{"id":964199,"date":"2023-01-21T01:47:15","date_gmt":"2023-01-21T01:47:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dissidentvoice.org\/?p=137103"},"modified":"2023-01-21T01:47:15","modified_gmt":"2023-01-21T01:47:15","slug":"social-media-who-would-you-like-me-to-be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2023\/01\/21\/social-media-who-would-you-like-me-to-be\/","title":{"rendered":"Social Media: \u201cWho Would You Like Me to Be?\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Way back in the 1830s, the brilliant Alexis de Tocqueville, visiting the American experiment of \u201cdemocracy,\u201d found a nation of persons afraid to disagree with the \u201ctyranny of the majority.\u201d Despite Ralph Waldo Emerson\u2019s inspiring Self-Reliance <\/i>of 1841, there remained very few free-thinking individualists to be found. Some 10 years later, when Thoreau published Walden <\/i>and \u201cLife Without Principle,\u201d he found very few readers indeed.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

The 1950s was a time of mass conformity. Americans thought, acted, and looked the same.<\/p><\/div>It took another century, but post-WW2 social scientists became increasingly alarmed by a prevailing mass conformity<\/i>\u2013to mindless patriotism, the targeting of dissenters (blacklisted socialists), hypocritical sex-norms (shaming of unwed mothers but titillating movies), and mindless acceptance of the benevolent, paternalistic corporations which had brought Jello <\/i>and Life Magazine <\/i>into their lives.<\/i> William H. Whyte\u2019s The Organization Man<\/i> (1956) was about the suburban executive-class which willingly accepted a kind of Faustian bargain: follow the boss, accept the hierarchy, always <\/i>be cooperative\u2013and you will \u201csucceed,\u201d thereby giving your (white) family the split-level home and two-car garage indispensable to social status. (The price?: one\u2019s \u201csoul\u201d–but what did that matter!). Eminent sociologist David Riesman, deploring the decline of \u201cinner-directed\u201d individualists, wrote his scathingly influential The Lonely Crowd <\/i>(1950). Like his friend Riesman, radical psychoanalyst Erich Fromm deplored the decline of autonomous character in favor of what he termed \u201cthe marketing personality\u201d–i.e., the role-play or \u201cpresentation\u201d of an outward persona<\/i> finely-honed to win approval, acceptance and \u201clikability\u201d (cf. also: Erving Goffman, Donald Winnicott, Dwight MacDonald).<\/p>\n

But their critiques proved short-lived: after all, by the late Sixties, the consumerist cornucopia made possible myriad, alternate \u201clifestyles,\u201d most of which encouraged more hedonistic consumption, including sex (thanks to Kinsey, Hugh Hefner, and the birth control pill). In fact, while disillusioned, idealistic youth bitterly rejected the racist, materialistic, and pro-war conventions of their elders, others embraced a conformist, <\/i>hedonistic subculture <\/i>(i.e., low-grade rock music, semi-promiscuous sex, disdain for work, and foolish drug use\u2013the latter of which differed little from the alcohol over-use of their older generation). Rather than seeking intense enlightenment through the disciplined study of philosophy and literature, they often opted for the latest fad of LSD \u201ctrips\u201d (little realizing the irony that the hallucinogenic drug was first developed by the CIA to brainwash its former agents). Communitarian belonging<\/i>, no matter how small one\u2019s commune, included sharing<\/i> of assets, childcare, even sex\u2013and inevitably led to disagreements and eventual dissolution. To be fair, young people of the time had read humanist intellectual Paul Goodman\u2019s Growing Up Absurd<\/i> (1960), and on the whole showed a generosity of spirit which contributed to the civil-rights movement, and mobilized the campus-wide anti-war revolt.<\/p>\n

So here we are, some fifty-plus years later, with a constant media-blitz about celebrities <\/i>and billionaires<\/i>. Hardly envied role-models to those rebellious youth of yesteryear, they are now, for the most part, cultic <\/i>super-human figures worshiped by their awestruck, \u201cinsignificant\u201d acolytes. Yet even a \u201cnobody\u201d–especially an adolescent plagued by peer-pressure and parental demands\u2013would love <\/i>to be \u201cfamous for 15 minutes\u201d (Andy Warhol). To be liked and admired<\/i>\u2013very human longings, but not the end-goal of a maturing, authentic selfhood.<\/p>\n

