Birth of the Social Identity

I never really identified myself with any group or community, much less a city. I shift to Gurgaon and suddenly I am a Mumbaite. Innocent instances -- dry summers, open spaces, unmetered rickshaws -- reminded of the psychological divide I had yet to cross even though I am not given to such biases. It seems simple enough a phenomenon and is overwhelmingly common but I feel there is something we can learn here.

The secret lies in how we understand who we are. We tend to identify ourselves with the help of echoes from the environment we are in, as if we only understand ourselves when we see the world react to us. You cannot base yourself in yourself -- how do you find the position of an object without having an external coordinate system? You are because something is not you.[1] It is well and good to not base yourself on a geographical or communal environment, but there will be an outside, always.

When you move to a new place, you are suddenly without that familiar environment that makes you you. Not knowing who or what you are is an unsettling feeling, forcing you to reach out and replace the void with a template. This is when a social identity becomes crucial. A ready cheat-sheet of who you are, what you like and whom you absolutely love to criticize. And this holds for any event that forces you into an identity crisis. Remember how quickly you fell into stereotypes when high school became a failed attempt at figuring out who you are?

This leads me to wonder what if this kind of identity crises were the reason social identities came into existence? Mass migrations, uprootings of peoples, famine, wars -- the entire gamut that characterized early mankind. What if they were the crucibles within which a Darwinian evolution of the concept emerged?

"Wait a minute," I hear you think, "Why would social identities need to come into existence? Don't societies have them by default?"  

I don't see a reason why they should. We often confuse a society with its social identity but they are not the same. A society is a functional group of people that achieves what the individuals could not by themselves -- it is an entity without an identifier. The social identity is what you think of when you think of the group. It is the personality, the spirit, the flavour. Its customs and fashions are suddenly a part of a larger pattern that suddenly make sense, no longer heuristics, and you will refer to it as you would an organism. (Some would call it an illusion but I do not see why the illusion of the self is any more substantial).

Now ask yourself, is it really necessary that the two spring into existence together? I think not. I go out for lunch with six people and we are a group. It is not until I need to leave that I am conscious of plucking myself from a group and this stickiness is my mind having unknowingly understood its own existence using the interactions within that group.[2]

The above is unresearched conjecture on my part (as will be most of my blog-posts) and I invite you to tear, gut and burn it. Why don't you share your views on the topic in the comments section?


Notes:

1. My guess on why loneliness makes you feel empty: reduction in the number of interactions you have with others reduces acknowledgments and assertions of who you are, thereby bereaving you of a sense of being.
2.  It is possible that the constant sticking and unsticking ultimately shapes how we evolve. If we are who we relate with, the pulling apart and adhering to entities is an continuous process and these metaphors are just a different way of saying that we are never the same river twice. 

Hello, World!

Why this blog?

I have been told on countless occasions (by folk that prosper on honest conversation) that I need to start writing down my mad trains of thought, since no matter how interesting they might be, people cannot be expected to receive their blunt force 24/7. This, then, will be that frozen wide-eyed discussion I could never have with you. That phone-call the night was too young to bear. That lecture I am not qualified to give. I start this blog to let the world peek into the conversations I have with myself; not all of them might be of relevance, value or originality and indeed, their only utility might be to make of my mind a museum, but I believe that is as good a reason as any.

Why am I interesting?

Because I was a weird kid. "Why?," you ask, once again with a tinge of impatience.

I have always been uncomfortable with accepting concepts at face value. If you realize, that makes for an exhausting learning process and a confused confusing child. When you are introduced to new information, vetted by whatever security your brain has, there is a choice to be made: do you usher that sliver of truth into your picture of the universe or do you demand that it meet all the other slivers of truth that came in before? Do you demand consistency? 

A simple example is found in the frustration of a young boy when he is taught not to lie and is later asked to say things like "Nice to meet you" when he clearly doesn't really care. The contradiction would require the introduction of the concept of Politeness, its accompanying assumptions regarding what works and what doesn't with communication, as well as an amendment to "Thou shalt not lie" (thereby rendering it non-universal and immediately subject to more scrutiny). I could go on about what other branches of Truth are discovered (sometimes, even their un-discoverability is discovered) within this example but I am sure you get the point.

This process scales and lends itself to connections between seemingly disparate foci of interest, for instance Geography and Mathematics or even History and Economics. You can draw graphs of Fulfilment versus Time and find Happiness in differentials (pun intended). It doesn't take a lot of effort to realize that subjects and disciplines are manifestations of the human inability to comprehend the Whole with a single set of axioms and heuristics. It is a human thing and I will probably write an article on why I believe that will never be resolved, but it pays to be conscious of the mist that fogs our lenses.

I no longer am that weird kid. As many of you can confirm, I am now a weird adult.


What will I write about?

I like making connections. The world explodes into a million colours when you join the dots. I often end up contemplating on discrepancies, oddities and patterns that I find in day-to-day life. I do not read (non-fantasy) books. At all. Most of what I discuss comes from me having spent long years trying to make sense of things, mostly with First Principles. Yes, I stand on the shoulders of giants before me, but it is more of me peeking at the horizon and then running on fresh grass until I reach the destination myself. I wear my convictions on the sleeve, flaunt them to the sky and seek to see them destroyed; whatever remains is incontrovertible, the latest version of Truth. There is poetry in that and I believe a lot of people are tuned to its beauty.

An example: whatever social/communication skills I do have have been developed consciously with Psychology in mind. I have experimented with people, gauged their reactions and adopted the exact same mannerisms my parents have tried to make me adopt since years, but now I understand why they exist. I rediscover fire. My EQ is IQ. That is pure alchemy. That is the kind of magic that seduces me into thinking the way I do. I could live the rest of my life without achieving little beyond a front-row seat to the theatre of the basest elements that constitute existence, and I would die (if death indeed exists) content.