Turning my own commitment to pragmatism against me. I like it. :up: I don't know is the short answer. But it's a potentially useful avenue of approach and has the advantage of emphasising that what's under threat is our relationship to ourselves, which idea appeals to a potentially more salient existential discourse vs a medical one and that may feed into a more generalised critical orientation. "Social media is making me depressed >>no biggie, I'll take a pill". "Social media functions to process my social capital needs into profits at the expense of my personal development >> ?"

I do not think that "identity" provides a good principle for establishing a hierarchy of goals. — Metaphysician Undercover

A hierarchy is just one mode of organization and not how I imagine goals being organizaed in an identity, at least not in the strict sense,

This principle is more directed toward the narrative of past events, and any proposed "identity" gains its strength from an extended temporality. That is to say that an identity is something derived from a long period of time. The structuring of goals on the other hand must be extremely adaptable, such that even goals which we have held on to for a very long duration must be capable of being dropped at a moments notice, due to the occurrence of unforeseen circumstances. — Metaphysician Undercover

Identities gain strength over time precisely insofar as they provide coherent frameworks for the activity of our desires as defined both through our conceptualised goals and immediate needs for gratification. Identities may be directed by goals and direct goals. There’s no contradiction here.

Part of the identity of “mother” is bound up with goals that are largely defined in terms of responsibilities and duties which have sociobiological roots. These can be organised under the general idea of what it means to be a mother. Of course, individual mothers will not all agree on what this is but their narratives will have a common core which organizes their dispositions as mothers and which is their “mother” identity.
— Baden
— Metaphysician Undercover

This is an example of the use of "types" which I said previously is deficient for describing a person as an active agent. The point being that one's goals must be strongly individualized, due to the role of 'the present circumstances' and the need to adapt,, as outlined above. An individual might refer to a "type" as guidance in producing goals, but ultimately the urgency of the current situation will necessitate that the rules of the type must be broken. Then if the person is trained only in the ways of choosing according to type, that person would be lost in some situations. — Metaphysician Undercover

There is no deficiency excepting the imposition of a level of determinism applied to the idea of how identity functions which not only have I never implied but that runs counter to the core of my argument. The logic of my posing the problem of self-conflicting selves contains within it the notion that breaking the “rules” of an identity is both something that happens and that is problematic. So, yes people get “lost in some situations” because a goal or desire conflicts with one or more of their identities. That’s part of the point I’ve been making.

This is not (generally) a consciously calculative process but the outcome of the human need to meaningfully interact. It is that need, that overarching goal that organizes our other disparate goals into manageable narratives that we can set against each other in order to more efficiently and less resource-intensively make decisions. E.g. If we prioritize certain narratives about ourselves, it makes it easier to choose between conflicting desires / goals. Our goals are given an extra layer of meaningful contextualization. And this is just what makes human social life possible. General social identities (your narratives of the other) become internalized in specific but not unrelated ways (my narratives of the self) so that we may relate coherently to others.
— Baden

What you appear to be doing here is placing the need for social interaction as the highest priority in ones goals. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, humans are inherently social. It's our ultimate contextualization; a recognizably human consciousness absent of all social interaction is incoherent. But we're social in a specifically human way that doesn’t preclude the prioritization of goals other than the immediately social. E.g. Our relationship to ourselves is mediated through the social phenomenon of language, which not only doesn’t restrict the variety of goals available to us but largely enables it. So, to speak of an overarching social goal that organizes our other sets of goals is just to admit that insofar as we are human we can't separate ourselves and our goals fully from our particular social context and the ideological hold it has over us.

Then the other goals will be shaped and prioritized around this. I see the opposite situation. Social interaction is inevitable, absolutely unavoidable, as portrayed in unenlighten's post. Goals are prioritized according to what is wanted or needed, and this constitutes privation. Therefore social interaction is at the opposite end of the scale from where goals are. Goals relate to freedom of choice, possibilities, while social relations related to necessities, what is impossible to be otherwise. — Metaphysician Undercover

Social relations define the field in which notions of freedom of choice become coherent. We don’t operate in a social vacuum and sociality is not a factor we can fully externalise either re our conceptualisation of goals or our decision-making processes as to how they may be achieved.

So it appears to me, like the difference between starting from a narrative, and starting from goals or intentions, produces a huge gap between the way that you and I understand these things. It's not a huge difference, because the understanding is quite similar, but it's a huge gap, like flip sides of the same coin. We both understand both sides, but disagree as to which side is up. — Metaphysician Undercover

To me, it’s as if you are trying to understand art by starting from one category of elements in different paintings as if they had such significance outside their individual framings they made such framings irrelevant. It’s a narrow perspective in two senses. Firstly, it elides the importance of dispositions, histories, capacities (analagous to other elements in the paintings), which are necessary for the realisation of goals. Secondly, it conceptualises the frame overly simplistically as a pure limitation. But just as It's the frame that allows for art to function as art, it's identities and the ideologies that underly their formation that allow the social to function as social. To imagine a world where the individual pursuance of goals absent of ideological framings occurs under simple social limitations is hardly coherent. The social finds its form not in a bunch of obstacles we as individuals need to navigate but as the very field of possibilities which allows us to define ourselves as the kinds of beings who navigate.

People wear masks, and people employ deception to get what they want. The kinds of masks and deception employed are dependent upon the context, and there are differences between what builds social capital on say, social media or in the workplace. Hopefully, you also agree that masks are not just tools to build social capital, but are important psychologically for a variety of reasons, and can be used socially for many reasons, even if they won't build social capital. They may also exist for a variety of negative reasons, such as social anxiety, fear of repercussions, repression, etc.

I agree that masks & deception can have intrapersonal significance, in fact, I think masks & deception can exist purely for one's psychological needs, even if it hurts their ability to attain social capital. Such as putting on a tough guy persona as a self-defence mechanism, or hiding your true feelings to avoid criticism.

