Belonging and the identity trap

Cultivating new aspirational identities... beyond ethno-nationalism

Artwork by Natalia Helena Sofia

To be alive in the 21st century is to feel unmoored: both overwhelmed by the pace of change, and lacking the structures and identities that can support us in navigating that change. As a recent McKinsey report noted: “Our world is changing faster than our biology can adapt.”

We are both literally uprooted—millions of people displaced from their homes by intersecting crises—and metaphysically uprooted: the old identities that we often took for granted no longer serve, and we don’t yet have anything to replace them.

I want to write today about our quest for aspirational identities, and specifically the urgent need for roots that reject the authoritarian appeal of ethno-nationalism.

TL;DR: Humans have a visceral need for roots: to belong both to place and to other people. In rejecting the ethno-nationalist answer, we must offer aspirational identities that are post-racial, post-nationalist… and post-patriarchal. I think the starting point must be a return to land: understood as bioregional, organized around natural boundaries, not geopolitical borders. Identities are malleable: we become what we practice. We can act our way into these new identities by practicing solidarity. Solidarity is what makes belonging real.

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The need for roots: our crisis of identity

There is a paradox inherent in the concept of belonging. Belonging is by definition a relational construct: we belong to or with something. Therefore to belong is to be part of something bigger than us, to a collective, a group, an identity. And yet of course we are also more than that particular source of belonging: yes I may belong to the group of “parents” but I am not only a parent. So to “belong” is also paradoxically to not belong: the very moment in which we adopt a group identity, we also limit our ability to belong in our fullest sense.

This is the identity trap: we need identities to make sense of who we are and to navigate the world… but there is a tradeoff between belonging and being our unique selves.

In her treatise on The Need for Roots, Simone Weil declares:

To be rooted is perhaps the most important and least recognized need of the human soul.

Hannah Arendt saw rootlessness as the essential precondition to totalitarianism (and its present reincarnation in authoritarianism). Channeling Weil and Arendt, Roger Berkowitz notes:

The modern condition of rootlessness is a foundational experience of totalitarianism; totalitarian movements succeed when they offer rootless people what they most crave: an ideologically consistent world aiming at grand narratives that give meaning to their lives.

I would amend the statement. It is not only authoritarian movements that must respond to this craving: it is also our movements for justice. If we fail to meet this challenge, we will continue to see authoritarianism—and violence—persist. Scott Remer reminds us about the stakes of not belonging:

People who feel themselves to be rootless or homeless will seek a home at any price, with possibly horrific results.

This is the question that launched this newsletter (and the community of liberatory practice that is Building Belonging): can we create an us without a them? There are two aspects to this inquiry: the task of creating a more inclusive us (building belonging) without demonizing a “them” (without doing what john a. powell calls “othering”).

The crisis of belonging is a crisis of identity: we don’t know where we belong, because we don’t know who we are. Our old sources of identity, often taken for granted, are being exposed for what they are: social constructs, undermined in real time by the pace of current events. Powerful movements for justice (Black Lives Matter, migrant justice, and feminism) have rightly given the lie to the three primary markers of my identity as a “white American man.” If I recognize race, the nation-state, and gender as social constructs—all of which created a sense of belonging for me by identifying an “other” for the purpose of extracting power and subjugating them—where does that leave me? Who am I?

People are experiencing a profound sense of loss for these identities (grief), and are left feeling unmoored (fearful in the face of uncertainty). James Baldwin explains:

Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety.

We have to attend to those emotions, and the underlying needs they speak to (our foundational human yearning for significance and belonging (rootedness). Arendt identifies our task, defining “rootedness” as “A place in the world, recognized and guaranteed by others.”

Ethno-nationalism vs… what?

We have not yet risen to the challenge. Right now there is only one vision taking these needs seriously… and it’s a profoundly dangerous vision. Authoritarians offer a reactionary nostalgic vision, one that doubles down on identities that no longer serve (and never did for many people): hardening borders around an increasingly incoherent nation-state; defining an exclusionary “we” around increasingly arbitrary definitions of race; and desperately clinging to a rigid gender binary in the face of scientific evidence to the contrary.

