morality/identity

i realised the other day that i have always understood the words morality and identity as being about the same thing. these are both, essentially, frameworks for doing.

morality is an awareness about what you should or shouldn't do. indentity is an awareness about what a You does. to think in math, these are essentially functional models for you, a system’s behaviour.

now, these are both largely inaccurate models for predicting actual behaviour which is way more determined by a secret third thing, ie, what you want to do. but buddha said desire is the root cause for all suffering or something so buddhi toh bhrasht honi thi.

identity is very prettily knotted to one of my favourite things to think about- class. now, by definition, a class, or atleast a consciousness about it, is created after a conflict. a contradiction. it is the moment you realise you're on different sides. in day to day politics, this only has a meaning in the specific instance of disagreement. it is a recognition of conflicting desires and interests, and the need to reach a unity. but when one starts statistically mapping such disagreements and sides in the world, patterns emerge. these are how political identities are shaped. and identity politics is really, the only politically relevant religion today.

as for morality, a common claim for the need for moral code is that if people simply did what they wanted to do, things would go to hell. yes, human nature is, in a sense, fundamentally selfish- we know our selves best. but i will push back on the idea that we are also inherently inconsiderate. because the only real moral then is to simply be considerate.

evil is deliberate. not careless, but careFUL. there is a structural incentive that makes one intend the crime. and that is a different problem to solve. justice is not something that can be corrected by weeding out limited consequences through institutionalising moral or legal codes via fear. justice is not random. justice is patterned, and there are structures that enable injustice. that is the site of corrective action- the creation of a better state of affairs. a better state. we all know our morals and identities. what we need is a life.