I honestly don’t know how I felt about the Goddam material. The paper while “identity is a lie we can’t live without” is just a basic outline of how Human tribalism is bad. A tale as old as time about how society would be better without tribalism, but Since we don’t live in a fairy tale land, we need to do the next best thing which keeps it under control. By not hating people for the piteous of shit like their skin color, national origin, and, beliefs. Also, within the material, it has a format I don’t like in serious articles a transcribed interview. Instead of putting in an effort by making paragraphs, describing the emotions on the persons face, or, integrating important details into the article as we get to know this person like who they are, their professions, their life story, into the interview. Well, there is just a giant info dump at the beginning about who was talking to then jumping right into it. So, they start talking about the fundamental nature of identity and how everyone has one even though they don’t want one. All it is beating the dead horse of how identities fundamental to human civilization and nature. How we fuse divisions of identity to justify terrible things. Honestly, I just don’t know where this is going with all the readings.
Hi Doyle, I’m puzzled by your approach to this freewrite. Given your reading situation – you need to write a paper about identity by Monday – I’m not sure your time was best spent ranting about the format of the interview and reducing the ideas in it to a slogan and proclaiming it all old news.
Consider a parallel situation. You’ve been tasked by your lab manager to learn more about the care and keeping of clown fish, and she’s given you five articles to read and to report back what you learned to answer the essential question: how can clown fish thrive in captivity?
As you browse the articles you realize they’re not in your favorite format and get a bit irritated. You also realize that some of the material is familiar because you’ve already learned some stuff about clown fish. In that situation, would you use the same strategy you did here, or would you work to engage the material, see if there’s something new to learn or to build on?
By reducing the interview to broad concepts like “tribalism” and “human nature” you pulled your focus away from the nuances and details that might have moved your thinking on identity forward. By ranting about format, you spent the time you might have spent exploring and developing the ideas you found in the articles in productive ways.
Bottom line, try to manage the desire to critique and quickly pigeon-hole the readings and instead use the time available to work through them and move your thinking forward.