Welcome back to the Deep Dive. I want to start
today by asking you, the listener, to check in
with your body for a second. And I mean, seriously,
literally check in. Think about the last time
you opened a news app, or maybe you clicked on
a trending topic on X or whatever social media
you use, and you saw an opinion that was just
the exact opposite of yours. Oh, I know exactly
where you're going with this. I feel it already.
You do, right. It's not just an intellectual
thought. It's not just, oh, I disagree with that
policy. It's... physical. It's a tightness in
the chest. Maybe your stomach drops a little
bit. Your heart rate actually goes up. It feels,
well, it feels dangerous. Right. It's the fight
or flight response. Literally, your nervous system
is reacting as if a tiger just walked into the
room. Exactly. And we're so used to hearing that
this is just. just how politics is in the 21st
century. We're told it's because of polarization
or the algorithms or, you know, fake news. And
sure, those are the accelerants. But we have
a stack of research today that suggests the fuel
for this fire, the actual root cause, is something
much, much deeper. It's about the very way we
define who we are. It's about this concept we
cling to called identity. And here is where it
gets fascinating and honestly, a little confronting
right out of the gate. The central thesis of
the material we're diving into today, it's centered
around an essay titled Idolatry of Identity.
And it argues that the way we think about identity
is actually a mistake. It's a category error.
A category error. Yeah. It argues that we have
taken these labels, race, party, nation, gender,
and we've made them bear more weight than they
can possibly hold. We have turned them effectively
into idols. Idolatry of identity. That is, I
mean, that's a heavy title. It sounds extremely
biblical. And I have to ask right off the bat,
isn't idolatry a bit of a loaded religious term
for what is essentially a political and sociological
discussion? It is entirely. intended to be loaded
the authors are using it very specifically in
a theological sense an idol isn't just a golden
calf it's something finite that you treat as
if it were infinite it's something created that
you worship as the creator okay finite treated
as infinite right and the argument here is that
we are in a crisis not because we have identities
obviously we have them but because we've elevated
them to the status of gods we look to our political
tribes or our social labels for our salvation
our absolute worth our ultimate meaning and because
they are just fragile human -made constructs,
they are cracking under the pressure. That's
the part I want to unpack right away. You said
human -made constructs, because it feels like
who I am, my identity, is the most natural, ancient,
rock -solid thing in the world. But you're saying,
based on this research, that identity as we know
it is actually a modern invention. That is probably
the biggest shocker in the research. We tend
to think human beings have always walked around
worrying about their identity. But the sources
argue that a medieval peasant or a member of
a classical Islamic polity or a Roman citizen,
they didn't have an identity crisis in the way
we do. They didn't have to go find themselves.
Wait, so if I'm a peasant in 12th century France,
I don't have an identity. Not in the modern sense.
You have a role. You have a place. And that's
the journey we're going on today. We are going
to look at how we invented the modern self, how
that invention has been weaponized into the polarization
we hate. And then, and this is the really ambitious
part of the deep dive, we are going to see if
ancient religious traditions offer us a way out.
And just to be clear for the listener, because
we're bringing up religion and ancient traditions,
this isn't a sermon. We aren't here to convert
anyone today. Not at all. We are looking at these
traditions, Islam, Hinduism, Jainism, Judaism,
Christianity, as deep reservoirs of psychology
and sociology. These are systems that have spent
thousands of years thinking about the human ego,
the self, and community. The argument is that
they might have the intellectual tools to repair
our broken politics. Tools that secular liberalism
just doesn't have in its current toolkit. So
the mission is to figure out why we are so angry
at each other and how ancient wisdom might fix
it. Let's start with that history lesson. You
said identity is invented. Take us back to that
medieval peasant. Right. To understand this,
we have to look at the work of the philosopher
Charles Taylor. He wrote this massive, dense
book called Sources of the Self. It's a complete
doorstop, but it's brilliant. Taylor draws a
fundamental distinction between the pre -modern
self and the modern self. Okay, set the scene
for the pre -modern. So imagine you are that
peasant in 12th century France. You do not wake
up in the morning wondering, who am I, really?
You don't take a personality test. You don't
curate a bio. Your identity is given to you.
