Doubting Identity
By Kevin A. Beck

We live in an intense age. Political unrest and economic uncertainty create a context conducive to extreme anxiety. Wars, terrorism, food shortages, pandemics, poverty, mass migrations, technological innovation, and climate change form a confluence in which fear and apprehension grip millions around the world.

The revolution in communication technology would seem to help us find solutions to our pressing issues. However, the dramatic increase in information increases the complexity of our crises.

Information overload can feel overwhelming. Instantaneous communication begs for immediate reaction. The pressure to express immediate opinions can hinder a thoughtful response to difficult problems.

The mass migration of human populations brings people with diverse views into closer proximity. Your neighbors might not look or sound like you. Gone are the days of regional, ethnic, or religious isolation. The internet is the Silk Road running through our Global Village.

Contact with people who hold different traditions and ideas than our own challenges our longstanding customs. It opens us to new ways of viewing the world and ourselves. In the milieu of social upheaval and transformation, people quickly become disoriented and lose a sense of identity.

Who are we as a community, people, political party, religion, or humanity? Who am I, and how do I fit in?

These questions strike at the heart of our perceived identity.

Fundamentalism and Cynicism

In the midst of so much uncertainty, Peter Berger and Anton Zijderveld suggest that various forms of fundamentalism promise to quell the unease. In their book, In Praise of Doubt, they argue that fundamentalist political, ideological, nationalistic, religious, and philosophical movements promise to provide a secure sense of identity.

Fundamentalism contends that change is bad, diversity is dangerous, and a reinstitution of an imagined past will bring stability and order. According to the various fundamentalisms, your life will proceed much easier if you just return to the “old ways” of acting, doing, thinking, believing, and behaving.

However, those old ways are illusory. There was not a golden age. Instead, fundamentalism invents one and proposes its mythology as fact.

According to Berger and Zijderveld, fundamentalism breeds fanatics. People overwrought by innumerable choices, frightened by unpredictability, and upset over the pace of change “are in quest of an authority that will declare and absolutely, ultimately correct choice” (p.46). Unsure of who they are or who they might become in a new and changing world, fundamentalism offers people an ostensible sense of stable identity.

However, in exchange for this crafted identity, fundamentalism exacerbates the stress it seeks to relieve. Fanatics understand that their identity-defining project is “inherently fragile” and “must continually be defended.” When fanatics encounter people, events, or facts that resist their assumptions and outlook, they tend to react with “aggressive certitude” (p.73).

This, as we’ve all seen, can have catastrophic consequences.

Extreme relativism appears to provide a viable alternative to fanatical fundamentalism. This cynical approach labels all attempts at knowing anything as futile. Knowledge is little more than a power ploy, and all truths are inherently equal regardless of their destructive potential.

After all, the cynic asks, what can we really know? Can we trust ourselves or anyone? And besides, it is easier to hold no convictions than to succumb to fanaticism.

But can we seriously equate Gandhi’s Satyagraha with National Socialism? Are the non-violent ideals of Martin Luther King no better than the racist policies of apartheid?

Extreme relativism attempts to deconstruct identity moorings altogether. Because it cynically perceives everything a false construction, one can never know who one truly is. The individual self, the collective self, and the cosmic self are all not real. According to this model, the quest for certainty is a dead end because “there are no objectively verifiable facts” (p52).

Nevertheless, Berger and Zijderveld affirm that “there are facts in this world, and in seeking to ascertain facts, objectivity is possible” (p.63). With this, they propose a middle way between fanatical zeal and paralyzing relativism.

Doubt

The way is doubt. Paradoxically, doubt allows a person to hold convictions while remaining open to new information that will modify those convictions.

Where fanaticism creates rigid obstinacy and extreme relativism produces blasé apathy, doubt fosters principled flexibility.

Where fundamentalism builds a false front of bravado hiding a heart of fear and insecurity, doubt “faces, as it were, knowledge and belief, but it knows ignorance and unbelief at its back” (p.107).

Where cynicism throws up its hands in learned ignorance or existential despair, doubt nurtures “an attitude of wonderment about the world around us” (p. 111).

Fundamentalism builds a false identity, and cynicism denies every identity. Doubt, though, provides the possibility of evolving identity. For the majority of human history, people received their identity essentially from the accidents of life or from other people. One would be born into a tribe, city-state, or nation. A marriage might be arranged. A person’s occupation, social status, and religion would be imposed. Most people had little choice in how they constructed their social and personal identity.

Given-identity changed with the advent of the Modern Age. Today, plurality is the norm, and with plurality we can choose who we are on an unprecedented scale. Voluntary associations bring about voluntary identity. Someone might see herself as an Italian-American feminist Catholic Buddhist who condones abortion. However, as the days pass, she may (and probably will) transform her identity by adding new identity markers, taking away old ones, and reordering the fresh mix.

Doubt empowers people to participate intentionally as creators in and of our lives and communities. By actively shaping your own identity, you can defuse tensions without yourself and in your relationships knowing that your identity is not dependant upon the affirmation of others.

Nor is your identity threatened by the presence of people who identify themselves in ways different than you do.

An Ethic of Responsibility

Doubt allows you to act morally and thoughtfully in the world. While doubt remains open to new information, it produces an “ethic of responsibility.” Drawing from all major faith and philosophical traditions, an ethic of responsibility embraces a basic tenet: “One should not do to another what is despicable to oneself” (p.124).

Not simply an exclusive religious mandate, this ethic of responsibility addresses the core of our deep humanity. As the understanding of our fundamental identity as humans develops, the ethic of responsibility deepens, widens, and matures. Once the dignity of humanity comes to be perceived it becomes “intrinsic to human being always and everywhere” (p.127).

This principle has been enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that opens with a confirmation that “the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.”

Also, the German constitution affirms, “Human dignity shall be inviolable.”

Berger and Zijderveld rightly note, “We cannot assert liberties and rights for ourselves while denigrating this assertion to the level of mere opinion or preference” (p.166).

By embracing doubt, we create the condition for nurturing our humanity. It permits communication, listening, and contributing to the lives of others without attempts of conversion or coercion. The dialectic of doubtful certainty emerges from confidence in the human community as it produces individual depth and cross-cultural respect.

This evolving ethic of responsibility becomes internalized in our collective institutions and individual consciences. Doubt broadens our understanding of who we are as it opens us to the presence, existence, and possibility of others. This awareness transforms our sense of self. It expands our identity by respecting individuality and generating a sense of connectedness to all humanity.

Healthy doubt moves us from narrow fundamentalist certainties and questionable callous cynicism to “real passion in defense of the core values that come from the perception of the human condition” (p.166). Each individual can nurture an autonomous, personal and hopeful existence in relationship with others doing the same.

Ultimate identity, then, is that of a common humanity. Regardless of our individual inherent traits or chosen relationships, we all share a universal essence that cannot be legislated, excommunicated, or denied out of existence.

Bio:

Kevin A. Beck loves living along the front range of the Rocky Mountains with his wife and three children. He writes and speaks about spirituality, personal transformation, and emerging culture.