Identity

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Hans-Ulrich Rudel was predominantly a Stuka pilot throughout the Second World War. His commitment to the fascist cause was unwavering. He was wounded five times yet continued to fly, even as his aircraft became increasingly obsolete. After the war, as a result of cumulative combat injuries, he lost his right leg.

Rudel was unique in scale if not in kind. He flew 2,530 combat missions, amassing such individual impact that it can be argued his actions produced effects visible at a strategic level. His post-war life was turbulent, and his ideological commitment to fascism never meaningfully faded.

Bletchley Park can be considered the focal point at which the Enigma code was broken during the Second World War. The full process remains partly obscured, as the underlying principles of cryptography continue to be relevant to modern encryption. At its peak, Bletchley employed around 9,000 staff, and the secrecy surrounding its operation—and its true strategic impact—will likely never be fully appreciated. The intelligence produced there played a decisive role in how the Allies defeated fascism.

Among those working at Bletchley was Alan Turing, an exceptional mathematician whose presence and intellectual synergy within the team were central to its success. His determination to see the mission succeed was unmistakable. For his contribution, he was secretly awarded an OBE.

After the war, Turing continued to contribute to the emerging field of computer science, further shaping the modern world in ways that were not yet visible at the time. In 1952, he was convicted of gross indecency for having a relationship with another man. He died in 1954. The conviction was formally pardoned in 2013, long after his death.

The identities of these two men could scarcely be more different. Both exhibited exceptional courage and determination, yet the consequences of their lives diverged dramatically—producing both profound good and lasting harm. The issue here is not comparison, nor equivalence, but recognition: societal tolerance can become dangerously misaligned, punishing what strengthens it while accommodating what corrodes it.

What We Project

Mutual knowledge of identity seems to frame the scope of the conversations we have with one another. What we believe we know about the person we are speaking to quietly defines what feels possible, appropriate, or useful to discuss.

If two engineers talk about cardiovascular surgery, both would recognise that the conversation will be limited. It would likely function as a vehicle for small talk — a way of getting to know one another — before moving toward more familiar ground. If the same conversation took place between a lawyer and a cardiovascular surgeon, the direction of exploration might be very different, shaped by responsibility, relevance, and professional proximity.

Once being an engineer, lawyer, or cardiovascular surgeon becomes part of identity, it quickly becomes clear that each category contains countless subsets. To be formally precise would require an ever-expanding set of qualifiers — a growing list of identity “hashtags” — simply to describe the professional component of a single person.

In everyday life, we do not operate at that level of resolution.

Within our social circles, identity is understood coarsely. In a bar, it is usually enough to know that someone is an engineer or a lawyer. In the office, we refine this slightly — chemical engineer, corporate lawyer — because the context demands it. At home, a partner may wish they knew far less.

The conversations we have may use the same language, but their structure and vocabulary vary widely. Some are formal and constrained; others are relaxed, irreverent, or raucous, depending entirely on the company held.

How We Are

If I have studied engineering and practise it, then I identify as an engineer. That is the identity I project. My manager, however, may see me as a slow engineer, a diligent engineer, or an unreliable one. These are not identities I have chosen; they are labels applied externally.

This is the counterpart to projection: the identity that is received, interpreted, and returned by others.

The discrepancy between what we believe we are and how we are seen is not an error — it is a normal consequence of information transfer across contexts. What matters is that once projected, identity does not remain static. It is filtered, simplified, and reclassified by those who receive it.

What Is Probably True

Our interactions with other people are diverse, spread across many overlapping subgroups within a social circle that is often estimated at around 150 individuals, commonly associated with the Robin Dunbar number. It is unlikely that any one person knows the entirety of who we are. Different subgroups see different aspects, and that is not a failure of authenticity — it is how social systems remain manageable.

These subgroups often require different levels of consideration and disclosure. We are, in all likelihood, well evolved for this. A rough hierarchy of identity disclosure might look something like this:

Intimate partners
Close family and close friends
Family and friends
Frequent but superficial contacts
The general population

As I reflect on this, it becomes clear that this hierarchy is not about shame or embarrassment. It is about intrusion — and the unnecessary noise, advice, and judgment that arise from people who hold only a narrow and incomplete view of who we are.

