Widening Conversational Scope: “Identity”
I’ve put this off for a long time. I once made the claim that I planned to say something that might possibly inspire feelings of hate towards me.
And then I got a bit scared and backed off from even saying it.
So, now I’ve given it its very own post, so that neither I, nor it, can hide. To wit:
Believing we “are one” [sic] has killed our souls as fierce, diverse, beautiful peoples.
Adhering to the annihilation of our diversity through all-consuming nationalities and hyper-evangelizing religions has smothered our wildness.
We need to narrow our sense of identity and belonging, down to the smallest and most human of scales.
We need to do this, because we need the “other”. We need the “not-us”. If we treat every stranger on the street as if they belong to that intimate circle of blood and village, than we leave ourselves wide open for abuse, consumption, enslavement. We also take away every opportunity for courtship, for ceremony, for sacredness and particularity of space and feeling.
The host needs a guest; the village needs the out-of-towners. To honor and welcome, to show off and out-do.
We need a human identity, not one married to a vast rapacious imperial corporation, that has created both the problem of the enemy nation “them”, and the solution of the national “we”, and the aw-shucks-what-can-we-do shrug at the need to consume the earth and everything beautiful to feed the slathering maw of that fiction.
As human beings, children of lineages that stretch back across great spans of time and trauma, we people a diversity. We do not belong to one “big love”. We belong to ourselves, our families, to the land that nourishes us, to the ineffable spark that enflames life.
We demonstrate our fierce and beautiful smallness, by welcoming strangers in our homes, into our villages, who don’t belong to our people, and for precisely that reason we can demonstrate how great a people the strangers have discovered.
If we can’t say who doesn’t belong, then our “welcome” doesn’t mean much.
We must identify with that which creates life; our unique nature, our family, our village of friends and families, however we arrive at that. And we must de-identify with the nation-state, with its politics of distraction, and begin to solve our own problems, so unique to our little group of families (or to our one little family), ourselves.
Maybe that doesn’t sound so bad, as I may have thought. We dwell in a crisis of identity; do we identify with the stories of Hollywood and the American nationalism (or pick your own country’s entertainment and governing fictions), or do we shrink our world down to right here, where life comes out of the ground, in this place, into the bodies, hearts, voices of our family and village.
Whether in the city, or the country, in an ecovillage on the dark side of the moon, or in the depths of a metropolis, we have a family, and we can create a village. We can do this by coming home to our true identity, something that only ever consisted of human and more-than-human relationships, real people that create life in each other. Not the imperial fiction that uses our allegiance as fuel to power the devouring of the world.
Discover your in-group, and then protect it fiercely; don’t let just anybody in, not without a fight, as any good village Grandmother will show you. Protect this in-group, so that then you can honor your out-group, the not-you.
Give up the “we are all one” religion. It has killed your soul. Let the diversity of peoples shatter oneness into countless billions of longings and courtship. Marry what you eat, court your neighbors, belong to yourselves and that which gives you life.
Tell your own stories, solve your own disputes. Identify with the life of your place.
February 10th, 2010 at 11:39 am
Yes!
February 10th, 2010 at 1:39 pm
Thanks Tom.
February 11th, 2010 at 12:04 am
In other words, live and be honest.
February 11th, 2010 at 12:33 am
I wonder though, wouldn’t this possibly lead to an increase in xenophobia and possibly prejudice born of no longer having cosmopolitan experiences?
February 11th, 2010 at 1:15 am
Abdallah-
Absolutely, as simple as that. The whirlwind of confusion spins so thick around us that such a simple choice requires great insight and dedication.
Cole-
You make xenophobia and prejudice sound like a bad thing.
I don’t know enough about you to answer your question as you’ve stated it (simply meaning I don’t sufficiently know what you mean by those words). If you could expand on your question I’ll happily respond more fully.
February 11th, 2010 at 8:31 am
Damn, tom campbell got there before me. Oh well, repeat for emphasis:
Yes yes yes yes yes! Screw the ‘Universal Brotherhood of Man’! (What a useful aspiration in an age of globalisation with human cultures across the globe homogenising into an amorphous mush of identical activity and beliefs…)
Too true. I caught myself doing this with a Jehova’s witness the other day - getting carried away by her questioning into revealing all kinds of confessions and personal explanations that I don’t normally share even with the people closest to me. What business was that of hers?
