Your Powerful But Stupid Identity

The Problem

There are few aspects/areas of your mind that are more powerful than the area we call your Identity Center. This is a highly specialized (and very isolated) portion of your mind where you store and maintain the version of yourself that you think of as the real you. Ironically, this version of yourself bears no requirement of accurately reflecting reality, and in fact, most people’s view of themselves in this way is clearly untrue, or at the very least differs significantly from the person others see when they look at the person in question. No, believe it or not, the purpose of this portion of your brain is not to bear truth, or to give you insider knowledge. Its sole purpose is to keep you alive. This is crucial to understand because your identity’s priorities tend to override the rest of your thought processes, often leading to wildly irrational behavior, and while you can manually choose to ignore your identity’s imperatives, it requires an inordinate amount of effort, and it has to be done very intentionally with conscious purpose. Any slip of attention or distraction, and your identity will take back over and make you do some really stupid stuff. In fact, it’s fair to say that of all the times when you’ve looked back on your actions and asked yourself “Why the hell did I do that?”, more often than not the answer to that question is your identity told you to. It is a terribly destructive force in our lives. I think it’s fair to say that most of the effect it has is to make our lives worse. However it does so, sacrificing everything else - happiness, emotional and physical health, relationships, any and all of it - for the purpose of keeping your heart beating and your lungs breathing.

The human mind is insanely powerful. And it will keep on thinking, even if you don’t tell it to. The whole time it is thinking, it is coming up with conclusions based on premises you already know and have accepted figuring out what you can surmise based on those premises, and then presenting them to you as new things that you now know, and then starts repeating the cycle based on those newly accepted premises. All the time, even when you’re asleep or not paying attention, this process is happening. The problem is this: the human brain is pretty damn logical, and the fact of the matter is, given enough time, it will eventually always reach the very reasonable conclusion that with as many people as are already on this planet, you personally are not really all that important or valuable, and in all fairness, the most reasonable thing you could do is commit suicide and stop taking resources away from other people more valuable than you. (P.S. Don’t do this. This is not a recommendation.) Or, even if suicide is not an option, perhaps maybe you might not fight as hard against disease or predators (of the four- or two-legged variety), and end up with the same result.

However, biologically, this presents a problem for the human race, because, while our brains are very logical, they’re really not that good at discerning truth from untruth, and even the single most valuable person on the planet is liable to have a bad day and feel like she’s not worth that much, and, I mean, we can’t have these pillars of society just popping themselves off every time they experience a bad break-up, can we? The truth of the matter is, even if the most valuable people were all retained somehow - well, that’s just not good enough. The human race needs a certain critical mass of population to be able to sustain itself. As unpleasant as it is, even the occasional asshole has his place and role in society. We need people of all types for this whole machination to run smoothly. I guess maybe I’m over-explaining why everyone committing suicide is bad, but you get the point. It’s bad, and even though at times, it may be the logical choice on a small scale, we just don’t want humans doing that on a large scale, and frankly, we would probably prefer to take the decision out of their hands entirely, and let the hostile environment cull them off at an appropriate rate.

Enter the Identity Center. The Identity Center is a biological development within the human mind, whose sole purpose is to convince you (even against all reason or logic) that you are a completely, unquestionably unique individual who has not just a valuable service to provide to the universe, but one that is indispensable. It does this by convincing you that you are truly one-of-a-kind. Ironically, it doesn’t seem to be necessary to convince you that your uniqueness is actually valuable. It seems, as long as you can believe that you are unique in the world, that seems to be enough to satisfy your logical mind that you are worthy to keep breathing. This is the identity’s only function. It is a sleeping dragon, and as long as your identity is satisfied that you are a unique individual, the identity has no impact on your thoughts, emotions or actions. However, if that notion is challenged - if some series of circumstances conspires to prove irrefutably that you are not who you think you are or that there is someone else just as good or better than you are at all the things that make you you - that’s when the Identity Center rears its head and some very destructive behavior can result (unless you’re well-trained on the subject and can wrestle the reins of your mind away from it).

You can see this everywhere, with your friends and family, your co-workers. It is a common trope and source of tension in TV, books, and movies. As a classic example, take the Karate Kid film from 1986. At the climax of the film, the antagonist, Johnny is facing Daniel in the final bout of the championship. Johnny’s identity is that of the best fighter in his region, and Daniel’s up and coming skill is threatening to prove not just to Johnny, but to all of Johnny’s community, that Johnny is no longer the top dog. You can see how important that is to him. You can also see throughout the film that Johnny is not just an evil person. We see the conflict in him between doing what is right (his rational mind) and making sure he wins the championship (his identity). In the end, of course, his identity wins out, and he blatantly cheats, overriding his rational mind in order to salvage his identity. This is used as the conflict in this story not because it’s a unique situation, but because it’s something we can all identify with. Our Identity Center frequently “makes”¹ us do something that we wouldn’t do normally, in the course of proving to itself that we are who we think we are.

The other important aspect to note here is that our Identity Center is rather stupid. It is dogmatic about one and only one thing: believing in your identity (which makes you unique) and destroying anything that threatens that belief. In the example above, Johnny cheats in order to win the championship, which, if you think about it even a little, proves that he isn’t really the best if he had to resort to cheating to win. But your identity Center doesn’t think that hard about it. It doesn’t take the bigger picture, or nuance, or complexities of the situation, or any of your other priorities or values into account. It acts like an enraged toddler, just smashing into the things it doesn’t like until either they subside or you fully expend the last of your energy (the latter is usually followed by emotional collapse, sobbing, or just breaking down into an emotionally comatose state). It is myopic and zealous in nature. And this is what makes it such a destructive force in our lives.