This is the (il)logic of ethno-nationalism, an unapologetic return to the fascist slogan “blood and soil”… and it is ascendant around the world, visible recently in the rise of the far-right in Sweden, Bolsonaro’s alarming staying power in Brazil, and Giorgia Meloni’s victory in Italy. In a brilliant interview with Prentis Hemphill, Alicia Garza explains what ethno-nationalist movements do so well:

1. They validate why you are there… they make you feel like you belong. Exactly as you are, without having to change! (belonging)

2. They help you make sense of your pain, and offer someone to blame (meaning)

3. They give you something to do about it (significance)

It’s worth unpacking Meloni’s viral speech in some detail, because she follows precisely this playbook. And she does it in an incredibly dangerous way, effectively packaging neo-fascist ideas for mainstream consumption (I found it compelling, and I know what she’s doing!) She sets up the bogeyman as “those who would like us no longer to have an identity” (defining an “us” in relationship to a “them”). She imagines an attack, positioning herself and her conjured groups as victims, declaring “I can’t define myself as Italian, Christian, woman, mother” (validating their pain, giving meaning to their experience).

Finally, she completes the pivot from defense (victim) to offense (offering significance and an opportunity to assert agency), declaring: “We will defend God, country, and family.” And she provides her followers some moral top-cover and a sense of righteousness by invoking a shadowy global cabal of financiers who are responsible (an antisemitic dog whistle), but one that allows her constituency to feel like they’re punching up (hero, not oppressor). 

Left unnamed are those likely to suffer most directly by her ideology and policies: marginalized people who do not hold a privileged dominant-culture identity. In this speech she doesn’t mention migrants, Muslims, people of color, or LGBT people, but her followers understand that “they” are not like “us” (we who are Italian, Christian, and adhere to a gender binary). This is a seductive narrative, particularly for people holding dominant culture identities, who don’t want to feel the discomfort of being the oppressor, and the complexity of negotiating new, more honest, and more inclusive identities. Jason Stanley explains:

When you fight back against fascism, you’ve got one hand tied behind your back, because the truth is messy and complex and the mythical story is always clear and compelling and entertaining. It’s hard to undercut that with facts.

I’m reminded of this classic comic from Scott Chambers:

Seeking new aspirational identities: post-nationalist, post-racial

Our work is more difficult: we are in the business of complex truths (which need not be unpleasant, though they are uncomfortable!) While ethno-nationalists work from an old script and one we are already familiar with, we have to build from imagination, inviting people into a story they haven’t yet heard. We need new aspirational identities.

I wrote an entire post on this idea, influenced by Doug Hattaway’s work. If we are to meet Arendt and Weil’s challenge, and offer a compelling alternative to the ethno-nationalist vision, we have to provide an answer to belonging that addresses the question of place (where), identity (who), and significance (what). And, following Berkowitz, the narrative has to be “ideologically consistent”; it needs to hold together.

A couple things feel clear to me. We cannot rely on the nation-state, nor on race: that is to try to beat the authoritarians at their own game. We will always lose. And: it’s not ideologically consistent. If we believe in belonging, the right to belong at a basic level must include both the right to home and the right to move: the nation-state regime denies both those prerogatives (I wrote about belonging beyond borders here). As Kim Tallbear notes:

Any love we invest in the nation-state is leading us farther from right relationship with the land and each other.

What forms collective identity? What forms culture, and community? Taking up that question in full is beyond the scope of this post. But I think the most compelling answer, and the one that is already true for most humans, is to orient toward land as we experience it, not as it is defined on geopolitical maps. The land we live on structures the other elements we come to associate with culture (food, language, values, etc.) As Doug Hattaway observed in a conversation on Aspirational Identities & Belonging:

Ultimately, the place is the people.

We must start there: belonging is ecological, and therefore bioregional. We live in watersheds, not nation-states. The first category of belonging is this: the “We” is those of us who feel like we belong to a common land. As Rarámuri scholar Enrique Salmón notes in an exquisite essay (hat-tip to Jovida Ross for the share):

Cultural survival can be measured by the degree to which cultures maintain a relationship with their bioregions.

