Member-only story
Nobody Is Only One Thing
Everyone is many things.
How do you identify yourself? This in and of itself is a multi-layered notion.
For example, I identify myself by my name, age, ethnic heritage, height, weight, nation, gender, vocation, hair color, eye color, and that’s just a start. Dig deeper and you’ll find more identifiers you can use.
You likely identify yourself in similar, multiple ways. There are many reasons for this. It can depend on who you are sharing your identity with, why you’re sharing, when you’re sharing, and more.
Some of your identifiers are tangible and material but most are intangible and immaterial. There are some which are temporary or specific to a time and place, a few are even semi-permanent (semi-permanent because change is the only constant in the universe). Hence, most are changeable.
Yet people will hold onto identifiers like life rafts in a stormy sea. They will fight and die, sometimes literally, to maintain an intangible identity.
Nationalism is a prime example of that. You identify so strongly with your nation that you will take up arms to protect its sovereignty. This is neither good nor bad in and of itself. It can become problematic when it forces stagnation over progress and blinds you to other relevant truths. That’s how you get racists, white…
