When Politics Becomes Identity
The Perils of Seeking Spiritual Fulfillment Through Political Work
In my previous newsletters, I've explored how the drive for spiritual fulfillment (what I call "relaxtionary consciousness") and achievement-subject culture shape the experiences of nonprofit workers. We've examined revolutionary and reactionary consciousness, and how relaxtionary consciousness often falls short of achieving meaningful social change. Today, I want to share a personal story that illustrates these concepts in action.
[Catch up on part 1, part 2, and part 3.]
A Moment of Transcendence
Sometime after midnight on November 4, 2008, I was driving from a bar in Chapel Hill, North Carolina back to my temporary lodging. The presidential election had been called hours earlier, but my campaign team and I had stayed out celebrating. As I drove, the radio played "All You Need Is Love" by The Beatles.
The music hit me in a way I wasn't prepared for. After nine weeks of constant travel, early mornings, late nights, and not even half a weekend day off, I pulled over, overcome with emotion" exultation, exhaustion, and profound spiritual fulfillment.
I said aloud that I would remember this moment as the highest fulfillment in my professional life. November 4, 2008 would mark the beginning of values like my own guiding our government. The Obama campaign represented the triumph of hope, caring, generosity, and humanity.
The wall of our Chapel Hill field office
The Campaign Experience
I had taken a leave of absence from my environmental organizing job to manage a voter registration effort in North Carolina. My responsibility was to help over thirty-eight thousand people register to vote. After the registration deadline, my team knocked on more than seventy-five thousand doors and spoke with over twenty thousand voters to persuade undecided voters to cast their ballots for Obama and to turn out likely Obama supporters who were infrequent voters.
As State Director, I supervised eight field offices covering most of North Carolina. Obama won North Carolina by just 14,177 votes, his narrowest statewide margin of victory in a state that hadn't voted for a Democrat for President in 32 years.
The campaign was grueling. The operation was hastily organized. And we worked without stopping. Our assigned goals were steep, and we were building a campaign operation from scratch. I would enter the office around 7AM, work continuously until joining a national conference call at 10:30PM, and wrap up after midnight, seven days a week. I was fueled by large coffees with multiple espresso shots.
When Obama won, we felt redeemed. The difficulties we had endured were validated, and the previous months were infused with meaning. Despite the challenges, many of us felt this campaign was one of the high points of our lives.
Politics and Identity Intertwined
What made this experience different from my previous environmental campaigns was the level of personal investment. In my earlier work protecting lakes or fighting pollution, my commitment was primarily logical and rational. I understood the facts and could explain the consequences of failure or benefits of victory. But those campaigns didn't involve me emotionally.
The presidential campaign was different. I unwittingly merged Obama's electoral success with my own personal needs and wants. The more I tied my identity to his, the more spiritual fulfillment I would gain if he won.
I wasn't doing it consciously, but I was weaving my identity together with Obama. When he won, I felt the same exultation as though I had won personally. Over subsequent years, I would sometimes experience criticism of Obama as a personal attack. Rather than relating to Obama as someone I had, in a sense, hired to do a job, I related to him as an embodiment of my values, hopes, and identity: he was the agent of my spiritual fulfillment.
This phenomenon isn't limited to one political perspective. For many committed supporters of any charismatic leader, that person comes to represent them, and they invest their spiritual fulfillment in that leader's successes.
The Terminal Illness of American Politics
I've come to believe that this merging of politics and identity is like a terminal illness for American politics and culture, manifesting two primary symptoms.
The first symptom is a committed resistance to criticism, reconsideration, and changing viewpoints in light of evidence. When political positions become core pieces of our personal stories, they harden against evolution. Facts, science, logic, and reason are shrugged off when aimed at core parts of our identities.
As politics is absorbed into our conception of self, we become vulnerable to confirmation bias and motivated reasoning. We don't engage with information as information but as a marker of identity. The question we're unconsciously asking isn't "What is true?" but "Whose team are you on?"
The second symptom results from the inevitable gap between what we want from our political leaders and what they can actually deliver. This gap creates cognitive dissonance, leading either to more entrenched Manichean political stances or to disenchantment and withdrawal from civic participation.
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The Disappointment Cycle
I experienced this cognitive dissonance firsthand. I had blended portions of my identity and personal values with Obama. He represented what I hoped for, and I invested him with my spiritual fulfillment.