Many people already think of themselves this way: I feel pride as a resident of the Pacific Northwest (the bioregion sometimes called Cascadia), and within that I feel a sense of kinship and “home” within the smaller Klamath-Siskiyou eco-region.

Land—not the political borders of nation-states, but the natural boundaries of ecoregions—provides a basis for shared identity that transcends social constructions of race. (I am indebted in this analysis to Bruno Latour, the French eco-philosopher who died this week. RIP to a giant.)

Gender, authoritarianism, and belonging

When we talk about authoritarianism and ethno-nationalism, I fear we miss one of its most important dimensions: gender, and the identity crisis of men and masculinity in particular. I don’t often quote David Brooks, but he’s right in observing (reviewing Richard Reeves’ important new book):

The culture is still searching for a modern masculine ideal.

Suffice to say, the search is not going well: rootless men seeking a home (following Weil) are insecure in their masculine identities and increasingly turning to authoritarianism and to violence (I wrote more about this phenomenon here).

The rise of the far-right is an overwhelmingly male phenomenon (in the recent Swedish parliamentary election men outnumbered women in supporting the neo-fascist Sweden Democrats by almost 3:1). The converse is also true: opposition movements are nearly always majority female. Where there are exceptions to the rule (Le Pen in France; Meloni in Italy, e.g.) they adhere to a rigid understanding of binary gender roles that only serves to perpetuate patriarchy; a core pillar of Meloni’s platform is a call for “Italian” women to have more babies. This observation prompted Anne-Marie Slaughter to coin the term “patriarchal authoritarianism,” which feels to me like an important contribution to understanding the authoritarian phenomenon.

Which means that it’s not enough to come up with a post-racial and post-nationalist set of aspirational identities: we also need to be post-patriarchal in our aspirations. Unfortunately, scholarly treatment of this subject, in my view, continues to miss the point: it’s not about men and women, but about a vision for a post-patriarchal future. There is a tendency in opposing patriarchal authoritarianism to pin our hopes on women: “the future is female.” But the future isn’t female, or at least I don’t think we want it to be. The future is nonbinary. This to me is the only definition of feminism worth fighting for. As Tressie McMillan Cottom put it on a recent podcast:

My vision for feminism is a world where gender wouldn’t shape the trajectory of your life at all.

Which means Brooks’ search for a new masculine ideal is looking for the wrong thing. The goal is not a “new masculine ideal” but a new understanding of gender that frees us all (and men in particular) from having to adhere to any notion of masculinity. Indigenous activist Sherri Mitchell explains:

The roles of gender keep us locked in a place where we cannot possibly be our full selves.

Here I would echo Tallbear’s caution on the nation-state, and apply it to gender: any effort that strengthens the gender binary or reifies masculinity or femininity is taking us farther from the future of right relationship that we long for. Jennifer Finney Boylan sees this as the core promise of feminism:

If feminism means anything, it means the freedom to be yourself.

And thus I think gender provides a powerful opportunity to free ourselves from the identity trap: it’s a place where we cannot rely on the binary, and thus must practice the difficult art of belonging to ourselves. As Antonia Macaro and Julian Baggini remind us:

It is because labels of identity can only refer to what we have in common with others that they can never capture our uniqueness.

Identity as noun and verb: something you are and something you do

This is where I find hope. Of course our identities are dynamic and multiple: we contain multitudes. Our identities are who we are, but it’s more accurate to say that our identities are what we do. The identity “trucker” describes someone who drives a truck: it is the act of driving that confers the identity. A “parent” is one who has had a child, or who engages in the act of parenting. And: these identities can persist after the action has concluded. A retired truck driver may still adhere to the identity of “trucker.” Brent Weeks explains:

What you do forms who you are. Then who you are forms what you do. It’s a vicious cycle, or a virtuous one, depending.

The implication is this: the way to change our identities is to change our actions. As James Clear reminds us:

Your habits are how you embody a particular identity… Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become.