Given by whom? By your circumstances. by your
family, your guild, your village, and ultimately
by the cosmos or God. You are the son of John.
You are a blacksmith. You are a subject of the
king. You are a child of the church. Your place
in the hierarchy is fixed. It's external to you.
Taylor calls this the porous self. Porous, meaning
things pass through it. Yes, meaning you are
open to the world. The meaning of your life comes
from outside of you, from the spiritual world,
from the community structure. You are a node
in a network that already exists. You don't have
to invent the network. That sounds, well, on
the one hand, incredibly restrictive. You're
stuck. If you're born a blacksmith's son, you're
a blacksmith. There's no upward mobility, no
following your dreams. Absolutely. It was incredibly
restrictive. But, and Taylor makes a huge point
of this, it was also psychologically restful.
Yes. You didn't have the anxiety of definition.
You didn't have to constantly prove your existence
or your validity. Because your existence was
an objective fact of society, you fit. Okay,
I can see that. There's a certain safety in knowing
your exact place. But we obviously don't live
there anymore. We don't want to live there. What
changed? Modernity. The Enlightenment. The Romantic
Era. Taylor describes this massive shift as radical
reflexivity. Radical reflexivity. Break that
down for us. It's the turn inward. Think about
Descartes, I think, therefore I am. Think about
the romantics who believed you had to find your
unique inner voice. The source of meaning moves
from the outside world, the stars, the king,
the church, to the inside of your own head. The
self becomes a project. So instead of looking
at the stars to know who I am, I look into my
own feelings. Precisely. And this is a massive
shift in human history. Identity stops being
something you receive and starts being something
you construct. You have to discover your inner
truth, interpret it, and then, and this is the
crucial part for our politics, express it to
the world. Express yourself. That is the ultimate
modern mantra. It is. But this creates a totally
new problem that the medieval peasant never had
to deal with. Taylor calls it the politics of
recognition. Recognition. Okay, explain that
mechanism. How does that work? Well, think about
it. If my identity is given by the village, if
I am the blacksmith, I don't need you to validate
me. Everyone sees the anvil. Everyone knows who
I am. It's an objective fact. But if my identity
is something I discovered inside myself, something
unique, personal, maybe a little fragile, then
it's invisible to you unless I express it. And
once I express it, I desperately need you to
confirm it. Yeah. So I need you to say, yes,
I see you. Your identity is valid. Exactly. If
you ignore me or if you misrecognize me, if you
use the wrong label or you mock my inner truth,
it doesn't just feel like you're being rude.
It feels like you are erasing my very existence.
Taylor argues that because identity is now constructed
internally but formed in dialogue with others,
we have developed an insatiable need for external
validation. That resonates so much with the social
media age. It's not enough to just be something.
I have to post about it. And if I post it and
get zero likes or if people criticize it in the
comments, I feel this crushing weight. It's not
just embarrassment. It feels like an existential
crisis. It is exhausting. We've created a world
where everyone is walking around holding a fragile
glass sculpture of their own ego. go, basically
begging everyone else not to drop it. But hold
on a second. Is this just about us being sensitive,
you know, snowflakes? Or is there something philosophical
missing here? Because it feels like we've also
lost the ability to even argue about what's good
or bad in the public square. You hit the nail
on the head. That brings us to the second pillar
of our history lesson here, the work of Alistair
McIntyre and his book After Virtue. McIntyre
argues that that period where we embraced reason
and science actually broke our moral compass
entirely. How so? I thought the Enlightenment
was supposed to liberate us from superstitions.
Reason was supposed to fix everything. Give us
a solid foundation. It tried to. The Enlightenment
thinkers tried to base morality on pure reason
alone. They wanted to discard the old superstitions
about God or cosmic order. But McIntyre says
they failed because they discarded a vital concept
called teleology. Teleology. That comes from
the Greek word telos, right? Meaning purpose.
Right. Telos means the end or the goal or the
purpose of a thing. Let's use a really simple
example. A watch. What is the talos of a watch?
To tell time accurately. Correct. Because you
know the talos of a watch, you can make an objective
moral statement about it. You can say, this is
a good watch if it keeps time, or this is a bad
watch if it's slow. The goodness is defined by
how well it fulfills its inherent purpose. Okay,
that makes total sense for a machine or a tool.
