Keeping an Open Identity

Up to now I've always tried to publish things in Woroni long before I posted them here, but then I realised that I want people to read this blog, not Woroni. Woroni is a vehicle for my blog, not the other way around, so now I'm posting things here first. The two articles below appear in the current and forthcoming issues of woroni respectively. Another article on intimacy will be up soon.

One thing that has always concerned me a great deal is the number of people who come to university with a certain ideology and style of thinking, and don’t change one bit over the course of their degrees. At best, they get better at defending the positions they arrived with.

I’m not just referring to people who join ‘young x’ political parties in first year and never look back. I’m also referring to people who come to university with a very established idea of what they want from life, be it a high flying corporate career or a life among the gum trees, and fail to explore other options that a university life and education opens up. Also people who arrive with certain prejudices, against homosexuals or people from Sydney’s north shore for example, and never really take the time to get to know queers or bourgeois people a little better before cementing their prejudices. In general, I’m referring to people who arrive with identities set in stone.

It is understandable that after the insecurity and vacuum of adolescence, someone might want to feel stable in their identity. But at the same time, it is disappointing that people are reluctant or incapable of maintaining an open mind into the future. This is largely because, let’s face it, we don’t know squat when we’re 18, about the world, about other people, or even about ourselves.

When I arrived at university, I was a socialist who knew very little about socializing, with a mild homophobic streak, who wanted to be a judge. Six years on, I’m a progressive little l liberal with centrist views, a stack of queer friends and a paranoid fear of any sort of work relating to the legal profession.

Now I’m not suggesting that everyone requires as much of an overhaul as I did. I’m simply advocating that people not see viewpoints in contra to theirs, as a threat to their identity, because you never know when those viewpoints will become yours.

In my opinion, the key is to try and refrain from turning discussions of values, ideologies, attitudes and approaches to living into arguments. The difference being that in an argument, everyone is trying to ‘win’ the argument, which makes them dishonest, petty and aggressive. In a discussion, everyone is just trying to learn.

Listen to the perspective and opinions of people with political ideologies, values and identities distinct from yours, and try to understand why they find those positions appealing. At the end of the day, we are all human, and we are all dealing with the same issues. What differ are our techniques. Some techniques, like xenophobia, are obviously disgusting and asinine, but others, like bourgeois values, atheism or a love for Justice Kirby, are quite reasonable and often very productive.

In my experience at least, you’ll become a much better person more capable of living a ‘good life’, if you maintain an open mind and a fluctuating identity, rather than fighting fire and brimstone for a poorly formed or downright unreasonable set of positions.