Identity and Life

Our lives are a chaotic mess largely determined by chance and the expectations that come with those chances. The top predictor of socioeconomic status is that of your parents, and this is true across cultures. While some have more socioeconomic mobility than others and the extremes weigh more heavily—if you’re completely impoverished or a billionaire, it’s almost impossible to up or go down, regardless of how industrious or reckless you are—most of us appear to be ruled by what we consider to be normal. If we grew up middle-class, we expect to remain there and gravitate toward it on top of the other logistical factors that lock us into place.

Throughout history most scientific discoveries or innovations were developed by people who were relatively wealthy. They had the time and resources to devote to these endeavors instead of toiling away at jobs.

Sports, which are as close to a meritocracy as it comes, are still primarily dominated by people who grew up poor, though this was truer in the past, and is not true across all sports.

Baseball parks and boxing gyms used to everywhere. The equipment is cheap, and not 100% necessary. You can play baseball with a stick and a cheap rubber ball, or box without gloves. The same is true of football, soccer, and especially basketball. All you need is a ball and a little bit of space. For track, all you need to do is run.

As the US has become more litigious, “safe,” and greedy, it became more difficult for kids to play baseball even in the street and the great athletes who might have been boxers in the past went to the NBA or the NFL instead.

There aren’t any great polo players from the ghetto as far as I know, but sports like hockey and swimming also demand resources like rinks and pools, and in the case of hockey, a litany of expensive equipment that persists throughout childhood.

If you’re a poor kid in the city, you can find a place to play basketball. In NY, you don’t even need to own your own ball. You can just go to a local outdoor court and play a pick up game against strangers. I grew up in Upstate NY, and when I first started coming down here in my late teens, I could barely beat kids who were twelve, and I couldn’t beat all of them.

On the other hand, there were definitely more kids in the city who didn’t know how to ride a bike, and after living here for over 20 years, I’m not sure I should be allowed to drive anymore even sober. I’ve driven a maximum of eight hours in the last two decades.

These are all aspects of identity, and while some choice was involved, most of it was chance. I was born to the parents I was born to, and they decided to raise me upstate in the 1980s and 1990s, when kids were typically more independent and a bicycle was a necessity. As I grew into a teen, the area became more developed, or the woods became further away. There were still places to swim or go cliff diving, but you needed a bicycle to get there in a reasonable amount of time.

As far as college, girlfriends, jobs, and just about everything else that followed, it was primarily determined by a series of random chances and the inexplicable decisions I made when chance gave me the opportunity.

Identity is the narrative we construct around a series of random events for the sake of our sanity, or for the illusion of a greater locus of control.

I went to Costa Rica in my late twenties to go whitewater rafting and ride a horse, as both were already ridiculously expensive here and I wanted to get out of the city. My rough plan was to go west, but a bus drivers’ strike forced me to go east. A couple from Europe told me I’d better hop on the last bus out of San Jose or I’d be stuck there, so I did.

The river I ended up rafting was rated a four, but should have been rated a five. It was dangerous as hell, and as I was one of the youngest and strongest, they gave me an oar. I would have fallen out and bashed my head against a boulder if a stranger hadn’t grabbed my ankle at the last second.

Still, it was under $20.00.

I rented a horse for two hours for $3.00. At that time in the NY, I would have had to pay over $100.00 for a lesson first, or to sit on a horse led by a trainer, then another $100.00 to ride on my own at a later date if they deemed me ready.

In Costa Rica, a weathered old guy told me he had one horse available and that she was mean. I said that was fine and he led me to a dilapidated barn and gave me the reigns. The horse was calm in the woods and I thought it was easy, but once we hit the beach, the bitch bolted and tried to throw me. It was like a Duran Duran video, except the guy on the horse was screaming.

The horse eventually gave up trying to kill me and we had a good time. My only regret is that I travel light and didn’t bring pants.

Do not ride a horse in shorts. This should have been obvious to me, but your inner thighs will get torn up if you don’t.

I also rented a surfboard and got a three hour lesson for $20.00. Out of the three activities, surfing was the most difficult, but I did manage to catch a wave and pop up successfully once near the end. The guy teaching me said it took him 5 years. I told him he probably said that to everyone, but he said that in the beginning, he didn’t care about popping up and was happy to just paddle around in the ocean. He brought me to a movie the town or village (or maybe a hamlet?) was projecting on an old sail on the beach that night, and told me there was a room for rent in the house he was sharing for $20.00 a month. This was around 2005, when Costa Rica was still really cheap, and a lot of expats told me I should stay, or go back to NY, close out my affairs, and move there. A lot of them were from NY.

They worked reasonable hours during the tourist season, or three to four months a year, which was enough to sustain them the rest of the year. I had already been a waiter in NY for over five years, and if you’re a waiter here, you can be a waiter anywhere.

