So, everyone's got an identity. What you think you are, what you identify with, how you'd describe yourself.

This identity thing is a big deal in terms of how you see the world. If there's a clash between the world and your identity, you'll probably favor your identity over the world.

That's... not good, but it's almost everyone. A few people seem to dissolve their identity, or base it around a rather robust principle (like truth, in the pure abstract unfiltered form) - but that's incredibly rare.

So okay, you've got an identity, it affects how you react to the world, and if the world and your identity comes into conflict, your identity is probably going to win. That's not necessarily a good thing, but it's how things are.

Given that, it's really important to not have an "oppositional identity" - that's where you define a big part of who you are as what you're against.

Yesterday I excerpted a part of Wikipedia's article on scientific management to make fun of the Soviet Union.

"In the Soviet Union, Taylorism was advocated by Aleksei Gastev and nauchnaia organizatsia truda (the movement for the scientific organisation of labor). It found support in both Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky. Gastev continued to promote this system of labor management until his arrest and execution in 1939."

There was a time when I actually felt really strongly that everything that the USSR stood for was really terrible for humanity, and must be opposed.

The problem is, when you've got an oppositional identity, it's very easy for you to wind getting jerked around and being reactive to anything that happens.

There's a couple discussion sites I visit. I see some people on there who are strongly anti-capitalism. Oh man, they're screwed. Every single day they're getting antagonized by all sorts of things. It constantly gets them off their game. There can be a nice article about Steve Jobs, or whatever, and they feel the need to speak up and decry some of it, because that's their identity.

It's obvious in that case, but maybe less obvious if you'e fighting something that's actually bad. Sure, XYZ Thing might be bad, but do you really want to base your identity off of being opposed to it? That's a rather limited narrow thing. And you're kind of in between a rock and a hard place, because either you'll be antagonized your whole life - or, God forbid, you actually wind up winning, but now a core part of who you are is obsolete. You'll celebrate and be happy a little bit, but a year later? Two years? Five years?

There's better things to build around than opposition. Just focus on your own game, do your thing, don't get off your game when you see something - even if it is something stupid, and it would be better if the stupid thing was defeated.