Tactical adoption of ethnic identity to overcome side vulnerability

I often try to avoid recognition/downplay their weight, in reaction to how much generally (older) people I know seem to have come to cherish recognition to the level of fetish.

When the OITs gave the BRU campaign award, I realized that despite my efforts, recognition was successful in stirring my emotions (ie: I couldn’t control my face expressions), which could become problematic in later, smaller meetings. So maybe it’s better for my long-term growth to just admit that I have a person/al part that desires recognition and accept/enjoy recognition when coming from our side of the trench. Repressed desires can become a major vulnerability, esp. if outsiders find out.

So enjoying recognition may be a viable tactic (short-term plan) with the ultimate goal of preserving a stable/immune personality.

Similarly, I may sometimes get swayed more easily by political touting, because I chose to not identify as anything ethnic. (I don’t have a problem with labeling myself with the biological/political “asian”) In other words, there may be psychological grounds for which I started name-dropping with people, who partially got the point that I am prone to an environment of confabulation. My intellectual background is weak in anything beyond non/lean-ideological direct action, so it works a lot more in the direction of “oh, you are red too! ho ho!” than an actual discussion.

Because I have more grounds to start with (cultural and racial) when I pick up “korean”, and won’t feel as insecure with even something like “activist”, I may be taking the right steps towards making myself less vulnerable to ideological play. I mean, as long as I can swallow all or part of the nationalistic bullshit that comes along. (It’s faster to take part of it for granted, than to trying to prove wrong to those who claim I’m not “korean” because I don’t do X or believe Y) . Which path, it doesn’t really matter.

Because after being in the field a few years, I’ll drop the korean; that’s why it’s (personally) tactical.

But naturally I won’t be the same person a few years from now.