There are so many different reasons to use masks, one could easily write books on the subject, it's such a complicated and nuanced area. In some cases, people aren't aware, in some they are, and it's complicated. — Judaka

I do pretty much agree with this. There's a lot to untangle and it is complicated. To reiterate, the specific dynamic I'm criticising is where masks become in themselves a focus of our appetites, commodified such that their variety of expression tends to lead to exercises of purely formal freedom. This is why I emphasised earlier that it is not social-technologies in themselves that are problematic but their intersection with consumer culture whereby the manipulation of our instinctive desires for social validation is the logical outcome of the profit motive embedded therein, serving formal freedom (more opportunities to satisfy appetites) at the expense of freedom proper (in what I've described as effortful cognitive engagement).

I don't understand the specifics of your thesis. In your OP you said that one impact of the phenomenon you were describing was political inactivity. — Judaka

I didn’t say that actually. In the line we were discussing, I used the word “inaction”. However, I understand how that might be misinterpreted, so I put some context on it in our previous conversation. And now, I’ve also edited the sentence to make it clearer that I don’t mean social media stops people doing things in a very general sense or stops people being politically active. Just the opposite is often the case, which is why elsewhere I talked of political polarisation as a problem, likely due to mechanisms such as this:

First, social media introduces more negative affect into social networks. Social media use tends to diversify communication within social networks by making people aware of what others think and feel about political and social issues (Kwon et al., 2014). They also provide ample opportunities for the self-disclosure of social cues (Walther, 1992, 2011), and people use these cues to form impressions about others in their social networks. Thus, social media enhance the perception of difference, and interpersonal contacts in these environments are typically rated less positively than interpersonal contacts in face-to-face communication — source

I mentioned that we're in an age of unprecedented political mobility and political tribalism. Why was this not a bigger problem for you? You simply say it was a good point. Then you say that this phenomenon will cause "long-term suffering", what is that? — Judaka

I made the analogy with drug use. And I’m not the only one to do that.

users … experience symptoms and consequences traditionally associated with substance-related addictions (i.e., salience, mood modification, tolerance, withdrawal, relapse, and conflict) may be addicted to using SNSs — source

Although not formally recognized as a diagnosis, SNS addiction shares many similarities with those of other addictions, including tolerance, withdrawal, conflict, salience, relapse, and mood modification… Theoretical and empirical models suggest that SNS addiction is molded by several factors; including dispositional, sociocultural, and behavioral reinforcement. Also, empirical findings generally unveil that SNS addiction is related to impaired health and well-being — source

Some of the consequences, which are consistent with my description of social media as

subjectively experienced in the long term as unhappy, meaningless and anxious selves — Baden

Adolescents who used social media more – both overall and at night – and those who were more emotionally invested in social media experienced poorer sleep quality, lower self-esteem and higher levels of anxiety and depression — source

After a week of baseline monitoring, 143 undergraduates at the University of Pennsylvania were randomly assigned to either limit Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat use to 10 minutes, per platform, per day, or to use social media as usual for three weeks.
…The limited use group showed significant reductions in loneliness and depression over three weeks compared to the control group. Both groups showed significant decreases in anxiety and fear of missing out over baseline, suggesting a benefit of increased self-monitoring
…
Our findings strongly suggest that limiting social media use … lead to significant improvement in well-being.” — source

In two nationally representative surveys of U.S. adolescents in grades 8 through 12 (N = 506,820) and national statistics on suicide deaths for those ages 13 to 18, adolescents’ depressive symptoms, suicide-related outcomes, and suicide rates increased between 2010 and 2015, especially among females. Adolescents who spent more time on new media (including social media and electronic devices such as smartphones) were more likely to report mental health issues, and adolescents who spent more time on nonscreen activities (in-person social interaction, sports/exercise, homework, print media, and attending religious services) were less likely. — source

Who would be most susceptible to this suffering and how do we know it's there? I could ask the same about self-conflict. Which countries are less susceptible to this problem than others? … Is it a unique characteristic of the West? — Judaka

Good questions. I don’t think we’re at the point empirically where that can be determined. E.g. re social media addiction:

there are sociodemographic differences in SNS addiction. The lack of consistent findings regarding a relationship with gender may be due to different sampling techniques and various assessment instruments used, as well as the presence of extraneous variables that may contribute to the relationships found. All of these factors highlight possible methodological problems of current SNS addiction research (e.g., lack of cross-comparisons due to differences in sampling and classification, lack of control of confounding variables), which need to be addressed in future empirical research. — source

There is evidence that those with low self-esteem are at particular risk. Which makes sense as their search for offline social capital is likely to be more problematic and the focus on online social capital may become more critical for them.

Regression analysis with Process macro for SPSS evidence the impact of likes on problematic use and the moderating role of self-esteem, serving as a protective factor, so that the impact of likes increase on problematic use is lower in participants with higher self-esteem compared to those with lower self-esteem. — source

I explained that social media entrenches our identities, which are not disposable and are just as real or important, if not often more so, than what exists in real life… What are these disposable, interchangeable identities in the first place? — Judaka

Social media identities are relatively disposable and interchangeable due to their form and mode of creation, i.e. their high plasticity. Your original examples in the thread show that social media identities can often become detached from other identities and that this can be very problematic. So, what is most salient in terms of intrapersonal conflict is how well these identities work with other identities that form our selves. Regardless of how entrenched they become, they may not be sustainable / their maintenance may lead to stress and anxiety as you’ve noted yourself.

In a separate case, there was a documentary on how multi-level marketing schemes would attract mothers who perhaps had had their children leave home. To sell accessories, cosmetics or clothes, and to present this image of themselves on social media as living a great life. As things would start to go poorly, they couldn't face the shame of admitting their failures online and so felt forced to maintain the lie. They preferred to continue their losing strategy than embarrass themselves to friends and family. — Judaka

Social media has created an environment where so many are either addicted or forced to constantly present the image of themselves they want others to see online. — Judaka

I know I haven't covered all of your concerns here, but I wanted to provide some evidence for my positioning anyway and I'll flesh out some more of my reasoning later.

Let me just take this bit first as I already have some serious objections.

