Identity and Self
While we have already highlighted some forms of identity that exist beyond the level of the biological individual, many newer cultures divide identity beneath the level of the individual. Consider those who develop multiple personas in an online environment, each of which has a unique perspective on the world. When most people hear about something like this, they will condemn the concept as ridiculous, yet it is a very old concept.
For ages, critics have struggled with the Christian idea that God could have three different aspects of himself (God, the Son, and the Holy Ghost) with one of those aspects acting as a sacrifice to another one of those aspects. They say, “how could Jesus’ sacrifice be meaningful if he is making it to appease himself?” They say this knowing full well that they have different personalities within their own mind, some of which condemn others and make decisions which lead to their suffering.
We all have aspects of ourselves that judge and even hate other aspects of ourselves. Sometimes we choose to call on these aspects and other times they are called up by environmental conditions or those around us. It is quite normal for people to have one way of acting around their family and another way of acting at school or work. We have always found this interpretation of Jesus to be an interesting one, albeit not mainstream: God did not “turn into Jesus” but Jesus is just the manifestation of God’s persona when he is hanging out with people. This is such a wildly different environment for him that said manifestation has holistically different thought patterns from the thought pattern God enjoys in a divine realm.
An interesting—and weirdly framed—example of this is the concept of “code switching.” In linguistics, code switching just means switching between two different languages or ways of talking in different environments. Ethnic minority communities have noted that they go through a similar process of calling on different internal characters in different environments—feeling pressured to call on more “white” characters when in certain situations.
We suspect a culture could do a lot of really interesting things with below-person-level identity division—especially in the online age.