“Only when nothing is said about you and you are merely named, are you recognized as you. As soon as something is said about you, you are only recognized as that thing…”
– Max Stirner
Identity comes out of the Latin word” idem” which means “same”. Identity is not about individuality. It is about categorization and defining one as the same as others. There can be no uniqueness.
National Identity places nationality over individual uniqueness. Christian Identity places adherence of Christian dogma above the individual, as unique simply following teaching of Jesus and not that interpreted by Bishops, Priests or Ministers. Identity based on skin tone places one’s skin tone as paramount over being a unique individual. Gender Identity subjugates the individual to an abstraction that creates sex based stereotypes. The individual cannot express themselves based on what would naturally occur.
By embracing one’s ownness or uniqueness one is free from identification. No identity label would ever be able to define the unique. The individual just is a means and an ends unto him or herself. Individuality is allowed to develop and as a result one feels no pressure to “fit in” or “be normal”.
As Max Stirner posited,
“I am nothing. I am not nothing in the sense of emptiness, but I am the creative nothing, the nothing out of which I myself as creator create everything.”
Max Stirner, The Ego and Its Own
I assert that, aside from some genetic predisposition, mental health issues occur because individuals are not able to create themselves as unique and autonomous. External identification attempts to force people into a box and the attempt to essentially force a square peg into a round hole leads to mental health problems and some form of neurosis. Either you create the you that is you or others will create the you they desire making you their possession.
I am the I am.
The Egoist Transsexual 