people should let their identity emerge as a consequence of their individual object-level views, instead of deriving their individual object-level views from their identity. That reversal of causation seems to me the problem with identity, not identity in itself.
I’d expect it to be extraordinarily hard to keep the causation one-way, even if you’re trying hard and are aware of all the consequences. In order for something to be promoted to conscious attention, it has to make it through a set of perceptual filters which include some coherence checks with your existing identity: it’s quite possible to believe earnestly that you’re taking into account all the data even as you silently drop half of it from your consideration.
To make matters worse, I’d also expect it to be extraordinarily hard to keep identity criteria stable. For example, the kids in the famous Robber’s Cave experiment (Sherif et al., 1954) readily generated stereotypes for themselves, all to support a more or less fabricated image of a distinct identity group; and this certainly isn’t limited to the laboratory, as the behavior of whatever political group you like the least should demonstrate! The lesson seems to be that identities aren’t static classification functions; justifications and superstitions accrete around them like nacre in the guts of an irritated oyster, growing and feeding back into an increasingly tangled complex of beliefs.
I suspect that if identity is as sticky & accretive as you suggest, trying to purge my identity could prove at least as hard as wearing my identity loosely on my beliefs. But that is just a guess on my part — I ought to chew on what you’ve said for a bit.
I’d expect it to be extraordinarily hard to keep the causation one-way, even if you’re trying hard and are aware of all the consequences. In order for something to be promoted to conscious attention, it has to make it through a set of perceptual filters which include some coherence checks with your existing identity: it’s quite possible to believe earnestly that you’re taking into account all the data even as you silently drop half of it from your consideration.
To make matters worse, I’d also expect it to be extraordinarily hard to keep identity criteria stable. For example, the kids in the famous Robber’s Cave experiment (Sherif et al., 1954) readily generated stereotypes for themselves, all to support a more or less fabricated image of a distinct identity group; and this certainly isn’t limited to the laboratory, as the behavior of whatever political group you like the least should demonstrate! The lesson seems to be that identities aren’t static classification functions; justifications and superstitions accrete around them like nacre in the guts of an irritated oyster, growing and feeding back into an increasingly tangled complex of beliefs.
You and Qiaochu_Yuan raise good points.
I suspect that if identity is as sticky & accretive as you suggest, trying to purge my identity could prove at least as hard as wearing my identity loosely on my beliefs. But that is just a guess on my part — I ought to chew on what you’ve said for a bit.