Essay
Comment
Identity
Politics
7 min read

Outsourcing our identities: the corrosive effect of political tribalism

Political identities need to connect with core identities, Andy Flannagan reflects on how political disagreement can distort the lives of participants.
Across the heads of a roadside crowd, men wearing orange sashes and military band uniforms march along.
An Orange parade in Larkhall, Scotland.
Ross Goodman, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

I spent the first 24 years of my life in Northern Ireland. I am incredibly proud to say that it is my homeland. I am still a regular visitor. I love it. I love the people. However, that doesn’t change the fact that my beautiful, yet broken home provides a disturbing case study in what can happen when two communities live in the same space, but separately.  

That is sadly what is happening in the USA right now, and increasingly what is happening in the UK too. What is at the root of an inability to co-exist with those with whom we disagree? There are many answers to that question. I am not saying that what follows is the only answer, but that perhaps some ancient realities underly our present-day struggles. 

When we hold too tight to an identity and someone pokes it, we get angry. But what shifts us from holding something healthily to grasping it with a clenched fist? 

It is difficult to have an academic discussion about where the border (if any) should be in Ireland. The hurt and history go deep. Reactions are visceral. You only have to note the violent responses to a green, white and gold flag flying on a civic building, or an unwelcome red, white and blue kerbstone appearing overnight to realise that something deeper is being triggered. Similar to the ‘culture war’ issues that plague our present, these coloured symbols illicit emotional reactions because they challenge our very identity.  

When we hold too tight to an identity and someone pokes it, we get angry. But what shifts us from holding something healthily to grasping it with a clenched fist? In the political realm these tribal identities may be conservative, progressive, brexiteer, remainer, Democrat, Republican, or many others. 

We all need what I would call these ‘secondary identities’ to survive and get things done in this world. We need a sense of belonging to a tribe. But without a strong primary identity, we cling to these secondary identities so tightly that we are unable to engage healthily when someone challenges them. I’ll put my cards on the table. I believe that the primary identity of every human (whether we believe in a deity or not) is that we are made in the image of God. We have divine DNA in us. It’s the common thread of our humanity, designed to represent (or image) the kind, just leadership of God to the world. 

This is our core identity. This is the thing that people should see if they bite into us like a stick of rock. But if we lose connection with that core, we will still find our identity elsewhere. Our God-given desire to get a sense of who we are and where we fit in continues to operate.  

The problem with idols is that once you give your primary allegiance to them they exact an increasingly large price from you, without you even noticing it. 

The ancient scriptures also give us a useful language for what happens when we give over too much of our identity to a cause or group. The nation of Israel were experts at doing this. In their bones they wanted to worship something or someone, but rather than the hard yards of a mystical journey with a God who was often playful or invisible, they chose the more tangible, internet-speed version and created an idol from what they already had and what they already knew. Cue golden calves and strange statues. 

This grasping for simplicity, and tangible immediacy, helps to explain why Brexit or wokeness have become an idol. And why Trump has become an idol too. In Northern Ireland, the Irish flag has become an idol, as has the Union Jack. And the problem with idols is that once you give your primary allegiance to them they exact an increasingly large price from you, without you even noticing it.  

We often talk about shifts in culture without recognising that the word culture is derived from the same root as the word cult. ‘Culture’ provides invisible, uncontested leadership – it is that which we presume to be true, without stopping to question it, as we would not question a cult leader. 

This is about avoiding the outsourcing of our identity to things that may be good, but that shouldn’t control us. 

In my work with Christians in Politics, bringing Christians together from across the political spectrum, I have become fairly good at spotting when folks start to lose touch with their primary identity. You notice it from the visceral, speedy reactions on social media, subliminally prioritising their immediate emotional state above the emotions of others.  

Sadly, this accelerated during the COVID lockdowns, when it was all too easy to spot the radicalisation of previously fairly centred people. More time than usual on social media, more fear than usual from living through the global pandemic, all leading to them spending more time down algorithm-induced rabbit holes. 

This is not about the elimination of emotion. Nor producing an anodyne, academic, rational public square. After all, many who believe that they are made in the image of God also follow the human who they believe perfected that image, and he spent plenty of time raging against injustice and turning over tables.  

This is about avoiding the outsourcing of our identity to things that may be good, but that shouldn’t control us. Such things should influence us, but they shouldn’t forge us.  