Shit. So what can I do about it?

Well, you always have the option of just overriding it. When you learn to recognize the influence of identity in your decision-making process (The best indicator of which is the irrational behavior), it makes it easier to see it and just manually decide, “No. I’m not going to do that.” That is an option, but it bears at least two disadvantages: 1) It’s tremendously energy consumptive. It takes a lot of mental energy to override your identity like that, similar to holding your 280lb weightlifter friend back when he wants to punch someone’s face in. You can do it, but you’re going to be tired afterward. 2) It only works when you’re actively overriding it. If you get distracted by something else - whether it’s an emergency situation that comes up, a sharp physical pain, or even just an attractive person walking by you - it’s very easy to let the leash slip, and your rabid dog of an identity is happy to leap right back into action before you realize what it’s doing. However, in the heat of the moment, this manual override may be your only option.

The better option requires preparation and maintenance, and must be completed in the calm times before this type of situation arises. You want to intentionally manage your identity such that it is always as true and accurate as you can make it. The reason this works is it essentially prevents any scenario where your identity would be challenged by outside facts, and keeps the sleeping dragon sleeping. Even this is more difficult than it sounds, not only because it carries the prerequisite of brutal honesty with yourself and a hard commitment to face difficult truths, but also because it necessarily means sometimes changing your identity to match what is real.

And here’s the kicker: remember that your identity is singularly focused on making sure that at all times you believe “X” about yourself. It doesn’t care about what your “X” is (however you choose to view yourself). You could identify as the world’s most prolific pooper, and your identity will happily accept that and defend it viciously against anyone who would say otherwise. Well, as it turns out, that vicious defense also applies to you trying to change what “X” is. See, your identity knows that if you replace “X” with “Y” then you will no longer believe “X”, and as such, your Identity Center will fight you tooth and nail to stop that from happening. You will have to have a wrestling match with your identity to get it to change itself to believing “Y” instead. But, as I said, your identity is stupid. Once you win that wrestling match, your identity will now be latched on to “Y” and will fight tooth and nail to keep believing “Y” even if you propose “X” again. So changing your identity is a tremendous undertaking, but once you do it, your identity will act like this is what it wanted all along. So it’s a bit of a monumental effort to change your identity, to force yourself to believe something different about who you are as a person. But once you make that change, it feels like the most natural thing in the world, and you might find yourself wondering what the big deal was.

So… what do I change it to?

Well, that’s the real question, isn’t it? Only you can answer that question for you, but it’s safe to say, this is where some serious, brutally honest introspection becomes necessary. The goal here is to reflect the real Universe (and specifically your position in it) as closely as possible. You can tell yourself (your identity) that you are the best checkers player in the world. Are you? Maybe. Maybe not. Honestly, most likely not. In point of fact, however, maybe you are truly pretty good at checkers, and even if you’re not literally the best in the world, maybe you will luck out and go several years or even decades without finding anyone better than you to challenge your identity. Maybe you can live your whole life believing that. That’s going to have to be a decision you make, weighing the likelihood of running into some disproving evidence vs the convenience of keeping an identity you already have. As I said earlier, as far as the function of the identity is concerned, it makes no difference what the identity is. As a pragmatic matter, your only goal in find a good identity is finding one that is at least correct enough that you’re unlikely to run into any proof to the contrary.

Now sometimes, if you’re someone like Michael Phelps or Jeff Bezos - someone who is undeniably the best at one thing they do - it’s pretty easy to define yourself in a way that is truly unique, and the Identity Center is quite content with that. If you are truly the best in the whole world at something, then that pretty easily slips in as your identity. But there are only so many things one can be good at, and only one person can truly be the best at it. Maybe if you’re second best, or in the top 10, that might be enough to form an identity around, but for the rest of us, our identity has to find some other means of creating true uniqueness. Fortunately, there are a few easy tricks that you can use to help you find a unique identity:

• Juxtaposition - This trick lets you define uniqueness by combining traits. E.g. “I am the only person who is good at violin, viola, cello, bass, and can still rock a banjo, and get down with the cowboys at a rodeo.” By recognizing any number of traits that you are good at or that in some way define you, you can create a combination that is unique in the world (or at least enough to convince your Identity Center that it is).

• Scope Limitation - This is where you add as scope that limits the number of people you are in competition with. This can be geographic: e.g. “I’m the best ping-pong player in the tri-state area,” or “I’m the one who keeps the Middleborough High PTA on track financially.” Some people also use their natural traits as a scope limiter. For example, “I’m the best woman financial advisor,” or “I’m the most charismatic lesbian politician.” By limiting the scope, you are effectively creating uniqueness, because you are the best at “X” within “A,” and since “A” is unique in the world, then by extension, so are you.

• Nostalgia - although not as strong, some people can still string along an identity based on whom they used to be. For example, Michael Jordan is no longer playing in the NBA, but being Michael Jordan is still probably still enough of an identity for him. You see this especially in people who experienced strong identity in their youth: “I was once the prettiest girl in all of South Carolina.” “Man you should have seen me quarterback at the state championships in my senior year. I was unstoppable.”

• Any combination of the above.

The other thing to note here, is that uniqueness is definitely the primary criteria. If you try to form an identity of “I’m good at math,” your Identity Center will spit it right back out again. That’s not unique enough for your Identity Center’s requirements. You will have to use some of the tricks above to narrow it down to a point where your Identity Center accepts it as a truly unique position in the world. You’ll know you’ve achieved it when you feel a sense of pride when thinking about your chosen identity. When there’s this little voice inside your head that says, “Yeah, I am that!” That’s when you know that your identity has been accepted by your Identity Center, and you’re good to go - at least, as long as you’ve chosen well. Good luck!