{"id":4975,"date":"2016-02-05T17:38:21","date_gmt":"2016-02-05T22:38:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/badcatholic\/?p=4975"},"modified":"2016-02-05T18:22:37","modified_gmt":"2016-02-05T23:22:37","slug":"faking-it-in-the-age-of-identity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/badcatholic\/2016\/02\/faking-it-in-the-age-of-identity.html","title":{"rendered":"Faking It in the Age of Identity"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

In his article, \u201cThe Year We Obsessed About Identity<\/a>\u201c, Wesley Morris predicted that our bright, Trump-infested future will be ever more\u00a0concerned with \u201cdefining ourselves.\u201d <\/em>Christianity Today<\/a> agreed<\/em>, and hoped that the faith would benefit from \u201cthis cultural importance of finding your \u201cauthentic self,\u201d having others validate it, and fully living into it.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

In <\/em>my article about identity, I practice using only legally-sourced stock photos like my boss<\/a> told me \u2014 so you tell me who you\u2019re gonna read.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

If, in previous ages, we viewed identity as\u00a0a gift\u00a0from our community (our name from the church, our status as man or woman from our elders)\u00a0now\u00a0our identities well up from within. Whether one asserts a Caitlyn from a Bruce, a black NAACP leader from a white one, an inner man, an inner species, an inner class or an inner culture, the basic movement is the same: Identity comes from your chest. The validation of other homo sapiens<\/em> is nice, but ultimately unnecessary. In the case of a complete contradiction between the \u201cinner you\u201d and \u201cwho you are unto your community,\u201d \u201cinner you\u201d wins every time. Identity kicks community\u2019s ass. The \u201ctrue self\u201d is the hero of the age \u2014 watch him rock at sports.<\/p>\n

\"free
\u201cSports.\u201d Free for unattributed use at morguefile.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

How marvelous! My peers drive to Best Buy, now to Starbucks,\u00a0and all the while enjoy an intimate knowledge of their own identity.\u00a0Half-witted and faking hipness in the New Humanity, I\u2019m afraid I have no such luck. I searched within for my \u201ctrue self\u201d but only found a note that read:\u00a0\u201cGone South. I took your truck.\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, I am beginning to wonder whether I have a \u201ctrue self\u201d at all. The \u201cindividual\u201d they assure me that I am eludes my loving grasp. I want to \u201cexpress myself\u201d and \u201cbe myself\u201d and \u201clove myself\u201d and even \u201cknow myself,\u201d but I keep having to ask other people who the hell this \u201cself\u201d guy is.<\/p>\n

\"Selfie\"
\u201cSelfie\u201d Free for unattributed use at morguefile.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I could never castigate my neighbors as being \u201cunable to understand my first-person narrative,\u201d because I am\u00a0forced to go to my neighbors to get<\/i> the damn narrative. I have to go to a mother to ask what the first seven years of my life were like (which, right from the outset, excludes from ever being able to claim \u201conly I<\/i> know what it means to be me.\u201d) I have to go to funerals and learn, from the mute wisdom of dead neighbors, that I\u2019m going to die \u2014 nothing in my first-person, unrepeatable experience of consciousness tells me that<\/i>. In fact, if I banned others from teaching\u00a0me who I am and defined myself<\/em> \u2014 I\u2019d imagine myself as an eternal being without beginning or end. I would be God!<\/p>\n

\"Businessmen acting like superheroes and tearing their shirts of with c\" Photo courtesy of and copyright Free Range Stock, www.freerangestock.com.
\u201cBusinessmen acting like superheroes and tearing their shirts off with c\u201d Photo courtesy of and copyright Free Range Stock, www.freerangestock.com.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

(You can imagine my depression. Not only does the dependence of my identity on the gaze of the Other make having a Tumblr account difficult \u2014 it prevents my deification.)<\/p>\n

I\u2019d like to think that, if I must<\/em> be sickeningly dependent on mothers and fathers and friends-with-better-memory-of-me-than-me for my identity, at least only I can make value-judgments<\/em> about this identity. This would give me back the capacity of grooving\u00a0to the lyrics of most pop songs, which croon, and I quote: \u201cDon\u2019t listen to them \/ you\u2019re beautiful, virtuous, and precious according to that inner sense of self you quietly nurse in your room.\u201d But that\u2019s never worked either: How many times have I been sure that I am a complete asshole, only to find, through the criticism of my neighbor, that such a self-identity wasn\u2019t correct in the slightest \u2014 I have this or that likeable quality. Conversely, how many times have I self-identified as\u00a0brilliant, only to find, through the criticism of my neighbor, that I\u2019m a complete asshole?<\/p>\n

