Belief and Identity

Today was one of those rare occasions where I felt completely relieved of all forms of existential crisis for some time, and knew that I was exactly where I should be. As an academic, it is my good fortune to meet some very bright minds-- some of whom have come together to start a Philosophy Club. 

Today's discussion was on the issue of identity. 

I have talked extensively about our cognitive faculty of identity in earlier posts. We all possess an "elastic" sense of self, where we often identify with some elements of our external world, and act in its interest. For instance, we often identify with our family, our religion, culture, country, profession, gender, etc. 

Identity associations are fundamentally different from rational associations. In the latter, we associate with something because we expect to derive a value from that association. Identity associations are different. When we identify with something-- we act as if that something is part of us. We actively work in its interest, regardless of whether it is doing well or not. It is only because parents identify with their children, they stick with them through thick and thin, and work in their children's interest. If parents were to have a rational association with their children, there would be no incentive at all, to bring up kids! 

As we were speaking about identity, a question was posed today by one of the participants. What is the difference between identity and deeply held beliefs (called Samskara in Sanskrit)?

In both cases we are driven by something that is deeply ensconced within us. While trying to unravel the difference between the two, here is what we realised. 

A belief-- whether deeply held or not-- represents an objective construct. It constrains, directs and regulates how we interpret our experiences. For instance, if someone held a deeply held belief saying, "Indians are all unreliable"-- this would influence how they interpret whatever they hear or see an Indian do. Because this belief is deeply held, they may not be aware of this biased interpretation, but it is there. It has somehow entered their psyche and has lodged itself deeply. 

In contrast to deeply held beliefs that affect the way we interpret the external world, identity is a subjective construct affects our self image and who we think we are. Identifying as X, means that we are inherently saying "I am X". 

However, just like beliefs, our identities can be curated by us or from external factors. We can be told or conditioned to identify as X by external factors. 

This brings us to the crucial point in this post. The moment we become aware of our identity, we realise that we are not what we identify with! Since our identity can be curated by both external and internal means, the locus of our self lies beyond our identities! 

Hence, as long as we identify with X, we are implicitly saying "I am X" and acting as if we are X. But the moment we become aware of this, we convert our identity into a belief! We then effectively say, "I believe I am X", and have objectified our identity and thus have also told ourselves that we are not X, and we are only "identifying" with X. 

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This discussion today, helped me understand why I'd been sceptical about this whole hype around gender identities and people putting their preferred pronouns in front of their names. 

Our gender identities may be fluid and our sense of gender may differ from the biological sex assigned at birth. Someone who does not identify with their gender assigned at birth, experiences gender dysphoria. They feel different internally, from how they get treated by the outside world. 

But the moment they say "I identify with this gender"-- if they mean this genuinely-- it means that they have actually gone one epistemological level beyond identification with their gender! This is because, "I identify with this gender" is now an objective statement and their core being is beyond this gender identity. 

If someone just asserts "I identify as X and you need to call me with these pronouns" it means that they possess this statement as a belief and not as their identity! For someone who is identifying as X, they would be acting as X without being aware of it, and not be saying that they are X. If we genuinely mean what we say when we say that we identify as X, then somewhere, we have also identified ourselves as something beyond X. 

This is like the impostor syndrome-- one who has an impostor syndrome does not keep talking about their impostor syndrome or keep bringing it up. They just suffer with a belief that they are impostors and don't deserve what they have. If somebody keeps complaining about their impostor syndrome, then they have either already overcome their impostor syndrome, or didn't have it in the first place.

Similarly, someone who goes about saying that they are right-brained and creative individuals, are most likely left-brained. Because it is the left brain that thinks in terms of categories like left-brain and right-brain. For the right-brain, we either have a brain or no-brain. 

Gender fluidity is one thing. But for someone to proclaim themselves to belong to some gender and demand others to treat them in a particular way-- is not very convincing. Either they have realised their gender fluidity-- for which, they need to identify themselves as something beyond their gender-- in which case, it doesn't matter how others view them and they are happy to be just viewed as humans; or this gender identity is forced, being used more as a mask or a persona, than what they really feel inside.