Politics is Part of Our Identity
By: Jack Rainier Pryor
Tags: Self Improvement, Politics, Mental Health Awareness, Psychology, Mental Health

Our Beliefs Shape the Core of Ourselves

Source: wikipedia

In my last essay, I talked about how denialism is a strategic, self-protective measure. I then branched into a certain kind of denial: political denialism.

Politics is not only an expression of ideological or abstract ideas and aims, removed from a person. It is part of our psychological makeup (Weir, 2019).

Our identity includes our political beliefs, and our identity is a composite image we project outward. Asha, Jagannatha-Rao, Sathyanarayana, and Vasudevaraju (2009) write:

“Beliefs originate from what we hear — and keep on hearing from others, ever since we were children (and even before that!). The sources of beliefs include environment, events, knowledge, past experiences, visualization etc. One of the biggest misconceptions people often harbor is that belief is a static, intellectual concept. Nothing can be farther from truth! Beliefs are a choice. We have the power to choose our beliefs. Our beliefs become our reality.” (para. 2)

As we make choices to shape our identity, we develop defenses for it. We also select our community: our friends and those family members with whom we keep close relations. In today’s era, with social media and search engines, we are even creating “filter bubbles” (Parser, 2011) which both read our choices and tune our experiences further and further inward toward it.

When people establish an identity, and then filter their input around it, they build connections to communities which reflect aspects of their personality back at them. This becomes their status quo. As Weir (2019) writes, quoting Jost (1994), “People are motivated to defend and justify aspects of the status quo because they are part of the status quo” (Justifying the Status Quo, para. 2).

Drastic change scares people, as do ideas and conditions which threaten it, so preserving our status quo becomes part of motivated reasoning. As Banjani and Jost (1994) describe it in this abstract, motivated reasoning is part of, “…system‐justification, which refers to psychological processes contributing to the preservation of existing social arrangements even at the expense of personal and group interest.”

Essentially we will use whatever tools we need to defend our status quo — each of us, regardless of our political leanings. Even liberals, centrists, socialists, libertarians; it doesn’t matter your declared ideological positions. Motivated reasoning is one of our brain’s tool kits for status quo preservation, which ties into guarding our identity. Denial is a human process, one that is part of grief (Kessler, n.d.) and self-preservation. Our skills at coping with reality, be it disaster, sadness, grief and change, determine how we reevaluate our belief choices, or as Asha, et al (2009) put it:

“Beliefs are not just cold mental premises, but are ‘hot stuff’ intertwined with emotions (conscious or unconscious). Perhaps, that is why we feel threatened or react with sometimes uncalled for aggression, when we believe our beliefs are being challenged!” (para.3)

A person who has learned and practiced healthy coping skills, emotional intelligence and empathy tend to cope better with challenges to their beliefs. They have learned their identity and beliefs aren’t fixed. We change throughout our lives. How we show up in the world today will be different even a year from now.

Those who have undeveloped skills and cling to a static and hierarchical view of the world, tend to double down when their identity is threatened. They employ denial strategies and spread conspiracy theories. They smear and shame their self-defined opposition. They will defend their identity, which is wrapped up in the status quo they have created, at all costs.

Weir (2019) reminds us that people will do contrarian and contradictory things to defend the status quo, even, “…when it means supporting politicians or policies that appear to be at odds with their own self-interest” (Justifying the Status Quo, para. 1).

At the base of all this, behind the identity and beliefs, are what every person has: needs. Maslow’s Pyramid (McLeod, 2020) is a popular tool for understanding human needs and wants. As McLeod states:

“Needs lower down in the hierarchy must be satisfied before individuals can attend to needs higher up. From the bottom of the hierarchy upwards, the needs are: physiological, safety, love and belonging, esteem, and self-actualization” (Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, para. 1).

