Welcome back to The Pickup Truck Diaries!
I feel like even though I’ve written over twenty of these articles over the last few years, I’ve still been neglecting this series somehow. After all, I really only want to engage with topics that I’m both passionate about or educated on in some way, but can also speak to – from somewhere along my own lived experience. The whole point is to fuse the knowledge and wisdom from my two university degrees and adult learning with my poor ghetto redneck youth to make new meaning, after all. I wonder, decades from now – if anybody will see the Pygmalion-esque themes in both my real life and my various art…
(There are at least three different allusions wrapped within one here, which I do like from a depth perspective. But I’m very lucky if anybody even knows the ancient “My Fair Lady” movies, much less the Oscar Wilde play or the OG Greek.)
Bah!
Also, I try to keep these motherfuckers around three thousand words to avoid getting too obtuse, so forgive me for my waxing on about such things as intentions behind art. We’d be here all day if I didn’t cap myself off somehow.
Anywho, sometimes you gotta sort some of your thoughts out before you can truly engage deeply and with proper self-reflective practice. Because even as I write these, I’m constantly self-reflecting, trying to be as true and transparent as possible to help other people grow and evolve into better humans, while evolving myself all the while as quickly as I can. It’s such a fascinating real-time process, as I’ve re-read some pieces I wrote a couple years ago and my critical eye picks up something new every time, even if it’s only a sentence of clarity added here and there, or an edit or update in brackets or such. I am often impressed with how well I feel my old opinions do hold up generally, though.
I rarely find myself cringing too hard!
So today we’re going to peel this orange, as you can see I’ve already started to slow roll as such. Let’s hop into and explore the concepts of Identity & Ego, as combined they can be one of our biggest sticking points as humans in terms of personal growth and evolution. You can google Ego, but it’s mostly an outdated Freudian term, so I’ll mostly be focusing on Identity today, with Ego as a specific application of such.
Now, as many of you know by now, I come from a small town, redneck logging family. Whilst my parents refuse to ever acknowledge our extreme feast and famine roller coaster over the years, and some family has gaslit me profusely about what I experienced to the point of nightmares, I still remember the times of poverty, where screaming matches and toxicity was the norm.
Now, we have to pause here – as my own unique journey may not reflect the vast majority of those reading this. How could I ever be sure that my readers are familiar with my real life “Pygmalion” story of changing over time from an ignorant redneck to an educated writer? After all, I transitioned and evolved from a place of ignorance – starting off as that prejudiced, uneducated, disabled logging kid. Within a few short decades, I left hundreds of archaic or shitty beliefs behind as I learned, replacing them with ever more progressive and open-minded philosophies. These new fragments of knowledge not only allowed me to engage with other humans with more respect, but allowed me to bury the bigoted piece of shit I used to be in the deepest well I could find. My identity was able to change over time. I was slowly able to strangle my ego to death as best I could.
So keep all that in mind as we progress, okay?
But some brass tacks first. When we talk about concepts like individual identity, we’re often initially talking about larger markers that people use to self-identify. In our current capitalist society, often the very first identity marker that people use is their chosen career or profession. We’ll be exploring this one first for a good chunk, because as I said – while I try to keep these articles around three thousand words or less, sometimes they can bloat a bit.
So why is it often that when introducing ourselves to new people, our job takes up so much of the initial introduction? As somebody who has worked an enormous variety of jobs over the years, almost immediately I have an issue here, as describing myself with specific titles and professions tends to paint one with a bit of a boring monochromatic brush.
For example, if I were to introduce myself as a Teacher or Educator, like I used to be years ago – I’d immediately spark a stereotype in most modern minds. What are some of the adjectives and descriptors we use for teachers, after all? Even from an initial glimpse, we can assume some general presumptions. For right now, ignore that old idiom: “Assuming makes an Ass out of U and Me.” What adjectives come up for you? The trick is to be aware of initial prejudices, and consistently reflect and examine them. Do you catch and call yourself out where appropriate? What slips by more consistently?
