GMOs, Climate Change and Identity

What I found most interesting in doing this poster presentation and viewing the other poster presentations this past week was analyzing the idea of "identity" and it's place in all of these subjects.

My presentation focused on "climate change denial" and, as a "liberal" I think that climate change deniers are just stupid- or at least I did. Now I think they're just kind of willfully ignorant, but for an important purpose: by embracing a belief they associate themselves with a label which in turn gives them access to the community that label represents... and the security that then comes with that. That's why the "rhetoric" and "psychology" bit of my group's project was so interesting to me. Facts can say one thing... society and the people in it can say something entirely, radically different.

The other two presentations also dealt with identity to some extent: the "Just Say Know to GMOs" group without directly saying "this is about identity" presented facts (and cookies) that were meant to combat a growing group of people who are opposed to GMOs mainly because it's the "hip liberal" thing to do right now. Granted, there are many (many) reasons to avoid GMOs but one of them is not "because it's cool."

We all have seeing devices in which we view the world: companies that have a lot of money (the big conservative oil giants, Monsanto, tobacco companies) all put a lot of effort (see: $$$$$$$) into making sure that our seeing devices are really glasses that they control. On the other hand, there's a "hip" community that also tries to change the perspective of our seeing devices and although liberal organizations typically don't have as much money as their opposers (not saying they don't have a lot, just saying they don't have AS MUCH) they do have help from big players like Hollywood (every cool character ever is a liberal).
What I'm trying to say here is that we all have different views on the world and we're all subject to having those views swayed by people that have ulterior motives. We all have a human need to identify with groups, to associate ourselves with other human beings (or our existence is pretty pointless, hello nihilism). And this is how identity plays into almost anything we could imagine. I even find myself disagreeing with someone or something just because I think that the "group" that I "identify" with would probably also oppose said thing... even though I might not even know a lot about whatever I'm opposing. I'm not saying I walk around screaming about how unfair our capital bourgeois society is, but I'm saying that I catch myself, just like I'm sure a lot of other people do, denying or upholding something that I don't really know anything about- just so I can have an affirmed place in "my" "sub"-society.

I look forward to seeing the rest of the poster presentations and being able to poke around and see how "identity" influences the presentations, my (our) peers, and our society.