Keep Your Identity Small

> "As a rule, any mention of religion on an online forum degenerates into a religious argument. Why? Why does this happen with religion and not with Javascript or baking or other topics people talk about on forums?"

I've also seen this happen on forums where people mention vi or emacs :)

Great essay and discussion.

I think there's another variable strongly influencing how "identity" behaves in the wild.

Consider the examples of Nelson Mandela and Ghandi. Both men very strongly identified with the cause of their people, but despite that identity had an amazingly noble approach to their oppressors. Horrible atrocities were committed by their foes, yet they reached out to them with grace - both during their struggles and after their victories. They studied their "enemy's" culture and language extensively and had empathy and compassion for them even while fighting for their cause.

There are many examples of wonderful Lincoln-esque people who strongly identified with a cause, yet had compassion and understanding for the other side. From examining them, it seems that identity was not a factor in causing strife and stupidity when it was coupled with that genuine graciousness and understanding.

Tragically, there seem to be far more examples in history of people taking the other approach - envy, hate, violence, etc. In those instances, identity seems to be the vigorous fan that stokes the flames.

While those may be extreme examples, the same principles apply to today's conversations. For instance, very few people would get into a heated debate with a down-syndrome child over a religious point of doctrine or political policy - no matter how adamant she was about it. Why? Well, it's hard not to have compassion for a mentally-handicapped child who is so innocent in her understanding. Yet when people come across a 35 year old man with the same view (who incidentally may be just as 'innocent' in his understanding) - it's much easier to throw away that compassion and understanding and attack him personally with vitriol.

If someone has genuine love and concern for another person it's hard to imagine the kind of stupid debates and spiraling into dumbness that pg describes - even if the participants are at polar ends of the religious/political identity scales. Some of you may remember what ParticleTree did to effectively reduce trolls and flamers: http://credibility.stanford.edu/captology/notebook/archives.... By giving commenters a reminder of compassion, they took a lot of heat out of identity-stupidity.

Lincoln, Ghandi, Mandela etc understood this principle and used it for great good. It reminds me of a great quote from one of my favorite sci-fi novels that shows Charity not as a flaccid quality - but like this:

"And now it came. It was fiery, sharp, bright, and ruthless, ready to kill, ready to die, outspeeding light; it was Charity, not as mortals imagine it, not even as it has been humanised for them since the Incarnation of the Word, but the trans-lunary virtue, fallen upon them direct from the Third Heaven, unmitigated. They were blinded, scorched. They thought it would burn their bones. They could not bear that it should continue. They could not bear that it should cease." - That Hideous Strength, CS Lewis

I've know highly religious/political people who were extremely dedicated to their views, yet seemed to get along with just about everyone even while having lively debate that even decreased dumbness! Unfortunately, we've also seen much of the opposite. The main key always seems to be whether the person has genuine love and compassion for the others holding opposing views - so much so that the others know that disagreement doesn't threaten the relationship. It's a rare and wonderful quality we can all strive for.

In a nutshell - have all the identity you want - just make sure you couple it with the Golden Rule (thankfully found in just about every belief system, religious or not, yay!).

Organized sports.

I've been very interested in this essay and the thread on defiance as a survival mechanism.

I've reached an "all code is data moment" though on the 'ideology' thing. If we dedicate ourselves to task then in order to do a good job of it we often need to buy into it with identity. For cleaning the dishes we wouldn't, but for designing something new we definitely do. There are controversial value judgements all over the place, and you often have to build on decision mechanisms that are a hell of a lot more vague than scientific conclusions when you do it. Hence, you are invested an ideology, both in terms of approach and belief.

Two things get you into real trouble. One is to stake a lot on something tenuous. If you have a design pattern idea that is very tenous, and then invest in building a system on top of it, you're probably in trouble. Been there, and i got prickly at suggestions that my base was not all that solid.

The other problem is when you have a belief system that is getting driven from somewhere else. Politics is the nasty one because you're forced to subscribe and it's about the group. Though I personally believe that strict property law is sacred, that most taxation is stealing and that public education is a poor model, the only options on offer are those that accept that and so I have to pick one. What's worse still is that politics is a zero sum game. When your solution wins, my bad compromise loses. It hurts a lot more if you openly share your faith that your chosen pick is a good one.

The political systems that are most notorious for hijacking casual conversations are those that are based on the idea that there is a fixed amount of wealth in society, because the stakes are a lot higher for people in that perspective.

Politics can be made worse by some vote electoral decision systems. One bad design is to base it on a winner takes all rule with no preferences. This can be made worse still with a gerrymander electorate. But - at least that ensures you get catch-all parties. Worse still is to give everyone a piece of the pie like the Israeli or old Italian system. In those systems every lobby group has its own political presence, there's less reason to govern for the all rather than your group, and this sets the stage for coruption and a perpetually unstable executive. Vague idea: a political system with a fixed 'kernel' but an arbitrary number of representatives who would be self-funded by bits of the community.

Religion is less of a problem than politics. You can have a conversation with someone about the ancestry of your different religions and respect their position openly and inside even if you do spare a moment later to have a private chuckle at the prospect of their eternity in the fiery pit. Hey - it's their funeral. Some cultures try to turn religion into politics: old testament stories that say that God punished a town because its people were bad, or that certain land must be reclaimed for the one true faith, or network marketing rules.

The problems are far less in the geek world and they decline as time goes on and tools get better making the compromises less. I suspect that normal people got more upset about mac-windows ten years ago than now, and that they get more upset now than than hackers, because they're victims of the compromises whereas experienced developers don't give a damn what platform they're on so long as they can get a shell and a compiler.

Although... everyone needs libraries...

Something that would be useful: tips on forming a world view with minimal reliance on external belief.

Of course! Kids does not think about death, they did not see it ahead. One probably could discover it after some incident or heavy decease, but usually kids are not aware. Unawareness is the one little secret of their cheerfulness.