Because of this narcissism, respect and empathy have been replaced with pity, sympathy, and hatred as a means of human connection. The best identity groups can do is feel sorry for each other and themselves. There is no joy, only an orgy of expressing grievances. They define themselves in terms of conflict (e.g. "anti-racists" and what they are against rather than what they are for). Narratives of oppression, victimhood, and struggle are their primary means of relating to the world. I considered myself a leftist and a feminist when their ideals revolved around equality, mutual understanding, and dismantling patriarchy. But something changed, and many of these groups and people in them (though not all, by any means) are not seeking equality or power-sharing. They simply want to replace the power elite with themselves and perpetuate the same values and social structure. Worse, they seek to actively punish outsiders both for disagreement and also for the sins of their great great great great great great great grandparents. Strife and war are their objectives, not peace and understanding. Identity groups are perilously close to becoming hate groups. The beauty of intellectual freedom is that we can choose to be open. We can choose not to believe in anything. We can choose to not identify as anything other than a human being. We can cast away these silly arbitrary labels and categories and sub-categories we have created as the unhealthy, factionalizing, alienating, ego-promoting exercises in futility they are. By doing so, we can choose to be members of the larger human community. We can choose joy and humility over self-righteous suffering. We can construct something larger than ourselves with people different from ourselves instead of wallowing in self-pity with ideological clones seeking power, control and revenge under the aegis of "activism."