I may look at social issues somewhat differently depending upon whether I am a single parent or an African-American or retired. Belonging to a particular nation also gives me a unique group perspective on events. A common ethnic or national identity amounts to a collective 'self' which is the social counterpart of our individual ideas and allegiances. Like an individual ego, this collective ego can feel proud, wounded, threatened, fragmented, or conflicted. However natural it may seem to identify with a particular race or nation or ideology, such identifications are a source of the alienation and hatred which holds back the larger reconciliation of the human family with itself and its life-support system.
History is full of wars fought over ideological or philosophical differences.
Not only war, but population growth, ecological degradation, in fact all our crises demand that we look for the authoritative source of our identity at a level which all life shares. Ultimately we are 'the same as' the universe itself. The mythologist Joseph Campbell has written of the stages through which our lives must pass if we are to attain a mature identity. In the first stage, we are born and are nurtured by parents, teachers and helpers. In the second, we move into the world and begin to undergo trials and tests.