MC #9 – Public Identity [2 pages]

How we act in public as an individual, couple or family directly affects our capacity to live a good life.  It affects our costs to survive, be free and “live a good life”.  And it affects the returns we get when we invest in help or care for our concerns.

We live in communities that we support to different degrees and in different ways.  We probably pay taxes and volunteer for at least a few outings with our children’s school.

We act as individual spouses on behalf of the marriage.  We act as a married couple and as a family unit.  And every action produces assessments of our trustworthiness, value, authority and leadership that become our public identities.

Whether we are acting as an individual, a couple or a family, our possibilities for accumulating power for taking care of our concerns and fulfilling our ambitions are opened and closed, amplified or diminished by other people’s interpretations of who we are for them and the community in which we live. 

Our integrity, value, relevance, trustworthiness and moods of willingness to contribute, cooperate and coordinate action with them for the sake of their concerns are judged constantly. 

To the extent we produce public identities of trustworthiness, value, authority and leadership, people will lower our costs  — time, energy, money and lost opportunities —  to have us participate and help, and to give help in return.

But, to the extent we are unknown, not trusted, not known to be valuable, authoritative or able to lead, our costs  — the time, energy, money and opportunities we must expend —  to get the help we need to take satisfactory care of our marriage’s and family’s concerns go up.

As individuals, we need to become competent to think and act for the sake of our marriages and communities all the time.  We have no time off or moments when our actions are irrelevant because our children will grow up and we will grow too old to work within about 4 decades,

… and then we have another 20-30 years to live,

… that is if we have enough money to afford housing, transportation, health care, food and family visits.

How we live at home is revealed to others through our public speaking and actions. 

No pretense fools others for long unless they are naïve and powerless themselves, in which case it doesn’t matter anyway. 

To participate in the world powerfully enough to fulfill our ambitions we need to keep our integrity as individuals and be responsible for our identities in the world.

As a couple, we have to go out into the world of other married couples and families and contribute in ways that are trustworthy, valuable, authoritative and leading.  We need to participate.  We need to be responsible for our identity as a couple because other people shape their actions towards us from their interpretations of our value and relevance to them. 

Pretense here is way overrated.  Pretentious couples, like pretentious individuals, can only fool naïve or powerless people who are happy to take them in because they, too, are marginalized away from real knowledge and power.

To participate with powerful people who are also moving to fulfill an ambition and who are looking for partners in the community, ambitious couples need to have integrity and manage their public identity.

Caring for our identity means that we need to be responsible that our children learn how to think and act in public.  They need to think and act so that others remain open to including the entire family in configurations of power. 

Manners are not a moral issue or the “right” thing to do.  Manners are ethics of power that open and close possibilities for the children and the entire family. 

No matter the “political correctness” that has people stay silent, no one wants to include children who are impolite or whiny, have no respect for other adults or children, are dirty or sloppy, don’t participate with a high degree of willingness, can’t cooperate or coordinate, or won’t contribute.