We need conflict for the sake of personal identity
Imagine that you never encounter conflict. Everyone does what you would do, says what you would say, and appears to believe what you believe. It's as though there is only one wind moving everyone in exactly the same way.
In this world, what constitutes your identity is always something other than personality. Without conflict, you become something more purely material: a certain location, a certain time.
The vigor with which you seek interpersonal conflict reflects what? The need to develop personality? Or perhaps personality needs an occasional workout to remain alive.
In this world, what constitutes your identity is always something other than personality. Without conflict, you become something more purely material: a certain location, a certain time.
The vigor with which you seek interpersonal conflict reflects what? The need to develop personality? Or perhaps personality needs an occasional workout to remain alive.
Comments (48)
People do seek interpersonal conflict. I think it is a critical piece of individuation. However, by 'conflict' I mean verbal contest. Debating, arguing, strongly disagreeing. It might be the case that in arguing you convince someone of your point of view, but at least for young people the principle benefit is convincing one's self of what one believes, holds dear, thinks is right, or wrong, and so forth.
No, we don't need conflict for identity.
Couldn't larger scale conflicts be performing the same function? It's not necessarily that people go into battle to flesh out their identities, but maybe that's a side-effect. Strongly emotional identity tags appear like winner, loser, strong, weak, divinely helped, divinely abandoned, etc.
Once an identity forms, it becomes passed down generationally and elaborated upon. A fresh dose of contest may be required to dust it off and rejuvenate it. Verbal contests might just be the cheapest form of energy injection.
Can you see any of that in the verbal contests you enter into? Or not?
Is it conflict? Or questioning? Both?
True. I don't see "I like fat" as a big part of personality. It is a part, though.
Absolutely.
Larger identities (like, "Scandinavian", "Anglican", "French" (especially French), are inherited. Some identities like "millennial" or "hippy" are rather foamy identities without too much substance. And identities benefit from the refreshment of conflict, and again I am not speaking of combat. Someone who really identifies as an anarchist or a socialist or a syndicalist in 2018 is going to need to reargue his case periodically, because there is so little in current society that would positively reinforce such an identity. Gay men, on the other hand, don't need to argue their case, because we can live the identity.
Actual combat experiences forge new identities among the combatants. Strenuous political campaigns can do the same thing. But these kind of experiences can't be arranged. One signs up or is drafted, and somebody else is in charge of the war or the campaign.
But doesn't it amplify your gayness if you're around people who are uneasy about it? Imagine being brownish in a crowd of brownish, versus being brown among all light-beige people. A sort of phantom brown person appears. The beige people talk to the phantom.
This is getting more poetic than I intended.
Personality. If you don't think it's complicated then you shouldn't have any trouble defining it clearly and comprehensively.
Actually I thought you were saying you knew the complicated part. I misunderstood.
Being among a large hostile red crowd tends to squelch my lavender pheromones, but it stimulates cortisol, so... one thing is down, something else is up. I prefer to pick a fight where the odds are not overwhelmingly bad.
At this point in life (old age) I mostly welcome the opportunity to validate my gay identity where I can scan with gaydar, flirt a bit and feel a little jolt of interest. Where I need a vigorous argument is on political grounds, to validate my leftist political identity.
In my OED there's a definition of conflict in psychology as "the opposition of incompatible needs or wishes within a person". So yes, I think this is conflict.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Scan with gaydar?
Exactly. Puce people have bad breath. Everybody knows that.
You were talking about the requirements of thought. I asked if that's conflict or questioning. Schopenhauer would say conflict, I think.
Allow me to rephrase the question: what exactly do you mean when you say 'personality' in the opening post?
For example, "In the spring, Jean had painted a large, semi-abstract mural in her bedroom full of red circles, turquoise blocks, and pink splashes. It was very foreign to her black and blue personality. When autumn came and it was time to transform the mural to something earthy, pending the dive into a brooding, deathly winter mural, she breathed a sigh of relief as if something was unwinding inside her."
