Identity is a fiction; it doesn’t exist. It’s a contrivance, a makeshift construct, a label slapped on to an entity with some blurry amalgam of shared experiences. But this isn’t just street wisdom; some of history’s sharpest minds have said as much.
“There are no facts, only interpretations.”
— Friedrich Nietzsche
Think about Hume, who saw identity as nothing more than a bundle of perceptions, devoid of any central core. Or Nietzsche, who embraced the chaos and contradictions within us, rejecting any fixed notion of self.
Edmund Dantes chose to become the Count of Monte Cristo, but what choice do we have? We all have control over our performative identities, a concept that Judith Butler would argue isn’t limited to gender but applies to the very essence of who we are.
“I don’t feel that it is necessary to know exactly what I am. The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning.”
— Michel Foucault
But here’s the kicker, identities are a paradox. Just ask Michel Foucault, who’d say our sense of self is shaped not by who we are but by power, society, and external forces.
You think you know who you are? Well, Erik Erikson might say your identity’s still evolving, shifting through different stages of life. And what’s “normal” anyway? Try to define it, and you’ll end up chasing shadows, much like Derrida’s deconstruction of stable identities.
“No such things as selves exist in the world: Nobody ever was or had a self.”
— Thomas Metzinger
“He seemed like a nice man,” how many times have we heard that line after someone’s accused of a crime? It’s a mystery, but Thomas Metzinger might tell you that the self is just an illusion, a by-product of the brain.
Nations, they’re the same mess. Like Heraclitus’s ever-changing river, a nation is never the same thing twice. So what the hell is a nation, anyway? What are you defending as a nationalist? It’s a riddle that echoes through history, resonating with the philosophical challenges to identity itself.
“I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception.”
— David Hume
If identity and nations are just made-up stories, what’s all the fuss about? Why do people get so worked up, even ready to die, for these fictions? Maybe it’s fear, maybe it’s pride, or maybe it’s because, as Kierkegaard warned, rationality itself can seem mad in a world gone astray.
In a world where everything’s shifting and nothing’s set in stone, these fictions offer some solid ground. But next time you’re ready to go to the mat for your identity or your nation, take a minute and ask yourself: what the hell am I really fighting for? What am I clinging to?
Philosophics 
I’ve been following a lot of Bernardo Kastrup ideas lately on analytic idealism. It touches a lot of these principles and the fallacies of physicalism.
Fun post!
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Much of what Kastrup says ressonates with me until he gets into the metaphysical further than I follow.
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I really resonate with him as well, probably because so much of it mirrors my own experience and conclusions. He hasn’t lost me yet! He puts things very clearly what is often difficult to articulate
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About a year ago I posted this
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The notion of self-identity has both amused and baffled me for many a year. Perhaps one of the longest standing ideals that has spewed from my mouth in view to describing it has something to do with character vs personality. Character in this context being composed of the actual things we do over the long haul that enable character traits such as intellectual diligence and courage. Whereas personality is the face we put on for others, for instance, celebrities appear adorable to the crowd but you would likely wish them dead if you had to live with them.
Here’s another radical way of looking at oneself:
“Who are ‘we’? … As pure souls, we were Spirit…. We were a part of the spiritual world, neither circumscribed nor cut off from it. Even now, we are still not cut off from it. Now, however, another person, who wanted to exist and who has found us … has added himself on to the original person…. Then we became both: now we are no longer only the one we were, and at times, when the spiritual person is idle and in a certain sense stops being present, we are only the person we have added on to ourselves.” – Plotinus, Ennead VI-4-14
You may feel that Nietzsche removed such metaphysical reflection from his philosophy altogether but he picks it up again as he nears his breakdown. Check out his final aphorism in The Will To Power for an ecstatic recap of Neoplatonism par excellence.
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Yes. We all employ various persona and coding techniques. I find it amusing that the people, especially defending the psychology of the psyche and the self as “real” call us autistic and such. Of course, Foucault warned us not to fall inti the normalcy game. A gay man himself, he did not agree with the gay rights movement by the same logic. If you want to become part of the system, you’ll be marginalised and controlled. Evidence seems to support his claim.
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