Why do we have identities?

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As far as I can tell, it’s because otherwise it would make it difficult to move further in the direction of sentience.

Identity is not a new thing. Animals have them in varying degrees.

I say this, and other things like this, a lot in answers, but only because people don’t think hard enough about it for it to properly blow their mind. But mammals and birds split off tens of millions of years ago. Yet we both have brains that are shockingly similar in structure. The paleomammalian cortex has its analogue in avian brains, and birds, despite being much much smaller with correspondingly smaller brain volumes, have more efficient brains, so they get more out of what they have.

This is why very small birds, like crows, can do things that much larger mammals just aren’t smart enough to do.

Now, when it comes to identity, the usual scientific test that’s done is called the mirror test. You put a mark on the subject’s head, sit it in front of a mirror, and see if it tries to get the mark off. If it translates the image of itself in the mirror with the idea that the mark it’s seeing on the mirror is actually on it’s own body and not on the thing in the mirror over there, then it’s self aware to some degree.

One of the birds tested, a magpie, not just scratched at the mark, but started using the mirror in the exact same way humans use it, posing, picking up objects, just seeing how he looked in the mirror.

This is in a creature descended from reptiles, which display no such intelligence. Mammal brains developed in a completely different fashion than bird brains, yet they both managed to develop self-awareness.

This co-evolution indicates that the identity is an ‘inevitable’ concept. When you collect enough sentience into one place, it becomes self aware and develops an identity. To give up identity we also have to give up intelligence.