Here, personality is associated with a season. It's manifest in the kind of aesthetic Jean identifies with. There are obviously connections between her material self and this persona, but it's more in the realm of the abstract. There are also ties to that boundless experience of being, but it's less immediate than that. I tend to think of it as being something like music, but that may be too obscure a way to think of it.
Oh, is "gaydar" not known everywhere? Gay radar or "Gaydar" is the mystical ability of gay men to recognize each other at a distance based on nothing more than a glance. First-glance ID is fairly accurate, but if in doubt, one looks twice or thrice. With firm confidence, one can consider asking the guy if he'd like to fuck and where would he prefer going. So you go there and a good time is had by all and sundry. Later on you might ask him his name. Or not.
IF one is quite mistaken, a situation of intense conflict might ensue, the outcome of which may be a more refined sense of how precarious existence can be.
If all this doesn't make sense, just RSVP and I will happily explain it all in excruciating detail.
When the gaydar fails it could turn into a gay bashing? That precariousness scares me.
Yes, I think that type of conflict is a requirement for thought.
The degree of seriousness in whatever the purpose is for seeking conflict, I suppose. The purpose for seeking conflict could be practice in argumentation in order to improve skills, or to gain a reward of some kind (perhaps only an ego boost), or merely for amusement.
As well it should. Of course, proceed with caution. But actually, it's not all that risky if one uses common sense. There are people I wouldn't approach for so much as the time of day, even if I had a stack of affidavits stating that they were definitely gay and available.
OK then, being old and experienced as you are, I won't worry about you ... unless you start to tell me that your gaydar can work over the internet.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Isn't that just personal preference though? You know, we all have innate inclinations to be attracted to this rather than that. Or are you talking about the capacity to discern a person's character just by looking at them? Is that a valid judgement, which is properly derived from experience, or is that a form of bias which manifests as racism in the extreme?
I agree. Any sort of conflict may or may not boost identity.
Great question. Not sure I have a great answer, but here's a try.
Interpersonal conflict seems to often involve some kind of superiority claim. I am right, you are wrong etc. Put another way, I am big, you are small.
Why do we want to feel big, as measured by some social comparison? Because we feel small.
Why do we feel small? Because we are made of thought, an electro-chemical information medium which operates by a process of dividing reality in to conceptual parts. This process creates the experience of reality being divided between "me" and "everything else", with "me" being very small and "everything else" being very big.
One way we attempt to overcome this perceived smallness is by attaching ourselves to something larger. So I become a Democrat, a Catholic, an American, something, anything larger than myself. Once I've attached myself to this something larger the something larger becomes an extension of my small self. If you question my something larger I will defend it, because it is me. If you present an effective challenge to my something larger, I may have to burn you at the stake.
I'm not entirely satisfied with this answer, but it's the direction I'm exploring. We're made of thought, so we experience ourselves as small, so the need arises to demonstrate that we are at least bigger than somebody.
No, no. Not character. I do not think one can identify someone's character at a glance, or even through a little casual interaction, such as a fairly simple financial transaction. Judging character takes time, I think.
This gaydar thing doesn't reveal very much about someone, other than that they are exhibiting certain subtle traits. [And what all those subtle traits are, I would be hard pressed to list.] Gaydar doesn't tell one what the guy is like, whether you will like them, and so on. Spotting another gay guy in a crowd of straights means one can at least pursue the possibility.
So in the situation where someone seeks out a conflict in order to gain a gratifying sense of superiority your claim is that, if they’re victorious, their identity will be boosted?
The particular behavior or habit would be boosted if they got a dopamine hit or whatever, but I don’t see how their ‘identity’ would be boosted. And what about the looser of the conflict who did not seek conflict? Your claim would seem to imply that their identity would be weakened. But what if they strongly identified as a looser? Then wouldn’t their identity be strengthened?
Maybe it would help if you explained exactly how identity is strengthened or weakened?
Being calm and composed doesn’t come naturally to me at all. I really need to work for it. In any case, I don’t see how this relates.
