Multiple Identities (Pt. 2)





Identity Construction 🔧



We have, each of us, a life-story, an inner narrative — whose continuity,

whose sense, is our lives. It might be said that each of us constructs and

lives, a “narrative,” and that this narrative is us, our identities. This quote from Oliver Sacks, in his book The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, is a compelling definition of identity. Identity is a story: the inner narrative we tell about ourselves and the story we project to others. There’s a division between these two pieces (more on that later), but at a broad level, identity is a story that we construct and internalize. I think this view explains why identity is so fluid and hard-to-define—stories are constantly evolving in response to social and societal pressures and stimuli. (As a side note, Sacks’ quote also helps explain the power of storytelling. Advertisers who tap into stories to sell products are selling not the “product,” but a story about who you will be if you buy the product. If you buy Smartwater, you’re inheriting the lifestyle of Jennifer Aniston (protruding collarbones and all.) If you buy a Ram truck, you will be more rugged and manly. If you buy Smuckers Jam, you will be validated as humble, time-honored, and family-oriented. At a deeper level, they’re selling a story about your identity.)

I have pretty shallow understanding of the philosophical underpinnings of identity construction. But I’m more interested in how our conceptions of identity shape how we behave. I recently read this quote from philosopher Amélie Rorty: A person’s roles and his place in the narrative devolve from the choices

that place him in a structural system related to others. The person thus

comes to stand behind his roles, to select them and to be judged by his

choices and his capacities to act out his personae in a total structure that is

the unfolding of his drama. We stand behind our roles, we are judged for our stances, and we act out the drama that is expected of us—especially in the context of online identities and building a “brand.” On Twitter, everyone sees a receipt of our likes, tweets, and retweets. Instagram and Facebook feeds are carefully curated. LinkedIn is harder to “game,” but is still curated to reflect a “journey“ and purpose. Digital identity is complex. In Part 1 of this post, I wrote about the constraining effect of society’s expectation to have a single, easily explainable story. But in the context of digital identities, it’s the opposite: we don’t get a “whole story.”

Fragmentation 🍕



“It’s never been more asked of us to show up as only slices of ourselves in

different places.” - Courtney Martin, from On Being with Krista Tippett. (I previously wrote about my thoughts on social media, published here in the MIT Tech Review. The essay is an excerpt from a 75-page creative portfolio on identity and social media that I spent around six months writing. To prevent this post from ballooning, I’ll save more on social media for a future post.) For now, I’ll focus on my own reluctance to build and “curate” a social media brand. Part of it is from habit. When I first got Instagram in eighth grade, my mom suggested that I should choose a picture where “my face wasn’t clear, or where I was wearing sunglasses.” This simple phrase reflects a lot about the mindset I’ve learned growing up—keep a low profile, don’t focus on yourself, don’t “waste” too much time on your appearance. Stay humble, do the work, and the opportunities will come. Being active on social media feels overly revealing. Yet more and more, I’ve realized how important having a digital presence is in 2020. If you can’t be easily found online, it’s assumed that you aren’t competent enough to establish a presence. It’s like being a designer without a portfolio. The other reason I’m not active on social media is more psychological. Social media seems like a curated and artificial way of crafting an identity. Having an audience slowly shapes not just your surface-level posts, but your role and brand and self-perception. As Sacks says, our identity is really just a narrative. A “feed.” Our narrative places us in a structural system that leads us to stand behind our roles, without really examining what our roles and beliefs are. I want to lean more into the discomfort of sharing on social media. But before that, I want to have a clearer idea in my mind of what my path is and how I can “disassociate“ from an online presence. Is it possible? It seems like whatever ”option“ I choose, I’m subscribing to some trope. If I want to make aesthetically pleasing Instagram posts, I’m a VSCO girl. If I purposely reject aesthetics, I’m some sort of edgy socialist. If I’m political, I’m ”activist girl“ or ”social justice warrior.“ Or some cross between these. It’s impossible to not have a brand. And for me, to not overthink. I’ve always thought of keeping virtual doors closed as the way to getting work done and getting away from distraction. Yet I also feel FOMO. I see connections made virtually, and wonder what I’m missing out on. I’ve found opportunities and learning resources passed through digital networks. I know I’m missing out on things I don’t even know about—which is the most anxiety-inducing part. It’s similar to the concept of parallel universes: an endless buffet of unfulfilled possibilities. I hate knowing what I don’t know.

