All of us have inherent identities, in fact, we have a multiplicity of identities that are constantly evolving, and are manifested depending on the situation and context. The multitude of ethnicities that contribute to our ‘identity’ demonstrates the richness of human culture. However, when we feel threatened and the surrounding environment does not provide a safe place that enables us to be who and what we are, time collapses. In these crisis situations, expressions of our feelings and defensiveness are often translated through our ‘primordial identity.’
We have a primary self-identity developed by various factors which influences our environment. In most modern societies that have been built upon modern values and principles, individuals have either lost or allowed their sense of interdependence on the ‘collective identity’ to be dormant. In traditional societies, a strong interrelationship between the individual’s ‘self-identity’ and the people’s ‘collective identity’ continues to exist.
Identity is never static, is always changing and evolving with experiences of new encounters with nature, other humans, life circumstances and the spiritual realm. While it is a dynamic concept, the modern discourse has reduced human experience to a state of ‘static perception’ where ‘identity’ is projected and promoted as the ‘guiding principle’ of politics in the contemporary world. This trend has far greater implications on the future of world politics. One concern of this emerging ‘worldview’ is that ‘differences’ are perceived and interpreted as the problem itself. Such a process, in due course, conveniently and convincingly with profound arguments reduces a substantial part of the premise – nature of conflict – to our most basic value – identity.
Humankind has a history of war and not peace which requires our attention and focus. Citing ‘identity’ as a causal factor for that history would be detrimental for we would become victims in the ‘agenda of mythmaking.’ Reducing multiple identities to a static perception of the world only enhances ‘mythmaking’ into another realist perceptual category. The result of this ‘mythmaking’ that the mere existence of cultural difference in terms of values, beliefs, ideologies, etc., is sufficient to cause conflict, makes culture into a cause of conflict. Unwittingly the ‘agenda of mythmaking’ has created ‘identity’, a given human process of development, into a potential cause of conflict.
An ‘elder’ from the Navajo Nation once said that from their worldview all human beings have two sides in them: a part which is their warrior side and the other part which is their peace side. This is interesting because it explains the worldview and perception of most indigenous peoples and their culture in terms of accommodating differences and accepting and recognizing these differences as a natural process of human life. This process has richness and complexity as it is the intersection where all the differences converge and have meaning.
