, if you survive your involuntary pilates sessions, is increased balance and decreased tension. Forget "purity", "truth" and "flow". There is no final, fluid, "self-actualized" state. My hungry stomach still growls, my empty wallet still weighs. My broken heart still sings. Whatever brand of scaffolding I choose, it will be revised endlessly by the same nervous hands connected to the same body I was born with, neither of which care what my brain believes, so long as I survive the next session. Time and gravity mercifully erase all our drafts, leaving only the memory of our colliding hungers for meaning. The rest is conversation and neither does the world care what conversation it's tagged in: we negotiate ourselves into language, into stories, into fictions that keep us moving, and me, shrugging at all the blueprints for "better" because they dodge a more serious question -- which "bad" illusions can you carry that won't eat you alive? Which of your illusions survive contact with what refuses to be illusion? Which rigid illusions, if any, remain negotiable when reality's rubber band inevitably snaps back?
The racist myth collapses because biology has a habit of spawning inconvenient humans. The cult collapses because entropy -- an engineer's idea of death knocking -- hacks every sealed door into welcoming cold drafts. The productivity addict eventually meets a burned-out body that quiet-quits and clocks out without notice. Are these people morally worse than you, than me, if their models collide more violently with the same terrain? If "better" is a costume word, when does "viable" finally fit? Can it be judged in the same mirror that flatters you on good days, and lies to me on bad ones? Or do you carry it, like a pebble in shoe, telling yourself that it's a personality quirk until your limp becomes the narrative and your mutinous body votes for your blistered feet?
The bones will always win. Only your flesh is still yours. The emperor of your mind must wear his fictions lightly enough that when the world asks, "Why aren't you naked?", he can still flash a crooked thumb and keep spinning on himself. With any luck, he'll create enough gravity to attract planets that conspire to pull him away from his center, on his way to orbiting new problems, temporarily, alive.
Beware black holes… They win by default. 👍
For real. Check the article I linked to in that section, it's appalling. And I've seen many other such cases. Seeing such blatant identity politics in such a wildly counterproductive place has caused me to avoid joining meditation groups I've otherwise been interested in.
One wonders if these people have ever understood Buddhism. Either they never understood it--which is very likely--or else their hypocrisy trumps their knowledge of Buddhism, in which case, they haven't learned anything from Buddhism.
Definitely, it's a failure of one of the philosophy's most core tenets!
Totally agree. It seems like Buddhist circles would be one of the few things more immune to identity politics!
Exactly. I lived in California where I used to go to Yoga several times a week, and that environment too has been corrupted. As you say, the types of people who tend to do Yoga are high in compassion and agreeableness--almost always women.