I think there is a very clear difficulty here. A "narrative" is a description of events occurring in a chronological order. We can produce a narrative describing observed past events, or potential future events, and even fictional events. The difficulty is that a proper narrative does not include the goals or intentions of the agents, these are only seen to be implied. And since there is not a necessary relation between a goal and an action,(free will), the implication is not valid. This means that if a goal is included into the narrative, it is not a valid part of the narrative. — Metaphysician Undercover

Maybe you are taking the concept of narrative too literally. But even from a literal point of view a narrative is not just "a description of events occuring in a chronological order". A text of the form "At 9am I got up. Then at 9.05 I washed my teeth. Then at 9.15 I ate my breakfast. Then ... etc.," is not a narrative text. It's more like a recount (see e.g. here, p8-9). A narrative, like a story, establishes some significant connection between its elements that gives it the power to subsist as an organizing emotive force for those elements. Narratives have emotional power.

In the case of identity narratives, which are obviously not literally texts we store in our head, but stories about who we are that may be expressed in different ways, the personal significance of e.g. a "mother" narrative lies in the responsibilities, duties, activities, goals etc. it implies as appropriate, and those can only be properly constituted in the context of the general social narrative of "mother".

Also, the idea that a proper narrative "does not include the goals or intentions of the agents" and that "if a goal is included into a narrative, it is not a valid part of the narrative" is utterly baffling to me. I have no idea where you got that from but I would challenge you to support it as it would preclude probably most of the great stories of humankind as being narratives.

Edit: You have supported this in the rest of your post. I'll try to find a way to respond to that. Our thinking is very far apart here.

No worries. You made some other good points I'm going to get on to anyway.

This makes you an unrealistic optimist, which hopefully causes you angst, in which case I'll be satisfied. — Hanover

:nerd:

So to begin with, I don't see that people create identities for oneself. We create identities for others, and narratives concerning others, and sometimes I might include myself in such a narrative, but the narrative is essentially about the other, not about myself. As "myself", I have an identity which is completely different from the narrative I have of others,, being based in my wants, desires, needs, and intentions. The narratives which I assign to others, giving them their identities, is based on their past actions, yet the identity I give to myself is based in what I want for the future. If I look back, and get overly concerned about how others have viewed me in the past, and I try to produce some sort of narrative from this, I will lose my bearing on the future, and lose track of myself.

Therefore I see what you call a person's identities, the identities which a person makes for oneself, as nothing other than the manifestation of the variety of goals which a person has for oneself. And, these goals often involve relations with others. So if I present myself to you in one way, to get what I want from you, and I present myself to another person in another way, to get what I want from that person, I see this not as giving myself a multiplicity of identities, but as having various distinct goals. However, an outside observer might look at my various different forms of behaviour, and conclude that I have different identities. — Metaphysician Undercover

There’s no necessary contradiction between an identity being a narrative and being the manifestation of the variety of goals we have for ourselves. The identity is a means whereby those goals are organized / conceptualised / made coherent. Part of the identity of “mother” is bound up with goals that are largely defined in terms of responsibilities and duties which have sociobiological roots. These can be organised under the general idea of what it means to be a mother. Of course, individual mothers will not all agree on what this is but their narratives will have a common core which organizes their dispositions as mothers and which is their “mother” identity. This is not (generally) a consciously calculative process but the outcome of the human need to meaningfully interact. It is that need, that overarching goal that organizes our other disparate goals into manageable narratives that we can set against each other in order to more efficiently and less resource-intensively make decisions. E.g. If we prioritize certain narratives about ourselves, it makes it easier to choose between conflicting desires / goals. Our goals are given an extra layer of meaningful contextualization. And this is just what makes human social life possible. General social identities (your narratives of the other) become internalized in specific but not unrelated ways (my narratives of the self) so that we may relate coherently to others.

I’ll deal with your objections to the PC worker scenario first. Tbh, it’s hard not to conclude that you’re confused about how thought experiments / hypothesized scenarios are supposed to work or be engaged with. PC worker is stipulated as an idealized (but not unrealistic) subject of a hypothesized scenario and as such is not a real person. You talk as if not only they are a real person but that they are someone that you know personally and even intimately such that you are upset at my treatment of them. You’ve described an inner world for them that I’m using “bullshit tactics” to undermine.

But in doing this, you’ve done exactly what you accused me of doing by making presumptions about their feelings and motives, their inner subjective experiences, something that was not at all my focus in that post. As I’ve told you, I’ve created a scenario for the sake of argument that focuses on the effects of masks on the power dynamics of a not untypical work context. I’ve focused on PC worker’s actions and their effect. Here, I've not robbed them of their agency. They choose to act as they do. But I have problematised the effects of their actions in the larger context. And I’ve also specifically held out to you the opportunity to discuss what the inner experiences of such a person might reasonably be. (That would be the next stage of the argument as I've already pointed out).

Now you may retort that the subjective experience of the employee differs in some important quality depending on the orientation they take towards their boss, and we can discuss that too — Baden

So, I haven’t set up a scenario that’s impossible to crtique or falsify. It’s just that you haven’t been able to do so because your focus is wrong. There are lots of ways to invalidate such hypothesised scenarios. You can question: logical connections (is there a necessary contradiction between aspects of the scenario?); theoretical underpinnings (does it rely on a misunderstanding of theories of e.g. power dynamics?); or elements of realism (is such a scenario even physically or socially possible?).

But you cannot invalidate the scenario by adding arbitrary presumptions of your own. You cannot say I’m wrong because you know that PC worker is actually doing things for this or that reason and feels totally fine about it. First of all, because being at only the first stage of the argument, PC worker’s inner feelings about what they’re doing are irrelevant and, second of all, because my hypothesized PC worker is not a real individual whose inner world only you have special access to.

The proper way to address the next stage of the argument would be for us to respectively put forward hypotheses on plausible short-term and long-term subjective effects on such a person, using theoretical or empirical evidence (qualitative or quantitative). You seem to have jumped ahead due to some emotional investment in the imaginary PC worker.

You've set up a false dichotomy between what's inside and outside. I won't assume your intent, but you've clearly used this dichotomy to impose your subjectivity over someone else. You're discounting the subjective experience of PC worker and ignoring whatever thoughts he has — Judaka

But if you can agree with the idea that lying to make a situation more comfortable to ourselves could potentially function to keep us in a situation that is not good for us in the long term, most of your objections will simply disappear. So the contention of the scenario so far focuses on the idea that the stories we tell about ourselves to ourselves don’t always work to our benefit. Sometimes they serve others in ways that are not immediately obvious. It's hard to see why this is so emotive for you when we have hardly broached any controversial ground yet.

