The Cognitive Path to Free Will: Identity Shaping

The world might be a better place if people were made aware that they can choose their identity. I can choose to make being a man an important part of my identity. Or I can choose to make being a veteran an important part of my identity. I can choose to make cybersecurity a part of my identity. I can choose from many identities with the same easy as whether or not I wish to be shopping at the grocery store instead of walking along a beach, but only with higher stakes and greater material consequences when a failure to select our identity is involved. .

I often suggest to people to choose an identity proactively and shape our mind and our narrative in our mind around it. I suggest to people to choose an identity not based on groups that empower us because those come with the darkest downsides. When others who share that identity do not represent us well our minds go into defense mode and now we are accountable for things we cannot control. It is then that we become unreasonable people which there are many in the world today because of this specific phenomenon alone.

I believe it's better to choose an identity that has as little connections to people we cannot control as possible. It might be lonelier but that path might also harden our resolve and strengthen us so that we can be the light that gives other people a place to go when they are unsure of who they are. What's so interesting about this is that it ruins the lives of millions of people and they are completely unaware of it right under their nose. We can be free to choose who we are once we make the above thought process a habit of our mind.