... especially the rich academic nuance that was prominent before the social media madness. I had built my entire identity and ethics around it. Kegan calls this self-authorship, where an individual builds a system of identity for themselves in the institutional stage.
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When I realised that the “other” side was equally nuanced, rather than evil or “obviously wrong”, I had a terrible realisation of the relativity of each system and the rug was completely pulled away beneath my feet. I had malaise for a long time after.
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I didn’t know what I believed anymore because previously I had thought my personal identity was based on something Right and True. Now I could see the system I used was based on founding assumptions that, while noble, and reasonable were mostly arbitrary.
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And that it was perfectly possible for other people to choose completely different foundations, which were equally reasonable, noble and arbitrary and build a completely different, but equally justified, other identity. I couldn’t talk to any of my friends about this
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because to question the system would be heresy. Rather than be kicked out for having wrong beliefs I drifted away from them. I felt evil for a while, a moral relativist. Getting more right wing as I got older and all that. But once I saw it, I couldn’t un-see it.
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