Emanations of the Philosophy of Life Instinct
If you ask me who I am, I think of this more or less sequentially: I am an Indian, male, Hindu, vegetarian, Brahmin, mechanical engineer, Kannadiga, IBMer, enterprise architect, and writer.
The pride or otherwise in each and what I may bring up at a particular time is quite another matter.
Notice how who I am is all about classification or typing. It comes so naturally to identify ourselves as belonging to particular affiliations, the most common being country, gender, race, faith, qualification, language, company, and position.
I also identify in a few secondary types: atheist, secularist, family man, Indian-Australian dual citizen, half Deshastha-Marathi, poet, philosopher, book lover, and art and music aficionado. The strength of my secondary identities is lower.
That’s nineteen categories by which I define myself! And I could add a few more.
Can we define ourselves without this ‘typing’? No way, Jose. Just think about it. How could we? Can I say, ‘I am a blob of life’? What use is it except to differentiate me from inert matter, and for whom?
Origins of identity
To what extent is our definition by classes to which we belong a necessity of logic and communication, and how much does it reflect human reality? And which came first?
We can consider this from an anthropocentric viewpoint. At first, we notice that humans can belong to many more categories than inert objects and other life forms.
Take a rock or a lake. In primary terms, the rock can have a basic type (e.g., sedimentary or igneous) and a size (e.g., large or small). Its secondary types can be the surface (e.g., smooth or rough) and content (e.g., ore-bearing). A rock is well-defined with this much. It would also be a limited set of characteristics for a lake, e.g., a large and deep glacial lake.
Let’s consider animals, say an elephant. It could be African or Asian and of a sub-type, such as an Asiatic Indian or Sri Lankan elephant. From an anthropocentric viewpoint, that’s about it, although within their minds, elephants may further differentiate by local niches, tribes, or family groups. But they most likely don’t add more than a couple of segregations.
It’s similar for plants, insects, bacteria, and so on. Each member has a handful of distinguishing characteristics.
But humans possess and recognise many simultaneous identities beyond the eight taxonomic levels. We characterise ourselves individually in scores of ways when you consider it. Why is it so?
The answer is evident in the light of the Philosophy of Life Instinct and evolutionary science.
Our three core life instincts, survival, growth, and reproduction, combined with the arc of evolution, have led to a richness of human groupings, from the smallest — family — to the largest — race and religion.
Nature is efficient, and individual or collective characteristics that do not serve life’s instincts would have been weeded out quickly. The thriving and persistence of multiple genetic and social types signal their crucial role in the growth and dominance of our species.
The evolutionary value of identity groups
In nature, there is a constant tussle between competition and cooperation among a species’ members. The strength of multiple members working together for survival is significantly higher than that of an individual.
Therefore, members with more cooperative genes survive in greater numbers over time and generations. This tendency to collaborate is part of the individual’s genetic fitness, and survival of the fittest favours genes with this tendency.
However, what if social support dilutes the best gene types by helping unlike and weaker types survive and mate? Does it result in poorer evolutionary outcomes for the species? Which is more critical for the survival and strengthening of the genotype — individual or collective fitness? Should the individual or the group be strong? To consider this, imagine five types of individuals who are genetically either:
- Fitter than the average but not cooperative
- Less fit than the average and cooperative with dissimilar types
- Fitter than the average and cooperative with dissimilar types
- Less fit than the average but cooperative with similar types
- Fitter than the average and cooperative with similar types
The fifth type would have the most power to exploit our ecosystem, and these genes would win out over millions of years, spanning primates, australopithecines, early hominids, and on to us.
It is the origin of cooperation based on similarity and underlies our relatively intelligent species’ complex and varied social groupings.
Identity and Belonging — Whither to?
The previous section throws up two critical questions.
Is it possible that we are now so collaborative that we allow less fit individuals and gene pools to survive, mate, and propagate? Are we slowing down or stopping individual evolutionary development? Are the Type 4 genes above winning now?
If so, will it increase our need and desire to band with similar types for survival and success? Is it already happening? Is our evolution now proceeding at a group rather than an individual level?
Benefits of identity groups
Networks of affiliation support our species in three fundamental ways.
Power from groups
Cooperation is seen in many species for hunting, gathering food, and building shelters. However, it is limited to families or small groups (the largest being bees and birds, where tens of thousands work together). But humans have evolved to cooperate in vast numbers, for example, in medicine and engineering, which benefits all 8+ billion of us.
Due to our significantly higher intelligence, we also have more cooperation modes, allowing us to exploit our planet in multiple complex ways.
Security from groups
Banding together to defend against natural calamities, predators, aggressors, and other threats is an ancient trick of the species. We have embraced the security of identifying with families, villages, religions, castes, nations, etc., and this is still going strong. Pandemics are examples of the most enormous scale of cooperation, where we identify as one global network of defending humans.
Genetic balancing act from groups
Life instincts and natural selection combine dissimilar DNA to produce unique new trial versions. Some are fitter than their contemporaries and parents and survive preferentially to strengthen and perpetuate a genotype.
However, combining very dissimilar DNA does not work, and there is a strong natural aversion to it, amounting to a rule that’s led to species separation.
