Sartre famously wrote that “l’enfer, c’est les autres”: hell is other people. But I’d rather suggest that “other people” are both hell and heaven. Strung between community and individ­u­ality, the umbilical cord of identity is a tenuous one.

No matter how deeply we feel connected to a group that shares any given identity, the fact remains that on an individual level, we will always be more unalike than alike.