Who am I this probably sounds like the
kind of question that you might ask
while lying on your psychiatrist’s couch
actually though it’s a timeless question
when I ask Who am I I’m really asking
what is my circle and the very next
question that follows from this is are
you inside my circle or outside it now
your answer says a lot about whether you
may have a lot of enemies or whether
you’re likely to live peaceably with
friends putting the question another way
who is us and who is them now I happen
to come from a wasp background in the
United States so as I grew up I was
perhaps initially a little less attuned
to perhaps questions of minority
people’s cultures and languages but when
I became a teenager I became fascinated
with other cultures I wanted to travel
live overseas learn languages and my job
later on I was an intelligence officer
took me and my family to live overseas
in many different places over a
considerable period of time and then
multiculturalism entered our own family
apart from our two biological daughters
my wife and I adopted a one-year-old
Korean orphan now we watched as he dealt
with this question of identity and
belonging
over the years living with us all a
while in very different places all
around the world Luke
sadly died of a drug overdose at age 21
these things
sadly happened to many people I ended up
writing a memoir about this but our time
with him
made us even more personally sensitive
to questions of identity in daily life
where we belong
although I certainly wouldn’t want to
suggest that identity issues have to
lead to despair or to drugs but the
question is still there for most of us
we all have friends family who might be
from minority backgrounds or different
than we are but let’s go back to the
beginning did cavemen cavemen sit around
their fireplace and worry about this
question of identity well yes in the
sense they did they didn’t talk to
psychiatrists about it no but they
certainly knew who belonged and who
didn’t was the next cave for example
friendly and did it belong or what about
the next five or ten caves away how far
did you have to go to find unfriendly
caves and why were they unfriendly yeah
back then we might have fought over who
got what portion of a mastodon that we
had just haunted but even then there
were those who were we were willing to
work with peaceably and others we viewed
flat out as enemies who we couldn’t get
along with so the question of who do we
belong to becomes very fundamental you
know it’s interesting that among many
Aboriginal peoples with very ancient
cultures like Navajo in the American
Southwest or Kwakiutl in in North
Western Canada and for these people the
word for their own peoples is simply the
people now if you weren’t one of the
people you were obviously something else
and possibly something even threatening
that makes again who am i a very
important question so who do we include
then and who do we exclude from our
group
I’m not just talking about our own
communities this is actually a global
issue and so let me get a little more
specific for clarity’s sake let’s take
the case of Iraq by now sadly familiar
to all of us to watching events over the
years on this on the TV screen
the country is suffered terribly in the
last two decades and is still undergoing
serious identity crises and struggles
but you know when we use the word
identity this isn’t just one thing it’s
a complicated thing in reality we all
have multiple identities gender for
example is one of the most basic ones in
our everyday lives and then there’s
ethnic difference what ethnic group do
we belong to many of us are increasingly
ethnically mixed and then there’s
linguistic you might belong to one
language or ethnic group but end up
speaking another language and then
there’s regional what region do you come
from and how much do people from that
region have a strong sense of belonging
against others on the outside think
Texas think of northern versus southern
China or even northern versus southern
Italy and then there’s religion in the
Middle East for several thousands of
years people organize their communities
on religious basis rather than on ethnic
or linguistic basis now in principle one
system can work just as well as the
other it’s all about how tolerant you
are within that particular system and
then there’s political identity in
America are you a Democrat or a
Republican where these days red or blue
in the UK are you a Tory or a socialist
or something else do you identify
personally as a liberal or conservative
globally and then we even have
national identity at our class are you
from more from a blue-collar class to
use a old-fashioned term or are you
white-collar are you to university
educated for Karl Marx class was the
ultimate mean meaningful identity issue
and even music and culture what cultural
tribe do you belong to if you’re my age
did you get off on Grateful Dead or
today do you go to Radiohead concerts
and what sports tribe do you belong to
in some countries that question can lead
to street riots now some of these
identity elements we can easily change
we can change what team we root for we
can change our musical tastes we can
seek higher education we can change our
profession we can move from one part of
the country to another even emigrate to
another country but it’s harder to
change our ethnicity and skin colour and
facial appearance are with us forever
and then comes the harshest aspect of
this identity question of all because
our identity it isn’t just what we think
we are we can decide who we are we can
cling to that identity but unfortunately
it’s a two-way street I I may think I
know who I am but you may think I’m a
different person you may see me in a
different light and that those two views
may not agree for example sadly some
Americans argue now about who is a real
American and that causes real trouble
and sometimes questions like this can
cause even life or death consequences
for example a terrible genocide took
place in Rwanda in 1994 between Hutu and
Tutsi people yes the differences between
the two – and the Tutsi were in
