Identity: The Black Magic of Metacognition

In this lesson, we will discuss a weapon-grade metacognitive tool. It possesses a certain level of danger—good people can use it to foster cooperation, but bad people can use it to manipulate hearts… and so I want to ensure you get your hands on it first.

This tool is called Identity.

Simply put, it’s about “who I am.” It can also be called a “persona,” and more deeply, it is the “right to define a human being.”

You have many identities: profession, social class, gender, region, belief, camp, and more. Identity is when you feel a sense of belonging to a certain identity, such that you automatically want to do things that align with it, defend its image, and unite with others who share it.

“I am a teacher → I must be responsible if a student gets into trouble.” “I am a scientist → my conclusions must be backed by evidence.” “I am a fan of team X → if you insult the team, you insult me.” “I am a ’loyal friend’ → I cannot refuse when a friend asks for help.”

The world is chaotic, information is overwhelming, and pros and cons are too complex. But I am a simple person. So, I directly ask: “How would someone like me act in this situation?”

Identity not only gives you a sense of belonging but also provides coherence, predictability, and pride. It often facilitates cooperation within a group. However, it has a side effect: it is naturally rigid. When you treat a certain identity as “me,” you find it hard to modify, and you become driven by it.

But if you treat identity as something “I use,” you can master it.

✵

Reconstructing the Narrative #

In the 1980s, Texas faced a severe highway littering problem. The state government tried everything—fines, slogans—but nothing worked. Investigations revealed that the primary litterers were young men aged 18 to 35, driving pickups, listening to heavy metal, and priding themselves on rebellion. Tell them to care for the environment, and they’d call it “sissy”; forbid littering, and they’d rebel even harder.

Then, an advertising agency came up with a legendary line. They featured football stars and blues singers in TV ads that aired repeatedly. It solved the problem. That phrase remains a Texan manifesto today: “Don’t mess with Texas.”

This wasn’t a lecture; it was a definition of identity. The subtext was: “A true, tough Texan wouldn’t let anyone mess up his home turf—anyone who litters in Texas is disrespecting us Texans.” It transformed the act of “not littering” from “obeying the government” to “defending the dignity of a Texas tough guy.”

Consequently, these young “rednecks” became environmental pioneers. They stopped littering and started watching others. Highway litter in Texas decreased by 72% within a few years [1].

This is a reconstruction of the identity narrative. The old narrative was “littering = rebellious and cool”; the new narrative is “littering = insulting your own home and uncool.”

A great way to change someone’s behavior is to change their understanding of “who they are.” There is a deeper insight here: you can actually define other people’s identities.

✵

The Power and Pitfalls of Identity #

Of course, you can define your own identity even more effectively. James Clear, in his bestseller Atomic Habits (2018), argues that the best way to change a habit is not through willpower but by establishing a new identity.

“I am a healthy person, so I’m different from those who aren’t; someone as cool as me goes to the gym every day.” “I’m not trying to quit smoking; I am a ’non-smoker.'”

Think about the examples of appealing to identity around you:

• “Are you a man or not?”
• “If you are Chinese, repost this!”
• “Sorry, I am a cop.”

Identity provides immense power; it is essentially a piece of low-level operating code. But it is also the source of conflict between groups.

French anthropologist Marcel Mauss proposed that “culture is a structure of refusal” [2]. Two groups living close together and sharing similar conditions will deliberately polarize: “Because you are like that, we must be like this—regardless, we are not like you.” This phenomenon exists worldwide: you often hate not the distant stranger, but the group next door that deliberately rejects your identity.

Political scientist Francis Fukuyama, in his 2018 book Identity [3], argued that many modern conflicts are not about the distribution of interests but about “inadequate recognition.” People feel anger and resentment not because they are poor, but because they feel their group is not seen or respected. This theory has strong explanatory power for current politics: why do so many poor people support policies that clearly favor the wealthy?

This is tribal thinking. In extreme cases, people fuse an identity with themselves. Any criticism of that group is taken as a personal insult. Notice how arguments on the internet today increasingly resemble religious wars.

✵

The Five Stages of the Mind #

Our goal is to proactively use identity without being used by it. Harvard psychologist Robert Kegan’s Constructive-Developmental Theory [4] provides a powerful framework for this. Kegan breaks down mental growth into five stages:

1. The Impulsive Mind: Infantile; doing whatever one wants, seeing only oneself.
2. The Imperial Mind (or Instrumental Mind): Able to see others but focuses on self-interest; treats others as tools to be manipulated through threats or bribes. This is typical of childhood.
3. The Socialized Mind: True maturity begins here. Identity intervenes. Your behavior is no longer driven by impulse or calculation but by playing your social roles well. Why work hard? Because you want to be a “good employee.” Why marry? To be a “good son/daughter.” Others’ expectations and social norms define your identity, and your identity defines your behavior. This is respectable but prone to internal conflict: “Should I be a good employee or a good mother?” Su Dongpo once lamented, “I long regret that this body is not my own; when can I forget the constant striving?”
4. The Self-Authoring Mind: You no longer care who others want you to be. What matters is who you want to be. You still need stable identities, but you define them yourself based on your own values and principles. This is what modern society requires of leaders. You don’t just solve problems; you define them. You have relationships rather than being had by them.
5. The Self-Transforming Mind: You not only set values and principles but also reflect on them. You realize the limitations of your own identities. You are no longer fused with a single set of principles, a single stance, or a single narrative. You can work with them, but you can also step back and examine them.

If Stage 4 is owning the self, Stage 5 is seeing through the self. You realize any single identity is limiting, allowing you to embrace contradictions, coordinate diverse people and things, and constantly reinvent yourself.