I’ve been enjoying the recent addition of some self-reflective and thought-experiment activities hidden within these Pickup Truck Diaries articles. So for this one, we’re going to do a bit of a prejudice check. I do still have some old resources like a “Privilege Checklist” activity I used to use to demonstrate intersectionalities and general lived privilege, but never fear… For this one you don’t have to write anything down. Just think about it!
How is this going to work? Well, I’m going to list as many of my former professions, experiences, roles, and project position titles, and all you have to do is to think of all the initial assumptions and stereotypes that pop up for you. Pause and take a moment to reflect on what you might assume about my identity based on what pops up!
I’m going to randomize them somewhat. Try to pause after each one and suss out which descriptors or concepts are yours as an individual, and which are bestowed onto you by the norms or stereotypes of society:
-Car Wash Attendant
-Sound & Lighting Technician
-Fiction Writer
-Janitor
-PE Teacher
-Artist
-Guild Leader
-Film Projectionist
-Volunteer
-Dishwasher
-Internet Cafe Assistant
-Logger
-Reality TV Actor (Bit Role)
-Mechanic
-Dungeon Master (The TTRPG game, not the kink. [No worries, we don’t kink shame here.])
-Librarian
-Comedian
-Chef
-Creative Director
-Nerd
-Ditch Digger
-Producer
-Customer Service
-Sales Person
-Non-Fiction Writer
-Jogger
-Mover
-Classroom Teacher
-Tech Support
-Graveyard Shift Barge Loading
-Raid Leader
-Football Player
-Administrator
-Heavy Equipment Operator
-Line Cook
-Foreman
-Lumberjack
-Bookkeeper
-Martial Artist
-Set Builder
-Gardener
-Social Media Manager
-Gamer
-Poet
-General Labourer
-Softball Player
-Drama Teacher
-Manager
-Snowboarder
-Actor
Long list, eh?
So some of you may already have noticed that some of the things I listed are very similar, or rephrased in some way. I always find myself amused by the differences between “Lumberjack” and “Logger” for instance. I’m sure the former evoked more “Paul Bunyan” turn of the century vibes, whilst the second is more casual and ambiguous in the modern era for the profession. Specific area dialects and lexicon differences are always fascinating to me. Seriously. “Lumberjack” sounds like a hand axe wielding motherfucker from the 1800’s!
Take a moment to pause and reflect – what assumptions, stereotypes, norms, or mental pictures came up throughout the process? Did you notice any that were somewhat drastic? What if I had included some other common jobs? Firefighters, Doctors, or the like?
This little activity is our first step into talking about identity, as so much of our self-perception within this broken entropic capitalist system starts from what we do every day to pay our bills and ensure we have food on the table and a roof over our heads. Obviously centuries of this style of system have biased and influenced our very self-perception, no? I’m sure some of the job or role titles up above were predetermined by what you knew at a glance about the job, right?
Which brings us into classism. Long and short, classism is a long list of shitty beliefs, expressions, and actions based on a person’s perceived social class, often attributed to wealth across most modern nations. When we think of the richest of the rich, those multi-billionaire motherfuckers destroying labour rights wherever they can, people often fall into two camps based on their own political beliefs.
First is the true blue capitalist, who believes that anybody capable of accumulating such wealth somehow deserves it due to some assumption of hard work. Maybe they think that doctors and lawyers DO provide more important services than sanitation workers or the like. I don’t know, as I’m not one of these stupid motherfuckers. It’s hard to perceive the rationalization without just observing the belief as an ignorance in the form of having no clue how labor, capital, and wage slavery works. Rich people skim profit off the top by cutting costs. Labor and wages are a cost. See how workers might have a problem with their labor being devalued and attacked as overpriced when such sorts of cuts often increase shareholder or owner revenues at their own loss?
