Futile questions

What's your name? Where are you from? What is your job? How old are you? These are probably the four most asked questions in our lives, and more importantly the ones that according to society define who we are.

The first one is perhaps necessary to make some sense when we refer to one another, but certainly not to define our identities. Yet we label good and bad names, parents debate for months over names for their children, artists often change their names to make them more captivating, we create middle names, nicknames, etc.

Among children and teenagers age is a great deal and naturally "how old are you?" is the second most important question. It is interesting to notice how children specify the months or even the days: "I am 4 and half!" but as we grow older we limit our answers to the years, and after we reach mid 30's we are rarely even asked about our age.

A third question, which instead acquires importance as we leave childhood, concerns our job.
Although there is not much in a job as for most of us is simply a mean to an end, this question becomes so important that almost fully defines our identities. Most people overidentify with what they do or create and so become John the Doctor, Paul the Lawyer, Sarah the Marketing Manager, etc. I personally hate this question because I want to be considered for much more than simply my job. As a result I have experienced so many different professions and acquired numerous specialisations which in the end make it impossible even for me to label myself as a researcher, a consultant, a scuba diving instructor, a swim coach, an academic, a manager, an entrepreneur, or so on...

A fourth question that I often try to avoid or give blurry answers to is "where are you from?" To me the nature of the question itself is bad as it seeks to separate rather than unite; it reinforces differences and sometimes hatred. Within a single city people from differenent suburbs look at each other differently, and the same applies across regions, between north and south of the same country, and ultimately across nations. The answer to the question becomes even more complicated for people who travel extensively and have often relocated, resided in various continents and perhaps acquired different citizenships.

There are of course a number of other questions we are often asked and some of them are extremely common in some countries but not in others. For example, in the Philippines the first question is "what is your religion?", while in Italy "which soccer team are you a fan of?" ranks vey high. Altought different in nature both of these questions answer the same need of belonging to a group. Whether we talk about etnicity, religion, politics, or sport the creation of groups gives us a sense of belonging but it also inevitably emphasizes differences and competition, which are not bad if controlled but just a stone throw away from mutating into racism, terrorism, war, and vandalism.

So, to summarize this post, there are two categories of questions we should be careful of, the ones aiming to define who we are in extremely simplistic terms and the ones with the purpose of creating competition among groups.