I believe this principle is a manifestation of Hegelian dialectics, he gives priority to the active "becoming", which sublates the passive logical states of being and not being, and these lend themselves to "identity — Metaphysician Undercover

I was just flicking through the Logic. This bit then, right?

S187

"The more precise meaning and expression which being and nothing receive, now that they are moments, is to be ascertained from the consideration of determinate being as the unity in which they are preserved. Being is being, and nothing is nothing, only in their contradistinction from each other; but in their truth, in their unity, they have vanished as these determinations and are now something else. Being and nothing are the same; but just because they are the same they are no longer being and nothing, but now have a different significance. In becoming they were coming-to-be and ceasing-to-be; in determinate being, a differently determined unity, they are again differently determined moments. This unity now remains their base from which they do not again emerge in the abstract significance of being and nothing."

[Hegel] gives priority to the active "becoming", which sublates the passive logical states of being and not being, and these lend themselves to "identity". In an Aristotelian interpretation we might say that neither/nor is the true identity, violating the law of excluded middle, but Hegel would want us to say that both are the true identity, violating the law of non-contradiction. Whichever you choose has metaphysical implications. — Metaphysician Undercover

Yes, but...

The principal point being that when we make "being" active (instead of the passive what is), and especially in the case of assigning agency to a being, then the principle of identity and therefore the three fundamental rules of good logical practise are no longer applicable. Then we need to seek principles other than identity to ground the activities of being (more appropriately stated as "becoming"). This other base, or grounding was proposed by Plato as "the good", and you apprehend it from a perspective of pragmaticism. — Metaphysician Undercover

...I think this involves a misunderstanding of how I'm using the term "identity" or an equivocation that muddles the issue. Or at least you haven't clearly established relevance imo. Again, I've no problem with working Hegel into this but I'll need a bit more convincing here.

(Have you read my OP btw? Some of what you've written suggests to me you haven't, particularly as I define how I'm using the concept of "identity" there quite directly.)

This is highly doubtful, due to the result of what I explained to Josh earlier. There is much that affects us without us apprehending that it affects us,. So any self-narrative that one produces will be extremely defective, missing many key elements. I believe this is why Plato argued strongly against the use of "narrative" in general. If one believes the narrative, it will inevitably mislead due to the deficiencies of narrative in general. — Metaphysician Undercover

It should be clear from what I’ve written that I agree with much of this, but, again, let’s not fall foul of binary thinking: “Narratives are defective by nature; therefore, avoid narratives” First of all, we can’t. Not under my definitions of identity and self at least. Second of all, the production of a self-narrative can be opposed to experimenting with identities as it tends to be a more organic process of organizing our identities over time. It answers the more holistic question: "What kind of person am I?" rather than "What’s my job?", "What political party do I follow?", "What nationality am I?" etc. When we e.g. have major decisions to make about the course of our lives, being able to answer that first question may be very important. And to the extent our answer is more coherent, it makes such decision-making easier. It also relates to our general self-esteem and how we contextualize our interactions with other. What do we expect from them? What do we think they expect from us? etc. These forces make self-narratives socially necessary. And the danger from my perspective is not in their inherent defectiveness but in their degree of defectiveness.

This is why assigning priority to inauthenticity is beneficial. The person's real, or "true" identity is neither identity A nor identity B. — Metaphysician Undercover

I stipulated in the scenario an additional hypothesized employee for reasons of contrast. They are two separate persons not separate identities in one person.

This, I think is a bit of a misunderstanding, because Heidegger gives priority to inauthenticity. So from this perspective there is no authentic narrative, only inauthentic narratives. Therefore authenticity narratives are fundamentally misguided. Authenticity however, is something we can strive for, but this requires an understanding of one's temporal existence, including an apprehension of potentialities, referred to above. The deficiency of a "narrative" is that it does not capture the reality of potential. — Metaphysician Undercover

I wasn’t referring directly to Heidegger there but to the (mis)appropriation of the concept of authenticity in popular culture. See un’s comment here for context.

I have nothing against introducing a Heideggerian (or any other) angle here (as long as relevance can be established, I'll respond). But continuing my pragmatist bent my main focus is a more grounded filling out of my argument. If I can achieve the modest task of convincing readers there might be something to look at and there might be productive ways to look at it they haven't thought of before, I'll be more than satisfied. Recalling my brief convo with @Hanover, I'm less in the pessimism/angst producing business than the art of encouraging critical thought and engagement.

The focus on authenticity is just another turn of the screw in this context: it is like enlightenment or 'cool' - to be concerned with one's authenticity is inauthentic + authenticity is the only important thing to be. Get out of that without moving! — unenlightened

I almost made exactly the same point to @Metaphysician Undercover when he brought up Heidegger. Authenticity narratives are corrupted with the kind of individuality narratives that I've criticized previously.

One might say, looking at the physical relations of these illnesses, that the virtual world is exploiting the body in the same way that modern society has been exploiting the environment. And the losers are suffering from lethal mental waste being dumped on them. — unenlightened

:up:

No... but I thought your OP was targeting liberal democracies and the modern US. No society has ever lacked the need for people to take on unwanted identities, where people could say or do whatever they wanted. Living without freedom should create a greater need for repressing and acting in contradiction to one's thoughts and feelings, surely? — Judaka

Our notions of freedom aren't entirely unproblematic. But identifying problems in how liberal democracies function doesn't in any way imply that tyrannies are a solution.

Well, you've done your best to manufacture a scenario complete with the specific interpretations, characterisations, focus and narrowness necessary to lead you to that conclusion. — Judaka

More or less. It's a starting point, for arguments' sake, rather than a destination.

This is a rather idealized (if not entirely unrealistic) example, but the idea can be leveraged into less obvious contexts, I think — Baden

There are compatibilities with Heideggerian notions of authenticity but I don't need to invoke Heidegger to make the point that people have a range of potentialities, the pursuance or not of which may open or close spaces for different types of being, some of which utilize more or less these personal potentialities, some of which inhere more or less quality.

