"Conditional identity" is the idea that the self is a construction of nested if statements. You can’t accurately describes yourself through a series of variables (“I am kind, fearful, Orthodox, etc.”). Every attribute depends on circumstance. If X, I do this, but if Y I do that. Maybe this sounds obvious, but when you take this seriously, you realize that you behold opposing beliefs that can’t possibly go together. When you embody conditional identity, it’s impossible to be “open-minded” without realizing that you are also its inversion, depending on context.
I wonder if the main bug in the human OS is that there are psychological and sociological incentives to define yourself through variables instead of functions.
You save glucose by automating your thinking. The process of self-discovery requires you to retarget your CPU to optimize its own code (instead of processing incoming tasks with cached CSS). It requires a real-time awareness to re-evaluate your identity logic in every new contexts. It’s tiring, but it’s rewarding.
Socially, it’s hard to have tribal meme wars with conditional identity. If you say, “typically I believe in X, Y, Z, however if A is big enough problem, that I will consider L, M, N, O, P, but if that crosses a threshold D%, then I’ll default to F until it collapses,” it’s much harder for the pack to know whether to welcome or kill you. To fill in these variables, that might look something like “typically I’m libertarian, but if shadow power conglomerates, I’m open to a transparent authoritarianism so long as it’s deployed on a public blockchain.” That is a salad of contradictions unless you really dig into it. It takes far less bandwidth to process “I”m a Democrat,” or “I’m a Christian,” but while cached thinking is convenient, it severs you from reality, and from the solutions needed for complex problems.
On the Internet, everyone judges you through split-second impressions, and there’s no time for them to work through your nuanced takes. You have a choice: to be understood as a false idol, or to be misunderstood as your true self. While there are ways to turn yourself into a 64-bit self without feeling too phony, I think the real lasting work comes from knowing yourself, which means being okay living in realms of paradox, ambiguity, and burdensome complexity.
I think the key reframe here is to not see the uncertainty of conditional identity as a source of fear, paralysis, and alienation, but as the only place where you sit at the edge of becoming.
