"How do you 'identify'?"
A nearly main-stream question these days. And, one that seems to both explode and contract at the same time — so many (and different kinds of) answers, too.
At some point, it seems to me, we've got to think more collectively about this question and the nature of identity itself.
Given all the 'identities' that are being used to define who we are, it is hard not to notice that so many things are being conflated, making it more and more difficult to find a constructive approach to parsing things a bit. We seem a bit lost in this regard, don't we?
So, what in the end is a true source of identity?
How much of what is going on in all our x-identity questions is related to the lack of answer to that question? It seems likely that we can't effectively answer something we aren't asking. What is identity anyway? Where does it come from? Why does it matter?
No disrespect to aliens, but sometimes I think if they were to visit and observe us, would they wonder if we believe that our identity is something that has to be completely self-identified or self authenticated? In other words, sometimes it looks like identity issues are tied up in self-actualization more than in a larger sense of the ecosystem in which we exist (do we after all, individually determine our identify?). Is this because we are trying to do more than one big thing here at the same time? Larger frameworks are imperfect, especially the ones we end up constructing. They often leave important things out. When this is exposed, though, we seem to opt for a simple categorical rejection of the whole framework, rather than allow the opportunity to ask better questions — to work harder at understanding what we are using to define things. In these rejection habits, have we left ourselves bereft of anything to use, to better think about and understand reality?
For example, why is it, anyway, that we seem to have adopted a primarily sexual framework for sorting such things out? Doesn't that seem a bit odd — to focus on just one function or dynamic of existence? Historically, would this even be the primary locus of understanding about what and who we are?
So, if we have rejected some of the more traditional ideals as a means of understanding things like identity, where does that dump us off — both baby and bathwater landing in the same puddle? Perhaps we do need to take a more honest look at what mankind has historically used to understand itself, as a whole? Otherwise, don't we end up with something that (even aliens might say) looks like a collective preoccupation with self-identification (everyone just decides for themselves)?
We are not independent isolated units, either of existence or understanding. Nothing is, in fact. The implications of this are both significant and substantial and, it would seem, they need to be re-explored and developed. If we are not alone and we are connected, what information should we use to constructively develop our sense of identity, especially as it relates to the context we are in? Maybe the answer is staring us right in the face:
Everything in nature invites us constantly to be what we are.
