On the street, at the family table or in a gathering of friends, that sentence is the harbor we take refuge in the most: “Well, that's the way we are!” This sentence is sometimes worn on the chest like a badge of pride, and sometimes it stands in front of us like an insurmountable wall against change. So, are we really “like that”? Or when we say “that's the way we are”, are we actually taking a picture of a river flowing endlessly and thinking that the river itself is just a freeze frame?
APPARENT STAGNATION, DEEPER CONFLICT
From the outside, it is easy to see a society or a family as a homogeneous mass. But within that structure we call “us”, there is a tremendous energy that pushes and pulls each other at every moment. Just as the plus and minus charges in an atom are in constant motion, society is sustained by the balance of conflicting ideas, different generations and changing habits.
When a father says, “My son would never do that” and his son does it, this is not a “degradation” but an inevitable contradiction in the nature of life. The old carries the new within it; the new is born out of the old, resisting it. Therefore, the moment we say “this is how we are”, we are actually describing a temporary reconciliation of the contradictions of the moment.
GHOSTS OF CITIES AND IDENTITIES
We make this generalization not only in families but also in geographies. When we say “We people from Ankara are like this”, “We people from Adana are like that” or “We Turks, Kurds, Arabs believe that”, we are actually trying to put millions of different lives into a single bag.
And why do we resort to this? Because uncertainty is frightening. When the mind struggles to make sense of a complex and ever-changing social structure, it traps it in a “fixed character” box.
- Reassurance of Belonging: Saying “this is who we are” prevents the individual from feeling lost in a vast universe; it offers a ready-made prescription.
- Escape from Responsibility: “It is in our genetics”, the responsibility for correcting mistakes or improving oneself is placed on that imaginary “character” of society.
However, Adana is not only about anger, Ankara is not only about bureaucracy, nor is an ethnic identity only about its traditions. Within each identity, conservatism and progressivism, tradition and rebellion, acceptance and change fight each other every second. What we call “Turkish” today is actually the current image of thousands of years of interaction, conflict and synthesis. Tomorrow, these interactions will carry us to a completely different point.
NOT A STATUE, A FOREST
It is a mistake to imagine society as a fixed statue carved out of marble. Society is more like a forest. From a distance you see a single green canopy (“This is how we are”), but when you enter it, every tree has a different speed, every creature a different aspect.
- Static View: “It's in our genetics, we don't change.”
- Dialectical View: “Yesterday we were the way we were because circumstances demanded it; today we are transformed by these interactions, tomorrow we will be a completely different synthesis.”
THE ONLY IMMUTABILITY OF CHANGE
“To say ”this is the way we are" is to fear the uncertainty of change and anchor in a familiar harbor. But life is a dance of contrasts. What makes a community strong is not that everyone is the same, but the transformational energy created by those differences and conflicts. Identities are not like frozen blocks of ice, but like clouds that constantly evaporate and condense.
As a result, instead of imprisoning ourselves in narrow patterns, we should recognize the endless flow within us. Perhaps the most accurate definition is this: “We are those who are constantly on the way to becoming something else.” A child not looking like its father, a city abandoning its old habits or a society changing its shell is not a mistake, it is life's way of saying “I am here and I am flowing”.
Are you really “like that” or do you just want to believe that you are?