My name is Richard and it is my shield against those who tried [all my life] to reduce me to a group identity [male, white, heterosexual, libertarian, etc]. Throughout my life I refused to be defined by others even though I was at times desperate to "belong" to something bigger than me. I refused to accept the nicknames that others sought to tag me with as my talisman or my entry token to their club. Often this made me an angry ant who was one out and therefore not to be taken seriously [this fact made me even more angry]. However... in my angry ant moments I did not accept an obvious solution to my issues which was to join the mob. I could have used my anger to further the cause of feminists, greens, and other ideologists. I had some experience of being an active part of the feminist movement, the Aboriginal Land Rights movement, the anti-war movement, etc. None of those experiences do I regret or seek to erase from my personal history; but, at all times I was simply Richard.
Today your identity is a matter that others determine as they tag you as a racist or worse as they seek to ensure that individuals can not thrive or survive beyond the boundaries of the ruling collective, mob, or group. I refuse to be tagged by these "group think" junkies and my shield against them is my first name [see photo]. This is a unique time but we have seen this script before in books such as Nineteen Eighty Four, Brave New World, and Atlas Shrugged. The "group think" that pervades our world today is dangerous but it is at least predictable. It is what people favour when they replace their first name identity with nicknames and other meaningless tags.
My first name is Richard and that is my identity. Is your first name aligned with your identity?
Richard.
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