The term idol is useful as it is now in popular usage thanks to TV shows like American Idol. Something in us knows that such here-one-minute-gone-the-next celebrity is not exactly bad for us, but also that such celebrity does not exist without a large number of people giving inappropriate amounts of time and attention (proportional to their talent) to these celebrity lives. 

There is a reason people try to keep religion and politics away from polite dinner table discussions. 

The challenge is that the most toxic idols are often actually really good things. Money. Food. Sex. These are good things. But as many of us know, if they start to control us rather than serve us, our happiness, waistlines, and marriages may be in trouble. With this understanding we can affirm someone’s political activism and enthusiasm as a good thing. We can affirm a political ideology as broadly helpful, but critique it when it has clearly become an idol in someone’s life, commanding time, energy and in real senses – worship. 

There is a visceral quality to our present debates that goes far beyond the discussion of policies. The enraged offence and wild language thrown at the other side speak of a deep and unhealthy suffusion of our identities to these tribes. 

The reactions we see on social media are the reactions of a child when their iPad is taken away. It is primal. Bearing in mind the toxicity of the social media-scape, it is easy to see how tribes are needed for protection, but if our responses to every situation are the knee-jerk reaction of our tribe, then we leave no space for breath, reflection or even prayer. And there is certainly no time to consult some ancient wisdom. There is a reason people try to keep religion and politics away from polite dinner table discussions. Nobody likes their identity being questioned. But rather than avoid these subjects, could we instead be so rooted in our primary identity that a disagreement doesn't have to lead to the end of fellowship and embrace? 

Tom Wright often points out that in life we will always need progressive (things need to change) moments but at times we also need conservative (things need to stay the same) moments. History is littered with both being significant. To pretend that one is always more important than the other is intellectually vacuous.

Our 'othering' of them renders them less human in our eyes and we are then able to countenance appalling things happening to them,

The same is true of parenting. There are times when a progressive response is required (okay you can start eating solid food now) and times when a conservative response is required (no, we still don't pour milk on the laptop). On a more serious note, discussions around parenting styles that sit on a spectrum between earth-motherly co-sleeping and Gina Ford military drilling are another good example of when disagreements within and between families get visceral. Again, it is because we don't just feel that this is a theoretical discussion. So much of our identity is unhealthily tied up in our insecurities around parenting that we feel that our very person is being attacked. The political and parenting spectra are eerily similar. 

Failing to remember that we are all made in the image of God and all part of the one human family also leaves the door open to the next level of ugliness – it leaves us able to dismiss' those we disagree with. They become people who are easy to label, mock, and dismiss. Our 'othering' of them renders them less human in our eyes and we are then able to countenance appalling things happening to them. They may become people we would rather see removed from proceedings than have reconciled to us. We forget the words of theologian Vinoth Ramachandrara, who said that:  

"when you stand face to face with another human being, made in the image of God, you are standing in the presence of a vehicle of the divine".  

Yes we need to be part of earthly tribes, but we also mustn't lose our identity to the tribe.  

Article
Belief
Books
Comment
Film & TV
5 min read

I’m not sure Christopher Nolan has actually read The Odyssey

The director has drunk the Kool-aid of modernity, and done so deeply
the head of a classical statue looks up amid embers around it.
The odyssey poster.
Universal Studios.

Greek myths are full of hubris. Full of it. I feel like ‘hubris’ isn’t a word you hear very often anymore. It means excessive pride or self-confidence that leads to a downfall, in case you were wondering. “Boris Johnson’s hubristic underestimation of the effects of ‘Partygate’ was the final nail in his political coffin,” we might say.  

In one myth, Icarus is imprisoned, but given wings held together by wax in aid of his escape. He is warned not to fly too close to the sun, because the heat will melt the wax. Guess what he does? Yep! Flies too close to the sun. The wings melt and he falls to his death. Hubris

Another myth tells the story of Prometheus. No, not the slightly underrated Alien prequel. (That’s right, I said underrated, but that’s another article for another day). Prometheus defies the Greek gods by stealing fire and giving it to humans. As punishment, Zeus ties Prometheus to a rock and has an eagle eat his liver, only for it to grow back overnight so the eagle can come back the next day and start again. Hubris. 

Greek myths are full of hubris. Full of it. 

