Tragedy of Identity: The Cultural Aggregation
Over the last few weeks I have been immersing myself in literature dealing with a variety of subjects from behavioral economics to avant-garde art to strategic resource allocation. I tend to do this because it hedges against one of the most pervasive behavioral biases inflicting mankind: the tragedy of identity. The tragedy of identity is a series of motives, thoughts, and actions that lead a person to believe they are confined by a perception of who they are. For instance, if someone begins to identity with being an ‘asshole’ they tend to align themselves with concepts, people, and actions that reinforce that notion. Under these pretexts, the individual builds a persona in an attempt to maximize her or her place in society.
When I say maximize, I am not talking about any sort of upward mobility, advancement, or tangible gain, but achieving harmony with the social environment at large, a phenomenon commonly known as “happiness”.
While on the pursuit of happiness, many individuals will find themselves thwarted by a rather overwhelming force; paraded around as being innocuous, the effects of this force are as life altering as any seen on this planet: culture. Culture in this instance are the social underpinnings, normalities, rules, status quo’s, conventions, and agreements made by a society at large, which serve as the reference point for all behavior. Culture is natural because socialization is natural; we are unable to ward off the need to be accepted and synergistic, we crave human interaction. Ergo, we begin compromising and assimilating, discovering the “best practices” in order to preserve the delicate and sometimes precarious fabric of a human interfacing.
From here it is a slippery slope into groupthink and all sorts of diminution of individuality. The tragedy of identity reveals itself in this context as the need to maximize utility by fitting in; few people are comfortable being the black swan
Have you ever in your life sat alone at night dreaming of a life of luxury? During that reverie, did you fashion yourself a regular Howard Hughes or Wright Brother? A modern day Ghandi or Martin Luther King, Jr.? In other words, did you see yourself breaking the status quo in order to achieve unprecedented success, fame, or popularity? When you were in high school did you conceive yourself being admitted to an Ivy League or being recruited by a top Fortune 500? For our tech laden generation, have you imagined a glorious IPO in which your exit garnered hundreds of millions — maybe billions — of dollars? Do you look at Larry Ellison or Bill Gates and fancy yourself on their level?
Then the next morning you got up and all of that lofty thinking disappeared right out the window. You put on your regular clothes, brushed your regular hair, got in your regular car, and arrived at the regular time at your regular job. After all you are simply an average citizen, all the self help books in the world can’t rewire that. You turn on the news and you hear the same old doom and gloom: the world is at unrest, the incumbent political regime is waning, poverty on the rise. Enter the conspiracy theories about elitist cabals and the odds stacked against the common man. It is an absolute circus trying to find positive individuality. SO you settle back in your routine, you retreat to your dreams when you can, and fully embody the identity you have haphazardly crafted over the years.
Culture is a collective, an aggregate, not unlike the celestial bodies in space. As we all know, the more mass an object has the more gravity is exerts. Thus, objects with large masses ‘trap’ smaller objects with relative ease, while smaller objects struggle to do the same. Look at individuality and society thought the same lens, while you may be able to concoct an absolutely spellbinding narrative about your own life and success, chances are you will succumb to the tremendous gravity of conformity because at the end of the day few people are prepared to be a pariah.
Few people are willing to be ridiculed for their precious dreams. Few are willing to be hungry, shelterless, while little to no strategic alliances. Few people are crafty enough to challenge convention in a manner that persuades, instead the devolve into ad hominem attacks, prejudice, and defeated discourse. Few people actually believe in the totality of their dreams, instead they are driven by the ever elusive Nirvana, a place to escape their worries. They forget that whether you are talking about the Elysian Fields, Valhalla, Heaven, The Garden of Eden or any other location of paradise, prices had to be paid in order to get there.
Successfully finding individuality and integrating it into society is paradise on earth, that is the very moment when a man is at his most sublime. You can blame the media, the Illuminati, the president, the Fed, the white man or whomever on your inability to thrive, but this is at the crux of your unhappiness. There have been a myriad of oppressive moves made by governments and hate groups that have stunted the movements of people, but they are easily outmaneuvered by those who believe in their dreams, those who believe in the flexibility of their identity.
Do no be trapped by culture, do not be trapped by the illusion of “you are who you are”. You are whoever you choose to be and although the odds are stacked against you in terms of genuine expressions of self being accepted, those expressions are the ticket to fulfillment.
bryce's labyrinth 