Holding Identity Lightly and Activism

IS HOLDING YOUR IDENTITY LIGHTLY COMPATIBLE WITH ACTIVISM?

We’ve seen how a strongly held identity distorts your ability to think. The sense of absolute moral clarity, of being on the side of good, battling evil—those are ideal conditions for soldier mindset.

But what if those are also the ideal conditions for activism? Changing the world requires passion. Dedication. Sacrifice. The soldier may have a biased, black-and-white worldview, but at least he’s full of the kind of passion that moves mountains. Whereas the scout, while an admirably fair-minded thinker, is just too dispassionate and tangled up in nuances to ever take action.

Or so the common wisdom goes. Let’s see how it holds up to scrutiny.

First, notice that not all ways of “taking action” are equal. Some actions are more impactful than others, and some actions are better at affirming your identity (filling you up with that satisfying “fighting for the righteous side” glow). Occasionally, there’s an action that scores well on both dimensions. Picture a passionate Democrat, working on the campaign of the Democratic candidate for office in a swing state. His days and nights spent fighting for victory are both identity-affirming and impactful—in a close race for an important seat, the campaign team’s efforts really can make a difference.

Usually, however, activists face trade-offs between identity and impact—and the more lightly you hold your identity, the more you can focus exclusively on actions with the highest impact. In chapter 10, I described how the Humane League pivoted away from their original approach of confrontational protests on behalf of lab animals to a strategy of negotiating with major corporations for more humane treatment of farm animals. That pivot boosted their impact by a factor of millions in terms of the number of animals affected—but through an identity lens, making nice with an “evil corporation” isn’t all that appealing.

Many identity-affirming actions, in turn, have little real-world impact. Think of someone putting bumper stickers on their car or yelling at strangers online for holding the wrong views. Some identity-affirming actions even have negative impact—they’re counterproductive for your goals. You’ve probably known activists who spend the bulk of their energy fighting with other activists they’re already 95 percent in agreement with over that remaining 5 percent sliver of disagreement. Sigmund Freud called it the “narcissism of small differences”—for the purposes of affirming your identity, the most tempting fight is often the one that helps distinguish you from your ideological neighbors.