Group-Identity Thinking is Killing Us. But Can We Overcome it?
Not only is it possible, it happens all the time and we don’t even notice it.
Humans love to categorize things, there’s no denying that.
We especially seem to love categorizing other humans.
Psychologists have shown that the first things we notice about each other are categories: race, gender, and age. (Although, so conspicuous by its absence is sexual attraction/mate selection that I wonder if they even tested for it).
But they’ve also shown that when we categorize each other along completely arbitrary lines, say, identifying a group of people who love pizza, versus those who love spaghetti, we are more likely to reward our own perceived group (the “Us” group) and withhold reward from perceived “Them” group.
In a different time of a couple of decades ago, this was known as “prejudice” or “bias” and it was seen as a flawed way of thinking — a thing to be identified in oneself, and overcome.
These days, we call it inevitable.
It’s as if we’ve completely abandoned the project of bettering ourselves as human beings and as a species, identifying our biases, working past our differences, trying to find commonalities, building a society together… and surrendered to the “project” of celebrating our biases, stoking the fires of old divisions, and forming walls of hate in our minds.
And the results are all too clear.
We divide along almost every issue you can imagine. Certainly along the standard religious, ethnic, language, economic status, philosophical, and political lines. But nowadays we even find ways to divide along particular issues. For example, over the past eighteen months, we have not united and had a civil discussion about epidemiology or brought our various perspectives to bear. Instead, we label someone a “covid zealot” or a “covid denier”, or a “masker” vs. an “anti-masker”, or “provaxx” vs. “antivaxx”, and attempt to silence or slander the opposition with ad hominem attacks.
Label and dismiss, label and dismiss. This constitutes ninety percent of our cultural “conversation”, if you can even call it that.
Conversation, unfortunately, is the first casualty of identity-based thinking.
When we categorize something, we think we’ve understood it. What need is there then, to converse with the categorized? What need is there to understand anything further about a person, once you’ve ordered them neatly into an identity group?
And yet, people are subtle, complex, nuanced. They might have something extremely important or valuable to say, but you will not hear it, because you have dismissed them based on their supposed “identity”.
You have walled off your mind to the “not one of us.”
And yet, maybe you’ve noticed this: before they say anything, people must first resist the categories that others are trying to impose on them, or express their resentment toward the idea that they are incapable of forming their own opinions apart from their supposed “identity group”. We begin to express ourselves now with “I’m not a [insert identity-label here]…
This should be a clue. When we have to start every single goddamn conversation by listing all the identity groups that we do not belong to, maybe the categories are not all that accurate, and represent a basic misunderstanding, not to mention an enormous waste of time and energy.
Also, isn’t it remarkable how, under certain circumstances, identity groups vanish?
Whenever we are focused on a shared goal, for example, like winning a sports match. Or enjoying live music together. Or whenever we are focused on co-operating to complete a project, or engaged in an activity that we mutually enjoy, or engaged in a really good discussion.
At times like these, though we might be peripherally aware of superficial differences, they effectively vanish, allowing us to direct our attention to more important matters.
Furthermore, this happens easily, without too much conscious effort. Even children at play will ignore superficial differences without being told to, or without having their attention called to it. The goal of the play, whatever it is, is simply too important for them to focus on it.
The adults of a rational species would take a lesson from that.
I think this is what shocks and deeply hurts people when they are made to sit through sensitivity training or being told by Critical Race Theory that they are inevitably racist: they simply do not think that way. They see more in common than in difference with their multi-racial colleagues, or simply give racial differences no thought at all. Yet they are told that they must do so, owing to their membership in an identity category. (Ironically, one based on the color of their skin.)
Just imagine, for a moment, a more enlightened species than ours.
If that species found themselves devolving into categorization — into dividing each other into identity groups and emphasizing their so-called differences — would they catch themselves in the act? Would they instead ask themselves, does this fellow species-member want or need to be categorized? Do they have their own perspective on things, and if so, should I try to understand it? Would the enlightened species ask themselves whether the category is superficial or whether it really mattered? Instead of labelling everyone and pretending they then “understand” them, would the enlightened species make it their personal ethic to respect individuality and complexity, and to actually attempt to understand one another? Instead of obsessing over categorizing someone, would they try to hear each other? And not just hear them as a “representative” of their supposed community, but just them, alone?
Would an enlightened species, in short, call this cultural obsession with group identity by its right name: prejudice, and strive, as we humans once did, to overcome it and drive it from their thinking?
Let’s call this what it is. We are diseased. Identity-thinking is a sickness, a scourge. And it has infected nearly everyone now alive.
The question (to use terminology with which we are now sadly familiar) is: is it endemic?
I’m not naïve enough to think that humans will eradicate identity-based thinking from the face of the planet.
But I do know that the enlightened will eradicate it from their minds.
In fact, in many ways, I think this is exactly what we mean by the term enlightenment: shedding conventional ways of thinking which confuse, divide, and harm us, and adopting a more holistic, universal point-of-view. In other words, adopting freethinking as one’s ethic and goal.
This is what it means to stop following the shadow puppets on the wall, to turn and exit the cave, and step out into the light.
If even one percent of one percent of the people now alive did that, how different do you think our world would look?