Also, possibly related, I watched a video of a lawyer advising his audience to never speak to the police, and he made the point that even smart, savvy people fall into various legal traps simply through an eagerness to tell their story, when anything they say may be (mis)used in evidence against them, as the warning goes… I’m guessing an important part of of this ‘narrowing the sense of identity’ would involve keeping the group’s stories (or, eventually, mythology) as ‘local currency’ that members don’t go splashing about in any old locality. Self-analysis: I wouldn’t feel so inclined to blab my mouth off to strangers (in official positions) if I had a ’safe’ social forum to express these intimacies among nearest and dearest, and thus didn’t feel the need to grab any excuse to get that stuff off my chest.
Oh, and ‘pick your own country’s entertainment and governing fictions’? I wish I could, but the cultural imperialists in ‘your’ country took them over years ago
John Pilger likes to quote Julius Nyerere, former president of Tanzania:
Great post!
Ian
February 11th, 2010 at 10:02 am
Yeah, I mean, there’s only so much time in one day, or in one life to spend with close ones. It’s either a shitty (non)relation with many, or, true, and friendly relations with a few. I chose the true relations.
And thanks for sharing your “hate inspiring” post.
- Misko
February 11th, 2010 at 5:30 pm
Brilliant! Well Said! I Agree!
February 11th, 2010 at 9:33 pm
Just in case nobody checks my tumblr sidebar, the Mohawks have recently provided a really excellent example of this (in the words of Doug George-Kanentiio):
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Mohawks%20evict%20Natives/2549277/story.html
February 11th, 2010 at 9:38 pm
Ian-
I’ve seen that lawyer video - how funny you mention it, because I’ve thought of it in that exact context too. Spot-on.
Misko-
But some folks really get riled up at the idea that all humans don’t belong to one amorphous obedient blob, consumer and master of all non-human peoples.
Well, I didn’t expect *you* would hate me.
And yes for choosing the true relations!
Wanbli WiWohpe-
Thank you!
February 12th, 2010 at 11:11 am
Thus we join the living system that is the planet
February 13th, 2010 at 11:18 am
I have found that the better we embrace those who are closest to us,i.e., ourselves, our family…the better we are able to embrace the wider circle. As an individual we meet another, and in that meeting we are introduced to yet another. As family grows, so does our embracement, as a community grows, so does our embracement. This form of embracement is not forced but rather a natural growth process. However, when we are forced to accept one that has intruded upon our “territories” problems will arise. To force our uniqueness upon another invokes ego’s and false senses of identities, believing we are right, when in fact rightness is in the eye of the beholder. In time, as the population grows, I imagine we humans will gradually adapt to and embrace the uniqueness of each other’s individuality–evolve as we may–or we will become extinct. It is a process; a development– which must evolve, not be forced, however. If we treasure our individuality, we must also accept the individuality of others. I hope that as time goes on, we will learn to appreciate differences, which in-turn shall allow us to embrace differences without sacrificing ourown or other’s identities. Imagine, if you will being one of the last two individuals on earth; you and the other having remarkable degrees of differences…would you learn to embrace each other’s differences as well as commonalities in order to ensure humanity grows, or we remain stuck on our own issues?
Blessings, as always, to you and yours,
CordieB.
February 14th, 2010 at 12:15 pm
I heard something on NPR how a lot of new internet technology is designed to essentially kill individuality, by making it seem as though the computer, or the mass blob of technology (technological singularity or w/e) is smarter than the individual, seen in such things as aggregates, and ‘made just for you’ algorithms.
The person on the show was someone who had been ‘on the inside’ of all this, and he said that the best thing to do was to go to the roots. Like a band on myspace you randomly found, or a blog you read? Dig deep, find out the biography and stories, don’t just dwell on the skimming the surface… I guess it’s about trying to make real human connections and not this absurd technological proxy of one, or the 10 second stranger chat in the checkout line.
February 14th, 2010 at 2:57 pm
So many small groups makes us all bigger. Diversity drives growth.
