Quotes About Identity

the world manipulates you, in the end you realize that your core identity is a complex illusion created by neural networks.

En resumen, mientras que el nacionalismo me enseña que mi nación es única y que tengo obligaciones especiales para con ella, el fascismo dice que mi nación es suprema y que debo a mi nación obligaciones exclusivas.

Those who resent the mutilation of Indian culture by the British Raj inadvertently sanctify the legacies of the Mughal Empire and the conquering sultanate of Delhi.

nationalism promises that whoever dies for the nation will for ever live in its collective memory. Yet this promise is so fuzzy that even most nationalists do not really know what to make of it.

But if both liberalism and communism are now discredited, maybe humans should abandon the very idea of a single global story? Why should Vietnamese villagers put their faith in the brainchild of a German from Trier and a Manchester industrialist? Maybe each country should adopt a different idiosyncratic path, defined by its own ancient traditions? Perhaps even Westerners should take a break from trying to run the world, and focus on their own affairs for a change?

Does the data about my DNA, my brain, and my life belong to me, to the government, to a corporation, or to the human collective?

We identify with the inner system that takes the crazy chaos of life and spins out of it seemingly logical and consistent yarns. It doesn't matter that the plot is full of lies and lacunas, and is rewritten again and again, so that today's story flatly contradicts yesterday's. The important thing is that we always retain the feeling that we have a single unchanging identity from birth to death (and perhaps even beyond).

the heroes face difficulties and dangers, but they eventually triumph by finding their authentic self and following their free choices.

Hardly anyone has just one identity. Nobody is just a Muslim, or just an Italian, or just a capitalist.

The orthodox branch holds that each human being is a unique individual possessing a distinctive inner voice and a never-to-be-repeated series of experiences.

Humans emerge from the womb like molten glass from a furnace. They can be spun, stretched and shaped with a surprising degree of freedom. This is why today we can educate our children to become Christian or Buddhist, capitalist or socialist, warlike or peace-loving. We

In the language of the Dinka people of the Sudan, 'Dinka' simply means 'people'. People who are not Dinka are not people. The Dinka's bitter enemies are the Nuer. What does the word Nuer mean in Nuer language? It means 'original people'. Thousands of miles from the Sudan deserts, in the frozen ice-lands of Alaska and north-eastern Siberia, live the Yupiks. What does Yupik mean in Yupik language? It means 'real people'.3 In

nationalism and religion still divide our human civilization into different and often hostile camps.

Most Westerners today believe in individualism. They believe that every human is an individual, whose worth does not depend on what other people think of him or her.

If] you really want to understand yourself, you should not identify with your Facebook account or with the inner story of the self. Instead, you should observe the actual flow of body and mind [...]. People ask 'Who am I?' and expect to be told a story. The first thing you need to know about yourself, is that you are not a story.

Just like Riley Andersen, most people barely know themselves, and when they try to "listen to themselves" they easily become prey to external manipulations. The voice we hear inside our heads is never trustworthy, because it always reflects state propaganda, ideological brainwashing, and commercial advertisements, not to mention biochemical bugs.

if you wish to obey the old adage and know thyself, you should not waste your time on philosophy, meditation or psychoanalysis, but rather you should systematically collect biometric data and allow algorithms to analyse them for you and tell you who you are and what you should do. The movement's motto is 'Self-knowledge through numbers'.

Todos los relatos que nos dan sentido e identidad son ficticios,

Escaping the narrow definition of self might well become a necessary survival skill in the 21st century

the notion that you have a single self and that you could therefore distinguish your authentic desires from alien voices is just another liberal myth, debunked by the latest scientific research.

Pero no queremos aceptar que nuestro Dios, nuestra nación o nuestros valores sean meras ficciones, porque estas cosas dan sentido a nuestra vida.

How many Indians today would want to call a vote to divest themselves of democracy, English, the railway network, the legal system, cricket and tea on the grounds that they are imperial legacies? And if they did, wouldn't the very act of calling a vote to decide the issue demonstrate their debt to their former overlords?

Most nations argue that they are a natural and eternal entity, created in some primordial epoch by mixing the soil of the motherland with the blood of the people. Yet such claims are usually exaggerated. Nations existed in the distant past, but their importance was much smaller than today because the importance of the state was much smaller.

There is just no such thing as "Christian economics," "Muslim economics," or "Hindu economics.