tdaxp

My good blog-friend Isaac (who I had the wonderful pleasure of meeting at Boyd '07 at Quantico) sent me "Fighting Identity: Why We Are Losing Our Wars" by Micahel Vlahos. Don't worry Isaac: I won't hold it against you. ;-)

Vlahos' article essentially is an abridgment of In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong by Amin Maalouf. Violence is seen as an outgrowth of Identity, a non-defined term that is a hidden hand in human relationships. While neither Maalouf nor Vlahos bother to defnie their term, the term "identity" is typically used in one of two ways:

1. metacognitive awareness of one's own preference schedule


2. an in-group/out-group marker

This raises the question: Does America need an identity?

By the first definition, not really. Maybe, but it's not going to happen, and if it did it might not be good. Hence the importance of 5GW.

By the second definition, sure. That's why we bother have passports and visas.

The rest of the article is a mish-mash of other European fads, including a belief in the state as a monopolizer of force, the view that globalization is essentailly a destructice force, and other boobytraps for the mind.

The term "identity" is used to describe two separate concepts.

The first meaning of "identity" is metacognitive awareness of one's own preference schedule. Educators often encourage "identity" (that is, better metacognitive knowledge). The purpose of this is emphasized by, and the ability to do this is questioned by, the people's lack of introspection. Additionally, Catholic theology questions the desirability of "discovering" one's own identity. Human nature may be sinful, but sin (which accounts for much of the natural preference schedule) does not "name" man. That is, wrong preference schedules cannot be used in describing one's true preference schedules.

Another use of "identity" is as an in-group/out-group marker. Typically, this occurs when there are rival political coalitions that can affect an individual's standing. For instance, the famous "erasing racism" study was able to override implicit racist identity by mixing the racial composition of competing groups of males. Similarly, the early "identity" of Catholic Bosnians as "Christian" (in the early part of the Bosnian War, when they were attempted to form ethnically homogenous regions of that state) quickly gave way to an "identity" as non-Serb, as both Bosnian Muslims and Bosian Croats (catholics) united to drive the Orthodox Christian Serbs from their territory.

This weekend I read two books: Neither Shall the Sword: Conflict in the Years Ahead by Chet Richards and In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong by Amin Maalouf. The Richards book was for fun, but Maalouf's work followed Elkind's and Moshman's in being required for my adolescent psychology class. The book is written by the Paris-based Lebanese author Amin Maalouf.

As an aside in The Lexus and the Olive Tree, Tom Friedman mentioned that French-speaking Arabs are the least equipped to understand globalization. Yup.

It's the busy season for adolescent psychology posts here at tdaxp. Elkind and Price were finished out, Moshman started (in a post since updated with even more!), and even a reaction paper was posted. Now a question set over David Moshman's views on identity development.