Identity

I was sitting in a local cafe and thinking. It’s a good place for thinking, soft pinks and potted plants, friendly staff and excellent coffee. I was thinking of identity and of self.

I don’t understand why people find the lives of others so interesting (particularly celebrities) and yet characterise their own life as mundane (or worse). I find my own life fascinating, and the more I take an interest in, the better it gets. This isn’t narcissism, it’s self care. Narcissism is when your obsession with self overrides your ability to empathise with the world around you; I find that by looking inwards I lessen my anxiety and improve my ability to care about others. It’s the psychological equivalent of being in an airplane landing on water and sorting out your own life jacket before you try and help other people with theirs - you are no use to the world if you sink first.

Identity is a big part of life and I have just started reading Afua Hirsch’s book “Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging.” Two chapters in and I’m hooked. She makes the important point that for black people in Britain, much of their history has been unrecorded or written out which makes it difficult to form your identity. Your sense of self is undermined by the fact that you are stereotyped and often abused on the basis of your skin colour. 

Then tonight on Radio 4 I heard a comedian arguing that the reason people defend their beliefs so bitterly is that they are inextricably linked to their identity. Talk someone out of their beliefs with rational argument and their centre collapses. Bit like Javert in Les Miserables, you end up throwing yourself in the Seine. Or if you live in Woking, the Basingstoke Canal. 

So one theory goes that the reason Brexit has got so bitter is that Brexiteers have a fixed view and can’t change their mind without having their view of Britain collapse; whereas for people like Hirsch we will only get progress if the old paradigm is dismantled. Time to stop seeing the British Empire as a good thing for instance. Time to take down the statues of people who supported the slave trade. Time to write a better history.

I’m enjoying this semi retirement thing. It is giving me time to think ...