Q&A - Collective Identity
Q: You often talk about collective identities like they’re bad things. Don’t we all belong to collective identities? French, German, male or female, athletic or non-athletic, and so on?
A: Before I get all the way into this, note a crucial word, “belong.” It is sometimes used in ways that can create confusion.
Now, it is certainly true that we can all be seen as members of various groups, so let me be a bit more specific. The issues here are self-identification and the grouping of ideas.
By self-identification I mean this: You were born in a certain place. Let’s presume for this example that you were born in Canada.
“A person who happened to be born in Canada”
or
“A Canadian”
Notice the self-definition implicit in these two statements. The first leaves your individuality unblemished. The second demotes you to being a part in a big machine.
Are you an individual, or a member of a collective?
This matters a great deal in terms of the grouping of ideas. If I am “A Canadian,” then I probably feel like I should accept “Canadian” ideas. In actual practice, people who self-identify this way will tend to accept any idea that can be convincingly packaged underneath the tag, “Canadian.”
This is a fundamental error. We should not accept any idea, based on tags or groupings. Each idea stands on its own, and each individual should conceive of him/herself as an independent unit, regardless of shared characteristics.
Finally, back to belonging: Do you actually belong to a group, or do you merely share some characteristics with certain other people?
The difference is crucial.
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December 8th, 2007 at 2:54 am
Also, if you think about a group as a collective idea-organism, consider what it means to say that you “belong to the group.”
Once you consider that a group might be something with a life of its own, saying that you belong to that thing sounds very much like saying that you are the property of that thing - and that is not far from the truth. A collective tends to treat its individual members very much like property. The stronger the collective, the more this is true. The strongest collectives will actually try to prevent you from leaving, and may even continue to try to reclaim their property (you) after you have escaped.
Consider cults that keep members captive, or Soviet controlled East Germany that put up walls, barbed wire, and armed guards along its borders to keep people in rather than out. Just because your religion or nation is not at that stage (yet), doesn’t make it any less the same sort of ideological animal that will tend to act as if it owns you.