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Eugine_Nier comments on Welcome to Less Wrong! (5th thread, March 2013) - Less Wrong
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Why do you think so? It's usual to express things in terms of one's identity (for example, people often say "I don't believe in God", a property of the person, instead of asserting "There is no God", a statement about the world), but this widespread tradition doesn't necessarily indicate that it's difficult to do otherwise, if people didn't systematic try (in particular, in the form of a cultural tradition, so that conformity would push people to discard their identity).
We all live within a culture, though. Some of us live in several subcultures at the same time. But unless you are a hermit living in a cave somewhere, escaping that cultural pressure to conform would be very difficult.
A lot of things are culturally normal, but easy to change in yourself, so this alone doesn't help to explain why one would believe that keeping one's identity small would be difficult.
What are some examples of such things, specifically those things that contribute to a person's identity within a culture ? By contrast, a preference for, say, yogurt instead of milk is culturally normal, is probably easy to acquire (or discard), but does not usually contribute to a person's identity.