I was making up a story about a Christian who loses faith. The story just sort of unfolded on its own and it became clear that conflict has a limited effect. My character was involved in Pro-life politics for many years and that kept him focused on his Christian beliefs. That sense of being in combat did bring a sort of militancy to his identity. But when he lost faith, no amount of conflict would turn things around. He began to question all of his former efforts. What happens next depends a lot on his natural character.
I guess I'm suggesting that if personal identity is like music, each person comes with (or is) a particular kind of instrument. A strong sense of identity means the music comes out with clarity. It's not about winning or losing. It's about knowing who you are.
By contrast, a person who has a weak sense of identity may be playing opposing themes simultaneously: not this or that, but always both.
I don't know. What are your thoughts?
You're kinda all over the place so I'm not sure. Is that by design? Anyway, one thing that bugs is how you seem to strongly associate identity with ego. Is that how you see it?
I think that ego has more to do with self-esteem and identity with the particulars that define a person. A person may have low self-esteem and identify as such. Low self-esteem can be part of a persons identity and if for whatever reason they suddenly and inexplicably had high self-esteem they wouldn't feel like themselves.
I don't think it makes sense to suggest that a person with high self-esteem (or low self-esteem, for that matter) necessarily has a "strong sense of identity." Our sense of identity, all things working relatively normal, is all but inescapable. Our attachment to this identity or appraisal of its value may wax and wane. Maybe some people try to lift their self-assessment via conflict.
I agree. Personal identity isn't ego by that definition.
Quoting praxis
I don't think so either. Losing can reinforce identity by producing a journey of overcoming, think of the American black identity. Too much losing can be lethal to identity if it results in hopelessness, not that hopelessness is necessarily a bad thing.
Quoting praxis
For some people, yes. There are those who can't carry a heavy sense of identity. So their identity is the identity-less. As I mentioned, they're probably playing opposing themes.
Have you ever read any Schopenhauer?
Karen Horney asserted that low self-esteem leads to the development of a personality that excessively craves approval and affection and exhibits an extreme desire for personal achievement. According to Alfred Adler’s theory of personality, low self-esteem leads people to strive to overcome their perceived inferiorities and to develop strengths or talents in compensation. Along the lines of Praxis' question, if someone has low self esteem and presents as a very needy person, is that their 'real' identity? A lot of people are needy, domineering, or manipulative their whole lives; it's hard to suppose that needy, dominating, or manipulative isn't who they are, at some point.
"Identity" is a front-burner issue just now. The Oxford Research Encyclopedia says that "...both contribute to a self that is not a unitary construct comprising only the individual as he or she is now, but also past and possible selves. Self-knowledge may overlap more or less with others’ views of the self." and "The origins of the self are also manifold and can be considered from developmental, biological, intrapsychic, and interpersonal perspectives. The self is connected to core motives (e.g., coherence, agency, and communion) and is manifested in the form of both personal identities and social identities."
Mostly people use and understand these words 'loosely'. But sometimes it helps to reflect on the recent (20th century) history of the terms. "Ego" is transactional, not a thermometer of self esteem. Are the distortions of low self-esteem (per Karen Horney or Alfred Adler) a person's real identity?
Just a thought.
It can be revealing to some psychoanalytic literature on the subject. However, overpsychologizing the subject is happening here.
I would say yes, those distortions are aspects of personality. There's no sane person down there waiting to pop out. What do you think?
Do you know how Nietzsche's use of "ego" compares with Freud's?
What do you mean?
I imagine that low self-esteem has various expressions. This seems rather limited in view.
Can a topic in psychology be over psychologized? Interesting concept.
No.
Read about overdetermination.
Hard to say. It's not in my ability to assess the merit of psychological profundity.
No. The best I could do is a Google search and pull a quote or two. like: Freud bought Nietzsche's collected works, but he felt that Nietzsche was more to be resisted than studied. Apparently Freud felt that Nietzsche's ideas had the potential of deflecting his (SF's) thinking in a direction he didn't wish to go.
Whether what I just parroted is true, false, or not even wrong... don't know.