The artist type have always had a tendency to wrestle with the nature of identity. As one watches the news, hears local talk, and has a super-consciousness living in most of their tech this feels like a relevant topic to discuss. 

In this opinion piece, I have to acknowledge this feeling that I have. That the root of most conflict nowadays is it has never been more difficult to discern what it means to be human. The obscurity of human nature is something that has perplexed great thinkers since ancient Greece and even beyond then. But we seem to be raising the question more often as technology pushes it on to us and we reflexivly push back. 

I am not well-versed enough to discuss the nuances of progress in technology, but the nature of progress is something that fascinates me deeply. It feels as though with each development we make we gain something at a cost. That cost corresponds with the way something was. As we progress in a direction that is increasingly invasive we have come either directly or indirectly have to wonder if the loss of what was is our sense of self. The juxtoposition of this claim is that the very technology that is making us insecure is simultaneously empowering us. Through interconnectivity, efficiency, and the transference of information.

The unfortunate nature of development is that with each milestone the next is in closer reach. Now I am not saying that technology is an inherent evil. Or that progress is. What I am saying is that things have changes drastically in my life time, let alone the last one hundred years, which is a rather short period of time in human history. But a painfully consequential amount of time for our conception of human nature. 

The only reason I mention this very opinionated and loose notion of recent progressions of scientific revolutions and their occurence is because it is the greatest change I notice. The other change I notice is a deteriorating sense of individual identity. You may say we have never lived in a more expressive time in human history. Or even in a more socially acceptable time. But I think that a good indicator of impersonal conceptions of identity are eras marked with extreme violence and division. The third unequivocal fact that I can discern about the times we are living in. 

I believe amidst the many existential question we face as an epoch, one that must not go unrecognized, is how do we reclaim national identity? Is the response this bizarre phenomenon of radical conservatism in a fleeting pursuit to an assured outline of what it means to be from a place? Placing limitations on a boundless experience, but having some goverment regulated sentiment of objectivity? Or allowing an identity to be created by individudals coming togethter over common ideals?

I do not have an answer for you. All I am doing is writing about an issue that I am sure we all know about but don't like to think about. 

What I do know is that artists historically struggle with sentiments of identity. So, maybe this is me making the case to go visit a museum. Or go out to a movie. Or if you meet an artist ask them about their work. Enjoy the arena, but also listen to local musicians. What I can say about my personal experience is that I never quite felt like I belonged anywhere. Everywhere I went I was either too fair skinned or too hispanic. I have somehow been the only brown person at an event and the only white person? My sex stuff is messy because sex stuff is messy. I am mature enough to know that life is fluid and that fluid is confusing. AKA life is confusing. 

What I will tell you is that I never felt like an American. I have felt like a New Yorker. I have felt like a man. I have felt dumb. I have felt educated. The only time I felt like an American, or at the very least like I knew what it meant to be American, is when I moved to a place I had never been in pursuit of improved education and opportunites for me and my family.