Amartya Sen - Identity and Violence

This was a short book, but I took close to a month to finish reading it. I blame it on the never-ending flow of work that I had to do!

This was a thought provoking piece of writing for me, even though the idea was simple. Essentially, the crux is that human beings possess many different identities (e.g. I am a brother, an agnostic, a civil servant, a Singaporean, a tennis player, an anime lover), and I can be all of these identities at the same time while being a totally coherent individual with a unique set of beliefs. When exercising my rational judgments or forming moral decisions, I will sometimes be constrained by the boundaries of these identities, but I can choose how much weight to give to the potentially conflicting values that come with affiliation to these identities.

The root of much violence in the current world is a result of people dichotomising the world by choosing to see people only in terms of one dimension of identity, in particular that which divides along racial or religious lines.

I have yet to read Huntington's book on clash of the civilisations, which Amrtya's book attempts to rebut, but I am quite convinced by Amartya's arguments here. In an increasingly globalised world, partitioning people categorically according to what we perceive as his or her dominant identity precludes us from understanding other people on a much more complete manner, and foists unwarranted prejudices that are associated with these identities upon these individuals. It may be more cumbersome, but a learning pt is that I'd strive to be more discerning in assessing people and not rely on lazy categorisations as a crutch to make decisions.