Similarly, we have developed feelings and thoughts that the mating of very dissimilar humans should be discouraged. By dissimilar, we mean those from different races, far-off places, ecosystem niches, diets, languages, belief systems, physiognomies, etc.
For example, imagine the offspring of an Eskimo father and a Tuareg mother. A thousand years ago, there would have been an instinctive recoil against this type of mating and progeny, and there could still be remnants of it today.
Is this aversion ingrained in genetic or social risk? For our argument, let’s take the case where the child turns out genetically fit for the Arctic cold and Saharan heat. It may be a prized exhibit of nature, but let’s consider the social aspect. The child’s survival, growth, and reproduction are at significant risk if it and its parents don’t belong to a community. In the modern world, the chances of the child being welcomed into the family, village, city, or nation have vastly increased, although not yet a given. Indeed, just a hundred years ago, it would have struggled to be assimilated and accepted like any other Eskimo or Tuareg child.
This favouring of mating within supersets of genetic subtypes and the social communities into which we are born makes our birth characteristics the strongest in our self-identification. I was born with six out of ten things I primarily identify with. These combinations are also favoured for other human activities, such as friendship, collaboration, recreation, and skill transmission.
Community bounds and the maximising of genetic variation pull in opposite directions within the species to strike a balance between risk and reward.
We feel seen, valued, useful, and safe in our communities. As the human world grows more intermingled and we become more confident in each other, the perceived risk of losing the safety of old identities will reduce. But we have a long way to go.
The dark side of identity
Like many other human capabilities, identity grouping has its ugly side.
Family bonds develop into feuds with other families. Racial identity turns into xenophobia and genocide. National identity grows into jingoism, colonialism, and expansionism. Religion and sects lead to extremism, terrorism, and war. And the list goes on.
Historically, the largest groupings have done the most terrible internal damage to the species, collateral to their benefits. The irony is that humanity, as one large cooperating group, has wiped out millions of other species and is permanently ruining the planet for itself. So much for cooperation!
In the next 24 hours, tens of thousands of humans (and millions of animals at the hands of the most malevolent cohort on Earth — humanity) will die due to the animus and strength of identity. It’s Jews vs Muslims, Catholics vs Protestants, Sunnis vs Shias, Russia vs Ukraine, China vs India, N. Korea vs the world and scores more animosities.
We may baulk at killing one person, but the barrier to eliminating an entire type is very low.
Identity Wisdom
We can’t just do away with identity and belonging. They are integral to our lives and well-being. If you were to ask me to stop identifying myself in one of the ten types I’ve listed at the start of the article, I would get a sinking feeling, as if I was giving up a piece of myself.
Our deep-seated need for the power and security we get from identity and belonging also explains why we feel a deep sense of loss when we see our children giving up something we identify with, whether it be belief, religion, sect, diet, language, profession, or something else we hold dear. We feel they are losing out and will be weaker. It may not happen, but we have evolved to feel so.
Should we then bow to nature’s wisdom and accept the good and bad of identities? But who said nature is perfect? Billions of us feel and think the bad side of identity is truly bad, including many caught up in its evils. We aren’t all blind fools. We have thinking minds and feeling hearts, the mightiest of our powers, to which we must listen and act. Perhaps nature has given us a choice for a reason.
How can we make the best of identity and belonging while avoiding its worst? Here are three paths.
1. Curbing excesses of identity
Humans have known for thousands of years that they need to curb the dark side of race, nation, religion, sect, and business. Enlightened national and religious leaders and core texts have exhorted their members to treat ‘others’ with tolerance and justice. Here are a few examples that illustrate this. We can follow them ever more diligently.
Edicts of Ashoka for humanity and animals
Constitution of India on International Relations
United Nations Charter
Tolerance in Hinduism | Practical Philosophy and Rational Religion
Bible Verses About Tolerance: 21 Scripture Quotes
Qur’an Verses Respecting Other Religions (9 Ayat)
2. Promoting benevolent identities
A more powerful approach is to promote the replacement of identity based on race, nation, religion, sect, politics, and language with pride in belonging to groups with manageable downsides. They could provide all the power and safety without becoming evil.
Notice that many of these benevolent characteristics are acquired later in life through thought and choice.
For example, we could start thinking and talking about our primary identities as ‘I am a…
- Global Engineer/Scientist/Doctor/Farmer/Lawyer/Teacher/etc.
- Sporting Sports Lover
- Artist for the World
Supplanting identities
Are there new or emerging groups we can belong to that are naturally peaceable and benevolent?
Essential requirement: Members of such nice groups won’t hate and look down upon others or force anyone to join!
Here are new groups we can belong to and give as our primary identities. Say, ‘I belong to…
- United World Humans
- One Earth for All Life
- Global Green Secular Free-market Social Democrats
- Rational Peaceful Humans
It will not turn us all into angels and magically eradicate global poverty, war, and human vileness, but we have to start somewhere.
If we become active members of such new affiliations and identify first and foremost with them, it may have a salutary effect that encourages others. These identities may spread to all 8.2 billion humans in a few decades and move us closer to becoming a nice life form.
End Note
Now, who am I? I am a mechanical engineer, secularist, writer, poet, philosopher, music and art aficionado, and enterprise architect. And I still feel fine.
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