This letter appeared in News-Journal on June 2, 2006 in the Community Voices category.
Most people clearly desire a personal sense of identification with one or more groupings of people (e.g. family, nation). This seems to provide a sense of grounding and feeling of stability in our lives. Some of these identification groupings are relatively more specific or limited, while others are relatively more general. Thus, to consider extremes, at the specific end we may have a person who identifies with her/his unique, idiosyncratic individuality as a person, while at the general end we might have identification with the human species or with all existing life. Between the extremes we have such categories as male or female, family, ethnic group, religious group, socio-economic status class, and geopolitical groupings (e.g. state, nation, western civilization). Most of us identify to some degree with several different categories, but also tend to emphasize or value some of them more than others. I believe that psychological identification can have important implications for human conflict.
History has shown that a strong sense of identity with certain identification categories tends to be especially associated with human conflict, ranging in violence from clan disputes to all out global warfare. These categories include ethnic groups, conservative religious groups possessing rigid dogma, socio-economic status class, and geopolitical groups. On the other hand, a strong sense of identity with the total human species, with life in general, and with total cosmic existence, as exemplified by liberal religious groups and secular humanists, appears to be more nearly associated with peaceful, nonviolent approaches to human disputes.
It is also worth noting that the psychological concept of concrete vs abstract thinking is pertinent to the distinctions being made here. For example, a sense of family or ethnicity is more a part of everyday life for most people than is a concept such as "citizen of the world." Current globalization trends, however, are greatly increasing the importance of the latter concept.
The various forms of psychological identification should certainly be respected, and indeed help serve to make life interesting. However, if we value peace over war, it would seem to be advisable for education to promote a broad sense of identification with life and existence in general.
