The Hierarchy of Identity
What is a person’s identity?
A conglomeration of ideas built on top of one another, itself built on top of a set of biological imperatives, all collectively bent towards preservation. I have identified 9 “types” corresponding to the composition of being – the different levels at which identity is constructed or redefined, all of which can be examined in order to determine how they shape our identity.
The genotype is constructed from a blend of genes from two parents, the genes then expressed through probability by way of the phenotype. At some point during our early childhood we learn to distinguish ourselves from our external environment. We subscribe to the idea of “self”, which has both conscious and unconscious manifestations – together called the endotype. The advent of self also gives birth to the idea of “other”, the essential crisis of human consciousness.
Throughout the course of our lives, we are influenced in various ways by our external environment, our interactions with it providing positive or negative feedback. From there we start to form a growing understanding of the relationship between self and other, in places reconciling the two – as we do in forming bonds with other people, and in places maintaining a certain distance or dissonance, such as competition for resources or mates. The total effect of the external world on a being is its exotype.
As we interact with our external environment, developing impressions of other beings, those other beings also develop certain perceptions of us, either through direct interaction or filtered through pre-existent identification paradigms such as race, religion, gender, or nationality. Our identity as perceived by others, which is infinitely variable, is known as the ectotype. This also means that we construct an ectotype for every other being with which we interact. We integrate into our identity different ectotypes from individuals whose impressions we value for any reason, or that which is projected onto us from the greater society.
Ectotypes affect our interactions with others, that is, they determine how those others treat us, whether they accept us or reject us, like or dislike us, admire or scorn us. This in turn can have an affect on how we see ourselves, either validating and reinforcing our self-image or creating a disparity which puts the endotype into crisis. All of these interactions are a part of how the external environment influences our being, and so in this way there is a triangular interplay between endotype, ectotype, and exotype.
How this interplay shapes our identity is both conscious and subconscious. Sometimes we are not even aware of how we make changes to our identity in order to make ourselves more “fit” for the external environment. Physical adaptations are obvious, while cultural adaptations can take place on a level beneath awareness. Humans do of course on some level consciously choose how they will represent their idea of self to the world – by way of physical appearance and outward personality. Often this representation is genuine, while other times it is a facade. As we go through life, it is at turns fixed or changing, and some aspects are circumstantial while others are consistent. It is our conscious response to the interplay between endotype, ectotype, and exotype, and is called heretype.
As we establish our identities we adopt ideas about everything. Ideas about other people and our relationships with them. Ideas about our world, from our immediate surroundings out to the whole of planet Earth and the universe beyond, and how we fit within them. Our social consciousness, our politics, our religion, our morals, our ethics, our aesthetics, our membership within groups – all of these complexes of ideas collaboratively form our ideotype which we fix upon ourselves. We “identify” with them, which is to say that we affix them to our identities. Our ideas about ourselves and the world become as much a part of who we are as our physical bodies.
But what does any of this really mean? Is any of it substantial? At the very bottom of our identity is our physical body, which had it developed in a different place under different circumstances and had different interactions with different people, may have manifested as an entirely different person. It has already been established that at some point we choose who we are, or at least how we represent ourselves to the world. This ability to choose makes human being’s existential freedom unique amongst all other animals of the world – but only insofar as we are aware that we have this choice.
While we may say that so many variables “determine” our identity, the word determine connotes a lack of choice. Our sense of self is affected by others perceptions of us, but if we are of the right frame of mind we can reject those perceptions where they conflict with our sense of self rather than internalizing them. We have that freedom. We have the least control over our physical bodies, but even they are subject to change through choice of diet, choice of activities, and other factors. But even if our identity was grounded in our physical bodies, it certainly does not mean that we have to subscribe to any of the ideas attached to them by others. This means that whatever “meanings” are applied to the various sets of physical characteristics, such as body types or “race” can be accepted or rejected in how we conceive our sense of self.
Although sociocultural constructs such as race, ethnicity, nationality, family role, gender, religious affiliation, and political orientation are layered upon us to form our identity, we can at any time reject any part or the whole of that identity and reinvent ourselves as we so choose. The crisis of establishing one’s identity is called angst, and where there is a disparity between sense of self and how others perceive us (or how we think they perceive us) there is anxiety. The two terms share a common etymology, and are quite clearly intertwined.
Most people probably are not even aware of the freedom they have. For example, a woman gives birth to a child. Social norms and biological imperatives dictate that she should play the role of “mother” to this child. Built within these norms and imperatives are positive feedback mechanisms which only further incline the woman to sustain that role, to identify herself as a “mother”. She may affix this identity to herself so firmly it supersedes all other aspects of self, and were she suddenly to be wrenched from this identity it would put who she conceived herself to be into crisis.
