You must exaggerate much and you must omit much.

As with nations, so with individuals.  I harp about the fact that the individual is not the average.  

As a consequence, the fetish among some ideologues, to impose monolithic identities based on some singular attribute is rendered nonsensical.  An individual's identity is an aggregation of experiences and opinions and knowledge and emotions and attributes.  

Everything is about the individual and the abstract concept of monolithic identities such as black or white, Christian or Muslim, rich or poor, male or female, etc. is rendered largely useless.  The average is not the individual and the individual is an aggregation.  

Walter Bagehot discusses this in Physics and Politics, published in 1872, in the context of nationalism.  

No nation admits of an abstract definition; all nations are beings of many qualities and many sides; no historical event exactly illustrates any one principle; every cause is intertwined and surrounded with a hundred others. The best history is but like the art of Rembrandt; it casts a vivid light on certain selected causes, on those which were best and greatest; it leaves all the rest in shadow and unseen. To make a single nation illustrate a principle, you must exaggerate much and you must omit much.

But his insight is equally true for the individual.  With only minor adjustments . . . 

No person admits of an abstract definition; all people are beings of many qualities and many sides; no personal experience exactly illustrates any one principle; every personal action is intertwined and surrounded with a hundred others. The best personal biography is but like the art of Rembrandt; it casts a vivid light on certain selected causes, on those which were best and greatest; it leaves all the rest in shadow and unseen. To make a single person illustrate an abstract principle, you must exaggerate much and you must omit much.