The small world of a big identity
a prison of your own design
Steve has very, very specific political opinions, and is happy to debate them with you at every opportunity, even when you don’t want to.
Steve just got back from his vacation in Greece, the same place he’s been going for 7 years, because that’s demonstrably the best thing you can do for your summer vacation, and he has a detailed explanation for why that’s so.
Steve is a software developer. He is so happy that he finally got to work with exactly the right tech stack. He’s very critical about some of his colleagues who have different views, because they’re wrong.
You haven’t seen Steve in a while so you invite him to lunch. He refuses because he does intermitent fasting, and he considers lunch to be silly habit. You say ok, let’s go out tonight for beers. He starts explaining that beer is the worst thing you could drink, all those carbs. You want to say that “out for beer” is just an expression, but he juts wants to continue talking about why beer is bad.
And this is when you remember why you haven’t seen Steve in a while.
Steve has a Big Identity
A Big Identity is defined as a tendency to 1) have opinions about pretty much everything and 2) consider those opinions part of your identity.
You don’t simply prefer to use a certain technology, that is part of who you are. You don’t use Python, you are a Python developer.
You don’t simply like to go to Greece on vacation, you are convinced that is demonstrably the best place to go to, and you are willing to defend this opinion at every opportunity.
You don’t simply follow a low carbs diet, you are convinced that it’s almost idiotic to not follow this diet, and you educate anyone about it, every time the topic remotely comes up.
Etc.
Etc.
What’s the problem with Big Identity?
At first glance, a Big Identity can seem positive. Here we have an opinionated person who passionately cares about so many issues. An active citizen surely, an involved and outspoken personality, someone to admire, right?
There’s a critical difference between being “involved” and having a Big Identity.
Big Identity is when people tie their identity to the myriad of opinions they have about everything, and because of that they take become excessively rigid and take everything personally.
If you say Italy is also a nice vacation spot, to them, that’s not simply someone having another preference, that’s an attack on a part of their identity. They’ve decided that Greece is the perfect choice, and if you don’t agree, in their mind, on some level, you’re attacking them personally.
At work, if you have a different idea, you’re not just proposing something else, no, what’s happening is that you’re very wrong and it becomes their mission to prove you wrong, even when a compromise could be reached, or the issue isn’t even that important and could be simply put to the side.
Big Identity is self developed Thought Police
Through his Big Identity Steve is not just insufferable to those around him, but he’s build a prison for his mind, locked himself in, thrown the key out, and he’s now sitting there in this jail of his own design, proud of the thickness of the walls.
Because he identifies so ferociously with so many things, that has killed his freedom of thinking and his creativity.
His mind can barely produce a thought like “maybe we should approach this situation in this new way”, because another part of his mind will immediately jump and say “no, no, we can’t do that, because of X, Y, Z, which we’ve already decided is good, so this new thing can’t possibly deserve any though, throw it away right now!”
At first glance, big identity people can seem complex and curious, because they have information and opinions about so many things.
In fact, they are the opposite of sophisticated or curious, because the many opinions they have are nothing more than as many chains they have tied themselves to.
They are stuck in place, unable to evolve, unable to be honest with themselves, unable to see. They are automatons, tragic figures of endless repetition, afraid they’ll fall if they don’t tie themselves to a thousand anchors, but because they’ve tied themselves in place they will never get to move, and yet they will sit there criticizing anyone who does.