I've long-since taken a mantle here in Japan that includes expectations of 5 day grizzled beard, canvas, and red and black flannel. The weirdness comes when I try to forge places with fellow Canadians or online.
Still, leaning in really is the only answer.
Forge your place, own it, be it.
Such strange roles we forge for ourselves on the internet and abroad, such insistent ur-identities. Do we realise what we're doing, I wonder? How we're slicing ourselves finer and finer until at last we reach some Planck length of self?
And what then?
The thing is: humans think in shorthand. Thus stereotypes - if we had to analyse in detail every time we met something new we'd get eaten or go hungry: "tigerish- run!" "gazellish - yum!" This part is basic, but we extend the ability via culture to serve social functions. We build up sets of symbols that serve as platonic ideals of things and situations - mythology.
In human terms this mythology serves to tag social place as well - social roles, status, ritual function, etc. We use it to understand the place of others in a situation, but also to signal our own. This is where masks come in.
It's masks all the way down.
We all have multiple roles/identities that apply in different situations. When we take on those roles we display the essential mythology and get affirmation from others' responses "look - I am X" vs "I see you - you are X"
But when you enter a new situation, there's a negotiation - you display your mythological identity, others affirm or reject, rinse and repeat as a) you adjust to expectations and b) they adjust their expectations according to observation ("stripes! Tigerish! Run!....hang on, it's eating grass.").
When the situation isn't just new but completely alien - ie you relocate to another country - there may be little or no overlap between your identity-masks and their expectations. Fundamental things may match - things like expectations for your role as father for example - but there may also be radical differences.
New roles need to be negotiated, but the old mythology doesn't just go away - in real terms they remain part of identity, but are now reinforced in different ways.
They get pared down to truly essential elements, those elements get exaggerated. Some of your identities get distilled into "urSelf". Others begin to blend with local expectations. The latter is integration, the former is dislocation. Both occur and continue to occur for as long as you live once you've been transplanted. At times integration is dominant. Others, circumstances emphasize difference and dislocation dominates. I've noticed that in the latter case people tend to retreat into really essentialist nationalism, clinging to iconic elements of identity and fiercely resistant to any suggestion they exist in anything but an ideal. Rationally, they know it's not the case, but that essentialism provides bedrock affirmation of identity they're not getting from those around them.
On the internet it's a blank slate. You still have identities and others still have expectations, but there are no/few reference points. You throw things at the screen and see what sticks. Then you build on it, emphasize what seems to resonate most widely, what seems to garner affirmation of place.
You forge another mask.
On the internet it's a blank slate. You still have identities and others still have expectations, but there are no/few reference points. You throw things at the screen and see what sticks. Then you build on it, emphasize what seems to resonate most widely, what seems to garner affirmation of place.
You forge another mask.
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