{"id":1585863,"date":"2024-04-02T15:30:26","date_gmt":"2024-04-02T15:30:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dissidentvoice.org\/?p=149432"},"modified":"2024-04-02T15:30:26","modified_gmt":"2024-04-02T15:30:26","slug":"the-sanctum-of-self-identity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2024\/04\/02\/the-sanctum-of-self-identity\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sanctum of Self-Identity"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>In early 6th century Athens (BCE), it was all the rage.\u00a0 Introduced by Thespis, play-acting quickly attained widespread popularity among the Athenians who, like most people, were looking for diverting forms of entertainment to fill the evening hours. On one such evening the aged patriarch Solon, celebrated lawmaker and civic founder, was persuaded to attend a performance. His reaction: indignation and an angry rebuke to Thespis, who blithely responded that such \u201cplay\u201d was harmless, merely a novel pastime.\u00a0 \u201cNo!\u201d\u00a0 Solon angrily retorted (here freely paraphrasing Plutarch\u2019s account), \u201cIt is dangerous.\u00a0 Such a tolerance for pretense and deception will end up infecting all our commerce and civic life.\u201d1\u00a0 <\/sup>But Thespis merely shrugged\u2013and now, some 2500 years later, we find ourselves enmeshed in a media-sphere of garrulous, deceitful \u201cactors,\u201d all clamoring for our attention as they exhibit their base arts of \u201cpersuasion.\u201d2\u00a0 <\/sup><\/p>\n

Consulting Bureau of Labor Statistics data, one finds that in the U.S. at present there are some 70,000 \u201cprofessional actors\u201d (compared to, for instance, 3000 sociologists). Quite obviously, the requisite job skills require playing different roles, displaying (simulated) emotions, and \u201csincerely\u201d persuading us to buy sundry products, \u201clifestyles,\u201d or political candidates.\u00a0 With their omnipresence in all performing media, actors have by now become absurdly over-valued as role-models <\/em>in everyday life.\u00a0 They may even be elected to high political office (cf. Lou Cannon\u2019s book, President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime<\/em>; other examples include Arnold Schwarznegger, Al Franken, Donald Trump, etc.).\u00a0 Indeed, Hitler once boastingly called himself \u201cthe greatest actor in Europe.\u201d3<\/sup><\/p>\n

Writing back in the 1940s, psychoanalyst Erich Fromm was already alarmed by the\u00a0 rise of a new American character-type: the \u201cmarketing-personality,\u201d whose looks, smiles and banter would be selling-points, not only in politics but infiltrating all aspects of social engagement.\u00a0 In short, not the real person and his values (if any), but a simulacrum or image fashioned to display pleasing, if insincere, demeanor, attitudes and opinions.4<\/sup>\u00a0 Sociologist Erving Goffman would later go so far as to argue that social interaction is in itself inherently \u201cdramaturgic,\u201d and that those most skillful in \u201cimpression management\u201d–no matter how deceptive or incompetent\u2013would be hired, elected, even \u201cloved.\u201d5\u00a0 <\/sup>But Goffman conspicuously neglected the crucial context of power-relations\u2013i.e., how those consigned to subordinate roles, especially in employment, are forced to exhibit compliant, cheerfully inauthentic behaviors.\u00a0 Psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott more accurately recognized that such violations of core-personality in interpersonal relations may reinforce the subjective sense of a \u201cfalse self,\u201d such realization producing depressed affect.6<\/sup><\/p>\n

As early as 1902, sociologist Charles Cooley had already promulgated his influential theory of the looking-glass self<\/em>, wherein the \u201cself\u201d is an entirely reactive, subjective state shaped by the responses and judgments of others (cf. also, the symbolic-interactionist theories of social psychologist George Herbert Mead).7<\/sup>\u00a0 If self-identity<\/em> itself was merely a nebulous configuration of perceived responses from others, stigmatizing and negative labeling would invariably lead to low self-regard (\u201cnegative self-image,\u201d etc.).\u00a0 Cooley\u2019s concept may have gained plausibility in a conformist culture which\u2013despite its purported individualism\u2013was, according to Alexis de Tocqueville\u2019s early observations in Democracy in America <\/em>(1830), a nation of persons afraid to disagree with the \u201ctyranny of the majority.\u201d<\/p>\n

But now, in the 21st century, we are surrounded by \u201csocial media,\u201d an insidiously normalized, omnipresent Panopticon.\u00a0 \u201cOnly connect!\u201d exhorted the depressed novelist Virginia Woolf, who met a tragic end a century ago.\u00a0 But now, the more urgent question has become: \u201cWhy <\/em>connect?\u201d\u00a0 Some fifty years ago, psychoanalyst Erik Erikson wrote brilliantly of the adolescent identity-crisis<\/em>, wherein a young person painfully separates from the authority of her parents and just as painstakingly seeks to forge a genuine identity comprised of well-thought-out values and intrinsic predispositions.\u00a0 The end-goal: genuine individuation\u2013not <\/em>the transient popularity gained by presenting a meticulously marketed \u201cself\u201d on Facebook or Instagram, to the anonymous thousands of \u201cinsignificant others.\u201d<\/p>\n

