How To Live As A Modern Person
To me, this means living as a human connected to other humans, not as some compartmentalized part of your identity.

And it's not just living this way that I think is essential but actively, consciously choosing to live that way.

David Brooks writes at The New York Times of everyone angrily asserting their group identity:

The Lebanese-born writer Amin Maalouf made an interesting point about identity: Other people often pick ours for us. The anti-Semite elevates the Jewish consciousness in the Jew. The Sunni radical elevates Shiite consciousness in the Shiite.

"People often see themselves in terms of whichever one of their allegiances is most under attack," Maalouf writes.

...Maalouf points to the myth that "'deep down inside' everyone there is just one affiliation that really matters." Some people live this way, hanging around just one sort of person, loyal to just one allegiance and leading insular, fearful lives. In fact, the heart has many portals. A healthy person can have four or six vibrant attachments and honor them all as part of the fullness of life.

The more vibrant attachments a person has, the more likely she will find some commonality with every other person on earth. The more interesting her own constellational self becomes. The world isn't only a battlefield of groups; it's also a World Wide Web of overlapping allegiances. You might be Black Lives Matter and he may be Make America Great Again, but you're both Houstonians cruising the same boat down flooded streets.

The final step is to practice equipoise. This is the trait we should be looking for in leaders. It's the ability to move gracefully through your identities -- to have the passions, blessings and hurts of one balanced by the passions, blessings and hurts of several others.

The person with equipoise doesn't feel attachments less powerfully but weaves several deep allegiances into one symphony.

I write about something related in "Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck" -- about not letting other people's behavior drive who you are.

Who we are is the sum total of our actions, and for me, being a "fellow human" to other people -- a "co-human," as I call it -- means defending the rights of any person who has their rights taken from them or violated, no matter what sex they are, what political group they belong to, or what skin color they have.

This is why I do not say I'm a feminist -- I'm not -- but explain that I'm a humanist. As I put it the other day to a woman on Twitter, this means that I am for fair treatment of all people, including all those men who've had their due process rights yanked from them on campus.

via @CHSommers