My own experience with this is tough, as the trades themselves of all sorts fit into these two camps, not that logging isn’t a weird oddball trade to begin with. It often seems to be a split based on intelligence or greed. The second track is more collective. The smarter guys, often in more traditional trades such as Electrical, Sheet Metal, and the like, will form unions – realizing that collective bargaining is a hell of a lot stronger than individual employee negotiations. By having a collective body, employers can’t just fire people they don’t like for asking for higher wages or demanding safer working conditions and the like. Does it offer an extra layer of investigation or protection for sketchy people? Sure, but show me a group of people in any society that doesn’t have those sorts regardless. Cross-sections of demographics and all that. And it is one hundred percent true that some unions are better than others, doing a far more efficient job of representing and supporting their members in the best faith possible.
The stupider or greedier guys often openly badmouth such concepts, arguing instead for independence at all costs, either because they do have a higher caliber of work to ensure continued work and contracts, and are making bank, or because it costs them more themselves as unions often fight for better wages and the private sector then has to pay higher to compensate in the hunt for quality employees. It’s like a pressure cooker constantly being jostled by dozens of groups, NGOs, or governments. Employees fight for better wages. Employers try to reduce costs by cutting pay and wages. And there are a bunch of bootlickers in the middle who try to play both sides or cuddle up to power and wealth, as always in humanity.
Some people have no honor.
Just wait until job markets change… I’m curious to see if many unions persist even through market downturns and if somebody does a study on non-union versus union workplaces and their layoffs. I always want to have the data to know, you know? Surely unions provide more worker stability support and the like in turbulent times, right? (Although I guess that depends on the relationship between any given union and the employer.)
We often see wealth and success as part of our identity, often tied to these jobs. It runs alongside the classic negativity towards the homeless, trailer parks, housing projects, rougher areas and the like. Poverty is associated with crime. The rich are obsessed with maintaining some veneer of respect or authority, based of course not on individual personalities or actions, but the sheer wealth or number of assets they possess. I actually remember one lecture, not that I can remember the course, where the data showed more attention to public perception the richer one got. To the point where public perception was even more important than money at a point for the richest of the rich! Never forget that police forces act as fancy security guards and general enforcers for the state and these wealthy bastards, eh? Even in informal relations, it’s hard to have a relationship personally with any cop knowing somebody represents the state’s oppression as a part of their identity at any given time. Also, it’s kind of more depressing that I’ve seen people solve more crimes with a baseball bat regarding petty theft than any investigator. But can you see how even here, I’m biased in my interpretation of the individual based on the career path and authorities such folks have chosen to represent?
My own experience manifests these sorts of concepts in very strange ways, relegated to specific times, places, and generations. As loggers, my father’s outfit was a smaller one. He didn’t have access to wood in the form of quota. Which is an allotment or area of trees you have perpetual harvesting rights on. There are sketchy corruption issues of quota being awarded to specific buddies in the WW2 and post-war era, and little has changed in 70+ years, but that’s for the historians, not us. Private logging businesses, if not subcontracted, thus had to bid on cut blocks called “Timber Sales” allocated by the provincial government. I cannot count the number of weekends us kids would be drug out to drive hours to some patch of fucking woods on the weekend – forced to hike up a mountain for hours in “work clothes.” Hell, if the bid didn’t match the quality and price of the wood, you’d often lose money. Lots of folks got absolutely fucked by this system, my father included. (There’s a reason numerous media outlets have made fun of British Columbia as “The Wild West” where corruption and crime are common as hell, even in various government ministries.)
Our poverty was strange, as it see-sawed up and down quite drastically, with good or bad harvests and timber sales. Long streaks of bad luck would bring immense struggle and trauma upon the core family unit constantly. But the one thing I always remember is the boom chains. See, up here on the West Coast, after loading a truck with the logs, they’d be taken from the mountain to what was called a “Dry Land Sort.” This was a waterfront work yard of sorts where logs would be graded for quality and species, and bucked or cut to length. Then, you’d roll bundles of ready logs into the ocean, packaged with chokers, a type of steel wire, where you’d fasten them into these enormous rafts of bundled logs called “booms.”