As it turns out, not even my judgments<\/i> about my identity are infallible. I\u2019m wrong about myself as often as anything else. How I wish I could say with my fearless generation: \u201cYou can\u2019t judge me.\u201d In truth, you can \u2014 you\u2019re usually\u00a0better at it than me. How I wish I could growl \u201cYou have no right<\/em> to tell me who I am!\u201d like a strong protagonist in a tasteful, all-white, Oscar-nominated biopic. In truth, you do \u2014 often with more right than I\u2019ll ever muster up.<\/p>\n

Oh, what weakness! I confess, some of my more meaningful conversations during this hapless plod towards death have involved someone looking at me with loving eyes and saying, \u201cThat\u2019s not who you are.\u201d (Had I known the Ethics I know now I would have punched them in the face, leaned gently over their unconscious frame and whispered, \u201cThat\u2019s my I<\/em>-dentity \u2014 not a you<\/em>-dentity,\u201d put my sunglasses back on, and walked away in profound slow-motion.)<\/p>\n

\"Cool guy in a vest and top hat\"<\/a>
\u201cCool guy in a vest and top hat\u201d Photo courtesy of and copyright Free Range Stock, www.freerangestock.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We speak so easily of being \u201cunable to judge\u201d other people\u2019s relationships. And I\u2019ll admit it sounds lovely, what with every pairing-up of humanoids locked into itself, safe from outside praise or criticism, justified as an uninhabited planet \u2014 two darling identities making out in mutual contract. But I was born pathetic, needy, and frail. Time after time I find that my relationships don\u2019t exist<\/i> until they make themselves available to the possible observation, judgment and criticism of a community. I must always \u201cdefine the relationship.\u201d I must call it a definite something<\/i> that can be recognized by those outside of the relationship. My peers get to \u201cbe themselves\u201d with ease \u2014 I need the entire outside world to do the same.<\/p>\n

Nor can I hop on board the gender-identity train. It\u2019s defined as \u201ca personal conception of oneself as male or female (or both or neither).\u201d But try as I may, I have never managed to develop a personal<\/i> concept of myself as male or female \u2014 the very terms are only meaningful in relation to each other. If I were the only man in existence, no amount of flexing, shaving, or gazing at myself in the mirror could ever give me the concept male<\/i> any more than I could extract the concept of \u201ceggshell white\u201d in an entirely eggshell-white world. Nothing about my individual \u201cinner self\u201d says \u201cmale\u201d or \u201cfemale\u201d or \u201cneither male nor female\u201d or \u201cboth male and female.\u201d If I say I am a male it is only in and through a relation to the female, and if I identify as female, my concept is only possible as an appropriation of what I learn from the outside. Even if I negate gender and say I have none, my negation thrives only on the communal concept of \u201cgender\u201d that it negates!<\/p>\n

\"Male and Female Hula Dancers\"
\u201cMale and Female Hula Dancers\u201d Free for unattributed use at morguefile.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In fact, the act of asserting my identity as coming from \u201cme\u201d is made possible only in and through a community. The very word \u201cidentity\u201d is a linguistic meaning that I did not invent. The very understanding of being a \u2018self\u2019 that \u2018asserts\u2019 is something I learned through other people \u2014 and post-Enlightenment Western culture in general. My very existence as bipedal with the ability to scream \u201cI\u2019m a straight, biromantic, INFP with a learning disorder\u201d comes from my parents. I didn\u2019t name myself, raise myself, choose my sex or the shape of my chin. I\u2019ve never even seen my face \u2014 only shadows and reflections. How then, can I claim to be the one who knows it best?<\/p>\n

We live in the most machismo of ages. We have drunk deep from the moonshine of the self-made man and now sway schwasted with self-assertion. I wish I could\u00a0stomach the liquor, face my community down with bloodshot eyes and roar (in a language they did not teach me) those wonderful words of Ayn Rand: \u201cI am done with the monster of \u201cWe,\u201d the word of serfdom, of plunder, of misery, falsehood and shame. And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into being, this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride. This god, this one word: \u2018I.'\u201d<\/p>\n

But I am too weak\u00a0to follow the example of our national prophet. \u00a0I don\u2019t want to speak for others (and I would never try to define\u00a0their first-person narrative) but I am a being-in-relation. There is no \u201creal me\u201d apart from my community, no \u201ctrue self\u201d apart from my neighbors. I only am<\/i> in, through and with my other people, and the struggle for my identity is only ever resolved by the struggle for genuine family with them all.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In his article, \u201cThe Year We Obsessed About Identity\u201c, Wesley Morris predicted that our bright, Trump-infested future will be ever more\u00a0concerned with \u201cdefining ourselves.\u201d Christianity Today agreed, and hoped that the faith would benefit from \u201cthis cultural importance of finding your \u201cauthentic self,\u201d having others validate it, and fully living into it.\u201d In my article […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nFaking It in the Age of Identity<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In his article, "The Year We Obsessed About Identity", Wesley Morris predicted that our bright, Trump-infested future will be ever more\u00a0concerned with\" 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