Example: A meeting scenario. A colleague, Xiao Li, presents a project that was mostly your work as his own. The boss praises him, and he doesn’t correct it. Later, the boss asks you privately: “Xiao Li did well, what do you think?”

• Impulsive Mind: Immediate rage. “That was mine! How can you not see that?”
• Instrumental Mind: Focuses on exchange. “Actually, I did it. I should get the reward, or I won’t do it next time.”
• Socialized Mind: Seeks relationship and approval. “Xiao Li worked hard, and I supported him. It was a team effort.” (Suffering in silence).
• Self-Authoring Mind: Emphasizes principles and facts. “The core idea was mine; Xiao Li handled presentation and coordination.”
• Self-Transforming Mind: Considers the higher perspective. “The facts are as they are. We shouldn’t let this hurt collaboration, but I suggest the company establish a formal attribution rule.”

Kegan’s research found [5] that among adults, 6% are at Stage 2, 58% at Stage 3, 35% at Stage 4, and only 1% reach Stage 5. I want you to reach Stage 5—the 1%.

✵

Subject-Object Shift #

To achieve this, you need a mental upgrade technique called the “Subject-Object Shift” [6].

• Subject: That which you are fused with, unable to perceive or reflect upon. You are it, and thus it controls you.
• Object: That which you can externalize, observe, reflect upon, and control. You look down upon it, and thus you can manipulate it.

Lower-level minds treat identity as their subject. High-level minds treat identity as an object.

You no longer “are” an identity; you are merely “invoking” an identity. You move from being forced to play one role in a scene to being able to switch between multiple identities at will. When your identity shifts from subject to object, you move from being an actor to being a director.

Relating to our “Three Selves” model, high-level thinking separates the “Interface Self” from the “Core Self.” Your core remains stable, but you can load different identities as needed.

✵

The “Black Magic”: Defining Others #

The “black magic” I speak of is not just setting your own identity, but setting others’ identities as well.

Suppose you read the news and see a corrupt or incompetent official behaving foolishly. You feel distressed but powerless, falling into “powerless rage.” How can you make this scenario more constructive?

You suffer because you identify as an “owner” of the country and view the official as a “parental figure.” This positioning doesn’t help you. What if you switch identities? What if you view the official as a mere politician and yourself as a political scientist? In the words of a popular textbook [7]:

“The relationship between a politician and a political scientist is roughly equivalent to the relationship between a bacteria and a bacteriologist.”

Don’t you feel relieved? Your perspective is now detached. You no longer expect the official to do good; you are simply curious about their patterns of behavior. You watch the news not with anger, but with insight.

Or if you encounter an unreasonable troll. If you act as a debater and see them as an equal opponent, you will get angrier. But if you switch the narrative—if you treat yourself as an entomologist and them as a rare beetle spraying venom and making noise—would you try to prove them wrong? Would your self-esteem be hurt?

You would only feel excitement and curiosity.

✵

Depersonalization and Mercy #

The most powerful use of this magic is stripping the other party of their subjectivity—“depersonalizing” them.

Philosopher Daniel Dennett proposed three levels of explanation, or “stances,” for understanding behavior [8]:

1. The Intentional Stance: Treating the other as a subject with beliefs, desires, and intentions—i.e., a person.
2. The Design Stance: Treating them as a designed machine or program. You don’t get angry at a computer crash; you think about memory leaks.
3. The Physical Stance: Treating them as a simple object. If a rock falls on you, you don’t blame the rock.

It doesn’t matter what the thing is; what matters is which stance has the most predictive power. Dennett’s point was that treating humans as “people” is just a convenient stance, but you can reverse it: take the design or physical stance toward certain people!

When a customer service rep uses scripted clichés, don’t take it as a personal slight; treat them as a script outputting default responses.

When a teacher faces a defiant student, taking the intentional stance views them as an “offender,” leading to conflict. Only by using the design stance—seeing them as an “unfinished brain learning self-control”—can you respond calmly.

In an ER, a doctor facing a drunk person should use the design stance: “This is an addiction + stress + impulse system running.” If time is critical, the physical stance—focusing only on the injury—is the most efficient and truly compassionate path.

Sometimes switching identities is a greater sincerity; sometimes not treating someone as a “person” is true mercy.

✵

Final Advice #

For most, identity is like skin—painful if touched because it’s part of the body. For high-level players, identity is like clothing—worn according to the occasion and hung by the door when home.

My advice is to prevent this black magic from consuming you. Switching identities is not about being two-faced. Identity is just an interface; your core self must remain stable.

Otherwise, you enter a dangerous nihilism: understanding everything but believing in nothing; switching everything but being responsible for nothing.

The highest level of this magic is not coldness, but “being in the act but not lost in it” [9]. You can perform perfectly in behavior while maintaining an observer’s perspective. You can commit fully to every role, yet remain ready to return to your clean, true self when the curtain falls.

Closing Poem #

Notes #

[1] eltnick, “Identity and Change”, Psychology for Educators [And More], Jan 4, 2016. https://eltnick.wordpress.com/2016/01/04/identity-and-change/

[2] 精英日课第六季，《人类新史》3：文化的分化

[3] Fukuyama, Francis. 2018. Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

[4] Berger, Jennifer Garvey. “A Summary of the Constructive-Developmental Theory of Robert Kegan.” 2003. 另见精英日课第六季，你的五个心智阶段。

[5] Kegan, Robert. In Over Our Heads: The Mental Demands of Modern Life. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994.

[6] 精英日课第六季，一个心智升级心法

[7] Roskin, Michael G., Robert L. Cord, James A. Medeiros, and Walter S. Jones. Political Science: An Introduction. 14th ed. Boston: Pearson, 2017.

[8] Dennett, Daniel C. 1987. The Intentional Stance. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

[9] 一个有意思的参考是精英日课第三季，晋升、失控和“扮演法”