6 ideas
Identity groups are mistakenly assumed to share an inner essence that explains why members behave and think alike. In reality, identities are held together by labels with ascription rules (who counts as a member) and norms about how members should act and be treated, and neither depends on any shared deep nature.
Religions are wrongly treated as fixed bodies of scripture-derived belief that dictate adherents' behavior. Religious identity is mostly a matter of shared practices and belonging, and doctrines are continually reinterpreted by communities. So pointing to a scriptural text says little about what believers actually do or will do.
National identity rests on stories of an ancient, unbroken people, but most nations are recent political creations that retroactively assembled a shared language, history and ancestry. What actually binds citizens is present commitment to a common political project, not descent or a primordial 'folk.'
Amo, an 18th-century African taken to Germany as a child, became a respected philosopher at German universities and later returned to the Gold Coast. His life shows how the same person can be read as African, German or European depending on shifting ascription rules. It also shows that racial identity was far less fixed before modern race theory hardened it.
The notion that 'the West' owns a continuous cultural essence passed intact from Athens to modern Europe treats culture like a gold nugget handed down through generations. In fact, the classical legacy was carried and reworked by Islamic and other traditions, and 'Western civilization' is a late invention. Culture is better seen as a shared inheritance that anyone can draw on and remix.
Following Michael Young's satire, a society that distributes status by measured merit comes to treat the successful as deserving and the unsuccessful as deficient, which entrenches disdain across classes. The fix is not abolishing merit-based roles but separating merit from human worth and dignity, because social esteem should not track market or test rewards.