Well, in the pre -modern world, we believed human
beings had a telos too. Maybe it was to glorify
God or to live in accordance with nature or to
serve the polis in ancient Greece. Because we
had a shared definition of what a human was for,
we could agree on what a good human was. We could
agree on virtues. But we don't agree on what
humans are for anymore. Exactly. Science doesn't
do telos. Science tells you how the mechanism
works, not what the purpose of the mechanism
is. We discarded the idea of a shared purpose.
So now we are left with moral rules. Don't kill,
be free, treat people fairly, but we have no
context for why. McIntyre calls the result emotivism.
Emotivism. That sounds like acting on your emotions.
Essentially, yes. It's the philosophical view
that all moral claims like abortion is wrong,
freedom is good, taxation is theft, are actually
nothing more than expressions of personal preference.
It's like saying, I like vanilla ice cream, but
we dress it up in fancy language to sound like
objective truth. So when I say this policy is
unjust, I'm not actually stating a fact about
the universe. I'm just saying, boo, I don't like
this. According to McIntyre, that is exactly
how our public discourse functions now. We shout
justice and rights at each other. But because
we have no shared standard of truth or purpose
to adjudicate the argument, we are just shouting
our emotional preferences. And this connects
back to identity. How exactly? Well. If we can't
agree on what is true or what is the purpose
of life, we retreat to the only thing we have
left. Who I am. Identity replaces truth as the
basis for political argument. I can't prove I'm
right based on a universal standard, so I claim
that my identity demands this view. As a blank,
I believe this. And if you disagree with me,
you aren't just disagreeing with my logic. You
are attacking me. You are attacking my existence.
Bingo. And that seems to be where all the anger
comes from. If we're just debating tax rates
and we both agree the goal is economic growth,
that's a math problem. We can solve math. We
can look at data. But if we're debating my identity,
my existence, my recognition, that's a war. And
this brings us to the weaponization of identity.
Because it's not just that we are isolated individuals
wandering around with these fragile selves. We
are clumping into tribes. Huge tribes. This is
where we get into the work of Liliana Mason,
specifically her book Uncivil Agreement. I found
this part of the deep dive totally fascinating
because she uses hard data to explain why politics
feels so much more toxic now than it did 50 years
ago. She uses the term social sorting, right?
Yes. Social sorting. Explain that. Because I
think people assume we've always been fiercely
divided. We have, but the structure of the division
was entirely different. Imagine the U .S. in
the 1960s or 70s. You might be a Republican,
but you might also be a union member. You might
be a Catholic living in the Northeast. Okay,
I'm picturing that guy. Now, generally, unions
leaned Democrat, but you're a Republican, so
your identities are cross -cutting. You have
friends at the union hall who are Democrats,
but you agree on labor issues. You have friends
at church who are Democrats, but you agree on
theology. Your Republican -ness was just one
slice of your pie. It didn't consume the whole
thing. So I had social pressure to not hate Democrats
because my bowling partner was a Democrat. We
had other things keeping us together. Exactly.
You had overlapping circles of belonging. But
Mason shows that over the last few decades, these
identities have sorted. They have stacked up
on top of each other. Stacked up how? What does
that look like today? Today, if you tell me your
political party, I can probably guess your religion,
your race, whether you live in a city or the
country, what kind of car you drive, and even
what grocery store you shop at. The circles have
all merged into one giant circle. We've created
what the source calls the mega identity. The
mega identity. And the stakes go through the
absolute roof. Because now, if our party loses
an election, it's not just that my taxes might
go up. It feels like my religion, my culture,
my race, and my geographic way of life have all
been rejected by the country. It feels like an
existential referendum on me. And the data backs
this up in a terrifying way. There was a study
by Iyengar and Westwood in 2015 that the source
cites. They found that partisan discrimination
in the U .S. now exceeds racial discrimination.
Wait, say that again? That is a massive claim.
Partisan discrimination is higher than racial
discrimination. In experimental settings, yes.
They gave people resumes to review for a scholarship
or a job. They found that people were significantly
more likely to discriminate against someone from
the opposing political party than against someone
of a different race. That is wild. But if you
think about it, we have very strong social norms
that say do not be racist. You get fired for
being racist. But we have absolutely no social
norms that say don't hate the other political
party. In fact, you get rewarded for it. It's
social currency. It's the last acceptable prejudice.
