Identity And Ideas
We rarely do or say something intentionally that surprises us. That’s because we are in intimate contact with the noise in our heads–we spend our days looking in the mirror, listening to our inner voice and defining our point of view. “That’s not the sort of thing I would say or do…” We call this internal familiarity our ‘identity.’ If our ideas are equated to our identity, then talking about ideas is very much the act of talking about yourself. And thus the tension is created. Our culture and our economy are built on ideas. Many of our society’s ideas get better over time and yet some of them get stuck. Often, we need a generation to step away before an entrenched idea begins to fade because the people who have been embracing that toxic or outlived idea see it as part of their identity. As the media realizes that they can improve profits by narrowcasting ideas to people who embrace them as part of who they are, it gets increasingly difficult to have a constructive conversation ab...