I'm not sure what my identity is. Yesterday in class a Japanese student told me that on the basis of my ancestry, I should be styled English-American (I'd like Anglo-American, but that's too redolent of the "global leader in the mining and natural resources sectors.")

In The Blood Lust of Identity, Ian Buruma makes some observations about why people fear for their sense of belonging. According to Amin Maalouf, it's because they feel that their community is under threat. I didn't believe that about myself, but after 9/11 it was interesting to see my own identity as an American surface. Buruma also observes that those who blame globalization for threatening local cultural identities turn out to be mostly disaffected intellectuals.

Buruma goes on to discuss Tom Hayden as one of the worst instances of romantic nativism and identity chatter, occurring in the heart of the post-industrialized West itself.

Some blogger that I've lost recommended this article, which shows mindless packets of data following a few simple rules to produce artificial genocide. Yet the agents are separately and individually reacting according to rules rather than some kind of mob psychology. So apparently societies possess their own logic, and cannot easily be directed or anticipated.

Not even the Olympian modeler, who writes the code and looks down from on high, can do more than guess at the effect of any particular rule as it ricochets through a world of diverse actors.

No wonder God has made such a poor fist of things.