There’s little value to be had by polarizing people either together or against each other, and nothing does that better (or worse) than identities. On the surface, it may sound like aligning with an identity or group might be a good thing. In my early years, I remember there being groups of people—jocks, band, goths/emo, hippies—and everyone got along just fine. So, what changed?
One perspective is that those people, at the time, weren’t announcing or claiming an identity or group to belong to. They just were that type of person, and they naturally found groups of similar people to blend with. Think of generational popular movies that showcased these habits, like The Breakfast Club (1985), Clueless (1995), and Mean Girls (2004). These were all classic coming-of-age movies that directly represented what many people experienced firsthand in school and their own social structure. But then something happened.
Identities.
The worst kind of identities—political identities—spiked around the early 2010s in the United States. In corporate America, the movement of inclusivity and the notion of diversity above all else stormed its way through HR departments across the country. And in the mainstream media and on the screens of every home, streaming services effectively killed low-budget, B-rated, cult-classic movies that once dominated the landscape. Seemingly overnight, the entire country became obsessed with identifying as something, rather than just being what you are and finding people to be happy around. You simply had to identify as something, or else you were the odd one out (or at least it felt like that at times).
Let’s not forget about social media’s impact. Companies like Facebook, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter) let everyone have a voice. Unfortunately, giving billions of people a platform to voice their opinions, regardless of how logical or insane, is a recipe for disaster. The drunkest person is always the loudest. And unlike a bar, you can’t kick these people out. You can block them, mute them, unfollow them, and unfriend them, but there will always be another drunk person at the bar.
The people dominating social media, the companies controlling streaming platforms, and the politicians wielding their influence have become some of the loudest voices telling us that we must choose an identity—and it better be the right one. We must pick a side: a political side, a social side, a side on each and every issue. And so you go and join a side for “issue A”, but then there’s a new issue the next day, and if you don’t agree with the side you picked on “issue B”, well then, now you’ve got to pick a new side that aligns with your views on both issues. The next day, there’s a new issue, and now you’re out of alignment with everyone you’ve tried to side with.
Or even worse—you picked a side, and now you just agree with how that side thinks for every issue going forward. You don’t even think about it. You just wait to see what the drunk, loud, annoying leaders of the group have to say, and you go along with it. Either you spread the message or sit quietly and don’t say anything to the contrary. This is where the individual dies.
This rat race of picking sides and forcing opinions down each other’s throats has brought us all to the brink of collapse. And here we are, sitting on the edge, just waiting for that last push before we completely go over.
That is, unless we just…stop. Stop taking sides, stop letting someone tell us what to think, stop letting movies, politicians, and social influences make up our minds for us.
We start talking, we start crossing aisles (or better yet, removing them), we start admitting that no one is perfect and that no two people will ever agree on every issue—and that’s okay. We start living like a civilized society again. We stop lumping everything and everyone together as if it’s a constant all-or-nothing situation.
It’s not that having an identity is the problem. Letting it control our every decision is. We don’t need a sorting hat to tell us who we should be around. Maybe if we stop identifying, we can start living again.