The root meaning of the word identity is “sameness, oneness or the state of being the same.” To identify as something or someone is to say that one is the same as or is of the same essence as that which one identifies with.
And what is it that one identifies with? Usually, one doesn’t identify with concrete objects. E.g. one would not identify as a tree or as a car or as one’s own parent etc. That would be too absurd. More usually, one identifies with abstractions or concepts or various mental objects. For example one identifies as a particular gender, being of a particular race, religion, nationality, linguistic group etc. These are all abstractions or more precisely, categories. To proceed further in our inquiry on identity let us first look at the process of categorization and why it is so fundamental and important to us.
Why is categorization so important to us?
Categorization is, broadly speaking, grouping together of objects with perceived similarities. Think of a neatly organized warehouse where all the items are thus categorized and labelled. One can easily and efficiently access what one needs in such a warehouse. Similarly, to understand and make sense of the physical world our brain needs to continuously categorize all the data it receives through the physical senses. When one sees and recognizes a tree it is because one has that preexisting category of trees in one’s head. If one extrapolates this idea, its easy to see that the entire field of material sciences and hence all the scientific knowledge and progress would not exist without the basic process of categorization.
And in our day to day lives, we might not even know what to do if we didn’t have categories. E.g. one sees a snake and is immediately able to identify it as a snake, allows one to take immediate action. If one has more specific categories of snakes, one could look at it more closely and identify it as a venomous or non-venomous kind, thus further aiding one’s actions. The more precise or well defined the categorization is the more useful it can be.
But this is all in relation to our physical world where categorization is indispensable. Let us also look at categorization in the psychological realm, and how and why that gives rise to identity.
Just as one uses categories to make sense of one’s physical world, one uses categories to make sense of i.e. identify, one self and one’s relations with others. But as it happens so often, a process that is is quite useful in the physical world doesn’t translate so well when used in the psychological world. To identify a thing is to create that thing as an independently existing entity. e.g. to identify a chair as a chair is to acknowledge its existence as separate from the tree from which it came, even though both are of the same substance. Thus, the moment one identifies oneself with a particular category, lets say a religion, one immediately separates one self from the ‘other’ categories, even though one is still of the same substance as people in other categories. While a tree and chair can still exist in apparent harmony despite belonging to different categories, in case of us humans, things are different. We don’t need to go into all the details of all the conflicts and violence we have perpetrated on each other since the beginning of our existence, simply on the basis of difference in identities.
Clearly, this process that is so indispensable in the physical world causes so much suffering in the psychological realm.
The next question ought to be why is the identity so important to us that we can kill and die for it? What is behind our desire for sameness and hence our fear of differences? Why is it comforting to identify with something larger than oneself, even if that is simply a mental category?
One’s physical body is mortal, prone to pain and sickness, and in general a constricting and embarrassing thing that defecates, urinates among all other biological urges. So, identifying with an abstraction that is free of these bodily ‘defects and constrictions’ seems like a perfect antidote to the physical mortality. Whether one identifies with a race or with the so called higher ideas of ‘atman’ or ‘emptiness’, the reasons are the same. Abstractions go on almost endlessly and so they represent our shot at continuity, i.e. immortality.
And perhaps that is why identity becomes all important, so much so that we are happy to face death fighting for it. Loss of identity is akin to, or even worse than physical death, many would say. Other identities then become not mere facts to coexist with, like tables and chairs and dogs, but rather mortal dangers to one’s immortality. Sameness is comforting, differences are threatening.
And once we are identified with a thing, our actions will then tend to conform with the norms and expectations of the category we are identified with. And the more we act like the category, the stronger the identity gets. Its a circle, perhaps a vicious one. Categorization and hence identification are not just labeling a self that is already in existence, they are in fact ways to create an entity- the self, where there was nothing before. But that entity is only a mental object, a phantasm. In reality, what is it that exists? In other words, is there an existence apart from mental objects? Is there a self, apart from the idea of self that arises as a seemingly fixed unitary entity out of the numerous mental categories? Trying to use identities to understand self in relation with other selves then is not only a futile intellectual exercise, it is positively a hindrance – a deception that leads farther and farther away from the understanding that one seeks.
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