People are used to acting one way around their work colleagues, another around their parents and relatives, another around their buddies they've known since college, and yet another way around their children. Behaviour changes, vocabulary changes, language changes, even accent changes depending on what identity you're presenting.
Identity isn't singular. It's the product of you interacting with other people. You don't present yourself in the same way to the local shopkeeper as you do in bed with your lover. To suggest that you have the same identity in both situations, that you present yourself in the same way, is completely absurd.
I don't think of identity in the same way as you. I suspect you strongly believe there is some "real you" inside your head, with some solidity and independence from your immediate surroundings. But I don't believe that myself for a moment; not just personally, but the science doesn't support it either. The Milgram experiment and Stanford Prison experiment show that people's actions are strongly influenced by their roles and relative social positions. The thing you think of as "self" isn't as unyielding as you seem to think; I believe it's largely illusory, in the much the same way that perceived free will is mostly narrative storytelling wrapped on top of unconscious actions - look at the research around split brains etc., e.g. http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/literally-psyched/2012/0...
Identity isn't singular. It's the product of you interacting with other people. You don't present yourself in the same way to the local shopkeeper as you do in bed with your lover. To suggest that you have the same identity in both situations, that you present yourself in the same way, is completely absurd.
I don't think of identity in the same way as you. I suspect you strongly believe there is some "real you" inside your head, with some solidity and independence from your immediate surroundings. But I don't believe that myself for a moment; not just personally, but the science doesn't support it either. The Milgram experiment and Stanford Prison experiment show that people's actions are strongly influenced by their roles and relative social positions. The thing you think of as "self" isn't as unyielding as you seem to think; I believe it's largely illusory, in the much the same way that perceived free will is mostly narrative storytelling wrapped on top of unconscious actions - look at the research around split brains etc., e.g. http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/literally-psyched/2012/0...