Open Letter to Gen X: #5 - Identity and Intersection
Analog Childhood * Digital Adulthood * Dystopian Elderhood
My Friends, Substack is awesome! My posts have a new structure, and will have some new features, sections, and other surprises. Surprises because even I don’t know what they are yet! Keep scrolling down, especially on a device or smart phone.
Thanks for being here. Let’s go.
Ric
Gen-X supports Butthole Surfers
Identity Intersection is nothing new. Check out the Sony Walkman in the clip below. That was reality for me. This was identity collision of the 1980s. Quaint.
Erikson considered identity to be psychosocial in nature, formed by the intersection of individual biological and psychological capacities in combination with the opportunities and supports offered by one’s social context.
Marcia (1980) considers identity to be a structure for organizing individual conscious and unconscious wishes, interests, skills, and talents within the framework of one’s biology and cultural context.
This or That
The last installment in this series was dated July 11, 2021. Seems like a million years ago. My starting point here is identity and intersection. Two words that when combined cause some to rejoice and some to recoil.
As usual, as is human nature, that presents two extremes. Two choices. Binary decisions. This or that. Black or White. Left or Right. Right or Wrong.
Most people I know don’t live on the extreme. Some do. I respect the hell out of them. Off the grid. Or fuck the grid. I’m cool with either. See Butthole Surfers.
When things start going south, like now, binary choices collide. We can see most of it happening in the Identity and Intersection spheres. When somebody is a This and a That, they feel proud.
When a bunch of This’s attract the attention of the This part of a person, the bunch of That’s get pissed, because they want the attention of the That part of the person. That, my friends, is Intersectional Identities.
When one bunch of this or that get pissed now, or actually, when less than a dozen of them or they get pissed, all hell breaks loose in corpamedia’merica.
You can believe in whatever the hell you want to. Just don’t drag my ass into the bar fight you start.
So I linked my previous installments above so you can catch up if so desired. I just checked the date of the first missive of this epistle, as it were. February 14, 2021. Seems like a million more miles ago. Considering recent events.
The psychological descriptions at the top are in my second letter. They talk about things that at the time I had not really experienced. It was total theory at the time of writing. What was wondered is now a memory.
A year after word-dumping over a hundred-thousand-letter-combos on you all, I have at least one conclusion: The intuitions of the past have become beliefs of the present and are now churning into anticipations of the future.
How can that be? Isn’t that trying to do something you thought about or planned out? Based on lived experiences. Expectations???
Nope! Planning the emotional future is as futile as regretting the painful past.
Useless burn of needed energy; needless turn of used energy.
Fame and Misfortune
Let’s talk about identity and intersection. Again. Like much of real life, the nuances, subtleties, and inferences are the undercurrent. The unspoken reality.
The spoken reality is Intersectional Identity. Much like unreal life. Quite a departure from nuances, subtleties, and inferences. But the currency of the realm.
Gen-Xers are all about identity and intersection. In that order. We struggled with who we were. We still do. But we recognized and rewarded each other with tribal acceptance. Skin color was not even on the list of criteria. Not even close.
We had missions back then. Early on, mostly innocent. Later on, mostly not. Early missions, as a 7-year-old with a house-key safety-pinned to your shirt, were to walk a mile to school and back without getting lost. And don’t lose the key. Or your glasses.
I went 0-3. Friends' moms would drive me home, open a back window and leave a note for my parents. I found a frog though. He died in my pocket though.
Great fun ideas like walking down in The Glades or running across the golf course usually ended up in the emergency room or a chat with Sam Brown.
So be it. At least the punishment was immediate and over. Now, long-term punishment and misplaced misfortune warm their hands over the fire of self-inflicted wounds and picked-over scabs. Wounds that cut deep and leave more vivid scars on others than the inflictor.
Feel or Deal?
Two examples to make the point. You are not just readers, but travel companions in this journey we are on right now. Reader is a factually true identity for you, the person reading these words at this moment in your life.
