Identity Mania
16th March 2022
In recent decades, anxieties afflicting Western democracies have arisen from new beliefs and conflicts about how citizens relate to each other—their relative status in society, notions of mutual respect, and the patterns that the past has imposed upon their thoughts and actions. What had seemed to be settled is now unsettled as citizens search for a new identity or try to adjust the identity they believe they have. Quarrels over race, gender, class, and equality have produced a social crisis and a fraying of common values, in which activities and opinions formerly accepted as part of collective existence have become bitterly contested. As a result, identity coated with resentment is now among the most potent of political forces.