selective identity

i enjoy people watching.  i am sitting next to the pool, having morning coffee in an effort to jolt myself awake.  i could have slept in, but i would rather sit here and take in the people around me. there is a table with an aussie flight crew, two pilots and two cabin crew, there are tables with singaporean chinese and others with chinese from the mainland.  there are tables with indians, russians, indonesians and the occasional americans.  most of the time its possible to read which group someone falls into at a distance.  haircuts, clothes, shoes are all hints that can be used to categorize.  if you can hear them talk, you may be able to go deeper, hearing regional-locations and education level.  if you have a real discussion, you can read even more.

i enjoy people watching because i like to see how close i can get to the truth.  is the woman who just took the table next to me aussie as i thought when i saw her walking across the pool... confirmed when she asks for coffee.  why would this matter?  i can give examples of when it has come in useful.  like when i knew the older aussie couple the other day at starbucks would speak english, and most likely be friendly and open to conversation. but honestly, it's more about the process.  the challenge, the fun of the puzzle and the thrill when i find out i am wrong.

human's are natural categorizers.  we are programmed to identify in-group and out-group members quickly.  a good skill to have on the savannas of africa, when the risk of misreading the membership of the person coming toward you could be fatal.  but one that can cause issues when in a cosmopolitan environment with complex social structures.  this may be why some people choose to remain deeply ensconced in their tribal group of choice.  rather than being asked to choose who is safe, they are given a default zone of safety by staying within "their group".

beyond the opportunity cost this imposes, the most glaring issue with this kind of exclusion is when they find that those inside the group cannot fully be trusted either.  once the group becomes suspect, people wonder if anything can be trusted.  if the group does not have a strong enough hold, this could drive someone to look for identity outside of the group.  it could cause one to learn and accept things that could be a challenge to the wider group gestalt.  this is how schisms happen, or how someone commits apostasy.

this risk of losing members is a major reason that group dynamics work to protect the trust that membership brings.  why groups have such strong policing mechanisms on member behavior.  limiting or stopping actions that risk group cohesion.  whether this is living away from the groups warm loving embrace, embracing thoughts (education) that contradict the orthodoxy, or sin of all sins embracing people (dating) outside the group.  allowing someone to begin to empathize with foreign groups removes the simplicity of accepting the communal bonds of the original tribe.

i literally lived on an island as a child.  i was the fourth generation to be born there.  my family was if not well known, then a bit infamous.  we were standard irish catholic.  it was likely that i would stay on the island, build a life and be happy going to the irish american club on saturday afternoon to have a pint with the boys.  but there were issues, my mother was not from the island, she was not catholic, she had come to college in town and met my father.  after my parents divorced, 8 years and 4 children too late, i spent time wondering what else is out there?  i wanted to know why and how church of england was different than roman catholic.  i wanted to know what other family i had off the island.  i wanted to take my irish catholic boyhood off, and try on the WASP side of my heritage.

i spent my college years off the island, i began to travel, i studied religion, history, politics and economics in a search for some understanding of the wider world.  but one weekend i went back to the island and went out drinking with the boys.  my friends, my closest friends in the world, and i tipped back a few glasses and told stories.  towards the end of the night, one of my friends came over to me and accused me of having lost my identity.  in his view, i was not entitled to drop back into the group like this.  he had stayed, i had left -- i should not be coming back now.  i had a new life, a new group.  in the moment i knew he was drunk, i thought it was less about me and more about his connection to others in the group, i wasn't angry it was more a sense of embarrassment for his display.  but that night was the last time i went to the island and saw this group of friends.  i have been back, but i never have the time to join this group.  i never make the time, because i am no longer a member.

i had always had a sense of distance from this group.  to be completely honest, i have always had a sense of distance from almost all of the groups i have been a member of over the years.  this may come from the need to be prepared for changes that would change the group dynamic; a compensation technique that a child of divorce could find useful.  this could also come from a the early understanding that orthodoxy was at times about stopping someone from asking the questions that come when outside the box.

but i love being outside.  i don't trust the easy answer, because they almost never seen right to me.  on this trip i am reading about the evolution of god that has been driven by social evolution of humans and why the west rules which argues that the industrial revolution and cultural bias is not enough to explain the history of east v. west.  the group i want to be a member of is the one which will appreciate and discuss these theses.  both of books challenge orthodoxy, but i enjoy the challenge and care less for the orthodoxy than the wider-view cosmopolitan discussion that they can drive.

i could not have been the guy who never asked questions.  i could not have accepted the orthodox through faith, or the simple answer that should not be questioned or challenged.  i knew early on that people of the in-group were wrong, dangerous or both.  the biggest danger i faced was not being able to search for better answers.  it was not being able to see the world, meet new people and share views that would be shut off if we each simply followed the simple path of staying inside our groups and never challenging ourselves and others to think.

i like people watching because i am in situations where there is complexity.  if we were all the same, all from a single tribe with shared norms and social expectations, what would be the fun of watching?  there would be nothing to parse, it would all be decided for us.

i like people watching, because i like to decide for myself.