But the reader is not the identity I intersect with. I intersect with the human inside the reader. You read to gather information. Just like you eat to gather fuel. I write like I cook. When you sauté a mushroom, you make the book easier to eat.
To mix my metaphors. But if you reread the psycho-stuff I led in with, they pointedly and specifically speak straight-up about identity, before intersection. If you don’t have an identity, and you intersect with another who does have one, guess what? Identity Assumption, maybe? Or at the least, Identity Foreclosure.
I know much about this because my path changed often during my scholastic odyssey. I began each new year navigating totally unfamiliar but not completely hostile territory.
Each introduction made the subsequent one less awkward. It became a skill. A talent of sorts. The Class Clown sometimes got lucky; administrators, teachers, The Lunch Lady, friends.
Most importantly, girls. Kinda hard to go steady with a girl when you move every summer. Jus sayin. So the skills sharpen. The emotions dull. Now we’re here.
Each new location was new and culturally different. They were established. I was the Outsider. Every. Single. Year. Identities shape-shift during formative years.
“Lila, believe me when I say this, I've never known a normal day in my entire life.”
— Dr. Spencer Reid, Criminal Minds, Season 1: Somebody's Watching
And when you have a different interior identity than your exterior, all kinds of things can happen. Good things. Bad things. But those are labels. Emotional labels tell us how to FEEL about those choices, decisions, and outcomes.
But not how to DEAL with them. I watched two incredible documentaries over the last week I strongly urge you to watch.
Two stories about men that achieved the pinnacle of success toiling at their passions. Both worked hard for many years to reach their mountaintops. Both endured massive self-inflicted wounds that profoundly damaged them and their loved ones.
They suffered public and dramatic falls from grace during their lives, but somehow found it within themselves to make the climb again. How and why? What do they have that any other human being does not have?
Nothing special. Just a never quit bone. Do you have one?
When you're down in the dumps and not ready to deal Decide what it is that you need Is it money or love, is it learning to live Or is it the mouth you must feed Gordon Lightfoot - “The House You Live In”
A pencil has eraser because it make mistake.
Never cut the hand that feed you, otherwise you are no-good piece of garbage.
I work hard all my life and now I show the people how I come from oldest country in the world to live the America dream.
The Iron SheikGordon Lightfoot may or may not be your cup of tea. But I can absolutely guarantee that whoever is your cup of tea considered Lightfoot an influence. I curated a couple of playlists for your listening pleasure.
I started going down the rabbit hole, again! Gordon Lightfoot is a Canadian National Hero. His songs have been covered by almost everyone. RUSH’s Geddy and Alex call him the greatest Canadian musician of all-time. A huge influence on them.
His lyrics are haunting, melodic, poetic and just deeply personal. I created two playlists (bc I’m nuts, ik) - one with covers, including Elvis and David Hasselhoff. You guys are so frickin lucky!
The other list has some of his best lyrical songs I believe. You know your favorites, so I mostly didn’t put them here. You may not have heard some of these ones, like Approaching Lavender and Saturday Clothes
You may not have watched professional wrestling in your life. It is considered a low-brow activity by some. Probably the same-some that consider half the country infected with Evil Bad Orange disease. But I digress.
The Iron Sheik was an iconic superstar in the 1980s. He got popped with coke and pot on a turnpike in NJ in the 80s. With another WWF superstar riding shotgun. Drinkin beers. And look at me now, he says.
I mean, this says it all right here baby . . .
Last Two Things -
You have to check this girl out. She writes the funniest take on the most silliest show. It is amazing and fun and a great mind off-ramp for a minute.
As an appraiser in LA, my views are one of a kind. For me. Some people living in these spots take it for granted. What everyday view do you take for granted?
Take a picture of it and frame it. Or at least look at it. Or at least stop and notice it.
Be well. Be aware. Be now.
Ric
Great article. Just when I thought it couldn't get any better, I get some of my beloved Iron Shiek at the end too! I'm looking forward to reading more. Speaking of that (and identity and intersection), I think you'll get a real kick out of this article too: https://honestlyre.substack.com/p/calculating-the-anti-life-equation
Keep up the good work!