Broken Identities

Identity is a complicated word. When it doesnt say anything, it covers everything. Yet, the making of identities, as a process, excels in complexity the ambiguity of an isolated word alone. An invisible force, shaping our secret lives and our public personae, defining the way act, connect, and react.

Gender, race, social roles, religious and political beliefs -- they all articulate our identity. This we know.

And we also know that the how-to of this accumulation of specificities (that ultimately define the self) has long been under the keen scrutiny of psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists and philosophers.

Why? Because its interpretation has a paramount influence on our lives, both as private individuals and members of a community and/or society.

Nonetheless, how our identities determine our choices remains, thus far, an open question. And so does another neighbouring inquiry: how do broken identities influence the calling of extreme behaviour?

What is this relevant?

As our brains get bombarded with millions of bits of information per second, greatly overlapping our capacity to process, we naturally tend to cave in. Implode into exhaustion. Explode into compulsive disproportionate reactions. Settle out for irrational behaviour.

Intolerance. Violence. Crime. Defying the good old common sense. Making togetherness inconceivable.

Looking for proof?

The abominable tide wave of assaults against freedom and security. The crushing of the agora and the cancelling of the possibility of a bearable vie quotidienne.

A solid identity is the primary foundation for good reasoning and civil behaviour.

What is identity?

To quote the classics, Mr. Erik Erikson , the blue eyed Jewish man who conveyed the first extended theory of psychological development, believed that identity is the direct result of the way we experience crisis and conflicts. Eight, to be more exact.

Before Erikson, Freud believed our psychological development ends during early adulthood. Erikson assumed that the making of our identities is a lifelong process that we can deconstruct in eight essential stages. Trust vs. mistrust (determined by the relationship with our mother). Autonomy vs. shame (determined by the relationship with both our parents). Initiative vs. guilt (determined by the relationship with our family). Industry vs. inferiority (determined by the relationship with our neighbours and colleagues). Identity vs. role confusion (determined by the relationship with our peers and role models). Intimacy vs. isolation (determined by the relationship with our friends and partners). Generativity vs. stagnation (determined by the relationship with our partner and workmates). Ego integrity vs. despair (determined by the relationship with our kind and with mankind).

Erikson also introduced the concept of identity crisis. Which he entitled as the most overwhelming conflict an individual can ever go through.

More recent, the American clinical psychologist, James Marcia, elaborated on Eriksons take on identity resolution and identity confusion by pulling in the concept of commitment. Two areas in which an adolescent must make such commitments, says Marica, are ideology and occupation .

Now, how does this get along with the question of choice (specifically, how do we choose what to commit to) is a whole different epic.

Broken identities and the calling of extreme behaviour

Getting back to a more troubling mundane concern.

How do we fathom the consequences of the identity crisis that encroached the Muslim communities in the Western world? And how does this crisis collide with the give and take strategy of militant Islamist groups?

There's no more mystery in that. The main pull factors that make so many young men and women join the lines of extremist organisations are segregation and alienation. Sticking to Eriksons scheme, the drives are: mistrust, shame, guilt, inferiority complex, confusion, isolation, stagnation, and despair.

Consequently, when you have a whole array of conflicts attacking the core of an individual, equality and diversity becomes suddenly an improbable reality.

And it has been exactly the same with any extreme ideology employed anytime and anywhere throughout history. Despite any specific social and economical circumstances.

What stands apart now are the granularity of the conflict and the magnitude of the phenomenon.

The narrative that ISIS and other similar organisations use builds on a web of duties and promises that provides a coherent fundamental truth to all those broken identities raging against the civilising machinery of Western civilisation and its paradigmatic rule of law.

And when it comes to individuation, fundamentals win over ethical conceptualisation and philosophical abstractions. Always.

How can we fix this?

Well, in fact we cant.