← Ulysses
On Identity1 min readApr 2026

You are your defaults

Most of who you are was never chosen. It was inherited, assigned, or never questioned. On the quiet power of the settings nobody changes.

By Ilias Ennajmi

Ask someone why they bank where they bank, vote how they vote, or take their coffee the way they take it, and you will usually get a reason invented on the spot. The honest answer is almost always the same: it was the setting they were handed, and changing a setting requires a reason, while keeping one requires nothing at all.

We treat identity as a series of decisions. It is closer to a series of decisions never made. The country you were born in, the language your thoughts arrive in, the assumptions you mistake for common sense: none of it was selected from a menu. It was the menu.

A preference you have never questioned is not a preference. It is an inheritance you are still paying interest on.

The useful move is not to burn it all down. That is just choosing the opposite default. It is to audit. Pick one setting you have never examined and ask whether you would choose it again from scratch. Most days the answer is yes, and that is fine. The point is that, for once, it was an answer.

Ilias Ennajmi · Ulysses

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