It allows us to vent all that tribal aggression
that we can't use elsewhere. So we have these
mega identities and they are fueled by this insatiable
need for recognition that Taylor talked about.
Francis Fukuyama has a term for this in the research,
right? Yes. In his book Identity, he talks about
thymos. It's a concept originally from Plato.
It refers to the part of the soul that craves
recognition and dignity. Fukuyama says there
are two types. There is isothemia. Isothemia,
like an isosceles triangle. Equal. Right. The
desire to be recognized as equal. I am just as
good as you. This is the basis of the civil rights
movement, feminism. Gay rights. It's the drive
for equal dignity. And that's good. We want that
in democracy. But there's a dark side. But Fukuyama
warns that isothemia has a very dangerous tendency
to slide into megalothemia. Megalothemia. That
sounds like a Godzilla villain. It's the desire
to be recognized as superior, to have your group
acknowledged not just as equal, but as the best,
the real Americans, the enlightened ones, the
chosen ones. When you combine the mega identity
with megalithemia, you get a recipe for civil
conflict. You get a zero -sum game where my dignity
practically requires your humiliation. The irony,
and this is the part that might upset some people,
but we have to go there to understand the source
material, is that the things we are fighting
over, these categories, might not even... be
as real as we think they are this is the core
paradox of the whole thing kwame anthony appear
wrote a book called the lies that bind he argues
that we are ready to go to war for categories
that are in his words riddled with contradictions
take race for example right now we have to be
very careful here racism is incredibly real the
sociological effects of race are undeniably real
absolutely sociologically historically race is
a massive reality with massive consequences but
apia is talking about biology and ontology. He
points out a stunning fact. 90 % of genetic variation
in humans exists within racial groups, not between
them. Meaning there's more genetic difference
between two random white guys than between the
average white guy and the average black guy.
Often, yes. Biologically, race is not a coherent
category. It's a sloppy historical shorthand
we invented based on superficial traits. Or take
nationality. Most modern nations are very recent
inventions, or religion traditions are internally
fractured with thousands of sects. But we treat
these fluid sociological constructions as if
they are fixed, hard realities. We treat them
as ontological, as the very ground of our being.
That's the idolatry part from the title. We've
taken a costume that society handed us, and we've
convinced ourselves it's our actual skin. Precisely.
We've forgotten that we made these categories
up. And because we treat them as fixed gods,
we are trapped in them. We worship the label.
So let's take a breath and look at the diagnosis
we have so far. We have a modern self that is
anxious, turned inward, and desperate for external
validation. We have lost our shared moral language,
so we just shout our feelings at each other.
We have stacked our identities into megatribes.
And we are worshiping these tribes as if they
are the ultimate biological truth. That is the
incredibly bleak picture. It is bleak. If this
were a standard political show, this is where
we would say, so vote for this candidate, they'll
fix it or pass this law. But the source material
strongly suggests that politics cannot fix this
because politics is just the symptom. The cure
has to go much deeper. Into the spiritual and
psychological. Yeah. And again, not in a thoughts
and prayers kind of way, but in a let's deconstruct
the human psyche kind of way. The argument is
that ancient spiritual traditions have actually
known about this idolatry of the self for millennia.
They have. They've been essentially debugging
the human operating system for 3 ,000 years.
And they offer a profound corrective. If the
problem is a rigid, constructed self that demands
constant worship and validation, the solution
is to realize that this rigid self is an illusion.
Let's start with the East. I was really struck
by the section on Islam and the research, specifically
the Sufi tradition. They have a concept called
the nafs. The nafs. It's usually translated into
English as the ego or the lower self. But what
I love about the Sufi perspective is that the
self isn't a statue. It isn't a fixed thing you
have to defend. It's a process. It's incredibly
fluid. So I'm not just one thing forever. I don't
have a true self I have to protect. No. The Quran
describes stages of the self. It's almost like
a developmental ladder you climb. You start at
the bottom with nafs al -amara. The commanding
self. Right. This is the self that commands you
to do evil or just gives in to base desires.
