
Sometimes you’re definitely one thing, like a human, but along some axes, you probably don't fall neatly into any particular category. One example of an edge case like this for me is ‘journalist’. Last year, I published three things in ‘a real magazine’; the year before that, one; the year before that, zero. Along an axis like this, you can imagine your identity as a tree on the border of two yards. Sometimes it’s fine to let that tree stand where it is; ‘journalist’ is like this for me—no one is forcing me to say whether or not I’m a journalist, and the ambiguity doesn’t really seem to affect my life.
But a lot of life is quite tribalistic. Humans love to build coalitions around common interests; we can’t get enough of it. It makes us feel safe in a harsh world. Some of us care a lot about having ‘correct’ (in the sense of actually true) opinions, but even more of us care a lot about having ‘correct’ (in the sense of other-people-won’t-be-mad-at-me-for-believing-this) opinions. Which makes sense; we don’t want to cast into the outer darkness to be the prey of wolves.
Even deeper than opinions, and more complex, are aspects of our identity. We often talk about some aspects of ourselves as if they’re facts, such as whether we’re cis or not; however, some of these aspects can be seen to be downstream of culture (cf.
’s “Why I Stopped Using They/Them Pronouns After 13 Years”). Often the truth-seeking move is to let your tree stand in its awkward location, and the integrity of this move can feel gratifying—but sometimes the outlier doesn’t get invited to parties. Sometimes, your life becomes easier if you cut that tree down and, as it falls, push it into one of the two yards.Here are some edge cases where I felt I’ve been at crossroads, and could have joined either side, but have pushed my tree into one of two yards (or have ended up there accidentally), and have been happy with the outcome:
Queer-ish person in non-queer world (vs straight-ish person in queer world)1
Dumb person in smart world (vs smart person in dumb world)
Poor person in rich world (vs rich person in poor world)
Left-leaning person in centrist world (vs centrist person in left world)
These are just my intuitive preferences. I don’t claim they’re optimally advantageous, or that they’ll always feel right. But they’ve been making me happy.
Finally, I should say that as time passes and I’ve personally witnessed more and more deep reconfigurations of cultural alignments, I’ve observed that people who leave their tree standing in an awkward location during one era, often at significant personal expense, tend to be, in the next era, the landmarks around which new territories form, becoming ground zero for the process described in “Geeks, MOPs, and sociopaths in subculture evolution.” I consider this steadfastness heroic; but the definition of a hero is someone who is better than the average person, and I consider myself relatively average.
My friend Peli once tweeted “I feel like I'm an American they/them, European he/him,” which is basically my deal—American gender norms are more conservative than Canadian—and also happens to encapsulate exactly what this post is about
Humans are tribalistic, and humans like security - something I think a lot of people are resistant to admit but it does overwhelmingly seem to be how we operate. What I find curious about your examples is that you're choosing your tribe but also your "world" - you are a left-learning person in a centrist world. Are you saying that it also helps your sense of security security to define what everyone else is too, so that you can define yourself in opposition to that? Or are you intentionally choosing your communities or echo-chambers so that you are only surrounded by centrists? If that community became more left-leaning, how would you change in response to it? (Maybe this is fodder for a follow up post...!)