Language itself often encodes this reality. In Germany, familiarity is reflected through the distinction between Du (informal) and Sie (formal). This is an oversimplification of how it is applied in practice, but the underlying principle is clear: not all relationships operate at the same level of intimacy.

In Japan, the language embeds an even more complex hierarchy of familiarity, status, and relational distance. Identity, respect, and disclosure are continuously adjusted based on context.

These linguistic systems do not exist to obscure truth. They exist to regulate social bandwidth. They acknowledge that unfiltered familiarity, applied indiscriminately, is not kindness — it is overload.

The Dating Game

In “Communication: A Shared Survival Tool,” part of the Nerd Cheat Sheet: Abstract Senses in Relativity and Reaction, the idea was raised that communication as ritual has its roots in the approach of two animals for the purpose of mating — historically binary sex. This may be one of the most conscious primitive social acts humans still perform. The emotions surrounding it are strong, compelling, and highly susceptible to interpretation.

I once saw a respected actress say in an interview that she would only perform nudity on screen when framed through humour. That resonated with me. Realistic simulation of sex is visually awkward, and in reality, meaningful only in private. Between consenting adults — regardless of sexual identity — there are appropriate outlets for sharing intimacy if that is what is desired. Such choices should be judgement-free. The essential condition is mutual consent.

Paradoxically, sex between humans has become both simpler and more complex over time. Some other species show similar patterns.

Nearly twenty years ago, an engineer in my department stood up during a meeting and explained that he was transitioning to live the rest of his life as a woman. This was not framed as a sexual matter, but as a life course decision. He was married and had a child. To me, this remains one of the bravest acts I have witnessed in person — the declaration itself, made while physically present among familiar colleagues.

I also credit the room. People stared quietly at the table. There was little eye contact. It felt like watching multiple minds attempting to integrate a concept they had never seriously considered before. When the offer, “I’d be happy to answer any questions,” was made, it was not taken up.

Professionally, my relationship with this colleague became more relaxed. From my perspective, we were colleagues and, in time, friends. She seemed to decompress. One colleague behaved professionally but as if physical proximity carried risk — I could not tell whether this was genuine fear, mockery, or something else. His behaviour did not change with discussion.

Several women in the department openly discussed discomfort around shared bathrooms. Had she continued using the men’s facilities while presenting as female, I would have found that uncomfortable as well. I never fully became at ease with what I perceived as mixed or ambiguous relational signals — an admission I recognise may sound arrogant, but it is an honest one. In my view, some awareness of this tension remains within the department even now.

Some years later, she died of cancer. Whether hormone treatment played any role is unknowable and purely speculative. She is genuinely missed. The turnout at her funeral was large, and her name still arises at informal departmental gatherings.

From my perspective, her life after transition felt like a form of simulation — one that carried clear positive effects for her and for others. Yet I was never able to fully relax into the new state of play, because I could not entirely comprehend or internally adjust to it.

Tolerance, Not Compliance

What we can observe in the UK is that preconceptions about identity have changed significantly since 1952 — a shift reflected across much of the Western world. Twenty years ago, in Germany, meetings like the one I attended were probably becoming more common. In my case, the company’s HR department, alongside medical and social professionals, appeared to be providing support and a framework for transition — medically, socially, and professionally — toward a sustainable future.

Since around 2020, however, a compliance-based philosophy has increasingly been applied within workplaces. This typically centres on three areas:

Diversity, Equality, and Inclusion (DEI)
Conflict of interest
Intellectual property

My experience of this shift has been through computer-based training. Expectations are explained, then tested using example scenarios. Testing is repeated until a satisfactory level of competence is demonstrated, and refresher courses are administered periodically. The model is familiar: rule definition, assessment, repetition.

At least at pre–high school level, DEI elements now also appear within the curriculum.

