I was in I don’t remember which undergrad class listening to a lecture delivered by one of my more brilliant professors when the idea of not identifying as a member of any group or class was implanted in my mind. Like most 21-year-olds, I didn’t really know who I was outside of the various roles and identities assigned to me by myself or others. I don’t remember exactly whom the professor was talking about, or even if it was an individual or a group, but whomever they were, I remember they were the most rugged of individualists, philosophically. They did not identify themselves as subjects of a king or citizens of a country. They did not identify themselves as members of their families. And they certainly didn’t identify themselves by anything so surface and irrelevant as sexual preference or clothing choice. Whomever it was, I liked them. and their rationale made sense to me. Most of the other students in the class didn’t really bother putting themselves through the exercise…they seemed to busy trying to scribble notes, thus missing the forest for the trees. But I did it So I went down the list: I’m not identifying myself as an American [note…I would never deny my Americanness, nor would I deny any of the other traits listed here…this is just an exercise to help one drill down to an actual identity, as opposed to the one based on “membership” in various demographic groups assigned by a society which insists on viewing and valuing people by placing them in sort of demographic buckets…but for the record, I am and always will be a very proud American citizen sworn to support and defend our Constitution. Fuckin’ right.]. And but so anyway if I define myself as not a citizen of my country, not a resident of my state or city, not a member of my family, not by whatever job title I may have at the moment, and as something that is far greater than my actual name, something far greater than something as trivial as my physical characteristics, my sexual preference, then whatever is left must be the “essence” of whom I actually am. I found the entire exercise incredibly liberating back in grad school, so much so that I kind of held on to it this day.
One result of this is that when I meet new people, they find the “getting to know you” phase of things rather difficult to navigate with me, and they usually give up, which only makes things more difficult for them as they do not have enough information to categorize me the way they categorize everyone else in their worlds. ‘Twas always thus, though people seem far more uncomfortable these days simply because they don’t seem to know what the hell to do mentally with someone who not only insists on “identifying” as part of some demographic group, but seems reticent to even share such information.
It makes living in a world controlled by identity politics rather…lonely. Speaking as one, people who intentionally resist categorization tend to seek out other difficult-to-categorize people, because they are simply more interesting and appear, at least, to have a little more depth that than rest of the unwashed “I know, right”-bleating herd.
This entire phenomenon…of suddenly finding myself as someone who intentionally resists categorization in a society who’s population’s main social priority seems to be militantly categorizing themselves…has contributed greatly to the feeling that I am entering The Matrix every time I leave the house. Even worse, it’s made people unbelievably boring.
“Swamp Thing” – The Chameleons
