Barbelith Underground > Conversation > What's wrong with separatism?

Rothkoid –

Identity used to be built gradually. Now it is increasingly purchased, instantly (and on credit card too!)

And how is selectivity of purchase not influential on one's identity? I purchase a lot of things, but they don't, like many people here, define who I am or what I have experienced.

Everything you do defines who you are. Everything you spend your money on goes towards defining your identity. What would you say your identity is based primarily upon?

Lurid –

Seriously, I still think you are clinging to your dichotomy. TBH, from my point of view, the consumer obsessed identity and your slightly nostalgic notion of identity seem equally unattractive to me.

Not so much a dichotomy as two general parallel categories with a fuzzy boundary

and your slightly nostalgic notion of identity seem equally unattractive to me.

Nostalgic? Or historical and more in keeping with our evolved identity as a critter more suited, in general, to a rural environment than an urban one? What alternative approach / understanding would you offer?

I can't help feeling that you are turning a personal preference into something bigger. Some people will have an “ongoing shared experience” that is based around an image to do with the association of certain products and music, say. That seems to me a perfectly valid expression of culture - not that it is really my business.

Again, I do not doubt this, but again I would say that the focus has changed from an identity (and typically a more stable one) built up around geography, dialect, environment, ongoing shared experience, to a focus based more on commercial products (CDs, T-Shirts, Cars and such like) which, as fashions, are less stable than the previous format. Do you honestly doubt this?!

I see problems with global capitalism and the insidious nature of corporate power, sure. But it seems patronising to judge someone else's culture as lacking, just because it isn't to my liking. Even if it has a basis in certain flawed structures.

I do not understand what you mean here…

Kit kat –

I agree with Lurid. In fact, one might say that moving away from geographical communities has made it easier for some people to find other people who have shared interests and experiences and to form communities based on that - a liberating experience in many cases, I imagine.

I know what you mean Kit Kat, but I do wonder whether that is just another factor of homogenisation; I would hardly have thought it as conducive to a varied environment as one made up of folks who have different interests……just a thought.

I'd hazard a guess that geographical communities (or at least communities which are primarily geographically based) have been undergoing change for a long time - probably two hundred years if not longer in some cases. There are many other ways of finding an identity, which are surely just as valid.

I agree that there is a movement away from the rural method of community formation (with its focus more on a slower pace of life and a more geographical identity formation) towards the urban method of community formation (with in turn its faster pace of life and a more product/commercial based identity formation). I just wonder if i. That is healthy and ii. That it is likely to encourage separatist communities to form by “overdoing” cultural blending….?