As kids, we spent hours racing across both the dryland sort logs and the log booms. I can’t remember us kids ever falling in, but I do remember the dog biffing it in once, and boxer dogs can’t swim for shit, as they bob almost upside down with the big chests. We got him out of course. Sprinting across loosely bundled logs floating in the Pacific Ocean was for sure a great way to slip, get pinned in the shifting booms, and drown. Not that we clued in much as kids. And our father was quite neglectful in regards to paying attention to where we played as he worked. Not that it was malicious, though.
Anywho, these booms were bundled with what were called “Boom Chains.” You can google them to see what they look like. They were lengths of chain with special loops and locks to keep the logs floating together, without drifting off. One of the ways I noticed our rougher times of poverty was when we were out with our father, and he’d pull muddy, rusted old Boom Chains out of the ground, rinse them off, and chuck them in the back of his work truck for reuse. As an adult, I understand the price of large gauge steel, even back then. As a child, I’m not sure if I understood why we were the only family I ever knew to salvage scrap from the shoreline. Not that my father wasn’t a fucking pack rat in that way anyways, keeping everything from old rusted chainsaw chains to half-used wet dry spray paint in piles at the side of the house or shed. For context, his upbringing was even rougher than mine, working at a stupidly early age, but also having to fish for his family’s dinner here and there.
Growing up in these different kinds of poverty does truly shape your identity and ego, as for a very long time I truly thought I was worthless. Some stupid dumb redneck logging family kids with a bunch of disabilities. It carried with me for a long time, no matter how hard I tried to escape the identity. In a strange way, that also sent my ego into spirals, as I constantly felt like I had to prove myself as more than some fuckup poor trades kid. I’d already gotten a bad rap as a “Skid” in early high school already for wearing the same worn out hoodies and pants almost every day. I remember wearing thrift store T-Shirts all the time as a kid, like the one emblazoned with a Zebra and “AFRICA!” in bright big letters. It had holes in the armpits of course, being what it was. Our Gram sewed us shit all the time to alleviate these sorts of issues, but as a single mother from the sixties, her sense of style wasn’t quite what a 1990’s wannabe punk liked to wear. As an adult, I cherish the last touque she knitted me that I own, an attempt at an old school navy blue maritimer captain’s hat that ended up as the perfect slouch beanie. (Insert a fashion twirl here.)
I cannot imagine how many folks out there have based their identities mostly on these two concepts – class and profession. I absolutely despise this forced application of identity as a one dimensional thing, incapable of somehow achieving that old quote: “We Contain Multitudes.” Personally, I dislike being brushed with one or two titles like “Writer” or “Educator” because I’ve already achieved a thousand titles anyways. I’m just me. I’d rather no titles for an introduction than any one title, you know?
We must only look to history to see how ego plays out in these toxic sorts of ways in response to both a perceived value tied to wealth, as well as careers we view as somehow “better” or more respectable than others. (Somehow completely ignoring the fact that society needs all sorts of jobs to function.) I cannot tell you all the toxic masculinity, depression, substance abuse, and other ego or identity issues I’ve witnessed throughout my life, especially in the trades. Yet somehow it always comes back to perception. Why do we care as humans so fucking much about how others perceive or judge us, dammit?!
We’re running out of time and space, so we’ll dive into one more thing before we go.
Body image.
The most terrifying antagonist of any single work of art. For both artist and audience.
In addition to general concepts like “pretty privilege,” something I experience when I lose a bunch of weight and get fighting fit again, there’s everything from the various body dysmorphias, to the identities associated with certain hobbies like sports or video games. Body shape and size. Etcetera. When I’m overweight or obese, especially as a 6’3 AMAB motherfucker, people treat me pretty terribly. And that’s without even touching things like gender expression as a nonbinary person – having old ladies give me foul looks for my painted black nails. You’d think a fairly large, bald AMAB person with painted black nails would make normies fear me rather than scorn me, but I guess I don’t know the wrath of an old christian white lady.
