Social identity and ideology, I think, go hand-in-hand. It's really easy for us to want to find ways of capturing and expressing and maintaining a social identity that empowers us in some way socially. Then, we are also in a place where the ideologies that support that identity can easily become a fortress.
In other words, we can easily just hold our preferences rigidly and project them, and use whatever tools we have to assert that in a political manner (eg come back with more people on my side). Or, we can try to find the actual starting points for ourselves to recognize what has actually been happening within us and start developing a gameplan to make that better and become more free in responding in generous ways.
There's probably a good handful of people here who are interested in self-development from a business or spiritual lens. There are also assuredly many people who are looking for a tribe to belong to. In my own experience, it's been helpful to me personally in both ways. In the latter, I think, it helped me see and prioritize certain types of connections with other people, and gave me an abstract idea of a group I could belong to--one that wasn't defined by this space but was easier to notice after participating here. I am very grateful for that.
I do think too that in the social media climate we live in, many people feel on high alert in terms of fighting other groups that are intentionally or destructively misrepresenting them. I don't know if social media is making things more fractured, hostile, and reductionistic, or it is on some level just showing those of us who before mostly blended in what it's like to experience social life from positions that many minority groups already had been living out. I mean, for myself, as a liberal democrat, watching something like Fox News, even as my "tribe" has probably a slight majority edge in terms of overall people, is incredibly unsettling. I thought about going to a Trump rally when it comes through just to see what it's like and try to deal with this spooky question of "who goes to a Trump rally?" I imagine so many people have built so much disgust and hatred towards me before having had any real conversations with anyone like me. Like I would be a vessel for them to hold themselves in a state of constant anger and point the blame at me. And for what? So they don't have to feel their actual conflicts? I don't know, but I would like to know the answer.
I think that's another issue we're kind of dealing with. Those of us who value the principles of the left in terms of dialogue, open-mindedness, fairness, etc, aren't doing a very good job of remembering what emotional responsibility entails. The idea that "you made me feel _______" isn't really a valid statement. We bring so much habituation in our appraisal of emotions and readiness to react. Our interpretative schemes. The magic of emotions is that they aren't directly caused by external events. For us to have authentic conversations, we need to hold both behaviors and emotional responsibilities to account. I think NVC is so good in this respect in reframing conversations away from feelings towards needs. To me, a needs approach restores a more sane, objectifiable social metric than feelings. Most of all, instead of simply prompting reactions, it helps us focus on the useful information. Meanwhile, it gives others options for how they can approach our needs and attempting to meet them in some small way, rather than dictating that they must do exactly what we want them to do, see us exactly how we want them to see us, etc. Hopefully in 2018, it's never been more obvious how limited the latter approach is in leading and helping build real community.
yes indeed.
. I don't see it as a personal attack at all. I might get a bit annoyed though if someone is super fixated on my typing.
