recursive 🏳️‍🌈4d ago

Most people engage in an incredible amount of self-deception to avoid the reality that, beyond some external constraints, there is quite a range of people you could choose to be

Is this the person that you want to be? Why not try being someone different?

Beyond the actual commitments you have made, it is unlikely you owe the other people in your life this prison which you have put yourself inside of

Show threaddoomsey4d ago
@recursive just going to put out there that withdrawing from commitments to an identity is perhaps less healthy if you have nothing other than that to define yourself
Show threadrecursive 🏳️‍🌈

@doomsey I'm actually curious if we actually have anything resembling scientific evidence that stability of identity actually confers safety in people's lives, or if this is just a widespread belief based on the correlation between situations where people experience instability of identity and [various hazards]

I spent vast stretches of my life afraid of change, but it was a fear that (I think) had mostly been taught to me

Apr 3 at 5:08amWeb
Show threadrecursive 🏳️‍🌈4d ago
@doomsey I am certainly willing to believe that the viewpoint i have takes a certain amount of scaffolding to arrive at
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧4d ago
@recursive @doomsey how many people with unstable identity have you personally known?
Show threaddoomsey4d ago

@whitequark @recursive Enough.

I want to be flippant here but I probably shouldn't be. *I'm* unstable - I know this because I fell apart, and then spent over a year of my life trying to explain what happened. Furthermore, being adjacent to a number of ND adjacent communities, I've been exposed to unstable personalities there as well. I've known at least three different versions of @recursive. I have a nephew being treated for schizophrenia. *I'm* being treated for severe depression associated with ... things. Look at my profile - I self describe as "human meatball."

Is all that experience with "unstable identity?" I will just leave you to think about it.

Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧4d ago
@doomsey sorry, that was meant to be a reply to @recursive — I had assumed the position in the thread would communicate that well enough but I was wrong about that
Show threadrecursive 🏳️‍🌈3d ago

@doomsey @whitequark To be fair, I suppose there's a big footnote to most of anything I would say about identity:

Some people have too-unstable identity already, this does not apply to them.

This is coming from the perspective of having too-rigid identity, which is a thing I have seen a lot, in myself and others, causing much suffering

Show threadrecursive 🏳️‍🌈3d ago
@doomsey @whitequark And I'm like this because without trying to be like this, there's an entire siren song of our culture telling me to revert to some kind of median white person tech-worker life
Show thread✧✦Catherine✦✧3d ago
@recursive @doomsey I hear this a bunch and it makes me feel like I'm living in a different world...
Show threadDawn Ahukanna4d ago
@recursive
Personal identity, like life, evolves over time.
Cultures addressing that notion prepare us to think about transitions, providing language+framework to discuss & work out pathways through that journey.
Western culture’s death aversion stunts l ability to talk about life journey & that ultimate destination.
In physics, shortest distance between 2 points A & Z, is a line. Instead of figuring out life with longest distance between, we live like points A & Z are identical in space & time.
Show threadrecursive 🏳️‍🌈3d ago
@dahukanna Yeah, I think a big part of the problem is that so much of [western late-capitalism culture] is based on the reification of many of the worst parts of agricultural culture (land ownership, patriarchy, etc.) and all of the concepts around identity that it demands, rather than providing people with frameworks for considering unconventional sorts of progress in their lives
Show threadrecursive 🏳️‍🌈3d ago

@dahukanna And also facing death.

My dad's cancer and death in 2022 taught me *a lot*