Read, or skimmed, Julia Galef's book, The Scout Mindset. I'd recommend it. But what I want to write about is the mystery of "identity". The last part of the book covers how "motivated reasoning", or the "soldier" mindset as she calls it, is tied up with our sense of identity. Her repeated references to "identity" got me wondering when it became so important.
When I was young, I knew my identity was white, Scots-Irish/German, Protestant, farm boy from upstate New York. Child of John and Gertrude, sibling of Jean, with stories of ancestors immigrating to the US. But I don't recall feeling my identity was in question.
Is it possible that these older sources of identity have faded away as society has changed and market capitalism has evolved so Americans and Brits worry more about identity and start to find it elsewhere? Google Ngram viewer has been improved since I last used it; you can now search texts in languages other than American and British English. When I used it to search for use of "identity", it started to be used much more around 1960.
The pattern was similar for British English, but not for French, Spanish...
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