To minimize the identity and to maximize the self

When reading James Clear's "Atomic Habits", one line struck me hard: 

... to avoid making any single aspect of your identity an overwhelming portion of who you are. In the words of investor Paul Graham, “ keep your identity small.”

Now, I used to look down upon even the idea of reading a self-help book like "Atomic Habits." Yet at a certain moment, I decided to give it a try. If it works, good for me; if not, no harm done. This line from Paul Graham has the illusion of telling people to humble oneself, which in fact has nothing to do with humbleness whatsoever. 

I'd prefer to use David Bowie's line, "I am a DJ, I am what I play." To a musician like Bowie this is hardly a humble gesture, rather a bit boastful, because when you can be whatever you play, you are basically omnipotent in the music sphere. Yet this has the very obvious drawback that keeps most people from adapting it, namely, that it seems to have no identity, no recognition of the self in the whole process. If you are whatever you play, who are you? Everybody, or let's just say Nobody. That seems to be the very reason why people tend to specialize instead of generalize. People want to be sure of "who I am." An identity in flux is little more than no identity at all. When someone says, "I am a lot of things," or, "who I am cannot be confined within a certain field," you get the feeling that he/she is a sham. 

I would also object to Clear's reason for keeping identity small, that is, to lower the risk of any certain identity you adopt, to diversify your identity, to use the investors' jargon. This is something modern men do most, and do most blatantly. The Kantian philosophy is one for the weak minds, said Jose Ortega y Gasset. Kant cared more about not erring than about attaining the truth. So are we. For timid people like the modern man, to bet one's whole life on just one particular identity seems far too risky: if it fails, my whole life fails. Never would it come to his mind that, if it does fail, it would be such a tremendous failure that even failing feels like a conquer. Well, as you can see, the latter is the gambler's mind, and our age has more or less lost the gambler's spirit.

My reason for keeping identity small is rather different. It is for one to maximize the self. You see, this is why I would totally object anyone pouring one's life onto a writing program, turning a blog into some sort of public diary. For writing is generalizing. And to generalize, you have to first specialize, to stretch out in some certain fields. The life of an ordinary person needs no generalizing, because it is not enough. 1+1=2 needs no generalizing. Only complex issues like geopolitics, economics, intellectual history, sota researches need generalizing, and they need it for very specific reasons, such as educating the mass, focusing on certain core ideas, or not losing the big picture of the issue. And I need not emphasize that the one area that specializes in generalization is philosophy, which means, quite to the contrary of the popular understanding (which is almost always misunderstanding) of it, that philosophy needs experience more than any other subject. Therefore, the old Parmenides would teach the young Socrates, philosophy is for the old, not for the young.

And so, to come back to the reason why I advice any amateur writers to choose a certain topic to focus on, to specialize as far as possible, instead of generally depicting or reflecting upon one's life, one need to be reminded of the usage, the pragmatic value of writing. Writing is a very elaborate form of thinking, which makes it efficient enough only when you are specific enough. To whine about one's lack of motivation, to worry about one's capability when facing a challenge, or to complain about the society in general, are all too vague to be thought through in the written form. Such ways of thinking go nowhere because of lack of direction, not motivation. As long as one is specific enough about one's topic, one is forced to specialize in a certain field, which explains why people like James Clear are wrongfully seen as "writers," while I would prefer to call him a "habit coach." Because he specializes enough to just focus on "habit," he can be a lame writer and a second-hand habit expert at the same time. It is precisely this "at the same time" that gives him whatever identity he has. We are a lot of things at the same time, however we want to deny it. The difference is only, most of us are too few of a lot of things, while some are quite a lot of a few things.