We may not yet be ready to name/define a set of post-racial, post-nationalist, post-patriarchal identities. But I do think we can define the set of actions and behaviors that move us toward that future of belonging. We can choose to reject the gender binary, to withdraw allegiance from the nation-state, to refuse to accept the tenets of white supremacy. We can build community at a local level, develop a relationship with our home ecoregions, work explicitly to transcend divisions of race, take our children to Pride parades to celebrate humanity in all its wonderful diversity.

It works in both directions; this is the core of Doug Hattaway’s thesis around the importance of aspirational identities. Orienting toward a desired identity can influence your actions; your actions then allow you to embody that identity. Patrik Edblad (hat tip to Lawrence for the share) explains the process as: Identity > Goal > Habit. He invites us to consider three sequential questions:

1. What’s my identity? Who do I want to be?

2. What’s my goal? What target will help me live in integrity with my identity?

3. What’s my habit? What #1 daily action will lead me to my goal?

I talk often in this space about the “3 horizon framework,” the idea that we’re constantly building a bridge (horizon 2) to the world we long for (horizon 3) from the present status quo (horizon 1). This too is the work of our identities: they have to both help us navigate the world as it is, and move toward the world we long for. I love Scott Perry’s question here:

How can your identity narrative describe not only who you are but also who you aspire to be?

Here again I think belonging can be a helpful way to orient. I’m not totally sure what my future identities will be, though I know what they will NOT be. Perhaps it’s enough to self-identify as a person who wants a world where everyone belongs, and to act accordingly? Belonging then is both the bridge (horizon 2) and the destination: the horizon 3 world I long for.

Solidarity makes belonging real

One final thought here in an effort to tie this together.

Our largest circle of concern (following john powell’s work) has to include the entire world: human and nonhuman beings alike, and all the land/water/air on which we collectively depend. We are all citizens of planet earth; by virtue of our existence, we belong here. As Joanna Macy reminds us: “mutual belonging is our birthright.”

But there are limits to our empathetic capacity, and our ability to act: it is impossible to assume responsibility for the whole world. We need a smaller “Us,” one that can provide a sense of solidarity inside of belonging. I love this definition from Astra Taylor and Leah Hunt-Hendrix:

Unlike identity, solidarity is not something you have, it is something you do—a set of actions taken toward a common goal... Solidarity both produces community and is rooted in it, and is thus simultaneously a means and an end. Solidarity is the practice of helping people realize that they—that is to say, we—are all in this together.

I would quibble a bit with the distinction between solidarity and identity: I think the act of solidarity both produces identity (they say community), and a sense of shared identity can inspire solidarity. That is, identity is both something you have… and something you do.

I think solidarity provides a practical way of anchoring belonging, and structuring our relationships. For me it’s core to what it means to be in community: we show up for each other. This is why one cornerstone of belonging has to be place-based: while I can belong to any number of geographically dispersed identities (bridgers, Ultimate frisbee players, IPA-enthusiasts), when I need someone to bring me food in my hospital bed… we need to be in physical proximity.

This is one way to think about belonging at different scales: it carries with it different commitments of solidarity. In a place-based context, it also offers a way to situate ourselves inside a bigger We: I imagine concentric circles of belonging (made real through acts of solidarity), that can provide a structure for governance at every scale: from the small/local to the global. In a global world facing global challenges, we will always need coordinated global collective action. (I still love the audacity of Miki Kashtan’s vision here: operationalizing belonging by democratizing power at global scale).

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As always, I’ve reached the point in writing where I fear I’ve tried to do too much, and at the same time I wonder if I’ve done justice to how much these concepts mean to me and how important they feel to navigating this global moment. Obviously there’s so much I didn’t cover here: e.g. how we might handle migration in a bioregional world (answer: let people migrate and build belonging where they feel at home!)

I’d love to know what resonates: does this invitation to imagining aspirational “post-” identities resonate? How about the proposal of situating belonging in relationship to land as the primary basis of orientation? If you made it this far, please consider joining our community of “gift subscribers” to tackle these inquiries together. Our next gathering will be Tuesday, October 25th at 8:30am PT.