We were all young once.
I think.
My recollection of adolescence, which may not be wholly accurate, was of a good time. There were one or two awkward scrapes I managed to get myself into, to be sure, but overall it was a blast.
The world hadn’t yet quite come into focus, and neither had I, but all of a sudden it seemed there was this humungous new horizon that I had become aware of. My thoughts and ideas, the way I viewed the world, changed on an almost daily basis as I tried to figure all this new stuff out, and also to figure out what it meant for me, and what my place in it was going to be.
I didn’t spend too much time thinking about “who I was” - in fact I don’t recall spending any time at all on this question - but I did spend a lot of time developing and thinking about what I was going to do with my life.
So I have considerable difficulty with the modern fixation on “identity”.
The question “who am I?” seems to be almost comically irrelevant in the face of much more important questions such as “what kind of person do I want to be?”
During this time I also became more aware that how I saw myself was not always quite the same as how others saw me. The question of “who am I?”, then, takes on a kind of relative aspect. Is what I “am” more accurately reflected in my self-perception, or in the perception of others?
If I make some claim about myself, some identity claim perhaps, then should I expect others to automatically agree with me? And who would be right? Me, or them?
Of course, if you live in the la-la fantasy land of PomoWorld™ you will not recognise that some things are objectively true and will talk about such meaningless things as “your truth”.
So-called “lived experience” is all well and good, but people often forget that all of our experiences are filtered through an almost entirely subjective interpretative layer. Two people who have broadly the same “lived experience” may very well come to interpret that experience in radically different ways.
We may think this is support for the claim of a notion of subjective “truth”, but often there is a more accurate interpretation of experience to be had in a given situation. There is often an interpretation that is more correct than another.
My “lived experience” at the industrial research lab where I worked was that I didn’t get the Group Leader promotion I wanted. I was up against a black guy whose parents were from Nigeria originally. I’m not sure what his parents were thinking when they named him Hyacinth, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t an early manifestation of gender woo.
If I was of a certain mindset I could have interpreted this as a “diversity hire” and seen myself as a victim of affirmative action. The truth1 was more (personally) depressing. Hyacinth is a very smart and competent guy - and there’s no question he was much more deserving of the promotion than I. I probably would have done an OK job as Group Leader - but Hyacinth did a great job.
One’s lived experience is hard enough to interpret correctly as an adult at times, but what about when we’re only just starting to develop the tools necessary to properly2 think about the world? If we can’t place complete trust in the interpretation of experience by an adult, then how much less trust can we place in the interpretation of experience by an adolescent?
This is not to say that any experience, or the feelings associated with it or its interpretation should simply be dismissed, but that some degree of wisdom is required when listening to the life stories of others.
Some people, particularly those with “Cluster B” type disorders have a very distorted interpretation of events. Their “interpretative circuits” just don’t work very well and they’ll often see everyday, normal, things as instances of terrible rejection or some other severe personal sleight. Things like CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) aim to fix this interpretative breakdown and to re-wire things so that other interpretations of events are admitted and considered.
How we choose to view the world and interpret our passage through it is of critical importance.
Whilst this is taken somewhat to extreme for comic effect in the classic scene from The Life of Brian, it’s not bad advice for most day-to-day things (3m 10s)
Consider a student attending one of those “problematic” lectures we all hear about with one of the following attitudes :
This is going to really upset me and probably traumatize me to some degree, but it’s important to hear how bigots think
This is going to be hateful and I need to be there to shout it down and to stop it from happening
This is going to be something I profoundly disagree with, but I need to hear the arguments so that I can develop my own counter-arguments
All of these students have a pre-conceived notion of the speaker and the lecture’s contents, but in each case the emotional response of the student to the lecture will probably be very different.
What about offence? If 10% of the audience at a stand-up gig find a joke “offensive” does this mean the joke is offensive, or only 10% offensive?
During covid, my brother took me to task for uttering the “racist” joke
Q : Why don’t the Chinese play cricket?
A : They’ve eaten all the bats
The problem is, as I see it, is that we’re being taught and encouraged to view the world, to interpret events and experiences, in ways that are harmful. Harmful to ourselves and harmful to society.
I grew up in a world without all of this shit. I was taught to have, shall we say, a somewhat more robust approach to myself and the things others did. I wasn’t taught to have some kind of catastrophic meltdown when someone said something I perceived to be hurty words.
As Lukianoff and Haidt have suggested, our youth (and ourselves) are being subjected to a kind of reverse-CBT which is being used to pathologize rather than heal.
If you need “counselling” after hearing an academic lecture on free speech, for example, then you definitely need counselling - but not for anything you heard in the lecture.
Adolescence should be a time of wonder - the world and ourselves are just beginning to “open up”. At least that’s the ideal where circumstance permits. Those who live in grinding poverty, for example, might be excused from such trite idealistic aspirations. But perhaps we should be aiming for that, for re-claiming adolescence as a time of wonder, for everyone - no matter how idealistic and hopelessly naïve this might be.
What we seem to be doing, instead, is turning our kids into basket cases - and even encouraging and celebrating that, to some extent. I don’t think we should be stigmatizing mental health conditions, but neither should we be awarding bravery or achievement stars for them. Some young people (and adults) seem to strap on their mental health ‘achievement’ badges these days and wear them like a set of medals. Today, I got to trauma level three. Now I just need to work on my anxiety level to see if I can’t improve that.
Things like depression or trauma or anxiety are serious and debilitating conditions. Feeling a bit down, being a bit upset, and getting a bit worried are not those - but they can easily become all of those things if we let them take control of us.
Things like social media, the endless inanity of things like CRT and the “social justice” view of the world, have primed us for turning everyday ups and downs into something much more serious - and the effects can be seen on our youth (as Haidt argues).
We’re doing a great job of addling our adolescents.
The actual truth and not some weird Pomo version of what this word means.
Of course, there’s no one “proper” way of thinking about the world and society, but I might tentatively suggest that if you think the reason you haven’t won the lottery yet is because you’ve offended the Great Spirit NibbleNuts, you’re not thinking properly.
When what you do doesn't seem to matter as to career, income, lifestyle, et cetera - bothering about who you are becomes more important.
Look at western culture, who gets cheered and cherished, for the last past 20+ years?
The celebrity, even if their fame consists of drunken fumbling sex before cameras in some "rwality show" or other. And what's a celebrity's first trait? Their identity. It's their brand (or Brand in one recent case), it's their IP, it's their trademark and so on.
'Ego, video sum' or whatever "I'm being seen, therefore I am" is in real latin.
Earlier, what you did was what and who you were. Get paid for sweeping the street? You're a street-sweeper. Make your way by taking notes? You're a secretary, Harry. Wiggle your private parts at children? You're a sex offender, me old beauty and you're fucking nicked, is what you are!
Remove consequences, remove any connection between work performance and career, perks and wages and here we are.
No Furture, as the punks used to say. So, why bother with anything but one's self and oneself?
My senior year of high school, we were all assigned the topic “Who am I?” This all started at least two decades ago. I can’t remember what I wrote, but I suspect that since I won an award for it, it was complete nonsense. Nowadays, I prefer what Emily has to say:
I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don't tell! they'd advertise – you know!