February 15th, 2010 at 9:02 pm
So I note above that you should not adopt the dreams of Hollywood. Well, fuck you. Those are my peeps. ;)P
My kissing cousins, the folks over the hill in Hollywood aren’t the only dream makers. The San Fernando Valley — a part of it being Burbank — creates those fictions as well and we’ll happily sell them to you so you’ll continue to visit and give us stuff. In return, we’ll whisper sweet nothings, take your stuff and leave you with shit. HA HA!!!
—-
Of an amusing sidenote, I’m working on the Transition movement stuff over here and the Los Angeles group wants to consider it a ‘hub’ — a center of communication — and the Valley as one of its satellites. We sneerily consider that hubris on their part. We are a hub all our own and they’re just cousins. We’re going to tell them to get over it, soon, and recognize us as not part of the one but as an Other.
February 19th, 2010 at 12:20 pm
I disagree…but you knew someone would.
February 19th, 2010 at 1:46 pm
Marita: Yes!
CordieB: Absolutely; the discernment to embrace each other’s differences without sacrificing our losing our own sense of self.
Fen: I do think the attempt to connect with “humanity” rather than a single warm-blooded person starts a lot of our social problems.
Sara: Exactly! Diversity indicates wealth, health, wholeness.
Bill: Hey, if you write the hollywood stories, you certainly can call them yours; just don’t expect me to anymore.
I love your hub story - exactly! Each their own hub.
Wild Girl: …and you must have known I’d have prepared myself for it, to wit:
http://www.mythic-cartography.org/2009/06/02/i-do-not-agree-to-disagree/
Please allow me to suggest that you may disagree because you don’t fully understand my point. You may actually understand it quite well; but if you respond more expansively by telling your own story about identity, or perhaps asking me a question whether I indeed mean what you think I mean, we can discover where things sit.
In any case, happily your disagreement doesn’t extend to revulsion, as I’ve gotten in the past when I’ve proposed this to folks.
February 22nd, 2010 at 5:50 pm
yes!
I just finished a weekend workshop on facilitating “restorative circles”. For restorative circles to really work, a system needs to be set up within a community so that everyone in the community has access. But I find it hard defining the community. This really helps!
Thank you Willem!
March 2nd, 2010 at 5:46 am
Willem-
Sorry I didn’t reply. My computer… how shall I put it… Collapsed! Hah!
What I mean to say is, is that, collapse or no, we as humans have a terrible history of racism, bigotry, and prejudice along ethnic lines. Retreating to culturally insular groups and building differences up over emphasizing our common humanity, is a recipe for suspicion, distrust, and aggression against. Back to “Them” VS “Us.” It doesn’t take an industrialized society to engage in race wars (look at the history of pre-Colombian Mesoamerica!).
I’m not saying your idea is itself prejudiced or anything like that! I’m just worried that such a situation could, possibly, lead to a resurgence of ignorance-fueled hatred of ‘the other.’
Best pipe-dream I could think of would be if we were all bands of nomads that traveled the entire world. Hunting and gathering in close-knit small groups, but still communicating significantly over cultural lines… But even in a rewilding sense, THAT is fetched.
March 3rd, 2010 at 7:30 pm
James-
I value hearing that so much. A thousand thanks.
Coleus-
If I understand you right, that you mean the history of civilization equates with the history of humanity, then I disagree with you from the middle of your first sentence.
Using a survey of civilization’s history (which is indeed commonly rendered as a timeline punctuated by genocide, ethnic strife, and the expansion of empire), as my only guide, would indeed give me pause about thinking in this way.
However, I do not equate the history of civilization with that of humanity. Humanity, before civilization (and where civilization has not snuffed out its diversity), demonstrates an admirable ability to maintain vibrant and beautiful life in a web of fiercely differing identities.
Empire and civilization, by definition, means an ever increasing identification at larger and larger scales: first family - village - land, then alliance of villages and region, then city-state and countryside, then nation-state and territory, then empire and colonies.
I’m offering up another direction, collapsing back to a more human and sane scale: directly from empire down to family, village, and land.
If the results of such a journey worries you, I can only say I have far more faith (born of experience) in the ability of one fierce individual human being to respect another, than in the relationship between two corporations, cities, empires, and so on.