Art 🎨



I’ve been thinking a lot about this quote from John O’Donohue, originally spoken on the radio “Webs of Wonder” and transcribed in this book: Every human person is inevitably involved with two worlds: the world they

carry within them and the world that is out there. All thinking, all writing,

all action, all creation and all destruction is about that bridge between the

two worlds. This interplay is the most challenging part of writing and creating: there’s always a gap between what’s in your head and what you’ve written or built. This also happens in the opposite direction: the outside world filters into your head. Designing an environment is one of the most important influences on life quality. We meticulously design our rooms and workspaces. But I haven’t given much thought to designing my digital environment in the past. How does the layout of my desktop, the websites I visit, and the apps I use affect me? How does who I follow influence what I post? How do they become part of my multiple identities? On my computer, I have a pretty clear divide between “writing-related” and “tech-related” websites and programs. In a parallel way, most people in the writing community don’t know I have anything to do with tech. And vice versa. It often doesn’t seem necessary. For example, if I’m working with someone on writing, it feels awkward and tedious to tell them I’m also into tech. It’s tedious to project my entire, “overarching narrative“ online. Yet I’m reminded of this quote from Art & Fear, one of my favorite books: Your growth as the artist is a growth toward fully realizable works—works

that become real in full illumination of all that you know. Including all you

know about yourself. I think I should be more open, online and otherwise, about the uncomfortable and annoying divisions between what I do, rather than ignoring these divisions or seeking simple ways to explain them. I should at least make an effort to design my digital environment, and the accounts and people I follow, to better match what I see as my relationship to multiple fields in parallel. I see art as a force to counter and mend societal division (to simplify just one aspect of what is deemed “art.”) I don’t think art alone can “fix” the fragmentation of multiple identities that happens online. But I think that creating art and writing can create a more whole identity—one that is more complex, more nuanced, more uncomfortable, more realistic, more wild, more meaningful. There’s another beautiful John O’Donahue quote from On Being: Your identity is not equivalent to your biography and that there is a place

in you where you have never been wounded, where there is still a sureness

in you, where there’s a seamlessness in you, and where there is a

confidence and tranquility in you. Krista Tippett, the host of On Being, gave a lecture at my local university (that I skipped school to attend.) During the lecture, she read this quote. She said the soul is this place that has never been wounded. Before this, I saw the word “soul” as a little cheesy. But if there is a definition, this seems to me the truest piece of identity: the place where there is a sureness and a seamlessness which needs no explanation.



Why does this matter? 💭



In a word, it doesn’t. Or it does. (Either way, this post is already too long.) Identity shapes us, and shapes how we understand and experience the world (from this essay.) How can we make identity a more meaningful part of how we design our society and our schools? Growing up, I often felt agony around identity issues. I was given skeletal words (Chinese-American, girl, Utahan, etc.) that I didn’t feel encompassed my unique experience. I wasn’t taught to really think about and consider who I wanted to be, what my story was, and what values I wanted to have. I guess that’s just “growing up.” But I still have questions: is my identity being manipulated, and if so, how and by whom? Can I step outside of my identity and analyze the role that I fit into? Is it possible to stop categorizing myself and others, while still being able to understand their stories? I’m not sure “identity” is even the best word, since it’s so often politicized or conflated with genetic and inherited traits. We currently fill identity with buzzwords about race and gender. Life-story seems more fitting: stories shape our actions in very concrete ways. My brother recommended to me this podcast with Naval Ravikant, where he says: We unconsciously pick up habits in the background and we keep them for

decades. We may not realize that they’re bad for us until we’re ready to

move on them. To some extent, our attitude in life, our mood, our

happiness levels, depression levels, these are also habits. [...] What we do is

we accumulate all these habits. We put them in the bundle of identity, ego,

ourselves, and then we get attached to that. [...] Now I’ve just reinforced it

and reinforced it and reinforced it and I call it a part of my identity. The habits we accumulate on social media create parts of our identity. The identities we form on social media can’t be easily “removed” like coats or scarves to unwrap. These stories become habits, which become our selves. I hope identity will be recognized with more multiplicity and with deeper understanding of stories in the future. I hope understanding identity will allow us to truly appreciate diversity in all its forms. I hope that awareness of multiple identities and their connections will be a counter to only showing pieces of ourselves online. Currently, code switching between multiple identities is our default setting. I don’t actually have evidence that that’s a bad thing. But I’ve been thinking a lot about Calvin and Hobbes. Hobbes is usually Hobbes: a mischievous tiger with an attack instinct. But Calvin’s parents see the mute, stitched, stuffed animal. Why settle for only a piece of your story? Why settle for the stuffed animal, when you could have the tiger?