The Identity Crisis

Who are you?

Are you male, female or other?

Are you old, young or in the middle, and what is old anymore? 60,70, 80?

Do you play a sport, or support a team? Do you say we when talking about your football or rugby team no matter where they are located?

Are you Catholic, Protestant, Muslim, Jewish or atheist?

Are you middle or working class?

Are you IT literate or not?

Are you outgoing or introverted, or somewhere in the mix?

Are you Irish, or British, or Northern Irish?

Identity drives our lives almost every day. There will be people this morning (27.2.23) who are walking around with smiles on their faces as Manchester United won a trophy yesterday. There will be people heading to jobs of all descriptions, from office to outdoor, manual to management. Some will be chatting to workmates, other already at their desks.

But when does identity become a crisis?

I was talking on a Twitter Space last night listening to someone who sees themself as more Irish than the vast majority of the population. So Irish that they can take Irish history and use it to justify the attempted murder of another person because they are not Irish at all. It made me wonder if I would ever be allowed to be Irish, as I diametrically oppose their fascist view of nationality. It led me to think that if a United Ireland comes about, will there immediately be a hierarchy of Irishness? Will we still continue to automatically identify people’s level of identity by their names, their location, the schools they attend, and the religion of their family?

Meanwhile in the so-called Loyalist community, being British is the driving identity. It is actually given a value ahead of health, education, housing and prosperity. Identity is politically weaponised to block democracy. And who or what does being Britsh mean?

Both are different sides of the same coin. People who are so driven by an extreme idea of identity that they put all the norms of society aside. Both use history to justify their extremism. For the loyalists, it is an Act of Union from 1800, for the republicans, it is 800 years of the British presence in Ireland. That we live in 2023 and have had an almost peaceful society for 25 years is irrelevant to them, their identity is more important. Theirs, not mine, They don’t care about my identity. My opinion is not worth hearing (I was stopped short in the Twitter space, just as I was stopped from talking on Nolan when asking about the continued presence of Jim Allister. What’s the difference?)

These identity extremists are all the same. The only difference is their upbringing. Family politics carried on from generation to generation. All believing that they are right, without bothering to think for themselves, to take time to find out what actually happened in Ireland before and during the Troubles. Believing that they are completely right and the others totally wrong. All using events in the Troubles to defend and attack, selectively naming events that justify their violence and ignoring their own.

Why is identity so important? What is it that disables free will and replaces it with programming as if we were computers having software installed? Our so-called humanity set aside to parrot views because that was their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents’ politics. Using the hurt of those generations as if they had suffered themselves.

Identity is a human need. We need to belong, to have friends, to be part of a great grouping in a club, or a team, or to support a football club. We need to be able to say where we are from, to be Irish or Northern Irish or British or French, German or Spanish. But when we discard our individuality in favour of a mass identity we lose our personal independence to think to challenge to innovate and engage. We make immediate assumptions about people because of our identity, not theirs.

If Ireland or Northern Ireland is to move on we need o reduce the importance of identity. If we are to have a really united Ireland, everyone needs to be seen as and treated as equals, otherwise, we are just shifting the discrimination form one place to another.