265. What is identity?

Previously in this blog (items 8 and 9) I discussed personal identity, cultural identity, and the relation between the two. I also proposed that identity has multiple elements that can be in conflict with each other, and that identity is subject to development, and can fall apart or grow stronger.

A good old friend of mine is developing a form of Alzheimer disease. Is he losing his identity? Eventually he will. That is the tragedy of Alzheimer' s. Now he can no longer be coherent in telling a story or conducting an argument. He can’t find the words, and connections are lost. But he is still clearly the person he was, with his demeanour, gestures, quips, laughter, expression, etc., in other words in what is called his ‘habitus’. Such habitus, style of exercising and expressing identity, is part of identity.   

Here I want to look in more detail at what constitutes identity. Is identity what we do, how we act? No: that is how identity manifests itself. Identity drives conduct, but is also formed by it, in response from the environment.

One needs the means to express identity and enact it, and from that form it, such as, among other things: a home, work, family, friends, access to education, freedom of movement and expression. In detaining refugees in centres, we rob them of the means to express and develop identity.  

How does it work, this formation of identity in exercising it? Earlier in this blog (item 35) I discussed the notion of ‘neural Darwinism’: mental, neural patterns of connection may compete with each other, and those are reinforced that yield perceived success. What is perceived as success is also part of identity.

What, then, are the things that constitute identity: drive conduct and develop from it? Is it fundamental drives or needs? The most fundamental needs are shared by all people, while identity should individuate people. But there are differences between people in what they want and prefer. I would say that individual preferences are an important part of identity.

But apart from preferences there are also distinctive ways in which people exercise and execute them. I think that here we arrive at ‘character’. That consists of dispositions to act, such as courage, commitment, imagination, enterprise, and ability to suffer and overcome disappointments.

Now, the exercise and development of  identity, and of character, depend on interaction between self and other, and between self and social systems. For this, there are relational features of character, such as empathy, self-control, preparedness to listen, ability to understand, willingness to share and to give and take, but also the strength to stand up for oneself.

Much of what we do is automatic, in routine conduct, about which we usually do not consciously deliberate (see item 5 on free will). This yields what I would call ‘behavioural inertia’. This is also how the brain works: it does not tell us what to do, but what not to do, when to step out of a routine.

And this is a good thing. Life would be unlivable if one had to consciously deliberate on everything we do, every step of the way. It is by surrendering to routine, e.g. in driving a car, that we can reflect on other things, such as what we are going to do where we are driving to. In emergencies, however, such as a traffic accident in the making, we need to be catapulted from routine into consciousness to take appropriate action.

In social inertia we routinely go along with what people usually do and say, in a variety of circumstances, or what one is expected to do, without much reflection. Now if identity entails individuation, not being identical with others, an important part of identity is to act against this inertia, to step out of social routines. The challenge is how to balance the drive of authenticity with the need to conform, going along with what is normal or socially required.

Here we are back at the ‘Foucault problem’ that I discussed before in this blog (in items 50, 212, 258): how to exercise autonomy while being assimilated in, and assimilating into oneself, social systems as ‘regimes of truth’? How to be an effective rebel?