Thoughts on subcultures
The root mechanic of the archetype of identity is in itself very simple to reason about. An identity is what allows something to be found and discerned from the rest of its surroundings. Examples are manifold; passports, database keys, aposematic traits, and so forth.
The high-level manifestations of this archetype are the most interesting. What do people mean when they are referring to their own identity? Why do some people feel a strong need to be identified and classified in a certain way? The questions are many and hard to answer. To even attempt to draw conclusions about these things one would need to dissect the genealogy of the matter.
Going back to its origins, any form of life needs to have boundaries that separate them from the rest of creation. The cell is a machine that takes stuff from the environment and puts it inside itself, therefore the system must be able to discern its own limits, lest the stuff could not be properly defined as appropriated. Identity is one of the very first concepts of life and all systems must have some notion of it to be discernable from chaos.
Secondly, not only does a system need boundaries, but it also needs some identifying function that enables it to act on its environment. It needs to have a "body" in which it can process things, and things it can process.
So far, the archetype of identity has only been described as properties that can be observed in a control system. As life grows more powerful, the system needs to know how other observers identify them. Still unconscious, the animals start evolving camouflage and social behavior that is centered around the concept of identity.
Inevitably, as more complex relationships emerge, the need to predict the future gives rise to the notion of time. The evolution of recording previous states to predict upcoming ones ultimately gave birth to consciousness after a couple of billion years.
Fast forward to modern society. Whenever I see a person with an extravagant style I wonder what gave rise to the need to be more easily discerned from the rest of the populous. I did, and still do to a lesser degree, express myself in this manner, which gives me the luxury of trying to reverse engineer my own behavior. When somebody says the words "It's just who I am", I do believe them. But I wonder why is that who you are.
It is very obvious that for many people, the identity of a subculture is more important than the content of the culture itself. How many would be punks or mods in the 1970s if it was not controversial to do so? It seems the identity is the very heart of these movements and the art they produce is merely something that gives the identity some substance.
Myself being a seeker and practitioner of many subcultures throughout my life I would like to know why I have this instinct; in what unknown depths it was spawned to later be rationalized and justified by my teenage brain with some nonsensical reasoning.
The unconscious seems to be trying to hide the fact of the matter from us. When asked why they express themselves in a certain way, most subcultists recoil in dismay at the audacity of having their identity questioned. Perhaps it is a gem that should not be unearthed? Nevertheless, I want to know.
Tribal warfare might have cemented the propensity for cultural belonging in man, as well as the strategy to migrate to a new tribe should they be unsuccessful in the first. But as I often mention, I think high-level archetypes are congregations of multiple lower-level constraints. Granted, losers want a new home where they are not losers and need to signal their belonging to this new home. But winners might also need to distinguish themselves for their power to be recognized.
Subcultures are created by a need to live in conflict with society at large, these creators are of the warrior class. They create new environments where they stand out from the masses, like a lone tree under a stormy sky they run the risk of being smitten by lightning. For these creators, their art is what justifies the existence of the culture. They have the urgent need not to belong and to declare this to their peers as a sort of affirmation of their own superiority.
The masses that follow, on the other hand, seem to be driven by quite different motives. Most of them appear to have an urgent need to belong to something; to migrate to something. What unveils this motive in a cultist is that the need to conform outweighs the need to be unique. It is not enough to be different to join these social clubs, the participant needs to limit their expression according to a certain template.
This results in some downright contradictory expressions. Let us take black metal as an example. The main slogan is for the practitioner to be free from constraints, to live as one wants with little or no regard for how the inferior masses may react. To be truly free. However, this ironically resulted in a culture where conformity was its greatest trait. The cultists were limited to an extremely limited number of bands that were considered accepted to consume. That most subcultures have a uniform (the very word indicates constraint) is a testament to this.
To not have an identity is to not exist; to be one with the environment. But a sloppy identity might be the most revealing kind of either waxing or waning power.