While we strive to meet our needs from the “lowest” to “highest”, this is an intuitive as much as physical process. We weigh and judge our satisfaction levels constantly. We can feel fulfilled with our basic needs but have low self esteem, and we can feel self-actualized while being hungry (physiological). As such our politics remains in flux too. A community can face wildfires (safety) while still having to fund their school districts and repave its roads (physiological).

By ordering our needs and showing the relationship among our politics and our identities, we can show how those needs are met.

A person who has an order-centered view, and who thinks beliefs are fixed, will defend threats to these beliefs. They seek out a community which reinforces instead of challenges their beliefs, and their online behavior can create a filter bubble which hardens those beliefs even further. All these meet their love and belonging needs. The twist is they meet their needs from a place of fear.

The “other” instills fear while their community+filters validate the fear, while their group provides love and belonging based on protecting against what is feared. Not long after, that person has created an identity around all this, and their political views and choices reflect it. A community like this uses shame and fear as tools to reinforce their status quo.

It isn’t hard to see the extent to which seeking a fear-minded community to meet love and comfort needs can go. The Southern Poverty Law Center tracks hate groups across the United States. The SPLC (n.d.) states, “Hatewatch is a blog that monitors and exposes the activities of the American radical right.” The group’s mission stretches back to its 1971 founding, when it first focused on the Ku Klux Klan. Its Hate Map (n.d.) tracks hate groups geographically.

Important note: one does not need to be part of a hate group, or express hateful views publicly or privately, to condone or enable systemic racism. Ibram X. Kendi’s 2019 book, How to Be Antiracist, breaks down and explains these concepts and a counter-system called “antiracism.”

Oppressed communities are on the other side of that coin. Oppressed people, such as Black People, Indigenous people, and People of Color (BIPOC) from other ethno-cultural groups, have experienced oppression dating back centuries (BGSU, n.d. King, et al, 2019. Hannah-Jones, et al, 2019). They experience frequent reminders there is much to be feared, especially from the group which has placed itself atop a society, views all changes and new ideas as a threat to its privilege, and creates enclosed associations to reinforce fear of change or challenge. BIPOC live in the shadow of the order which the fearful, hierarchical one has created and seeks to protect. While Americans often think of oppression within its own, national context, BIPOC oppression also occurs in states such as Australia, South Africa and Canada.

Hence a person from an oppressed community, while still having the same needs as everyone else, filters, connects and protects in similar ways but with different ends in mind. Their identity and worldview is also different from a white conservative one, even if they share specific things in common. For BIPOC, love, comfort and safety come from their need for refuge. They desire safe, loving places in which to be unguarded, to experience joy and muster resolve against external hostility. Michael Harriott from The Root (2020) writes,

“We are no angrier than we were last week or last month or last Trayvon or last Sandra. We are as tired as we were when Breonna bit the bullet or when George gave up the ghost. This country would collapse upon itself if we ever sat down and acknowledged our weariness” (para. 21).

Harriott is speaking within the context of the ongoing Black Lives Matter movement/concept, which is rooted in civil rights activism while focusing on police brutality in particular. The quote above is contextualized within a broader point about Black Patriotism. Harriott states Black people have given their lives, labor and blood for the United States, while its white-centered order has frequently failed to pay them back with love, safety and comfort.

The experiences of Black Americans like Harriott highlights how their identities are shaped. Their political beliefs reflect the need for safety, love and comfort. Except in their case, it’s also about relationship repair between a white American majority and Black people in particular. They are also trying to meet another need, their physiological one to survive. As in, physically surviving against oppressive forces.

In the above examples the comparisons and contrasts are apparent. A community which cherishes static order and deploys denial strategy, motivated reasoning, filter bubbles, other rationalizations, and even physical force to protect itself. A Black American community carves out protective spaces so they can experience the love, comfort and safety the American order has failed to provide, while trying to safeguard their own, physical bodies against forces deployed against them.

Upon looking at this, one can see how politics is part of our identity. As Asha, et al (2009) state (paraphrased), belief is a choice. We make choices each day about who we will be today, and how we will show up in the world. The summary of those choices is our identity, including our politics.