Wheatley Dialogue LO10207

jack hirschfeld (jack@his.com)
Fri, 27 Sep 1996 21:15:11 -0400

Replying to LO10200 --

Identity is a powerful issue of our time. Broad social movements of the
early part of this century have fractured into a politics of identity.
Who would have believed three decades ago that people would "identify"
themselves by sexual orientation or by solidarity on a single social issue
(like cutting trees, or cruelty to animals, or abortion)?

Today, the streets of Belfast, of Jerusalem, of Sarajevo, of Chechin, of
Los Angeles are red with blood shed for identity's sake. Why is
individual identity so precious? A person cannot say "an organization is,
or does, or thinks" without someone else quick to his feet to say "an
organization is made up of people!" What if our identities have no
individual integrity but exist only in relationships, or only in what we
are not? I was born stateless and tried to be an "American" and then a
"citizen of the world" and more than 50 years had to pass before I
"identified" myself as a Holocaust survivor.

--

Jack Hirschfeld Doesn't anybody stay in one place anymore? jack@his.com

Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>