It's pure impulse, pure ego. It's the toddler
in your brain screaming, I want. It's the part
of you that wants to dunk on someone on Twitter
because it feels really good in the moment to
be superior. We've all been there. It does feel
good in the moment. We all live there sometimes.
But then, ideally, you mature and move to Nafs
al -Awamah, the self -blaming conscience. This
is when you realize you messed up. You feel guilt.
You look at your own anger online and say, you
know, that wasn't the real me. I can do better.
And the final goal. The goal is to reach Nafs
al -Mumain, the soul, at peace. And ultimately,
in Sufism, the ultimate spiritual goal is Fana.
Fana. That translates to annihilation, right?
That sounds terrifying to a modern person. It
sounds totally scary to the modern ear because
we are so obsessed with preserving ourselves,
recognizing ourselves. But fauna isn't destruction
in a violent or nihilistic sense. It's the passing
away of the ego. It's the deep realization that
I am not the center of the universe. It's just
getting over yourself. Exactly. William Chittick,
who is a great scholar of Sufism, has this wonderful
quote in the material. Each moment of the self
is unique. It liberates you. If the self is fluid,
changing every single moment in relation to God
and the world, then you don't have to defend
a giant, rigid fortress of me. That is actually
very freeing. If I mess up or if someone attacks
my identity, I can say, well, that was just a
fleeting state. That label isn't my soul. I don't
have to burn the world down to defend it. It
loosens the grip of the idol. It turns the idol
back into dust. Now, Hinduism does something
very similar, but it uses a different metaphor.
The costume. The actor and the role. This comes
from the Gita, doesn't it? Yes, the Bhagavad
Gita and the Upanishads. They draw a very sharp,
clear distinction between the Atman, the eternal
self, the unchanging spark of the divine inside
you, and the empirical self. The empirical self
being your body, your caste, your job, your gender,
your political party. Exactly. And the empirical
self, the political party, the job, the social
status, that's all part of Maya. Maya. Illusion.
Maya. Illusion. Now, illusion doesn't mean it
doesn't exist. The traffic jam is real. The election
is real. It means it's not the ultimate reality.
It's a cosmic play. Imagine you are a method
actor on Broadway. You're playing a king. You
wear the crown. You give the orders. You feel
the power of the scene. But deep down, you have
to know, I am not actually the king. I am the
actor playing the king. I have to take the crown
off and go home. But in our modern politics,
we've completely forgotten we're actors. We think
the costume is super glued to our skin. We think
we are the role. And that's exactly why we fight
so viciously. Because if the costume is all I
have, if my political label is my entire existence,
then an attack on the costume is a lethal attack
on my existence. If my party loses the election,
I psychologically die. So the spiritual practice
here is to wake up on stage. To wake up and realize,
I am playing the role of a Democrat, or I am
playing the role of a conservative. And I will
play it well. I will fight for justice as I see
it. But I know that the person across the stage
from me, the quote unquote villain, is also just
an actor. They have the same eternal Atman. The
Gita has a beautiful line about this, the equal
vision. Yes. It says the wise person sees with
equal vision a Brahmin, a priest, a cow, an elephant
or a dog eater, which means an outcast. They
see the exact same divine spark in all of them,
regardless of the costume they are wearing in
this life. That is radical equality. But let's
be perfectly honest here. It's really hard to
look at a political troll on the Internet, someone
saying vile things and see a divine spark. It's
incredibly hard. That's why it's called a spiritual
discipline and not a weekend hobby. It goes against
our tribal nature. Now, if we want a practical
tool for how to actually talk to that troll or
talk to someone we fiercely disagree with, Jainism
is the absolute gold standard in the research.
Jainism. These are the folks who are strictly
nonviolent, right? Yeah. They wear masks sometimes
to avoid inhaling and killing microscopic insects.
Yes, ahisa perfect nonviolence is their core
tenet. But the source material highlights something
brilliant they developed called intellectual
ahisa. Intellectual nonviolence. I love that
concept. Let's dig into that. It's based on a
philosophical doctrine called anekantavada. Did
I pronounce that right? You sounded very confident,
so let's go with yes, anacondavada. It translates
to the many -sidedness of truth. The classic
analogy they use, which you've probably heard,
is the blind man and the elephant. Right. One
touches the trunk and says truth is a snake.
