Tribal
Identity
“The
belief that we have to compromise critical parts of ourselves to fit in makes
visible and real to us both our need for love and our equally strong need to
explore who we are.”
Carol
Pearson (The Hero Within, p.70; Harper and Row, 1986)
Most of
us conform to a set of standards that is expected of us by our tribe. We may be
bourgeois bohemians, or sophisticated academics, or farm workers, but we all
conform to what is expected to some degree. When I was a working woman, had I come
to work in overalls and mud-covered Wellingtons, I would have been asked to please
go home, take a bath, and put on something more appropriate. Standards differ
culture to culture, family to family, business to business. When someone bucks
the system, they get into trouble.
Conformity
is necessary under certain conditions. The military uses it as a means of discipline
and of putting everybody on the same playing field. If one soldier is from California,
with a family that works in the tech industry and makes millions of dollars, his/her
uniform still looks the same as that of a Texas ranch hand with a high school education.
It’s the military’s way of saying, here, you don’t get your personal identity—we’ll
tell you who you are. If you buck that system, they will make your life a
living hell.
Our cultural
expectation of conformity can also stifle our ability to explore who we are as
individuals, and how we want to operate in the world. As young people, we are
constantly stretched between our need to belong and our need to figure out who
we are separate from our family and friends. As teenagers, we try a few things—change
our hair, wear weird clothing, paint our lips black, inscribe a tattoo in a
place where it shouldn’t be seen, and then make sure it is seen. But if we are
tortured by friends on social media and made fun of, we quickly get back in
line. We need approval; we need to be loved, and so we compromise parts of
ourselves and conform.
It is
not until you or I individuate enough to stand in our own authority, that the
system ceases to dictate the terms of our identity. When we can say, this is
who I am, like it or not, conformity becomes a non-issue. But it does not
cancel our need to belong—we’re mammals after all. It does, however, make it
easier to be alone simply because we find ourselves to be good company—we are
substantial enough to be of interest to ourselves. What we usually discover is
that other people who are also individuated and have their own identity are
just fine with who we are, warts, weirdness, and all. Now we have a new tribe; we
belong to them and they to us. It’s a good tribe to be part of. When you can
have all your parts, and don’t have to compromise who you are, you’re in the
right place.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
No comments:
Post a Comment