However, I believe that according to Heidegger we are fundamentally inauthentic. So this presents a sort of paradox, to find the true self is to find inauthenticity, and this is probably why we are prone to multiple identities. We cannot say that one or another is the true identity, because it's like asking what are you doing with your life, when the person is involved in many projects. — Metaphysician Undercover

Sure, but we can have an overarching self-narrative that more or less coherently (both in an abstract and practical sense) encompasses our identities and the energies and drives that lie behind their formation.

should we let people explore their identities even if this turns out to be bad for them or should we teach people about their identities even this turns out to be bad for them? If letting anybody explore identities implies costs and risks, should we let people explore their identities at their own expense/risk or share the expense/risk collectively as much as possible? I think that what you consider commodification of identities answers both questions in a certain way. And that the notion of "commodification of identities" is also supposed to frame them in a negative light, because it suggests exploitation (some self-interested social agents sell a variety of goods/services designed for identity seekers despite their potential side effects and make money out of it), while the issue that we must deal with prior to discussing exploitation is the desirable balance between freedom and safety in satisfying individual needs within a community — neomac

I agree with the thrust of this though the notion of satisfying needs is problematic. Needs are wrapped up in the social dynamic I'm criticising. Anyhow, I've suggested earlier that education re social technologies etc is a desirable way to approach the problem. There's a degree to which this is happening already and certain social media platforms are losing their lustre due to the their modes of operation becoming more transparent (although the narrative of "privacy" is more dominant than that of manipulation). So, yes, I cast things in a negative light because I'm focusing on the problems inherent in the way we interact with these technologies but I don't want to be seen to be ignoring the opportunities.

But it seems to me that not only what the dimensions, magnitude and form of the problem are , but whether there is seen to be a problem at all, is determined by the theoretical framework we embrace. In other words, the theory comes first, not after a problem has been identified — Joshs

My meta-theoretic orientation is pragmatist. I have an interest in understanding and contextualizing social reality through theorizing as an explanatory, predictive, and suggestive tool. So, it's not such a one-way street for me. Theories are not like football teams where I feel the need to support one over the other because it's currently winning the Premier League.

From the vantage of poststructuralist thinking, which deconstructs subjectivity, the problem of the alienated capitalist subject vanishes and in its place emerges a pluralism of strategies for ensuring that new openings or ‘lines of flight’ are created within discursive structures (economic, social, technological). — Joshs

Alienation doesn't vanish nor do the mechanisms that contribute to it though you can conceptualise such mechanisms in different ways. I think your view that the problem disappears is due to a reading that's overly simplistic, determinative, and binary. I've already given the example of Sherry Turkle to demonstrate how the opportunities that social technologies open up (in just the way you've described) do not fully preclude the dangers they present.

When it comes to the biological body, things have changed since Marcuse’s Freudian-influenced concept of libido. Within enactivist approach in psychology, which share features with poststructuralism, the relation between individual and social is less a spectrum than an inseparable, reciprocal interaction. Body, mind and world form one system. There is a functional autonomy to the self of the organism , but not in Freud’s sense of an interior psychodynamic structure. When you read today about the psyche being ‘embodied and ‘embedded’ , this indicates that , as Shaun Gallagher writes “objective (social and cultural) factors already have an effect on our perception and understanding of the world, even in the immediacy of our embodied and instrumental copings with the environment.” — Joshs

So? How is some level of inter-theoretic identity excluded here in the context of my project? Why is this banal observation “objective (social and cultural) factors already have an effect on our perception and understanding of the world, even in the immediacy of our embodied and instrumental copings with the environment.” germane?

I come at the concept of agency from a sociological perspective whereby it involves habituated dispositions that sustain current identities, the capacity to imagine and realize future identities, and the socially facilitated space to make practical judgements that direct and mould the process of identity formation. In the case where our circumstances are obscured from us, the latter two aspects of agency may be inhibited.

My agency is expressed and defined in terms of how, through social interchange, I continually establish and re-establish what is at stake and at issue for me in partially shared
circumstances of interchange with others. Personal agency can never be determined apart from the social embedded practices which form it, but neither can agency disappear into or simply be ‘dominated’ by social discursive structures, since practices are never completely shared — Joshs

I've never committed to a binary logic of domination/freedom, agency/absence of agency. We both agree that personal agency can't be determined distinct from the social embedded practices / socially facilitated spaces that contextualize it. So we should agree it's a process of negotiation within social limits, which define certain modes of its functioning and potential for self-realization and can be more or less facilitative of such. Unless, your purpose of translating my sociolological language into your poststructuralist language is to insist on some free-floating absolute equality of identities / potentialities such that the value of modern existence lies in novelty for novelty's sake with no concept of quality admissible, I don't see the substance of your objections.

I'm struggling to understand how the various arguments you've made recently are connected. Are they? — Judaka

Sure. They connect to the concept of the social immune system and how it relates to identity as mentioned in the OP.

Western capitalism is less tyrannical than what preceded it or what exists elsewhere, and western democracies are less tyrannical than alternatives. — Judaka

I'm not suggesting liberal democracies are worse places to live than theocracies, dictatorships or other tyrannies. But there's a sense in which you know where you are with a tyranny, whereas the control exerted over our behaviour and place in the system in a liberal democracy is more subtle. I think that has real effects re realizing our potentialities. And I think the idea we can think our way out of being controlled through deception where such deception primarily functions to make us more comfortable being controlled is contradictory. Imo, we would want to live in a liberal democracy (with no better alternative) but understand as well as possible how we relate to it in order to best realize our creative potentials therein. That may involve recognizing the obscured compatibility of apparently polarised political identities in embedding us in inert personal conditions.

I'm autistic, so I'm actually pretty awful at this, and I have to do a lot of this calculation consciously because it doesn't happen as automatically. Autism has potential value as a way to look at for contrast from what's normal. — Judaka

That's interesting. And I think, yes, it may have potential value in maintaining a more conscious and effective separation from damaging social influences. It's a line of thought worth pursuing.

Secondly, there is no "mask narrative". The deception here is intentional and calculated. It's like you're analysing the situation as someone who doesn't know any better. You know that the PC office worker is being intentionally and purposefully deceptive, to appear as a model employee is the purpose of this deception. The deception is the mask, if there was no deception, and the PC office worker from the start openly expressed how foolish the boss was, then there would be no mask or deception to talk about. It's by design, and the continuation of this deception requires continuous intent.

