IDENTITY: FACING REALITY
Identity Then and Now
The importance of identity as an organizing dynamic for people and all living beings cannot be overemphasized. It always has and forever will be the basis for how we define ourselves as individuals and societies, the choices we make, the things we attend to, the behaviors we manifest. So it’s important to look at how identity has functioned over time into our present day.
Traditionally, cultures defined identity. Who you were, what you thought, what you did were predetermined by where you were born. Identity was never a personal choice. The community raised you with a clear moral sense of right and wrong and gave you a set of beliefs, expectations, and ways of living that bound you to the group with a strong sense of belonging. At some point you may have rebelled, left the community, and sought your freedom to express yourself. But when it came time to raise your children, chances are you were drawn back to your culture whose value now seemed obvious.
Cultural identity can continue for centuries, even millennia, providing ground and continuity. But as is happening now, wars and famine force people to relocate. This has been going on since the beginning of human history, but the scale of this in modern times is one of the most challenging problems for the nations of the affluent world. And one they are retreating from in self-protection. There are more than 65 million refugees; even if wars miraculously were to cease, their numbers will keep growing because of climate change.2
Global Culture
In Minneapolis airport
the Somalis serve us
hungry weary travelers with
innocent true smiles
when they began
their long march westward
fleeing violence
terrors on their path
hunger in their bones
only hope and fear
to prod them on
did they ever dream
of this day when
they would smile again
as they serve me a latte
tall dark skinny.
Margaret Wheatley
Most indigenous cultures, their traditions and languages, are being lost to the pressures of global culture at rates even greater than that for the extinction of biological species.3
People who are dislocated from their homelands and their traditions experience profound loss and disorientation. Their pain is far more than physical; it is also deeply emotional and spiritual as they are uprooted from all that has anchored them.
Global culture has taken hold, a new reality easy to identify in the things we share at the consumer level in music, movies, fashion, food, products, technology. And at the personal level in alienation, addiction, violence, and suicide. The premise of this culture is personal freedom, the right to create yourself in any way you want, unhampered by the past, free to fly without any need for ground. If you are born in the right place, you are free to dream, to follow your passion, to redefine yourself whenever and however you choose. If you are born anywhere else, you watch this display of freedom with envy and resentment that can erupt in fury. Those who fly free in self-absorption fail to see those taking aim at them from below.
A culture focused on individual freedom can only result in narcissism, polarization, conflict, estrangement, and loneliness. What is the meaning of life when it’s all about me?
In the Age of Decadence that Glubb describes, everyone is focused on their self-interest. Elites protect their wealth, leaders protect their power, and the masses clamor for entertainment. We worship actors, musicians, and athletes. We are bought off with food and grand spectacles; we become obsessed with sports. And we grow more and more demanding; we feel entitled not because we’ve earned it, but just because we can demand it. And leaders respond because they want to keep us quiet.
I know this sounds depressingly familiar, so let me remind you that this is how humans always behave during the decline of their civilization. Always.
But let me get more precise (and depressing) in describing the particular forces in our civilization that are driving us deeper into the dark morass of individual identity. Understanding these forces also offers us clarity as leaders about how to avoid this descent as we endeavor to create islands of sanity. So do not despair—this analysis can prove beneficial because we need to know how to work well with this primary organizing dynamic of identity. (Was that a spoiler alert?)
In global culture, identity not only is self-created—it is manufactured to be self-promoting. Popularity now is the measure of success personally and politically. It’s not what you stand for, but whether your most recent persona creates followers, fans, and votes. The tools for identity manufacture are right at our fingertips, in social media, where we can build our image by posting pictures, videos, blogs, links, comments. Instantly we know what others think about us, what they liked or disliked. Online we can find those with seemingly identical beliefs and together certify that our beliefs and prejudices are the truth. As online consumers, marketeers know us all too well through algorithms that identify and predict our buying preferences; those preferences are then manipulated into purchases to satisfy needs we didn’t know we had (because we didn’t).4
This maelstrom of fake and manipulated identities is only possible because we seem unable to find any other basis for self-identification. Exhausted by the consumption and entertainment, or because of it, we grow talented at sarcasm. Cynicism takes over and with it the descent into meaninglessness. We don’t know who we are or why anything is important.
We could have been anything we wanted, yet our free-floating individualism has taken us far from community, contribution or connection, the very things that truly give life meaning and purpose.