Identity trouble

I started (and never finished) writing this post years ago about moving, and its impact on one's identity. I was thinking about it in the context of our family move from Oxford to Leeds, and my anxiety about how it would affect the kids. But the much larger context is my own childhood as an 'army brat'. I was born in Germany, in a military hospital in Rinteln, and we moved around after that very regularly, as my father was posted to various hospitals around the world. I lived two years in Jerusalem and two in Hong Kong, as well as innumerable shorter stays in different German and UK locations. Some stays were as short as three months, and I ended up going to five different primary schools before we settled, finally, in North Yorkshire, when I was 9. This undoubtedly had profound effects upon me, many good and some bad, some both. I've been pretty itinerant ever since, leaving for India aged 17, taking up residence in Leeds, Bristol, France, Cornwall, Vienna and Oxford, as well as packing in as many holidays, foreign conferences and study visits as humanly possible. I am a lover of a novelty, and my instinct whenever life feels stale is to move, get a fresh start. Most obviously, it's left me with life-long itchy feet. I tend to get very restless in my fifth year of one place and start dreaming of different climes. I have a tendency to react to troubles by trying to run away from them. But I suspect it also led me to philosophy, and the mechanism by which this happened is one that i want to explore in this post, as also having an important connection to identity.

When I first moved to Leeds I expected it, like all my homes, to be temporary. But one huge impact of the divorce, that I hadn't really realised would happen, is that I have now lost control over where I live. Or more specifically, I've lost control over which school my kids go to. It now looks like i will be here for the foreseeable. My kids are developing Yorkshire accents. and its freaking me out.

 In particular, I've got this nagging fear, which I suspect less-itinerant types may find hard to understand, about the potential damage staying put might cause to my children.

The issue I'm trying to sort out is whether growing up in a single, stable, location is good or bad for one's psychological development. I have often bemused dinner party company with my favourite game: If you were the all-humanly-powerful king of the world, what three things would you do?

I've never settled on my third answer, but one and two are clear as day. First, I would make vegetarianism compulsory. We can discuss that another day. Second, I would make it compulsory for all families to change locations, ideally internationally, at least every five years.

Discuss!

I'm not pretending these are anything other than massively authoritarian and I suppose if the rules allowed it I'd wish to bring these into force by persuading people, rather than simply imposing it, but that's not my focus here. In the philosopher's sense of in an ideal world, would the world be better if everyone were vegetarian and everyone moved every five years? I think the answer is 'yes'.

Of course there would be disadvantages. It may well reduce or even eliminate the gorgeous cultural diversity we currently enjoy, and I'd be the first person to miss for example the culinary diversity. Things may well end up more homogeneous, more globalised. But I think those, merely aesthetic costs, would be worth paying, because I am convinced the upside would be less war. This needs lots of explanation, of course. And my explanation is sorely vulnerable to the charge that i'm simply not qualified to evaluate the consequences of settled life. But given that it's the majority position, and well articulated in majority art and literature, i feel justified in claiming some epistemic advantage there.

In short, my belief is that sedentary life causes all the major problems in the world because it allows the formation of group identities of various kinds. Loyalty to a group or even a location. Patriotism. Nationalism. The internalisation of local norms to the point where they are experienced as defining you.

When you move regularly, ideally as a child, you very quickly and indubitably come to recognise norms as local, contingent, arbitrary. You realise that they are different from one place to another. And this is hugely freeing. It gives one the feeling of a superior vantage point, an ability to step outside of the customs and peculiarities that, from the inside, are invisible. And as soon as these contingent assumptions are visible, they lose their power to trap one.

How many wars have happened because two or more groups of people had accumulated rival identities, incompatible loyalties to a piece of land, or an artefact? All of them.

I don't pretend that forced mobility will completely eradicate group sentiment and the troubles that follow - people will surely find alternative means for forming identity groups. But it seems obvious that growing up in one location allows group identities to coagulate to the point where their social construction loses visibility, and this is when biological determinism and other forms of essentialism become tempting. Without evidence of things happening differently, its natural for people to form the belief that the ways things actually do happen is inevitable, natural, non-negotiable. Without the privilege of alternative perspectives people become trapped in cages of ossified local habit. And these cages then become the boundaries of battle grounds. I contest the conservative conviction that there is anything noble about arbitrary attachments, tradition, or localism for their own sakes.

Teresa May famously claimed that a citizen of the world is a citizen of nowhere. It is true that i often feel rootless, an outsider. But I think this is much like the absence of a television. In some ways its nice to have a tv, an undemanding way to fill the hours, a source of pleasure for millions. Only if you get rid of the wretched idiot box, and force yourself to undergo an apparent deprivation, do you discover all the more fulfilling ways to spend those hours. In the same way, identity can be cosy, safe. It allows you to passively follow others, to transfer autonomy to others in your group. But there is much to be gained from a life spent defining oneself, seeking one's own path, rejecting the easy route of conformity.

My kids can't remember living anywhere but Leeds. I'll do everything in my power to take them places, to show them alternative perspectives, as well as to mine all the fantastic diversity this city contains. Hopefully they'll reach adulthood and leave as quickly as possible like I did. I hate that so many people in the world lack the means or the right to traverse national boundaries like i can. I hate national boundaries. I hope my kids can grow up looking past them.