like or linguistic or even religious
terms were really rather slight so who
was us and who was them at that time and
1 million people ended up being
slaughtered as a result or take a rock I
may say I’m Iraqi but another Iraqi may
say no your occurred even if I’m an
Iraqi citizen yet another Iraqi may
focus on whether I’m Shiite or Sunni for
them that is the most important
designation not what my passport says or
take the tragic case of Nazi Germany
look how quickly here situations can
change in 1922 if we had asked the
German Jew on the street who are you and
remember in 1992 we’re talking about the
German Weimar Republic democratic
liberal if we were to ask that you on
the street in 1922 who are you he or she
might have answered well I’m a German I
am A Berliner I teach it to file a new
verse eat ate I’m a Jew I’m a professor
of psychology I grew up in Heidelberg
I’m a socialist
I’m a serious tennis player and I play
oboe and our local symphony now let’s
take that same person 15 years later
when Hitler’s Nazi Party had come to
full power if you ask that person then
who are you there was only one answer
that meant anything to the authorities
the Jewish identity was all that
mattered and that usually had fatal
consequences same country same people
different circumstances I wrote a book
some years back on Arab Shiites along
with an Iraqi American woman whose
father happened to be Shiite and her
mother was something this was
commonplace in the Iraq in the
these but after the chaos following the
US invasion of Iraq in 2003 the place
fell apart a mixed marriage like that
then really became unthinkable indeed
mixed neighborhoods became unthinkable
so your sectarian identity often for you
came to mean life or death and others
impose that on you for many black people
the question of color may be at the top
of their identity concerns but it’s not
because they want it to be among
themselves it isn’t the key criterion
but for some other people color is a key
issue and this isn’t only about
prejudice we’re also talking about power
so there it is we can’t always control
what we claim our identity is if others
don’t see it that way but what’s
striking are all in all of this is how
fast these identity issues can get right
down to the ugly gut level and times of
crisis are what throws this all right
out on the table out on the floor in
front of us when things go bad political
or social on evil upheaval revolution
war riots anything that destroys the
formerly established order then identity
becomes deeply fundamental when things
go bad like this you find who what your
gut identity is have you ever wondered
why we hear so much about tribalism or
clans or sectarian groups right down in
Iraq it’s because the government and the
infrastructure and the social order were
destroyed society then turns into a
jungle of survival and at that point
your identity becomes totally focused on
your own personal security and the
security of your family why wouldn’t it
weird where’d you go and tie
of deep trouble like this who-who will
take you in
who will acknowledge you as one of their
own who will protect you feed you give
you a gun fight for your cause it can
get pretty raw and fundamental and at
that point you’ve come to know that your
government isn’t going to defend you if
it ever did but your tribe will so can
we find some more positive thoughts and
all of this yeah I think the more
heartening aspect is that things can
change
chaos war and violence create of course
the harshest interpretations of who we
are but when conditions are fairly
decent stable safe our perceptions of
ourselves and others can change if I
feel more comfortable safer than I feel
less suspicious and more relaxed I can
be more generous and open maybe I can
develop a broader outlook again maybe
that’s when I decide that yes we’re all
Iraqis or Rwandan stew gether or I can
maybe think bigger that we’re all Middle
Easterners or we’re all Europeans or
were all Africans together or maybe just
humans together but even then have we
noticed how similar individuals can
sometimes see things very differently
even from almost exactly the same
background what is it that makes one
person of that faith of one faith decide
to put up rigid walls against other
people and yet another person of that
very same religion or culture is more
open we can even see this in siblings
brought up within the same family one of
whom is narrow and suspicious and
perspective and another more open and
generous what is it that creates these
mental boundaries within us this is hard
to understand sometimes but I always
love to go back to the wonderful old
Sioux
saying that they drew a square and
excluded me but I drew a circle and
included them so if things are going to
get better in this world what
circumstances might help us think more
broadly and more generously well
obviously a feeling of security law and
order around us for a start that enables
us to lower our guard and feel less
fearful and then of course mixing with a
wide variety of other people does a
great deal it’s a critically valuable
experience for us learning foreign
languages makes us much more empathetic
and here I’m not just thinking about oh
well I learned that foreign language so
I can now communicate with that person
actually most of us are pretty good in
communicating in some language or other
anyway but when you’re sit down and
learn a foreign language this is a
gesture of generosity of empathy towards
another culture even if you don’t
require that language to communicate
with them so this kind of acknowledgment
of common goals can be extremely
important in bringing us together who
knows a Martian invasion might unite all
of us on the globe against another
invader so it comes back to us and our
personal psychology in the end am I
going to look for the things that you
and I have in common that we share or do
I focus on what we don’t have in common
and don’t share so I can put up my
boundaries and so in the end the way I
respond to others comes right back to
the original question that we posed at the outset who do I think I am