One of the strange abilities the human race possesses, that is responsible for the proliferation of thousands and thousands of different cultures across time, is that we have the ability to catalyze an identity around anything. Even things that are purely fictional, like Star Wars. We can very easily form collective identities around shared narratives and beliefs.

The key here is identitization. If I take something I care about, or some belief, some story, some behavior, and build my identity around it, it becomes who I am. It becomes a garment or badge that I wear, a community that I inhabit, an essence that I embody. And in a culture that protects our essential identities, that belief becomes unassailable, because it becomes identical with who I am. You can’t interrogate being, it just is.

Modern activists for various beliefs and behaviors are very sensible and very aware. They’ve noticed that the key for many other groups to getting attention, recognition, sympathy, and protection was developing those beliefs and choices into an innate identity. Into a culture, a way of being. An innate or natural embodiment of an existing spirit.

And so these other groups want to emulate that success and build their own identities around their particular thing. By doing so they hope to enjoy the same benefits. And it’s not clear why they shouldn’t. Unfortunately, these neo-identities may find that already-established identities are not so eager to give up the spotlight or its benefits.

Since attention is always focused on the edges in a progressive society, any movement toward the center may result in a loss, not a gain, of status. And it’s also possible that newer identities may contain elements that contradict or challenge or supplant or criticize existing cultural forms of life. In a kingdom where everyone must run as fast as they can just to stay in one place, it doesn’t benefit one to fall behind. And there is always the pressure to discover new forms of life in the petri dish of society.