But the truth is that this woman, social norms and biological imperatives aside, has the freedom to abandon that child, to renounce all responsibility and reject the role of mother. Now depending upon how she goes about this the consequences – emotionally, socially, or legally – may be more or less severe, but they do not affect her ability to free herself from her identity as a mother. So that it’s clear, I am not advocating the idea of women abandoning their children, but merely making the point that such freedom exists.
That to many people would be unthinkable. They may say that even if she put the child up for adoption she is still technically – by the fact of their biological connection – the child’s “mother”. But the role of mother, just like all other non-physical aspects of identity, is a construct, and as such it can be deconstructed and renounced. Imagine a hypothetical close-knit society where the children of any set of parents are treated as the children of every adult in the society. Perhaps the words “mother” or “father” do not even exist in this society. The child merely exists in a familial relationship with the entire community.
Certainly there will be different people who fall into different roles with respect to this child, but none of them may be exactly what one would classify as a “mother”. A woman who breastfeeds the child may not be biologically related to him at all, but merely another woman who was lactating because of her own recent pregnancy. This woman may then do nothing else for the child as far as nuturing or protecting him or even interacting with him. Perhaps her only job is to feed him. Is she his mother? Or does that title fall to the man who coddles, protects, and loves the child? It should be clear that the role of “mother” is not as substantial as we normally take it to be.
The person that I conceive of as my own mother is merely the ectotype for her that I have created through our interactions, but is not at all the whole of her identity. To think so is to place limitations on who she is and who she can be, and it is not my place to do so. Only she can choose to what extent she is my mother, and what that means for our relationship and how that contributes to her personal identity.
What the example of the mother is meant to demonstrate is that a person can deconstruct their identity – starting at any layer – and “rebuild” themselves as they choose. From renouncing one’s race or ethnicity to rejecting cultural norms or mores to abandoning one’s entire self-image. This can be beneficial in many ways. For example, if a person has been continuously rejected in their quest for romance for any number of reasons, they may internalize these rejections as meaning that something is wrong or undesirable about themselves. But the truth is that each rejection is an individual event, and not necessarily reflective of any global truth about the person.
Perhaps one person invalidated them for having what they saw as an unattractive body type. Another because they weren’t of the same “race”. Yet another rejected them for their choice of fashion. We may be invalidated and rejected at anytime and for any reason, and if we were to internalize every single one of them, we would only be in constant crisis. But we don’t internalize them all. Which ones we reject and which ones we accept are all a matter of choice. This means that we also have the choice to reject them all, to not allow any of those external judgments to determine our sense of self.
The point of this essay is not to say that a person should necessarily abandon their entire identity, but to demonstrate that they have the freedom to do so. The only true identity is a divine nothingness – a rich soil in which we can plant any kind of seeds, a blank canvas we can paint however we wish and paint over again and again, a clay that we can mold and shape into any form, a void which can be filled with anything the free-thinker desires. As children we understand this freedom – if only subconsciously – more than we do by the time we become adults – since at that time we are likely to have become set within a certain identity.
But this freedom never leaves us, as evidenced by people who hold to certain ideas for the majority of their lives, only to come to some revelation and change their minds completely. This kind of revelation and change can come in youth, in middle age, in old age, or even on a person’s deathbed. But it is only a “revelation” after we’ve forgotten that we can change who we are, what we think, how we feel, and what we believe at any given time.
So in conclusion, if you find that your identity places you in some kind of crisis – either within yourself or with your environment, remember that you have the freedom to change, or the freedom to determine whether or not that crisis has to exist at all.
Physical bodies, ecosystems, ideas, personalities, cultures, communities, nations, worlds – and verily, the entire universe – are in flux. Should it be so strange that an individual identity is inconstant, deconstructable, and adaptable? Certainly not.
I really like this post. It really captures that sense of “floating in a place beyond all rules and restrictions”. So many people live their lives inside cages within cages of social taboos, family expectations, personal ignorance, etc. They really can’t see that the only reason they are “supposed to/should do something” is because someone, who a large number of people give authority to, says so. People hold these concepts of love, nature, science, religion, etc. as if they were handed down by a supreme being instead of long dead people as human as they.
“As children we understand this freedom…”
I often think of how when you’re little time goes past so slowly because EVERYTHING is a mystery waiting to be explored. As we get older, we unconsciously tick off boxes in our heads of the things we “think” we know and pretty soon we just drift through the day completely missing all the infinite potential sitting around us – by time we are teenagers we have already locked our mind away. I make it a priority to not let myself forget what experiencing every day differently as a kid was like – the way days “felt” because of all the ambient sounds merging into a completely unique experience…so many people forget that.