Wow this is fantastic. I'd never read Paul Graham and so didn't have this labels thing in my mind, but like you I've always sought to be around people different than me and see what of them I could absorb. And I think that's a somewhat rare life pattern to sustain over time...it's very natural during the late teens and early twenties when you're emerging into your own identity free from parents finally and heavily influenced in university...and then most people settle in...but to keep it going is I think very noble and challenging.
I think it ebbs and flows with life’s seasons, but after some serious immersion in antiracism by being with fellow leaders of different races in NYC (I’m white) then I spent seven years in SE Asia, so it was thrust on me. Now the hardest one of all is being in USA South with Trump lovers and desperately seeking to find some redemptive quality to this kind of conservatism and so far it’s eluding me, but I’m not giving up.
I think probably this is something that doesn't matter very much in the sense that both approaches are fine.
Personally, I identify a bit more with PG. It's not that I think it's superior to have more fewer identity labels, it's that I struggle with them because I never quite feel like they fit. I'm a disagreeable person, so as soon as I find a label that fits, I start interacting with people in the group and disagreeing with them. And then suddenly I'm not that thing anymore. For me identity is just dynamically unstable.
Wow this is fantastic. I'd never read Paul Graham and so didn't have this labels thing in my mind, but like you I've always sought to be around people different than me and see what of them I could absorb. And I think that's a somewhat rare life pattern to sustain over time...it's very natural during the late teens and early twenties when you're emerging into your own identity free from parents finally and heavily influenced in university...and then most people settle in...but to keep it going is I think very noble and challenging.
Have you managed to keep it going? I'll admit I'm not doing as well as I was at immersing myself in new groups
I think it ebbs and flows with life’s seasons, but after some serious immersion in antiracism by being with fellow leaders of different races in NYC (I’m white) then I spent seven years in SE Asia, so it was thrust on me. Now the hardest one of all is being in USA South with Trump lovers and desperately seeking to find some redemptive quality to this kind of conservatism and so far it’s eluding me, but I’m not giving up.
I literally have a draft in my folder called “Make Your Identity Large” 😂
Same wavelength!
I'd be very curious to read your version!
I think https://contemplatonist.substack.com/ may also have written something in this direction!
Ah, here it is! https://contemplatonist.substack.com/p/against-small-identities
I think probably this is something that doesn't matter very much in the sense that both approaches are fine.
Personally, I identify a bit more with PG. It's not that I think it's superior to have more fewer identity labels, it's that I struggle with them because I never quite feel like they fit. I'm a disagreeable person, so as soon as I find a label that fits, I start interacting with people in the group and disagreeing with them. And then suddenly I'm not that thing anymore. For me identity is just dynamically unstable.