IMO, too much time gets spent defining "identity". It still ceases to matter in my life in a practical way how anyone defines "identity". I dont use definitions of "identity" in any practical way, other than when trying to build to a service that I need to understand what approach lives on the other side. BUT, "identity" is a pointer to a deeper more fundamental problem.
Source authority.
Our systems want provisioned authority to be the baseline of credibility standing "identity" and its correlations up.
People, structured as families/Individuals, can self-provision authority, and by way of demonstration for Sovereign systems, always have done so... especially where the intent of liberty, pursuits of happiness, justice, crisis survival, and more perfect Unions are concerned.
Of course, "system thinkers" find this idea to be anathema. This split, between Individuals and those defined by their relations to others, represents a very old split...and very world-influencing culture by culture... like Enlightenment vs Dark Ages split.
But in "identity" terms... I don't find myself having a disorienting problem based on the design of the present system.. I just need to un-willingly accept that I am an entity correlated by the system at birth by a method of provisioning "identity" unto me that takes my baseline personal authority and transmutes it for the betterment of Society so that I may be effectively managed as a liability construct owned by the system with access to provisioned Rights... documented temporally as a variable experience based on my gender or skin color, etc.
The foundation of "identity" is source authority. So long as the only option you have for "legal" use in Society is a provisioned form of authority, "identity" and all its correlations may improve with technological advances... but do I really care? Its the status quo, and it is not an American identity based on the definition of how American Sovereignty is demonstrated repeatedly. China or Russian Sovereignty...sure. Nailed it.
Joe... you are Joe because you were told to be Joe by a process of "identity" that did not involve you... and even if you changed your legal "identity", you still had to receive permission and abandon your 5th Amendment integrity in doing so. This did not appear as a problem until digital databases changed how correlation works in the real world. Now its unavoidable... the #1 risk of "identity" theft is a baby with a National Sovereign ID. The system itself is the risk.
"Identity" may appear as a thing...but really its a process. And it has many angles to admire. In this way, its like origami... fold it uniquely as you may, its complexity is still of the same piece of paper. So your use of "identity" personally can be complex, nuanced, speak to a myriad of definitions you prescribe to and are correlated by... but its still just a common piece of paper that was provisioned to you.. when its functional as an object in legal Society.
Problem is the person that folds that paper is not accurately represented as the source authority of "identity" and all its living correlations. No Sovereign process to guarantee and protect the integrity of an Individual as source authority has been enabled by intent... deliberate intent. "Identity" is a mechanism for industrial control instead, and correlation accuracy is the objective across every spectrum of use increasingly.
The unthinking herds... or perhaps worse, the system thinking masses... are complicit in giving credibility to this structure. Why? Easy... they are told to... in a million ways all adding up to survival, prosperity, opportunity access, ability to operate motorized vehicles, go to Kindergarten, and use money even (down with evil cash!). The scale of illiteracy in Society is off the charts, and all you have to do is graph Facebook use globally to see the problem scale. Data and "identity" illiteracy are the foundation of the Facebook growth story... social grease is just the apple.
Authority... its source provisioning, and the methods we use to guarantee and secure its Rights defined Constitutionally are the real crisis. "Identity" is built to service authority. As long as Individual source authority is intentionally omitted from the process of claiming the Constitutional Rights you are enveloped by as a citizen in America... your "identity" is what you are correlated to be, by fact or fiction, self or other, etc. Thats the crisis... and even in war zones and 3rd world countries the view is obvious and on the table at the United Nations in considering what "identity" should be.
John Hancock, the man's signatory act, was a declaration of source authority for all of history to be reminded by. America does not exist without this basic structure. Makes you wonder if thats not the whole point. The system can not be the source authority of every "identity" that is legally correlated in Society... and still be an American system. It will continue to degrade over time and civil disobedience will grow. This is a bureaucratic failure of administrative design.
The fact that there is no signatory event for every Individual to declare independence as Right-bearing entities in Society is the first problem of administrative design yielding a flawed origin of source authority... and the subsequent failure is how the absence of this origin of authority yields no process for instantiating legal identity that structurally demonstrates all of our Constitutional Rights.
Structure yields results.
Not definitions.
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