One touches the leg and says truth is a tree.
One touches the ear and says truth is a fan.
Exactly. They are all right based on their experience,
but they are all wrong about the whole. Janes
believe that reality is so massive and so complex
that no single human view can possibly capture
it all. Only a fully enlightened being, a Kevelin,
can see the whole truth at once. For the rest
of us, our view is always inherently partial.
So how does a Jane argue politics then? Do they
just say, well, everything is true, there is
no right answer? That sounds like relativism.
No, they aren't relativists. They use a system
of logic called sadvada. It means conditional
predication. Basically, every statement you make
should have an invisible asterisk next to it
that says, from a certain perspective. So instead
of saying, the economy is failing, which is an
absolute dogmatic statement. You would say from
the perspective of a wage earner in the manufacturing
sector, the economy is failing. And someone else
might say, well, from the perspective of a tech
shareholder, the economy is booming. And both
are true. Both are true. Neither is the whole
truth. They are facets of the diamond. If we
actually spoke like that, cable news would cease
to exist entirely. Tonight on Primetime. From
a certain perspective, the other side has a valid
point. The ratings would plummet to zero. they
would absolutely plummet. But think about the
profound epistemic humility that requires. It
frames dogmatic attachment to your own view as
a form of actual violence. To claim I possess
the absolute final truth and you are absolutely
100 % wrong is to do violence to the complexity
of reality. That is a powerful reframe. Dogma
as violence. So we have this massive deconstruction
of the ego from the Eastern traditions. Sufism
says the self is fluid. Hinduism says it's just
a costume. Jainism says your truth is only partial.
But there's another side to this puzzle. Because
if you just deconstruct everything, you might
end up with nihilism. You still need to build
something back up. Right. We don't just need
to humble ourselves. We need to actively honor
the other person. We need a solid basis for human
dignity. And this is where the Western Abrahamic
traditions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam,
really shine in the source material. They give
us an undeniable reason to respect the person
we disagree with, even if we think they're dangerously
wrong. Let's talk about the Jewish concept of
the image of God. B'tzalem Elohim. It comes from
Genesis 1 .27. God created man in his own image.
This is the absolute bedrock of Western human
rights. Even if our secular society often forgets
the theological root of it, it means that every
single human being, regardless of their utility,
their intelligence, their wealth, or their politics,
has infinite value. Because they bear the stamp
of the creator. And the Talmud raises the stakes
on this even higher. The Talmud says one who
destroys a single life, it is as if he destroyed
an entire world. Think about the gravity of that.
Every person is a universe. Leo Beck, the great
Jewish thinker, had a specific insight on this
regarding diversity and how we view each other.
Yes. He wrote that above all castes, classes,
and nations stands one certainty, man or humanity.
But the specific brilliant Jewish genius here
is holding the tension between the particular
and the universal. What do you mean by that tension,
the particular versus universal? Well, Judaism
is a tribal religion. It's a covenant with a
very specific people, the Jews. They have particular
laws, particular lands, particular traditions.
But the theology affirms the universal dignity
of everyone, regardless of whether they are in
that covenant or not. I can be deeply, passionately
committed to my tribe, but I must also recognize
the infinite worth. of the stranger that feels
like exactly the balance we are completely missing
right now we either have people who are all tribe
and they hate the stranger or we have people
who want to be enlightened global citizens but
they have no local roots no tribe at all exactly
judaism models how to be both you have a distinct
home you love your home but you deeply respect
the neighbor christianity takes this universalism
and really blasts it out to the empire there's
that famous verse in galatians the source mentions
galatians 3 .28 Now, I've heard intense arguments
about this verse. Is Paul saying those categories
literally don't exist anymore? Is he being colorblind
or genderblind? Because saying there is no male
and female seems biologically... obviously untrue.
It's a great question and it gets debated a lot,
but most scholars argue he's not saying they
physically vanish. He's not saying differences
aren't real or don't shape our lives. He's saying
they are secondary. They are no longer the fundamental
standing of a person before God or the community.
