History of Identity (Sort of)

I have a lot of thoughts on this topic, so here goes for a starter post, made of confused, entangled thoughts.
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We've been obsessed with the idea of identity for around a century, with the invention of psychology (perhaps it was not invented, but it seems so by the history). It seems we get more and more obsessed as time goes on. It seems that before the 1700's or so, people thought of Who They Are far less than we do today. Especially with the invention of novels (late 1700's?) it seems people started to think more about our Internal Monologue. The importance we put on that monologue has grown over time.

It just doesn't seem to have mattered to people much before what you thought, which brings its own set of troubles, but if what you think doesn't matter that much, it conveniently means that what others think doesn't matter that much, either. However, I doubt anyone was particularly concerned whether or not what they or others thought mattered. We often infer upon the past that they might have been secretly controlling others, knowing that others could have given input, but most likely a lot of the usual chafing between people happened for mostly non-malicious reasons, not that there was no fault in what people did.

(It occurred to me today that that one thing is probably what would be the most culture-shocking about time travelling- the completely different way we think about Our Selves nowadays.)

I haven't yet decided how I rate that, bad or good- so far it seems it's a mix of the two. There is a lot of good in not minding much about your self, highlighted because of our current cultural fixation on Self, but there are some issues, such as advocating for personal needs. I'll leave this off, because there's a lot to go into here.

From what little I know of the past century, the idea of Self and Identity has grown a huge network of language and its own set of new concerns. It is amazing when I consider how things might used to have been contrasted with how we think about all this now. Our whole culture has radically shifted just because of our hyper-psychologised way of thinking. Everything surrounds and concerns the individual in a way unparalleled in the past... the little I can think of in comparison is what seems to be the self-indulgence of cultures in other times or places where the richest and most powerful people have been free to concern themselves purely with how they feel and what they want- where they have the time and energy to simply think of themselves.

We in our affluence nowadays have the luxury to think this way, possibly even more so than they did (although we do not have slaves and servants). We have convenience beyond all past ages because of the inventions and the infrastructure developed over centuries.

So therefore, in our freedom from bare necessity, from the mere struggle to live, we can think about our selves. And thus, we have begun to think about our identities, who we are, which I begin to think may be a culturally regressive thing.

It's fine to think about what you happen to be like- what your attributes are in relation to reality, but to define yourself by those things, to restrict your growth by saying you're just like this and can't help it, that is going too far. I don't mean that you can always change, but rather that we needn't restrict ourselves by our defining Boxes. They are simply useful explanations of whatever is.

I may have to prove that there is an epidemic of self-definition now. Ah, well.