We use masks for all kinds of reasons, but it's always calculated. For example, the PC office worker may present as apolitical until probing the situation to see whether being truthful will lead to conflict or kinship. Is it courageous to say whatever you think with no regard for consequences? Or foolish?

Humans are so fucking good at lying, we do it seamlessly, effortlessly, instinctively. To characterise us as having our psyches shattered (exaggerating) by telling some lies to our boss just seems very unnatural to me. — Judaka

This is an important point of disagreement. Yes, lying/deception can be intentional, beneficial, calculated etc. But what I've presented relates to the operation of a more generalised context where “lying” is proposed as a defence against the domination inherent in being on the wrong side of an asymmetric power relation that establishes itself as a mode of life. I’ve specified in the example that the “liar” acts as a model employee. So analysing the power dynamics (i.e. what’s relevant to the argument concerning domination) how do we differentiate between the boss / model employee relationship where model employee A conceptualises themselves as model vs. where model employee B conceptualises themselves as a "liar"?

From the point of view of the boss, there is no difference. A model employee is an employee who, within the bounds of company culture (defining the respective responsibilities / duties / powers of management and staff), has submitted to the full limits of control by the boss, i.e. who the boss has maximum power/dominance over. Logically analagous, the micro-social (work) context dictates the operation of the power dynamic plays out the same way. Whatever limit of domination is defined by company culture is reached in the model employee. This is the limit of the (social) identity of the "model employee", a tool of the machinery of their workplace.

We have introduced the complication of personal differences between the boss and the employee, such that the boss is an ideological opponent of the employee. Such personal differences may threaten the smooth operation of a company as they complicate the submission of one individual to another for an ostensibly pure material gain by introducing a social capital dynamic that runs in an opposing direction. The employee submits to the boss because they are paid to do so. In the general social capital landscape of modern society, this is the norm. But to submit to an ideological opponent threatens humiliation (loss of social capital), just as to dominate one offers esteem (gain of social capital). This dynamic is entrenched by the employee’s online life as it involves a social capital market that offers rewards for “dominating” ideological opponents (through mocking them, beating them in debates, deriding them etc.) which come with concomitant punishments for being “dominated” by them.

Taking the perspective of the boss / company / workplace machinery, the perfect solution to the potential conflict created by such personal differences as we’ve injected into the above scenario is that they should be dissolved in such a way that the employee maintains his/herself as model / tool / cog with minimum company resources invested. And this is exactly how the employee's deception narrative / mask functions. The employee does all the work and keeps intact the power dynamic whereby he / she is dominated. It functions so well, in fact, that it becomes as you’ve suggested effortless and instinctive, further abrogating any danger to the system.

Humans are so fucking good at lying, we do it seamlessly, effortlessly, instinctively — Judaka

Note the contradiction btw between this and:

We use masks for all kinds of reasons, but it's always calculated — Judaka

What is instinctive is just what is not calculated. And I think this is a problem for your conception of how long-term “lying” in the form of taking on an unwanted social identity for material gain functions (especially one that involves some from of ideological conflict). Under any objective analysis, such instinctive lying in the form of the effortless cooperative behaviour it fosters functions to the benefit of the boss and the company machinery. Your conception of this being otherwise—and the paradoxes that view engenders—demonstrates imo just how the interpersonal lie can become intrapersonal.

This can be applied to all sorts of contexts, of course. Zizek puts it succinctly:

The experience that we have of our lives from within, the story we tell ourselves about ourselves in order to account for what we are doing, is fundamentally a lie – the truth lies outside, in what we do. — Zizek

Now you may retort that the subjective experience of the employee differs in some important quality depending on the orientation they take towards their boss, and we can discuss that too (I don't think it btw just "shatters" the employee psychologically--it's a process of denigration, not a dramatic event). But what you can’t deny is how the effort at deception functions socially, its impotence, and its even facilitative role in a power dynamic that maintains the employee as a tool of the boss and the company machinery in which they are embedded.

Nice way to go off topic. I can't help but point out though that this:

Christianity has made abortion a moral issue. It never was one before — Benkei

is way off base.

"According to Buddhist ethics, the first precept instructs lay Buddhists to abstain from killing or harming any living being or destroying living creatures. In Buddhist beliefs, a life begins from the first moment of conception, therefore, abortion, which is obviously an act of harming and killing an innocent life, is definitely sinful and against the precept. The majority of Buddhists therefore agree that abortion is equal to the killing of a human being, and is a form of sinfulness that should be avoided."

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2982600

"According to Hindu bioethics, abortion is allowed only in cases where it is necessary for saving the life of the mother. The perspective of Hinduism is a very pro-life one, emphasizing Ahimsa and its intrinsic reverence for life."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7166242/#:~:text=According%20to%20Hindu%20bioethics%2C%20abortion,its%20intrinsic%20reverence%20for%20life.

"most Islamic scholars agree that the termination of a pregnancy for foetal anomalies is allowed before ensoulment, after which abortion becomes totally forbidden, even in the presence of foetal abnormalities; the exception being a risk to the mother’s life or confirmed intrauterine death."

https://bmcmedethics.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1472-6939-15-10

Can we keep things on topic, please.

I was just running with the idea of gaining value from interesting opportunities for thought even when what I was thinking about was how someone else was fucking up. — Hanover

Thank you, your post has been an interesting opportunity for thought.

I don't experience identifying these kinds of issues as angst but as interesting opportunities for thought. Kind of like how you experience them as fun opportunities to talk about your experiences in the kitchen or at the seaside.

If I know my co-workers are Trump supporters and I hate Trump, I may keep my mouth shut to avoid conflict, but that's not inner conflict, right? Instead, to avoid direct conflict, I'll make a post on my social media and mock them online. — Judaka

Maybe another example might help to forge some common ground. And @”Josh” maybe you can contextualize your theoretical objections using the below.

Let’s say, similarly to your example, I work in an office. I am a woke PC type but my boss is a Trumpy conservative. During work hours, I act like a model employee. I do what my boss wants, speak politely to him and even go along with his (from my point of view) stupid ideas when I find myself in social situations with him. All the while of course, I see myself as just wearing a mask; I hate him and mock him at every opportunity when with my online friends.

