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Keep your Identity Small (2009)

paulgraham.com

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Re: Keep your Identity Small (2009)

#111

Post by mseebach »

dorkwood wrote: post #106
mseebach wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea is about trying to keep seperate the things you do/feel/believe and what you are . For our waiter friend, is the fact that he's a waiter somehow the essence of his being? Or is it a job he does, because one needs a job and this is on balance a pretty good one? In the latter case, if someone says that waiting is a dead end job, he can much easier say sure, yeah, not many places to go, but the hours are really…

I agree that it would be more productive for the waiter to be able to detach his identity from his job. But to even be able to do that in the first place, he needs to have something else going on. He needs to be so sure of his identity that an insult to his line of work doesn't bother him. But if he's taken the writer's advice, and kept his identity very small, what if he one day realises that whatever he saw himself…

> you're always going to have to see yourself as something.

I think this is indirectly a large part of the problem. The trend in society is that everybody must have totally unique and interesting identities, and since few people are in fact "special" enough to live up to that ridiculously high standard, they need to pile on everything and the kitchensink to get to some reasonable approximation. And you'll still wake up one day and dread that your identity is not, in fact, unique and interesting enough, which looks a lot like your "a lie" scenario. But in the meantime, you've set yourself up to spend a non-trivial amount of time fending off attacks, real and imagined, on any of the myriad of items that make up your identity.

In a past not too distant, our waiter-friend would be content to see himself as a good person, a good friend and a provider for his family.

Re: Keep your Identity Small (2009)

#112

Post by Hasknewbie »

dorkwood wrote: post #56

I'd argue for the opposite: growing your identity beyond a single thing. If someone sees themselves as a waiter and nothing else, they're more likely to feel injured by someone saying that a waiter is a dead-end job, because the majority of their identity just took a heavy blow. But if they instead see themselves as a waiter, a gardener, a musician, and a reader, they'll be less affected when one of those things is a…

David Berreby's book "Us and Them: The Science of Identity"[1] pretty much agrees with you, and makes the case that the less rich/diverse someone's identity is (in essence: the more "single-issue" they are), the more likely they are to have a narrow view of it and to cling to it regardless of its validity.

His conclusion is that an individual should cultivate multiple identities, so that each one is enriched by the others and becomes more nuanced in the process.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Us-Them-Identity-David-Berreby/dp/022...

Re: Keep your Identity Small (2009)

#113

Post by majewsky »

unscaled wrote: post #74
madez wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Richard Stallman is warning of the dangers of JavaScript since at least 2009 [0]. That is about 9 years ago. [0] https://lwn.net/Articles/324835/

He didn't have any bone to pick with the language _per se_, but rather with the inability to easily replace an app running in the browser with a modified version, even though the license allows you to do so. It was arguably a lot easier to modify scripts in place in 2009 with tools like Proxomitron or extensions like Greasemonkey, but modern complex SPAs made that harder. It's a reasonable argument against JS in the…

> but modern complex SPAs made that harder

Not just SPAs, but the pace of web development. A web app like Facebook or Github can see changes to its coding multiple times a day, sometimes with dozens of versions being A/B-tested at once. Have fun maintaining a Greasemonkey script for that.

Re: Keep your Identity Small (2009)

#114

Post by dorkwood »

mseebach wrote: post #111
dorkwood wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that it would be more productive for the waiter to be able to detach his identity from his job. But to even be able to do that in the first place, he needs to have something else going on. He needs to be so sure of his identity that an insult to his line of work doesn't bother him. But if he's taken the writer's advice, and kept his identity very small, what if he one day realises that whatever he saw himself…

> you're always going to have to see yourself as something. I think this is indirectly a large part of the problem. The trend in society is that everybody must have totally unique and interesting identities, and since few people are in fact "special" enough to live up to that ridiculously high standard, they need to pile on everything and the kitchensink to get to some reasonable approximation. And you'll still wake…

I think we both agree that contentedness is the goal, but we disagree on how to get there.

To you, it might seem like 'fending off attacks, real or imagined', is a waste of time, when the waiter could just snap his fingers and suddenly be content with being a good person. But I don't think it's that easy. I think that mentally fending off attacks is a necessary component of becoming content. For the waiter to arrive there, he needs experience. He needs to have reasoned through his problems and put his answers to the test: what makes a good person? Is it living virtuously? Is it living according to one's values? What are my values? I value craftsmanship, yet I'm a waiter -- is that a conflict? In my opinion, the waiter needs to figure all of that out before he can become content. You might call it a waste of time, worrying about things that may or may not be consequential. I call it building up mental fortitude.

Becoming content, in my opinion, requires mental fortitude, and having a varied identity is one of the tools to help build that. I'm still struggling to see how limiting my identity to a single thing helps me be content in any way. Even if I limit it to something as simple as 'a provider for my family', what happens if I fall on hard times and can't do that anymore? It's going to hit me like a ton of bricks. I'd rather be able to weather that storm when it comes.

Re: Keep your Identity Small (2009)

#115

Post by mseebach »

dorkwood wrote: post #114
mseebach wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you're always going to have to see yourself as something. I think this is indirectly a large part of the problem. The trend in society is that everybody must have totally unique and interesting identities, and since few people are in fact "special" enough to live up to that ridiculously high standard, they need to pile on everything and the kitchensink to get to some reasonable approximation. And you'll still wake…

I think we both agree that contentedness is the goal, but we disagree on how to get there. To you, it might seem like 'fending off attacks, real or imagined', is a waste of time, when the waiter could just snap his fingers and suddenly be content with being a good person. But I don't think it's that easy. I think that mentally fending off attacks is a necessary component of becoming content. For the waiter to arrive…

It seems to come down to a definition of what it means for something to be a part of your identity. All of those internal discussions the waiter has, he can have those productively, probably more productively, without making waiterism his identity.

The point of limiting your identity to the core stuff, like providing for your family, is that those are the things are truly matter. If you can't provide for your family, that will hit you like a ton of bricks, regardless of whether it's part of your identity or not. But if you let a nasty comment about your hairstyle, the viability of socialism or whether Jesus really existed bring you down, you can choose not to care because it doesn't really matter (in that isolated interaction, the questions may well matter in the grand scheme of things).

Also, nobody said this was supposed to be easy, something you just flip on and off. But it's something individuals can think about for themselves and decide whether their haircut or profession is really important enough to feel attacked if someone makes a nasty comment.

Re: Keep your Identity Small (2009)

#116

Post by dorkwood »

mseebach wrote: post #115
dorkwood wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we both agree that contentedness is the goal, but we disagree on how to get there. To you, it might seem like 'fending off attacks, real or imagined', is a waste of time, when the waiter could just snap his fingers and suddenly be content with being a good person. But I don't think it's that easy. I think that mentally fending off attacks is a necessary component of becoming content. For the waiter to arrive…

It seems to come down to a definition of what it means for something to be a part of your identity. All of those internal discussions the waiter has, he can have those productively, probably more productively, without making waiterism his identity. The point of limiting your identity to the core stuff, like providing for your family, is that those are the things are truly matter. If you can't provide for your family,…

Yeah, I think you're right about it coming down to a definition of what identity is.

When I talk about broadening my identity, I guess what I'm really talking about is exploring new interests and testing out new ideas. The thought of 'keeping your identity small', to me, seemed as if it was suggesting I should never invest myself into anything lest I open myself up to criticism (which struck me as a fearful way to live).

If I instead think of it as deciding between what matters and what doesn't, and only truly caring about things that matter, that makes a lot more sense, and is actually something I agree with.

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