Every one of us is very protective of our identity.
Your identity is defined by who you are, what you do, and more importantly, what you believe in, what you value and carry about.
Your identity is where you place yourself on your mental map of the world.
The thing is — most of your map is borrowed.
“Life isn’t about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.”
— George Bernard Shaw
We are not born with any original ideas.
We start acquiring different notions and mental patterns from other people at an early age, and we keep doing that for the rest of our lives.
We use these patterns to shape our mental map of the world.
That is, your mental map is defined by other peoples’ ideas. And your identity is the coordinates of the place where you find yourself on the map.
And as the map is defined by other peoples’ ideas, your identity, values and beliefs are likewise defined by the information you have acquired from other people.
The things we believe in and care about, like self-actualization, status, money, relationships, pretty much everything above the second level of Maslow’s pyramid ― have come to us from other people.
We might think that we can choose our values based on what we objectively think is important and how things should be in the world, but the truth is - that’s only an illusion of control.
We signal our choices through clothes, behaviour patterns and social media.
We want to be seen as a certain kind of person, who belongs to a certain kind of group.
These values and choices have already been pre-defined by all the beliefs and ideas we’ve acquired up until the current moment.
It’s quite hard to think objectively when most of your thoughts are not yours.
Yes, our “free will” is not that free after all.
Even though according to the current scientific theory, humans are still evolving, we’re not that much different from humans 50 000 years ago, compared to other primates.
However, everything that we have today: our culture, technology, legal systems etc. is powered purely by ideas and beliefs that are stored in the heads of people, as wells as on paper and in computers.
“Large numbers of strangers can cooperate successfully by believing in common myths. Any large-scale human cooperation – whether a modern state, a medieval church, an ancient city or an archaic tribe – is rooted in common myths that exist only in people's collective imagination.”
― Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
Imagine a global catastrophe that destroys all computers and books.
How many years do you think would take to rebuild things to the same level as now?
Do you think the culture and the society would look the same and would operate based on the same principles?
Alright, back to our identity.
The fact that most of our beliefs and thoughts came from other people doesn’t mean we don’t or we can’t have any original ideas.
We can reason from the first principles. We can apply second-order thinking.
We get to choose which patterns, beliefs and mental models we want to use and which we should discard.
Contrary to the popular belief, you are not the average of the five people you spend the most time with. However, it’s not entirely untrue, you are most affected by the people close to you.
Humans are biological machines for spreading ideas. We are heavily influenced by the society and the people around us, our circles and our communities.
“It is inevitable if you enter into relations with people on a regular basis, either for conversation, dining or simple friendship, that you will grow to be like them, unless you can get them to emulate you.”
— Epictetus
Exercising high agency, using System 2 thinking, requires a lot of energy, which you can’t do 100% of your time. We’re most susceptible to soaking other ideas subconsciously, when we operate on autopilot.
If you want to be influenced by the right ideas, even when you’re not proactively seeking them, the best way is to make the right decisions come automatically by designing your environment.
Choose the people that will define what ideas you get exposed to. People whose default behaviour is your desired behaviour, who have the qualities that you want to embody
Choose your friends wisely. Cultivate people in your life that make you better.
Distance yourself from people who make you want to compromise your morals. Seek out people who inspire you, who lift you upwards, who are great role models for you.
You will become more like them.
Until next time 👋