But Who Are You, Really
Who are you?
If I was to strip away all of your friends, your social groups, your social media, your hobbies, all of the external ways you identify yourself… what would be left? Who would you be?
“I’m a mother.”
“I’m a father.”
“I’m a brother.”
“I’m a good friend.”
All of these answers, while they sound nice, are completely inadequate. They tell me nothing about you. And, more importantly, they tell you nothing about you. What I want to know, and what you should want to know, is who are you, really. How are you a good mother? What makes you good? What exactly do you do for your children? And why?
I know you’re a brother, but what is it that you give to your siblings? What values do you strengthen in your family? What are you offering them that they’re not getting somewhere else?
What are you willing to experience pain to stand up for?
It’s easy, especially in the age of the internet and its insistence on labeling things, to slap generalized labels on yourself and call it a day. “I’m a patriot,” you might say. Ok, well what’s the last thing you did that was patriotic? If you don’t have a good answer, why are you calling yourself a patriot?
“I’m a person who values honesty.” Ok, well when’s the last time you were honest when it absolutely sucked to be honest? If you don’t have a good answer, why are you claiming to value honesty?
Are you actually honest, or do you just want to feel good about yourself? Are you just claiming that word because you have nothing else to claim?
It’s easy to attribute nice names and words and values to yourself. It feels good. We all like to think that we stand for something. But it’s another thing entirely to actually stand for something. And to know precisely what you mean when you say who you are.
We often get so distracted with the identities and values of our groups, that we forget who we are as individuals. And we often get so caught up trying to tell the world who we are, that we forget to be something.
Henri Tajfel was one of the first social scientists to deeply study the effects of social groups and mental categorization on our individual sense of identity. He believed that, in a lot of ways, social identity trumps individual identity.
He discovered that, even under completely arbitrary and comically irrelevant conditions, human beings have a need to “belong” socially. Even when there’s nothing at stake. Even when there’s nothing to lose by ignoring the group, and nothing to gain by being part of it. And not only that, but we have a need to take care of “our own” at the expense of others.
We have deep a need to join social ingroups and reject social outgroups.
The reason Tajfel became so interested in the science of social identity is because, once upon a time, he lost his own. And he also saw the catastrophic effects of the blind valuation of social identity. He saw how much he relied upon his social identity, but also how bad things can get when people put too much stock into it.
Tajfel, a Jewish boy born in Poland, was studying in France when World War II began. He volunteered to serve in the French army. Tajfel identified himself as a French citizen, even though he wasn’t — including when he was captured by Germans a year later. He would spend the rest of the war being shipped from camp to prisoner-of-war camp, hiding the fact that he was Jewish just to stay alive.
After the war, Tajfel returned to his family. Unfortunately he found none of them alive. His family, along with most of his friends, had been massacred by Nazi soldiers in the Holocaust.
After the war, he was granted French citizenship.
And then he moved to Britain with his wife, and was granted British citizenship.
Meanwhile, two things had happened to him. 1) He had to rebuild his sense of social identity, not once but twice, after having lost not only everyone he identified himself with but also his geographical identity. And 2) he became insatiably curious about what drives a human’s sense of social identity.
He discovered, through years of research, some strong patterns of behavior. Human beings have a deep compulsion to identify with groups and to infer their own identity from those groups. We have a need to be accepted, and therefore to let our values be informed by the collective values of a group.
We take this kind of observation for granted today. It seems obvious. But this was not well understood at the time. And, contrary to popular belief then, this tendency is not reserved for extreme personalities or narcissistic people. It is a pattern that recurs across even the most ordinary, harmless personalities.
So what Henri Tajfel was showing us was that people, including the friendliest and most amicable German citizens, are consumed by a need to fit in. Even when it’s not good for them, even when it’s not with people they like, and even when the social groups don’t even reflect their own underlying values. In fact, I’ll bet you’ve been in a group of friends at some point in your life that held values that were opposed to your own.
Social groups are great, but they’re not enough. And they often cloud your ability to see what it is that really matters to you. You need more than social groups. You need to know who you actually are.
When I got sober ten years ago, I had to decide who I was. Or, rather, I had to honestly ask myself who I was, because maybe the answer was already there waiting to be found. It was probably a good bit of both. I knew that if I didn’t find out who I really was and what I was really living for, I would die. I would feel empty, go back to drugs, and die. I had to find something to stand for so that I could live.
I decided on two things.
I was going to be honest. And when I mean honest, I don’t just mean telling my girlfriend when her lipstick doesn’t look good. I mean I was going to willingly confront the world with honesty and willingly face the consequences. Because being honest is worthwhile; it’s something worth living and dying for. It rescues the world from dishonesty. And when you are honest with people, even when it absolutely sucks to be honest, it builds incredibly strong relationships. People know they can count on you.
The other thing I decided was that I was going to be a sturdy man, for the people in my life. Especially for the women in my life. The kind of man who restrains himself. The kind of man who can be relied on to temper himself. I have just as many weaknesses as the next guy, and I have just as many masculine desires as the next guy. But I was tired (and still am) of seeing them control men who ought to just silence themselves and be good men. I decided to control mine. I have seen excessive masculine desire ruin one too many lives, and I decided I’m not going to be that man. Easy as it would be.
Henri Tajfel discovered part of his identity, or decided on it, after what he saw with his own eyes. He wondered how average citizens could be driven so far by social pressures that were founded in purely bad ideas. He wanted to do something about it.
And I have seen lives ripped apart by the avoidance of hard truth, and by weak men who want too much and take too much. So I decided to do something about it.
I have found principles worth standing up for. And it makes me feel sturdy. It makes me feel good about myself. It gives me self-respect.
I have been around people who are dishonest, the last few years. And I walk away from them. And I have also been around weak men who think the world owes them something. And I walk away from them too. Because I don’t want their approval, and I don’t have any respect for them.
Social identity is a useful thing. It helps us get social rewards and helps us have the warm sensation of belonging. It helps us find purpose by living in service to our group, our family, or our community. Those are all wonderful things, and we should have those things in our lives. We should feel the warm sensation of belonging. And we should live in service to a group greater than ourselves.
But groups, families, and communities can mislead you, and make you compromise yourself. Make you neglect the values you ought to be standing up for.
And they can be taken away from you. All of the external ways you identify yourself can be taken away from you.
And if that happens, who are you really going to be? What are you actually going to stand for and live out? What are you willing to live or die for?
Internal identity is who you really are. It can be something you decide upon, or it can be something you allow life to show you. If you don’t have an answer for that, you need to come up with one. Or two or three.
Tell me what you’re living for. I mean that. Tell me.
Drink some water and don’t let the outgroup have any,
JDR
“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.” - Oscar Wilde