My version of body dysmorphia is going to be different from a trans person with gender based body dysmorphia. I despise my casket of meat. Sign me up for the singularity the minute it hits, please, so I can construct or inherit my own form fluidly at will! I kind of despise being human. Perhaps that’s my internalized misanthropy, but I digress.
Yet this is the shitty body I inhabit. I need to take better care of it, even if only as a tool or object I’m trapped in. I’ve run both ends of the eating disorder spectrum, both feeding myself to obesity in cravings for dopamine, but also in terms of going the other way, starving myself. In weight lifting and gym bro culture, cutting is reducing body fat, and bulking is building muscle. My best cutting record? 300lbs down to 240lbs.
In a month.
I’m sure you can see the problems with such a drastic lifestyle based around min-maxing weight loss at all costs.
This becomes even more complicated for queer folks, whose sex, gender, body, and expression changes and varies widely. That’s without even delving into notions of how queer identity has been shaped by substantial hatred over the last several centuries in Western culture. How do you think an ego reacts to such enormous societal pressures, especially for the poor bastards in Christian Nationalist territory?
But again, that’s another article or three.
As we wind down, I can only share my own reflections with you. I’m already pretty openly anarchist, so you know some of the things I stand by. Body autonomy at all costs, to ensure that no matter what you decide your identity to be, you have the means to express it freely and without people being intentionally shitty to you. Respect and honor, meaning my identity, for all my jokes, metaphors, and allusions to being evil, is rooted in doing greater good.
I guess I’m suggesting you choose to build your own identity, rather than allowing society or your social circles to define aspects of it for you. I might be multiply disabled, but instead of letting my status as a neurodiverse person define me – I’m preferring to define myself in my own ways, rather than letting the labels do the talking. I think this is the core concept behind person-first language, as I might say that McRae is a Demisexual, Non Binary AMAB person with Disabilities, rather than an “ADHD Guy” or some such bullshit.
So let’s do one final experiment together, shall we? I like folks to leave with something, even if it’s just a little self reflection process or formative activity of sorts.
I’m going to list a lot of the various factors that define an identity, and I want you to pause and engage with each in contrast and comparison to the identity you’d like to cultivate. What aspects affect your day to day life, or how you present yourself?
Here we go:
-Race
-Gender
-Sex
-Sexuality
-Pronouns
-Career
-Hobbies
-Class
-Ethnicity
-Culture or Religion
-Appearance
-Age or Generation
-Unique Experiences (Such as trauma or the like.)
-Location or Hometown
-Self Esteem
-Politics
-Family
Whew. At least that list was shorter than the other one, eh?
After you’ve had a chance to ponder your reflections, do you notice that you have any specific areas or factors that outweigh others? I know that I tend to feel that family and family ties often bias me, as I come from a small town where I later worked a job of higher community influence and engagement. Some people hated my folks because they’d been unable to pay debts or had opposing political views. Hell, my father even forced me to help the Conservatives campaign one year! (Luckily he was very quickly disillusioned with how his voice and efforts were shit on. I think I’ve pulled him back from the dark side. I hope.)
Funny how I myself voted for Trudeau in 2015 based entirely on promises of vote reform, only to be fucking lied to and betrayed, eh?
And everybody wonders why I keep moving about as far left as I can, eh? Progressivism or death, damn it!
Listen, all we can do at the end of the day is self reflect. That’s why we’re here, right? To sit and think and absorb the parts of living as best we can to make better and more ethical and “true to yourself” decisions.
But while I feel this one could go on and on, let’s wrap this up, as we’ve already gone long. This will be a self help book if we keep going.
At the end of the day, you define you. Don’t let others define you. That’s your right, choice, and responsibility. I don’t give two fucks who you are – but you shouldn’t go the opposite way and obsess over such things either as long as you’re being true to your morals and values.
After all, the only guarantee we have is mortality, eh? Try not to sweat it too hard.
Now, let’s get the fuck out of here!
-McRae