Over a century ago, sociologist Charles Cooley introduced a highly influential but pernicious concept: the looking-glass self<\/i> (1902). This theory claimed that the \u201cself\u201d is shaped entirely by: how I think I appear<\/i> to others, what I imagine their judgment <\/i>of me is, and how I respond by \u201cpresenting a self\u201d which conforms to their expectations. Social psychologist G. H. Mead\u2013and more recently, a bevy of deluded anthropologists\u2013have promoted similar views. Although humanistic psychologists of the Sixties rejected this approach entirely, emphasizing self-awareness, meditation, and growth-oriented, often solitary, study, Cooley\u2019s conformist outlook, demeaning to the dignity of self-directed, singular persons, has prevailed. (By contrast, Abraham Maslow wrote: \u201cFar from needing other people, growth-motivated people may actually be hampered by them.\u201d1<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

So we come to \u201csocial media,\u201d a distinctly 21st century phenomenon. \u201cOnly connect!\u201d exhorted the depressed novelist Virginia Woolf, who met a tragic end a century ago. But now, the more urgent question is: \u201cWhy<\/i> connect?\u201d Admittedly, having enjoyed my youth in the free-spirited Seventies, I have had no desire to connect with social media. In fact, if a professor had demanded that the class do their work on a computer\u2013much reviled in those days\u2013I like many would have walked out, saying \u201cI loathe computers.\u201d But now, young people are for the most part so habituated and brain-addled to constant cyber-gadgets that very few indeed would consider dumping them into the nearest trash can. (I personally was able, thanks to a lifetime of evading authoritarian demands, to avoid even having a cellphone. Who, unless their job requires it, would willingly want to be constantly accessible and \u201con call\u201d?!).<\/p>\n

In the Sixties, psychoanalyst Erik Erikson wrote brilliantly of the adolescent identity-crisis<\/i>, in which a young person painfully separates from the authority of her parents and just as painstakingly seeks to forge a genuine identity composed of well-thought-out principles, values, and emotional cultivation. The goal, first and foremost: genuine individuation, not <\/i>the social popularity which results from conformity to the demands of peers (or even, via Facebook in our time, thousands of \u201cinsignificant others\u201d). As I previously wrote in my articles \u201cThe Sanctum of Self-Identity<\/a>,\u201d and \u201cThe Need for Alienation<\/a>,\u201d authentic self-identity is strengthened and integrated over a lifetime as one sustains one\u2019s moral and intellectual integrity, the bedrock of one\u2019s self-esteem as one confronts an often hostile, unappreciative social milieu.2<\/a><\/sup> As scholars such as Mary Aiken and Susan Harter have documented, the evidence is overwhelming that adolescents and young people, trying to elicit favorable approval<\/i> and attention\u2013<\/i>as in generating \u201clikes\u201d and \u201cfollowers\u201d–are thereby becoming more vulnerable to depressing disapproval and feelings of insufficient self-worth.3<\/a><\/sup><\/p>\n

  1. Abraham Maslow, Toward a Psychology of Being. <\/i>Second edition, 1962, Van Nostrand, p.34.<\/li>
  2. At the age of 14, as a solitary reader of Ayn Rand\u2019s The Fountainhead<\/i>, I learned this lesson well\u2013and it has served me for a lifetime. Her libertarian, individualistic worldview\u2013not to be confused with her later misguided, pro-capitalist Atlas Shrugged\u2013<\/i>was superbly crafted in, for me, perhaps the best of 20th century novel. Of course, I could also have learned this lesson, in more succinct form, from Thoreau or Socrates (esp. The Apology<\/i>).<\/li>
  3. Mary Aiken, The Cyber Effect. <\/i>New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2016. 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 Journal of Research on Adolescence <\/i> (3): 285-308, July 1996.<\/li><\/ol>The post Social Media: \u201cWho Would You Like Me to Be?\u201d<\/a> first appeared on Dissident Voice<\/a>.\n

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

    Way back in the 1830s, the brilliant Alexis de Tocqueville, visiting the American experiment of \u201cdemocracy,\u201d found a nation of persons afraid to disagree with the \u201ctyranny of the majority.\u201d Despite Ralph Waldo Emerson\u2019s inspiring Self-Reliance of 1841, there remained very few free-thinking individualists to be found. Some 10 years later, when Thoreau published Walden [\u2026]<\/p>\n

    The post Social Media: \u201cWho Would You Like Me to Be?\u201d<\/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":[56425,17145,56431,4740,16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/964199"}],"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=964199"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/964199\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":965131,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/964199\/revisions\/965131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=964199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=964199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=964199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}