Holding Your Identities Lightly
I recently finished reading a wonderful book by Julia Galef titled The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Other Don’t. One of the pieces of advice that really resonated with me is “hold you identity lightly.” What does this mean?
Identities are usually “a central source of pride and meaning in your life” but they don’t have to be. Holding your identity lightly means that you think about these identities as “a description, not a flag to be waved proudly.” It means that you think about these identities “in a matter-of-fact way” and not let them short-circuit your thinking. (p200)
When we label ourselves, we degrade our ability to persuade others. Our tightly-held identities can make us feel morally or intellectually superior to others. It’s pretty damn hard to help open minds if our own are closed. In order to engage with others, it’s important that we understand their views. It doesn’t mean we have to agree with them, but it’s important to understand why they may hold the views they hold. Yes, sometimes people can be flat out wrong, but there is usually some reason they are where they are.
There are so many things tied up in labels and rarely do we ever match what we thing that label means, or what society tells us that label means. We can sometimes allow how these identities are represented in society to influence our thinking about them, even in ourselves. These identities are like stereotypes that we apply to ourselves, and normally, stereotypes are not a great thing. Have you ever voted for someone simply because there is a D or R after their name on the ballot? Have you ever felt like “this group supports this idea so I should too?” If you identify as a conservative, it’s ok if you don’t think trickle down economics don’t work. If you call yourself a liberal, it’s ok to have doubts about the efficacy of government spending.
The Scout Mindset offers a lot of fantastic ideas about how to see the world clearly, how to see things for what they really are, not what we want them to be. I imagine that I will be returning to some of these ideas in the future in this newsletter.
I hope you are well, and I hope you got something out of this. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Putting this on my "to read" list.