But who is the “true” me here?

Is this as simple a case as the online me is the “true” me and I can without complications view my work role as a mask, so that the true me positively resists domination by a boss that I despise personally just by lying to him and “pretending” to be a model employee?

Or is it more the case that I am effectively dominated by my boss and I am a model employee, that this identity is “true”? I do what he wants and even humour his stupidities against my own wishes because I have to (or feel I have to) in order to keep my job. But because admitting this is painful, I create the mask narrative to obscure the actual nature of the relationship.

Of course, if this is the case, the narrative, such that it allows me to continue to stand working under such conditions extends my domination as does the psychological release through my online identity. As Zizek might put it, my hidden mask (desired online identity) allows for the effective functioning of my public mask (undesired work identity).

We can, of course, reject subjective notions of "true" and "false" identities here and simply look at the likely effects of such a dynamic on me:

My online interactions embed my woke/PC identity as I am rewarded physiologically for expressing it (because I accrue social capital in the process). My work context, though, represses it. For what I am rewarded for expressing online, I feel I would be punished for expressing at work. Regardless of how resolute I may be in my political opinions, their expression is complicated by the opposing social capital markets I must constantly traverse and the conflicting conditioning involved in doing so. I am dominated to the extent that I am forced by my social context (or feel I am) for practical reasons to navigate such conflicting markets.

This is a rather idealized (if not entirely unrealistic) example, but the idea can be leveraged into less obvious contexts, I think. Do you agree? Or do you think I'm overstating / misinterpreting the situation?

It appears that a lack of regulation inevitably leads to disaster in markets of this type — frank

That's not an unfair comment, but it depends to a degree what you mean by "disaster". The FTX, LUNA and 3AC debacles could be characterised that way, but those who invested responsibly in things they understood, followed best practices, and kept an eye on the market, most likely made money. And the overall market (though volatile) continues to expand at an impressive pace, so there are dangers and opportunities there. What's desirable imo is a reasonable regulatory framework that curbs the worst excesses of the market but still leaves room for the freedom to take risks in pursuit of returns, i.e. for personal responsibility.

do you think some entities are just more upstanding than others? And if so, how would you identity them? — frank

Absolutely. And they can be identified by research and paying attention. LUNA was an algorithmic stablecoin and so prone to collapse like every one of its type before. Anyone paying close attention knew this and therefore knew at least some of the risks involved, which became more and more apparent closer to the time of its collapse. Similarly, warnings were plentiful before FTX went bankrupt.

As for cryptocurrencies themselves, the difference between a random memecoin and an, e.g. Layer 1 cryptocurrency is huge. The Ethereum foundation, for example, are good actors with a well-established product in the Ethereum network, which has clear battle-tested functionality, very obvious practical long-term uses, and a deflationary cryptocurrency, Ether, that despite the recent crash is up 2000% since the lows of March 2020. Dogecoin is an inflationary memecoin--disparaged as a joke even by its founder--that was popularized by one dude, Elon Musk, and has multiplied massively in value, but has a future largely dependent on whether or not he feels like clowning around with it again. No prizes for spotting the more reliable entity there.

Just to deal with this point for now (I'll try to get on to the rest later):

Isn't such duplicity just standard in social interaction? We can wear masks when needed, without losing sight of what's a mask and what's real. It's almost as though your argument hinges upon that not being the case. — Judaka

Yes, in the sense that imo the ideology of interchangeable, disposable identities is a means to obscure the reality of how identity actually functions. If it were the case that we could (generally) flit among ostensibly contradictory identities with no negative consequences, my argument would fail. But I think even some of the examples you put forward above support the idea that things are not so simple. Still, we might need to explore further the idea of what it means to lose "sight of what's a mask and what's real".

Insofar as we function in a socially recognizable state, we are always wearing a mask (manifesting an identity). We may swap more or less comfortable masks for each other or superimpose them on each other in more or less comfortable ways. And some masks are more fundamental to us than others. But, crucially, our masks are constants and are our tools for accruing social capital. They are that which gives us access to this market and as such associate themselves with our physiological reward systems.

So, of course, we can lie to try to separate one mask from another, but the experience of being in an environment, such as work, that we would not voluntarily put ourselves in but need to be in for practical reasons is generally not like that. The lie migrates from the interpersonal to the intrapersonal. When we are forced to wear a mask, we tend to confabulate personal agency into a process of being dominated. We become the mask in the process of imagining ourselves separate from it. The inner lie, the gap we create between our personal narrative and our true social position allows the mask to remain and operate. And the more effective the lie, the better it may operate.

Zizek makes a similar point here:

“Therein resides the truth of the charming story like Alexandre Dumas’ The Man Behind the Iron Mask: what if we should turn around the topic according to which, in our social interactions, we wear masks covering our hidden true face? What if, on the contrary, in order for us to interact in public with our true face, we have to have a mask somewhere hidden"

What we confabulate as the lie of one mask (the unwanted identity) is a means to avoid the truth of this mask–that we acutally are (or are becoming) what we don’t want to be, i.e. in a state of (partial) domination, which is facilitated rather than contradicted by another mask (a desired identity) that allows us enough (partial) freedom to continue such confabulations.

In concrete terms, our strategies for accruing social capital come into conflict (as I've illustrated before) and in the long term this may cause us psychological problems. That this process is experienced very differently among individuals doesn’t alter its fundamental nature. We are all wired differently physiologically and relate to ourselves differently psychologically but we are still programmed to seek resources, material and social, and that programming manifests real biological consequences in social interactions. Also, the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves about such interactions are part of an overall strategy to negotiate the social and should be examined critically.

Im going to try and restate those reservations. It seems to me that the philosophical resources you draw from (post-Marxist Frankfurt school critical theory, among others) to form your concepts of self, identity, the social and their interconnections, remain too attached to the concept of the bounded subject even as they critique metaphysical notions of the self. Your aim is to rescue a notion of subjective unity from its dispersion and fragmentation by social forces. Personal development depends on finding a way to resist the irresoluteness of online identities. — Joshs

We are always, to a degree, warring factions of drives, desires, dispositions, histories, narratives etc. (I’ve emphasised this several times in other discussions). We never get to a fully unified self. But we can be more or less unified: resoluteness tends to be proportionate to unity and the realisation of positive potentialities proportionate to resoluteness. My goal here is to point to some social obstacles to the realisation of positive potentialities. E.g. Socio-technological mechanisms that empower themselves at our expense through the commodification of our relationship to ourselves.