To be liked and admired<\/em>\u2013very human longings, but not the end-goal of maturing, authentic selfhood.\u00a0 Yet if young persons increasingly perceive themselves as commodities to be refashioned and play-acted to gain \u201cviews\u201d and \u201clikes,\u201d\u00a0 they become far more vulnerable to depressing disapproval and feelings of insufficient self-worth.8\u00a0 <\/sup>\u00a0Solon had indeed presciently predicted a penultimate outcome: artfully contrived self-presentations\u2013whether in employment or on-line dating or just promoting a pleasing persona <\/em>to potentially millions of anonymous, \u201cfollowers\u201d–would in time come to substitute image for sincerity, self-display for authentic integrity.<\/p>\n

But where then can the individual<\/em> find a sanctuary to preserve and cultivate his true self-identity?\u00a0 To a considerable degree, in solitude\u2013 wherein one actively chooses <\/em>limited yet meaningful social exchanges, and finds the necessary time and space for self-reflection and for developing critical thinking and rational values.\u00a0 Notwithstanding the enduring contributions of object-relations theorists, the humanistic (post-Adlerian) psychologist Abraham Maslow even declared: \u201cFar from needing other people, growth-motivated people may actually be hampered by them.\u201d9 <\/sup><\/p>\n

Indeed, those who question prevailing cultural norms and often-corrupt, hypocritical practices will most likely feel alienated<\/em> from the unthinking, mass conformity all around them.\u00a0 As philosopher Walter Kaufmann observed:<\/p>\n

It is those who are easily satisfied that we should worry about, and it is grounds<\/p>\n

for melancholy that most people cease so soon to find the world strange and questionable.\u00a0 [A]s perception increases, any sensitive person will feel a deep<\/p>\n

sense of estrangement.\u00a0 Seeing how society is riddled with dishonesty, stupidity, and brutality, he will feel estranged from society, and seeing how most of one\u2019s<\/p>\n

fellow men are not deeply troubled by this, he will feel estranged from them.10<\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the 21st century, daily \u201clife\u201d has become a constant stream of stimulus-response reactivity<\/em>.\u00a0 Even so, one\u2019s self-identity <\/em>can be secured and protected, not only by subtle forms of refusal and non-compliance, but by resolutely evading <\/em>any unacceptable socio-political demand that would compromise one\u2019s core-values (and which is not enforced by severe sanctions).\u00a0 Freedom to<\/em>: think one\u2019s own thoughts (without constant interruptions), select what to read and listen to, which<\/em> communications media to allow into one\u2019s mental space, what gadgets (if any) to use, which persons to associate with or avoid\u2013and so forth.\u00a0 And<\/em>, freedom from<\/em>: inordinate demands for \u201cperformance\u201d or \u201cneeding-to-achieve\u201d (social status), and, above all, the relentless marketing of a persona<\/em> rather than the preservation and growth of one\u2019s true self-identity.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/strong>END NOTES<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. \u00a0Plutarch, Life of Solon. In: Greek Lives, <\/em>Oxford World Classics, 2009.<\/li>\n
  2. In his On Rhetoric<\/em>, Aristotle sharply contrasted two types: \u201cthe noble,\u201d which encourages critical thinking and self-awareness (as in the Socrates of Plato\u2019s Apology<\/em>), and \u201cthe base,\u201d which deceives in order to manipulate and control.<\/li>\n
  3. Volker Ullrich, Hitler: Ascent 1889-1939<\/em>, Vintage, 2017.<\/li>\n
  4. Erich Fromm, Man for Himself<\/em>, Holt Rinehart, 1947.<\/li>\n
  5. Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, <\/em>Doubleday, 1959.<\/li>\n
  6. Donald Winnicott, Ego distortion in terms of true and false self. In: The Maturational Process and the Facilitating Environment.\u00a0 <\/em>International Universities Press, 1960; pps. 140-157.<\/li>\n
  7. Charles Cooley, Human Nature and Social Order<\/em>, Scribners, 1902; pps. 183-184.<\/li>\n
  8. Cf. Mary Aiken, The Cyber Effect. <\/em>Spiegel & Grau, 2016.\u00a0 Also, as to the harmful effect of Cooley\u2019s concept on children, see: Susan Harter, \u201cThe Perceived Directionality of the Link Between Approval and Self-Worth: The Liabilities of a Looking-Glass Self-Orientation Among Young Adolescents.\u201d\u00a0 Journal of Research on Adolescence <\/em>(3):285-308, July 1996.<\/li>\n
  9. Abraham Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being<\/em>, second edition.\u00a0 Van Nostrand, 1962, p. 34.\u00a0 See also:\u00a0 Anthony Storr, Solitude: Return to the Self, <\/em>Free Press, 1988.<\/li>\n
  10. \u00a0Walter Kaufmann, Without Guilt and Justice: From Decidophobia to Autonomy.\u00a0 <\/em>Peter Wyden Inc., 1973; p. 146.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

     <\/p>The post The Sanctum of Self-Identity<\/a> first appeared on Dissident Voice<\/a>.\n

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    In early 6th century Athens (BCE), it was all the rage.\u00a0 Introduced by Thespis, play-acting quickly attained widespread popularity among the Athenians who, like most people, were looking for diverting forms of entertainment to fill the evening hours. On one such evening the aged patriarch Solon, celebrated lawmaker and civic founder, was persuaded to attend [\u2026]<\/p>\n

    The post The Sanctum of Self-Identity<\/a> first appeared on Dissident Voice<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":281,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[77418,32625,4740,28170,28171],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1585863"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/281"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1585863"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1585863\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1591560,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1585863\/revisions\/1591560"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1585863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1585863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1585863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}