Structurally, a major component of DEI is anchored in early social development — within the family and among peers. This is where children first encounter the social knowledge base of their locality and context: what might be called the codex of the street. Schools traditionally assumed a reasonable baseline codex in their students and focused on refinement rather than construction.

This raises an uncomfortable question in the West:
Has the street codex become corrupted, or are older mechanisms for learning it disappearing and requiring substitution?
Has the social evolution of the Western family unit weakened to the point where it struggles to instil a coherent set of values sufficient for navigating society?

The intent of DEI is to promote cohesion within an increasingly diverse population. In education, the methodology is largely state-led. Expertise is drawn from the academic institutions the state sponsors, and implementation follows a rules-based logic: identical situations should be treated identically. Feedback from those affected is often slow, weak, or indirect, and can be ignored without immediate consequence. The result risks becoming bureaucratic rather than functional. Non-compliance is suppressed punitively.

When the use of pronouns for the purpose of gender identity becomes rigid, other aspects of a person’s identity may be implicitly suppressed. This can occur organically within a functioning social codex, through tolerance and adjustment. Alternatively, it can be forced through a single, uniform framework that attempts to paint all identities with one brush. Forced identity politics risks undermining the very inclusion it seeks to achieve.

In the commercial world, a minimum behavioural codex is enforced through employment consequences — the breaking of the soup bowl. This is a punitive but effective mechanism within a free-market system. Its increasing use may indicate that society is no longer reliably supplying individuals with a shared baseline codex. Historically, this role was largely filled by religion.

This leads to a final question:
If society no longer agrees on a shared moral framework, are government and the free market suitable substitutes for teaching it — or have they, through convergence, contributed to its erosion?

Modifying Labels

Identity shapes how we are seen, how we see others, and what we are willing to accept from them.

The chapter Identity explores how we project ourselves—both voluntarily and involuntarily—and how others interpret what we reveal.

We are not the same person to everyone we meet.

Each interaction exposes only part of who we are, and from that, others form a view. That view is shaped not only by what we present, but by how it is interpreted within a particular context.

The role of the Social Knowledge Base

One of the properties of the social knowledge base—the living, local expression of human knowledge and behaviour—is that it frames what is considered normal, expected, or inappropriate within a given environment.

This is not uniform.

It varies by:

location
culture
context
time

As a result, the same individual may be interpreted very differently depending on where and how they are observed.

Historical figures illustrate this clearly. Individuals such as Hans-Ulrich Rudel and Alan Turing are remembered through different lenses, depending on which aspects of their identity are emphasised.

Labels and their function

Because identity is inherently multidimensional, labels serve a practical purpose.

They allow us to simplify complexity:

“You are a doctor”
“You are an engineer”

These labels provide quick orientation within the social knowledge base.

However, labels can also mislead.

They may:

carry assumptions
trigger bias
reduce individuals to a single dimension

For example:

“You are from Munich—so you must support a particular football team.”

This illustrates how a label can extend beyond the available information and introduce incorrect assumptions.

Identity, society, and influence

In recent decades, there has been increased focus on identity, diversity, and inclusion. These efforts aim to shape the social knowledge base toward broader acceptance and fairness.

Like all attempts to influence shared norms, the outcomes vary.

Some approaches:

expand understanding
reduce unnecessary bias

Others risk:

oversimplification
or the imposition of rigid expectations

Responsibility and balance

This raises an important question:

What is the responsibility of the individual in revealing aspects of their identity, and what is the responsibility of society in interpreting them?

Identity exists within a balance:

The individual chooses what to reveal
Society interprets based on available frameworks

Tolerance plays a key role in maintaining that balance.

When interpretation becomes too rigid—whether through prejudice or enforced uniformity—the richness of individual identity is reduced.

Conclusion

Identity is not fixed—it is interpreted.

Understanding this requires awareness of:

what is being expressed
how it is being framed
and which assumptions are being applied

📖 Series Roadmap

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Balancing the Books (23.04.2026)
Money Makes the World Go Around (23.04.2026)
Framing (23.04.2026)
Peanut Allergies (24.04.2026)
Identity (24.04.2026)
###### (04.11.2025)
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###### (18.11.2025)

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