We live in a time where everyone is expected to say who they are. Not once, but again and again. Online profiles, public declarations, social movements, and personal testimonies are all steeped in the language of self-definition. Whether it is political affiliation, gender identity, spiritual journey, or cultural roots, the call is constant: declare yourself, take a stand, show your truth.
This can seem empowering. For those whose stories were long denied or distorted, naming oneself is an act of recovery. To be seen is not a small thing. And yet, the climate around identity today does not feel like freedom. It often feels like pressure. The insistence on performance creates a strange fatigue. Every interaction becomes a stage, every disagreement a threat. Those who hesitate are seen as inauthentic. Those who question are treated as hostile.
Both liberal and conservative camps now mirror each other in a curious way. Each side centers its language on identity, grievance, and belonging. Each carries its own sacred terms, taboos, and moral scripts. Both want to be recognized, but neither wants to be transformed. What looks like conflict is often a loop. And beneath it, a shared exhaustion hums quietly.
When Identity Becomes a Burden
At the start, identity is a way to assert presence in a world that tried to make us invisible. But over time, it can become a kind of mirror we are forced to stare into, even when we are tired of looking. The mirror stops reflecting others and begins only to reflect the self, magnified, fixed, and lit too brightly.
Once identity becomes central, it becomes fragile. A challenge feels like erasure. A question feels like violence. And so the walls go up. What began as freedom turns into armor. Even our attempts at authenticity take on a kind of rigidity. People speak of their “truth,” but the way they speak it sounds rehearsed. Even vulnerability can become performance when we feel watched.
It is not only marginalized communities who feel this burden. Those who consider themselves defenders of tradition or morality also speak from identity. Their values are tied to who they are, and threats to those values feel like threats to their place in the world. The mirror is everywhere. Some polish it with pride. Others smash it in anger. But few seem able to set it down.
This constant self-reference creates a world where relationships are no longer about shared life, but about recognized roles. Communities form around common wounds or common enemies, not common labor or common hope. Institutions, be they religious, academic, or civic, feel less like places of learning and more like arenas of moral branding. In such a climate, even silence feels suspicious.
From Witch Hunts to Self-Hunts
In older societies, the fear of chaos led people to hunt witches, heretics, and traitors. Public accusations were not just expressions of moral concern, but rituals meant to protect the community. Someone had to be named and cast out so that order could be restored. Often, the accused were powerless. The process was cruel, but it made people feel safe, at least for a while.
Today, we have kept the ritual but changed its target. We no longer need inquisitors. We have learned to hunt ourselves. Every tweet, every old video, every hesitation becomes evidence. We scan ourselves and others for signs of impurity, not theological impurity this time, but social or ideological impurity. The rituals are digital, but the mood is ancient.
What makes this worse is that many people now feel they must police their own allies. Movements fracture into factions. The question is no longer whether you support the cause, but whether you support it correctly. An ally who says the wrong thing can be more dangerous than an enemy. So trust evaporates, and paranoia grows. Communities built on identity often collapse under the weight of purity.
This is not just happening on the left or the right. Religious communities, political circles, activist spaces, even families are all affected. The mood is anxious. People speak with disclaimers. They apologize before they speak. They hesitate to be honest, not because they lack conviction, but because they fear being misunderstood. Or worse, being remembered only for one sentence taken out of context.
And what if the enemy is within? What if I’m not radical enough, not traditional enough, not authentic enough? We torment ourselves with impossible expectations. We demand that our outer selves reflect our inner convictions without contradiction. But we are not seamless. We are complex, confused, and changing. The new witch trials ask us to be pure in ways no one has ever been.
The Illusion of Mutual Understanding
In the face of so much division, people often speak of dialogue, empathy, and mutual understanding. These are beautiful words. But in the current climate, they have grown thin. They can feel like slogans meant to pacify rather than to repair. Listening has become a technique, not a disposition. And empathy is often measured by how quickly we agree.
The problem lies in the assumption that understanding is always possible. Sometimes it is not. Sometimes the pain is too deep, the histories too distant, the languages too different. We speak across chasms, but act as if we are standing on the same ground. In such cases, pretending to understand can become a form of dishonesty. It flattens difference instead of respecting it.
Worse still, dialogue itself has become performative. People share their stories not to connect, but to stake a claim. Every experience becomes a credential. Every memory a badge. The self becomes a kind of social currency, traded for sympathy, attention, or legitimacy. What is lost is the quiet space between people where something unknown might grow.
We say we want to listen. But often we are just waiting for our turn to speak. We say we want to be seen. But often we mean we want to be praised. We say we want peace. But what we want is victory without violence. Dialogue can be beautiful. But not when it is used to hide our refusal to change.
Dōgen’s Door: To Know the Self Is to Forget the Self
There is another way to think about this. It does not begin with politics or even psychology. It begins with silence. The Japanese Zen master Dōgen once wrote, “To study the Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be awakened by all things.”
What might this mean in our world of loud identities? Perhaps that the path to wisdom is not more expression, but less clinging. To truly know oneself is to stop obsessing over one’s labels, one’s reflection, one’s narrative. And in that forgetting, not erasure, but release, one becomes free to see again. To encounter the world without needing it to mirror back the self.
For Dōgen, and for many mystics across traditions, the self is not the goal. It is the gateway. We pass through it, not to destroy it, but to stop holding it so tightly. Identity can guide us to understanding, but it cannot sustain it. When we forget ourselves, not in negligence but in openness, we begin to see more clearly. Not just others, but reality itself.
This is not about retreating from the world. It is about meeting the world without armor. When the self is no longer a performance, relation becomes possible again. We do not need to agree to be present. We do not need to validate each other to care. We do not need to be understood to be real.
Relation Without Performance
In this vision, relation is no longer a transaction. It is no longer based on shared politics, shared background, or even shared pain. It is based on presence. On showing up without a script. On letting the other person be who they are, without needing to explain, affirm, or correct them.
This kind of relation is rare, because it cannot be produced. It grows slowly. It requires attention, not applause. It happens in moments of shared silence, in meals, in gestures that do not need to be justified. It asks us to let go of our need to be impressive, and instead to become trustworthy.
Some of the most meaningful human bonds are forged not through identity but through work. People building something together. People caring for others. People who do not agree, but who share responsibility. This is not the erasure of difference. It is the setting down of mirrors in favor of windows.
A world built on this kind of relation would still honor stories. But it would not require them to be constant. It would make room for ambiguity, for not knowing, for contradiction. It would allow people to grow without having to announce every step. It would be a world where being is more important than branding.
The Way Out Is Not Backward but Inward
We are not going to undo the identity revolution. Nor should we. The stories that were told needed to be told. The visibility that was claimed needed to be claimed. But now, perhaps, the task is different. Not to shout louder, but to listen differently. Not to defend identity, but to set it down when it becomes too heavy.
This is not a return to traditionalism, though some will find echoes there. Nor is it an escape into apathy. It is a call to presence. To see again. To live with less noise and more honesty. To remember that before we were selves to be defined, we were beings in relation. That is still true.
The world does not need more brands of personhood. It needs people who can meet without fear. People who can listen without rehearsing their next sentence. People who can forget themselves, not as denial, but as freedom.
That kind of forgetting is not absence. It is attention. It is love without decoration. It is the quiet exit from the performance of identity, into the unguarded space of being.
Image: Wikipedia
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