And so, this is why I find the new poster for Christopher Nolan’s upcoming adaptation of Greek epic The Odyssey so … bizarre. But then I’ve been nervous about Nolan’s adaptation since it was announced. Nolan is a wonderful filmmaker, but he’s also deeply naturalistic in the messages he conveys. By this, I mean that all his films suggest that nature – the physical, material world of atoms and things – is all there is. Even when he has opportunity to explore themes of the mystical, or magical, or the supernatural, he only does so when a purely ‘natural’ explanation for such things is possible.  

For example, in The Prestige (and HUGE spoilers for the film here: it’s incredible, please watch it if you haven’t), Nolan tells the story of two rival magicians, played by Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale. Robert Angier (Jackman) is trying to work out Alfred Borden’s (Bale) teleportation trick. The secret? (Seriously: big, big spoilers here). Science. Nikola Tesla has invented a device that can clone someone but send the clone to a different location. The trick – the mysterious MacGuffin at the film’s heart – has a natural, scientific explanation. Magic isn’t real and you’re a fool if you think otherwise. 

Perhaps this is also why Nolan directed the wonderful Dark Knight trilogy. After all, Batman’s superpower is just wealth: it’s entirely naturalistic, with nothing that can’t fit into a scientific way of understanding the world. Or we could point towards the science fiction that underwrites Inception, Interstellar, and Tenet. For a filmmaker so gifted at tension and intrigue, he has surprisingly little truck with mystique, mystery, and the divine. But this is a problem when it comes to The Odyssey. A huge problem.  

Let’s return to that poster I mentioned earlier. It shows the head of a classical Greek statue, flames ember underneath it. The caption? Defy the Gods. And it’s at this point I start to wonder if Nolan has actually read The Odyssey. Because The Odyssey takes questions of divinity and their authority very, very seriously. Like many Greek myths and poems, the message of The Odyssey isn’t ‘defy the Gods’. No: it’s ‘trying to defy the gods is an unbelievably stupid, futile, and dangerous thing to do’. Nolan would seemingly have us raze Mount Olympus to the ground.  

Look, all we have is a poster so far. Nolan might prove me wrong. But we shouldn’t be surprised if Nolan reworks The Odyssey in such a way that ‘defy the Gods’ becomes its central message. Because Nolan is a quintessentially modern filmmaker.  

In a 1965 book called Freud and Philosophy, French philosopher Paul Ricœur described the modern period as dominated by a climate of suspicion or scepticism. Within this ‘climate of thought’, the straightforward understandings of things are actually deceptive, instead hiding hidden, deeper, and ‘truer’ meanings. He described Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Karl Mark as the ‘masters of suspicion.’ And so the world around us is to be approached suspiciously, to uncover the ‘truer’ meanings about our subconscious (so Freud), our false, religiously imposed morals (so Nietzsche), or our exploitative economic systems (so Marx). 

Each of Ricœur’s ‘masters of suspicion’ might be mapped on to one of the villains in Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy. Liam Neeson is Ra’s al Ghul, a Freud-like figure who helps Bruce Wayne navigate the psychological effects of his parents’ murders in childhood. Heath Ledger’s mesmeric Joker is Nietzsche’s stand-in, exposing our misguided systems and structures of ethics, tethered to a religious framework we no longer hold to. Tom Hardy’s Bane is Marx, freeing Gotham’s proletariat from the economic structures that oppress them so. 

It's not a perfect fit, but I think there’s more than enough evidence to say that Nolan has drunk the Kool-aid of modernity, and he has drunk so very deeply. And this would be fine – absolutely fine – if he wasn’t planning to adapt The Odyssey. Because, as a quintessentially modern filmmaker, Nolan’s work emerges out of and celebrates a culture wherein ‘defy the gods’ is a slogan that can only be heard as heroic, courageous, and noble, rather than dumb and futile, as The Odyssey would stress to us. 

Defying divinity is not heroic. The Odyssey knows this and knows it well. Defying the gods never ends well for humans stupid enough to try in Homer’s work. Our modern sensibilities encourage us to be suspicious of institutionalised power, especially when that power takes a religious shape. We are predisposed to imagine that invocations of the divine are nothing more than thinly-veiled power-grabs. And sometimes they are. But The Odyssey is right to say that divinity itself is not to be trifled with. Renounce your creator at your peril. 

Like all his other films, Nolan’s The Odyssey is likely to be tense, wrought, and cinematographically immaculate. But also like his other films, I worry it will be deeply naturalistic in the way it handles the inescapably divine and supernatural elements present in Homer’s epic. The Odyssey has an important message for our increasingly hubristic society. I just worry that Nolan’s not the man to convey it as it deserves. 

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