Context really matters here, right? Because of
Rome. Huge context. In the Roman world, being
a slave or free was absolutely everything. It
determined if you were a human person with rights
or literally a talking farm tool. Being Jew or
Greek determined your entire legal and social
status. Paul is saying, no, those labels are
surface level. Your ultimate worth is determined
by something that transcends those labels. He
is relativizing the entire social hierarchy of
the Roman Empire. So to apply it today, Democrat
or Republican might describe how I vote. But
it doesn't describe my ultimate worth as a human
being. Exactly. It renders the political label
penultimate. It's important, but it's not the
ultimate truth about you. The mega -identity
gets demoted. And Islam has a beautiful parallel
to this in the Quran regarding why diversity
even exists in the first place. Sura 49 .13 it
says we made you into nations and tribes so that
you may know one another yes the idea is that
diversity isn't a mistake it isn't a bug in the
system it's a deliberate feature god didn't make
us different so we would fight and sort into
mega tribes but so we would learn If everyone
was exactly the same, there would be no knowing.
There would be no friction, no curiosity, no
growth. And there's that Islamic concept of fitra
too, which I find really hopeful for the idea
of a secular democracy. Fitra is the primordial
nature. Think of it as the factory settings of
the human soul. Abdulaziz Saqedina, a major scholar
in this field, argues that fitra is what actually
allows us to have a functioning pluralistic society.
How so? How does fitra help us politically? Because
Fitcher implies that every single human being
has a God -given moral compass. Even if you are
an atheist and I am a Muslim or you are a hardcore
Republican and I am a progressive Democrat, we
both have this innate capacity for reason, for
conscience, for knowing right from wrong. So
we aren't total aliens to each other, even across
massive divides. We aren't aliens. We share a
common language of moral justification that exists
before our religious or political labels even
enter the picture. We can reason together because
we come from the exact same source code. So let's
bring all these threads together. The Eastern
traditions tell us, hey, your ego is a costume.
Don't worship it. The Western traditions tell
us, hey, that person you hate is made in the
image of God. Treat them with ultimate dignity.
That's the theory. Deconstruction of the idol
and restoration of true dignity. But now we have
to land the plane. How do we actually do this?
How do we build a modern functioning society
on this? Because right now it feels like we are
ripping apart at the seams. Telling people to
see the image of God in a Twitter troll is a
very tall order, especially on Election Day.
It is a massive order. And this brings us to
the final piece of our source material. and the
profound work of the late great rabbi Jonathan
Sacks. He was a total giant in this field. He
wrote a book called The Dignity of Difference.
Great title, by the way. It's a wonderful book.
And in it, he makes a crucial distinction that
I think perfectly explains why our current politics
is failing so miserably. He distinguishes between
a social contract and a social covenant. Okay,
political science nerds, wake up. This is your
moment. Contract versus covenant. Break it down
for us. A social contract, which is what modern
liberal democracy is entirely built on, going
all the way back to Hobbes and Locke and Rousseau,
is fundamentally transactional. It's a business
deal. Meaning I give you something, you give
me something. Meaning I pay my taxes. The government
fixes the road. I obey the law. The state protects
my private property. It is completely based on
mutual self -interest. I do this so that you
do that. That pretty much describes most of my
interactions with the state. Right. And Sachs
says the contract is necessary. You absolutely
need it to run a state, collect taxes and pave
roads. But it is entirely insufficient to run
a society. Because what happens when the deal
goes bad? If the government stops fixing the
road, I want to stop paying. If the deal isn't
working for me anymore. I want out of the contract.
Exactly. It's fragile. If the society is just
based on interests, then as soon as our interests
diverge, which they inevitably will, we are enemies.
We have nothing holding us together. A covenant,
however, is completely different. How so? What
is a covenant? A covenant is relational. It's
transformative. Think of a healthy marriage.
A marriage isn't, or at least it shouldn't be,
a contract where I will wash the dishes only
if you mow the lawn, and if you don't, the marriage
is void. It's much deeper. It's I am bound to
you. Your fate is my fate. I am loyal to this
bond regardless of whether it is currently convenient
for my self -interest. For better or for worse.
Exactly. A covenant creates a we. A contract
just manages a bunch of isolated I's. Sachs argues
that in the modern West, we have moved from a
politics of solidarity, which is covenant, covenant
to a politics of identity, which is contract.