The people from NY told me I could stay in the city and be ground into insanity, or I could move there and actually live. I could swim and surf and drink beer while watching movies on the beach instead of working 70 to 80 hours a week to live in a shitty apartment with the constant stench and noise of humanity.

Maybe I was afraid to be happy, or no longer knew how. Maybe I never knew how. Chance had given me a choice, and I chose NY for no discernible reason. I told myself why I had to come back, but that just isn’t how our minds work. We make the decision first, then rationalize it later. Why we decide what we do is a mysterious confluence of influences we’re largely unaware of. There is a science to it, and it’s disturbing.

Manipulation works better than reason, fear and rage work better than empathy or kindness, and while screaming the same crap repeatedly works on most, more subtle cues or factors affect almost everyone.

An experiment was done across people of different political affiliations, ideologies, ages, race, sex, gender, and other variables. Matched samples were used in each group, meaning each group consisted of the same proportion of people in each demographic. One group was alerted shortly before the experiment that their scheduled participation time had been moved up by 15 minutes, or was rushed. On the way, each encountered a person asking for help. Those who felt rushed were significantly less likely to help than those who weren’t across all other variables.

This was the primary part of the experiment, but when they arrived, they were screened again to re-report their demographics and self-perceived levels of empathy and compassion, and their reports remained consistent with their initial screenings whether they stopped to help or not.

Feeling rushed made people more callous, including priests and nuns who had taken vows of poverty, and the pay for participation was a pittance, or around the equivalent of $20.00 today, which for most short experiments is just enough to make sure people show up.

Identity is not severable from life. Without one, there would be no point of reference for the other, and what we tell ourselves about who we are typically does not hold up against scrutiny.

Consider how most of us have to live, what our society lionizes, and how we behave versus who we think we are or want to be, and there is a chasm.

This a function of how systems work. There are unintended or unforeseen consequences, but the irony here, as with all tools, is that you cannot figure out what a problem is or how to resolve it without also learning how to better exploit it, and then you have the questions of choice, morality, ethics, and necessity.

Is it ethical to manipulate for the greater good, or out of necessity, and what does being able to do so say about identity or choice?

In the last five years, the number of US citizens who support nuclear power has grown into a definitive majority. Proponents of nuclear power have faced criticism for stating it has a quiet scientific consensus as being our only feasible alternative, as well being the safest, greenest, and cheapest in the long run.

Climate and energy scientists have been muzzled, or instructed to say it would be foolish to dismiss any option when asked about nuclear power, but in private, and increasingly in public, they’ve become more willing to openly advocate for nuclear power. As the data accumulates, it’s becoming clear that wind and solar are a net loss, and no numerate person could look at the data objectively without drawing the same conclusion.

We rely on math and science to mitigate irrational fears and false assumptions, and while I advocate for nuclear power, that isn’t the point.

Did US citizens become more numerate and objective over the last five years?

Maybe.

Do they care more about public health, as every time a nuclear reactor has been shuttered to be replaced by wind and/or solar, the use of fossil fuel, which already directly kills 1.5 million a year, goes up?

Maybe.

Do they care that the price of electricity goes up every time as its dependability goes down?

Anecdotally, I’d have to say yes.

I’ve written articles about this for close to 10 years, and they used to be met with much more contention. The people who supported nuclear power lived in regions where reactors were shuttered and replaced by wind and solar, and they were pissed about their bills and brown and blackouts.

Since the last reactor at Indian Point was shutdown in April 2021, air pollution in NY has increased by about 33% due to increased usage of fossil fuel. The exacerbated ecological and health problems are still being quantified, but it’s safe to predict the results will turn out the same way as they have in every other like situation.

So why has public opinion on this changed?

In part, it’s because Elon Musk and Bill Gates need nuclear power to run their servers, or a couple of rapacious billionaires have inadvertently helped due to their “necessities.”

The other part is because of how younger generations define themselves and appraise their situation.

We’ve royally fucked these kids, but they aren’t more pro-nuclear because they’re more numerate or humane.

It’s fear.

There’s still enough left to be lost to scare them.

We tell ourselves we care about each other, but when it comes down to survival, we only care about who or what we need or want.

Every luxury we have tacitly endorses the exploitation of and violence against others, even as we’re being exploited and harmed.

We are biologically and psychologically stuck with identities based on faulty but necessary personal narratives and biases, but we can do better, and it begins with acknowledging this.

Who we are doesn’t really matter. What we do does.

There is more to identity, but for now, as far as behavior, or who you want to be, go with the data because it’s as close to parsing reality as we can get, acting on it is a responsibility, and having it or the means to acquire it is a gift.

We may never know who we really are, and we will never agree on what’s right or best, but we can do better.

Do better.