I believed he would transform an ineffective and acrimonious federal legislature, and I eagerly awaited major progress on climate action and universal healthcare. I mistook the election for the actualization of my ardent beliefs rather than the predictable consequence of a divided country making a change after years of unpopular policies by George W. Bush.
The years that followed had high points: the Affordable Care Act, the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and environmental protections. Yet these changes were incremental compared to what I had hoped for. My dreams involved remaking our economy and society. In reflection, I can chuckle at my naiveté; what else should I have expected? But for a long time, I wrestled with the gulf between my soaring hopes and mundane reality.
Two Paths of Response
I've observed two general responses to this cognitive dissonance.
Most political enthusiasts don't embrace outright conspiracy theories, but they do some way need to resolve the dissonance. The easiest target for blame is the opposition. When politics and group membership are tightly integrated with identity, it's difficult to accept that change happens incrementally. Better to concentrate on the evil of opponents. If only that could be eliminated, then spiritual fulfillment would be at hand.
This blame-shifting mechanism serves a powerful psychological purpose. It preserves our self-conception and protects our identity investment in our chosen political figures or movements. By externalizing responsibility for unfulfilled promises or disappointing outcomes, we can maintain the belief that our values and vision are correct. They're simply being obstructed by malevolent forces.
I've witnessed this pattern across the political spectrum. During the Obama years, many progressives blamed Republican obstructionism for every policy shortcoming, rather than acknowledging the limitations of Obama's centrist approach or the complexities of governance.
This opposition-blaming creates a dangerous feedback loop. The more we invest our identity in political outcomes, the more we need to protect that investment by vilifying opponents. This vilification then makes compromise and pragmatic governance even more difficult, leading to further disappointment and more extreme blame narratives. At its worst, this cycle transforms political opponents from fellow citizens with different perspectives into existential threats to our very identity and way of life.
What's particularly insidious about this response is how it masquerades as political engagement while actually preventing meaningful dialogue. When we're locked in opposition-blaming mode, we're not truly engaging with policy realities or seeking common ground—we're performing rituals that reinforce our group identity and soothe our cognitive dissonance.
The other response is to divest politics from identity entirely. Like after a messy breakup, you need time apart. You stop following political news, take time away from social media, and devalue politics as a method for accomplishing social change. Many describe feeling "jaded" or "hopeless" about meaningful policy change.
This disengagement represents a form of self-protection. When we've experienced the crushing disappointment that follows investing our whole identity in political outcomes, the pain can be overwhelming. For many who choose this path, there's a genuine grief process as they mourn the loss of a worldview where politics could deliver transcendent meaning and purpose.
I've seen this disengagement manifest as a kind of cynical detachment that masquerades as wisdom. "All politicians are corrupt," they might say, or "The system is broken beyond repair." These statements serve as protective shields against future disappointment while justifying withdrawal from civic participation. What begins as a healthy separation of politics from core identity can, if taken too far, evolve into a nihilistic rejection of collective action altogether — precisely when our democratic institutions most need engaged, clear-eyed citizens.
Those who disengage may seek spiritual fulfillment through channels they can control: their private lives, career success, family, or consumption. Some turn to technology, scientific advancement, direct service work, or socially responsible business. While some of these pursuits are incredibly valuable, this turning away from politics is concerning. Democracy needs engaged citizens, and building up private spheres at the expense of collective engagement weakens our communities.
Finding Balance
My cognitive dissonance took nearly a decade to recognize and resolve. I had to witness the frustrations of one administration and the rise of another. I also reached new conclusions as my career evolved.
The challenge for those of us with relaxtionary consciousness is finding a way to engage politically without making politics the sole source of our identity and spiritual fulfillment. We must recognize that while individual fulfillment matters, our fate is connected to others. Seeking some spiritual fulfillment in private spheres is natural, but concentrating all of it there is dangerous.
Perhaps the healthiest approach is to engage politically with clear eyes about the incremental nature of change, while finding spiritual fulfillment in multiple domains of life. This balanced approach might help us avoid both the bitter disillusionment of the politically jaded and the tribal extremism of those whose identities have become inseparable from their political affiliations.
I am interested in exploring how we might cultivate this more sustainable approach to political engagement. I'd love to hear your thoughts on how you've navigated these waters in your own life and work.
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