We basically view the country as a giant hotel
where we are all just trying to get the best
room service for our specific tribe rather than
a home that we actively build and maintain together.
So we urgently need to recover covenantal thinking.
But does that mean we all have to believe the
exact same thing? Because that sounds a lot like
assimilation, which people rightly push back
against. No, and this is Sack's true brilliance
here. He calls for integration without assimilation.
Explain the difference between those two. Assimilation
is the classic melting pot. You throw everyone
in, turn up the heat, and they melt into one
uniform sludge. You lose your distinctiveness,
your heritage, your specific beliefs. Sack says
no. Monotheism. The belief in one God does not
mean monism. The belief in only one valid path
or one uniform way to be human. The creator actually
loves diversity. You can be fully Jewish, fully
Muslim, fully Texan, fully Californian. You absolutely
keep your distinct identity. So I get to keep
my costume. You keep your costume. It's a beautiful
costume. But you are bound to the whole society
in a way that supersedes your private interest.
You are committed to the relationship, to the
covenant, more than you are committed to winning
every single argument. That sounds incredible
in theory, but it also sounds really hard in
practice. Is there any empirical evidence that
this actually works, or is it just nice philosophy?
There is actual evidence. The source points to
research by scholars like Ibrat Patel and Mohammed
Abernumer. They study interfaith engagement and
conflict resolution on the ground. And what do
they find when they put these groups together?
They find that when people actually engage across
lines of difference, but not just sitting in
a conference room debating theology, because
that usually goes nowhere and just entrenches
people. Right. Debates just trigger the megalithymia.
Exactly. But when they engage by actually working
on a shared project, building a Habitat for Humanity
house together, running a local food bank, cleaning
up a park. Shared action. Shared action toward
a common good. When they do that, the research
shows they develop shared moral frameworks. They
build a covenant. And they don't lose their religion
in the process. A Christian often becomes a better
Christian by working alongside a Muslim because
they are challenged to actually live up to their
own charitable values. But the crucial shift
is that the other stops being an existential
threat. It's the contact hypothesis, right? It's
really hard to hate people close up. It's practically
impossible to hate people when you are sweating
alongside them, passing them a hammer. The abstraction
falls away. The mega identity crumbles. You stop
seeing a representative of the evil opposing
party and you just see Dave. Just Dave, who is
bad at using a hammer, but tells good jokes.
And that mundane connection is the literal beginning
of a covenant. You know, this whole deep dive
has been quite a journey. We started with that
physical tightness in our chest, the deep anxiety
of the modern self scrolling through social media.
We looked at how we turned identity into an idol,
demanding constant recognition. And we ended
up with Rabbi Sachs basically telling us to get
married to our neighbors. It is a lot of ground
to cover, but I think the core takeaway, despite
all the heavy philosophy, is actually quite simple.
Summarize it for us. What is the one thing the
listener should take away from all this source
material? The idolatry of identity is making
us completely miserable. We are worshiping labels
and categories that we invented ourselves. The
way out of this trap is not to pretend we don't
have identities. We do, and they matter. They
shape our lives. The way out is to just hold
them lightly. I see them as costumes. To see
them as costumes. To practice the intellectual
humility of the Jains, knowing our truth is always
partial. To see the image of God like the Jews
and Christians, knowing the other person is fundamentally
sacred. And to see the fluid process like the
Sufis, knowing that we are always changing moment
to moment. And to realize that the person shouting
at you on Twitter is also just a person in a
costume, probably really scared, probably looking
for validation and recognition, just like you
are. Precisely. We are all just seeking dignity.
Here is a provocative thought to leave you with
to mull over on your own. The source suggests
that all idols eventually must be transcended.
If we can actually do this, if we can look at
our own political party, our own tribe, our most
cherished labels and say, this is important to
me, but it's not God, we might actually find
the freedom to connect with the human being behind
the label. And maybe, just maybe, the cost of
that freedom is admitting we don't have it all
figured out. And that epistemic humility might
literally be the only way we survive this century
together. A huge challenge. But hey, that's exactly
why we dive deep. We certainly do. Thanks for
joining us for this one. Let us know. Are you
ready to take off the costume? Even just a little
bit. We'll see you next time.