March 4th, 2010 at 1:30 am
Ha, i was thinking, all the ” OH NOES ! RACISMS! ANARCHISTS” (which i havent seen in the posts here btw) know this concept all to well and call it “Affinity Groups”. yeah i know, slightly different, but similar in terms of small scale in-out-groups, and identification.
Funny too how many of the radical subculture have the “one-humanity-meme” going. Yet all these subcultures resemble what you’re writing about here much more, then a global superstate consciousness. Maybe i just comes naturally…
March 5th, 2010 at 10:33 am
[…] a couple pieces that I could not agree with more: Stop Hating Teens and Start Respecting Them, and Widening Conversational Scope: Identity. And if you haven’t seen it yet, Willem is currently engaged in developing and spreading […]
April 12th, 2010 at 11:46 pm
I have a totally different perspective.
I certainly don’t think that “believing we are one has killed our souls as fierce, diverse, beautiful peoples” which you seem to equate with “[annihilating] our diversity through all-consuming nationalities and hyper-evangelizing religions [which have] smothered our wildness”.
But those things are hardly expressions of oneness. Nationality pits an “us” against “them”, and evangelizing religions draw a sharp line around those that buy into the chosen myth and the others who don’t.
You go on to describe situations that require an other, such as hosts & guests, villages & out-of-towners, but this is not the context in which we are one. This is the “realm of the relative,” home of relative truths; Oneness in a truth only in the absolute sense.
Oneness is a non-dual truth which contains dualism, as the Tao contains Yin and Yang. When you can say “both/and” rathe than “either/or”, when you can hold both the “host and the guest” and the One, when these two can have conversation, that’s when things get really interesting.
I suspect you’ll find more fruitful and practical ideas around the importance of strong tribal and ethnic identities in Spiral Dynamics (Beck & Cowan) and some of the integral theory works that reference SD. An example I saw was the Netherlands, which doesn’t have a strong national/ethnic identity which leaves the country SO open and tolerant that it puts itself at risk of tolerating the intolerable… I believe the example given was around trouble with the rising Muslim population there (your “welcoming strangers in our homes, into our villages, who don’t belong to our people”).
Also, you’ll find a beautiful explication of how the belief that we are NOT One but separate, discrete, Cartesian individuals is really the driving and destructive force behind our cultural mythos today in Charles Eisenstein’s Ascent of Humanity. The full text is online at http://ascentofhumanity.com/ or you can purchase the book in regular form.
So, diametric to what you assert, I say that any true understanding of Oneness that manages to spread is 1) a force for good and 2) not contradictory to the need for individual identity and diversity. How could it be One and not contain multitudes? Don’t mistake it for its opposite.
April 20th, 2010 at 3:00 pm
I’m jumping in before taking the time to read earlier messages and must take responsibility for any resultant errors…
I see a contradiction between saying that there is a “ineffable spark that enflames life” and saying that we are not all one, but this may be a matter of how one defines “we” and “are”. Shouldn’t we recognize that spark in others and, recognizing that commonality, show compassion?
However, we do need strong cultures to remain healthy and sane, and bland national cultures do no satisfy this. Subcultures provide many of benefits of a tribe except they are usually part-time cultures that we don’t take with us to work or when we return home.
I’m a fan of P.M.’s anarchist utopia “bolo’bolo”. It describes a world of millions of tribal-sized communities, each with their own culture, independent of the cultures of neighboring communities. There is a basic minimal ethos, though: ground rules for inter-community relationships and recognition of a few basic human rights — ultimately based on the principle that there is ultimately one single ibu (= person) inhabiting billions of bodies. We are all one.
April 21st, 2010 at 9:39 am
Yasha-
Recognizing that spark, belongs to a more advanced level of teaching, in my opinion.
Most people, including those of the “new age” culture, don’t understand, viscerally, enough about the value of family (not abstractly, but in a real, enacted sense) and land. I believe the “oneness” myth has made this even more difficult.
One must feel one’s distinctness, and fiercely guard it, before learning of our wholeness together.
The bolo’bolo you describe sounds like the indigenous human world, where civilization has not yet scoured it out. “We are all one” requires the use of a religious verb, a civilized verb, known as the “to be” verb.
You say a very different thing when you say “we all belong to one body”, than “we are all one”.
Thanks for commenting.
yrs,
Willem