But I don’t want to get pigeon-holed theoretically. Yes, for my purposes, it suits me to present a theory that tries to walk a middle line between metaphysical notions of an ultimately “true” self and postmodern notions of decentred subjects in a flux of necessarily competitive agencies: I need some comprehensible notion of self to make my case and I also want to stay grounded in a solid social scientific context. So, my aim is to put forward a coherent grounds for making an argument, not to take theoretical sides for the sake of a theoretical discussion. There either is a problem or there isn’t. If there is, the job is to put forward a theory that explains it in a self-consistent manner. That doesn’t preclude it being done otherwise.

Sherry Turkle, for example, can make just your theoretical criticism in “Life on the Screen: Identity in the Age of the Internet”:

“...the unitary self maintains its oneness by repressing all that does not fit. Thus censored, the illegitimate parts of the self are not accessible.”... [But our postmodern selves] “do not feel compelled to rank or judge the elements of our multiplicity. We do not feel compelled to exclude what does not fit.” — Turkle

To put it another way, very similarly to how you have:

“Sherry Turkle [advocates] the notion that cyberspace-phenomena render palpable in our everyday experience the deconstructionist “decentered subject”. According to these theorists, one should endorse the dissemination of the unique self into a multiplicity of competing agents… into a plurality of self-images without a global coordinating centre, that is operative in cyberspace.” — Slavoj Zizek, On Belief

But in “Alone Together”:

“Turkle explores how technology is changing the way we communicate. In particular, Turkle raises concerns about the way in which genuine, organic social interactions become degraded through constant exposure to illusory meaningful exchanges with artificial intelligence. Underlying Turkle's central argument is the fact that the technological developments which have most contributed to the rise of inter-connectivity have at the same time bolstered a sense of alienation between people. The alienation involves links between social networks favouring those of proper conversations.” — Wikipedia

It seems like she agrees with both of us. And to a large extent, so do I. There are opportunities in online interactions, which I've acknowledged (we are engaging in one now), but there are also pitfalls. So, where’s the beef?

If we accept some concept of social capital; if we accept the reality of shame/pride/humiliation; If we accept we have bodies (or, maybe, they have us); if we accept basic physiological mechanisms of reward and punishment that can make undesirable behaviours addictive; If we accept we do not actually subsist in a purely abstract virtuality though it subsists in us–and allows us our unique position in the sentient world; If we accept big tech's profit motive and knowledge advantage; If we accept that much, do we not have a basis for accepting there might be a problem, regardless of differences in theoretical stance?

I think the philosophical approaches that offer the most effective and direct critique of this way of thinking fall into the postmodern camp of poststructuralism ( Derrida, Foucault, Deleuze). The social constructionist work of Ken Gergen also belongs to this larger thinking.

While there is significant overlap between the postmodern and the critical theoretic vantages concerning the importance of social practices in shaping individual thought and feeling, for writers like Gergen subjectivity is an effect of discursive interchange. He conceives the relationship between two or more persons not in terms of "interacting" individuals, but of elements of an inseparable system in which the relationship precedes the individual psychologies. The ‘I’ through-and -through is a socially created construct. — Joshs

Sure, this is a way of looking at selves through the lens of the social, from which perspective we are social atoms in a discursive flux. We are grounded in physical bodies too though. So, there’s always a spectrum from “individuality’ to “social”. And, yes, we may conceptualise meaningful individuality in social terms because our relationship to our physical selves is sedimented socially over time, but, again, that’s just to recompose the notion of individuality for theoretical purposes.

The social can no longer be thought of in opposition to the individual. This means that forces of domination are not possessed by individuals , groups , institutions , corporations, governments, media centers. They flow through, within and between subjectivities , in this way constantly creating and recreating individuals and groups through dialogical interchange. — Joshs

The issue imo dissolves when you accept there is a spectrum from individuality to sociality, which can be conceptualised in different ways. Regardless of where you draw the line (or whether you choose to draw one at all), the spectrum still has two ends, one in a physical world that defines our ultimate separation from each other and one in a socio-linguistic world that defines our ultimate bonding and mutual dependency. So of course the opposition between the individual and the social disappears when you define the individual out of existence (you decide not to draw the line), but we still experience ourselves as individuals and power structures are still understood as nodes and concentrations, so it’s easier to elucidate things in these terms.

Gergen writes “Successful bonding calls for a transformation in narrative. The “I” as the center of the story must gradually be replaced by the “we.”

You write that technology-fueled cultural trends encourage “multiple and fractured identity formation, the creation of self-conflictual selves”, which limits “our ability to narrativize a coherent and unified self in a meaningful social context.”

For Gergen the goal is not to carve out a self-narrative that distinguishes the individual in some way from the social context it interacts with, but “to coordinate our actions within the common scenarios of our culture.”
In other words, the relational bond is a dance co-created by a ‘we’, not an interaction between internally unified selves. Loneliness and isolation would be symptoms of a dance whose shared unfolding is uncoordinated , not the failure to produce coherent selves participating in the dance. — Joshs

There’s value in doing that, but his project is different from mine. And again you can conceptualise resoluteness, integrity, personal fulfilment etc either as the successful moulding of a more coherent unified sense of self or as byproducts of a more coordinated shared dance of elements of the social. Understood in terms of the latter, let’s say the danger is that social media glorifies bad dancing. Competitive discourses. Anyhow, if it turns out I'm using the equivalent of classical mechanics to your general relativity, that’s OK considering my intentions.

We put his "series on pessimism" in here, so you are the sacrificial lamb of consistency.

You're welcome. :smile:

This discussion was merged into Antinatalism Arguments

Thanks for the report. I'll look into it. Next time you can send a PM though.

I think it would help to give a simple example of what you take an identity to be. Are you talking about what it means to be a modern woman or a father figure or what? If we want to create a sphere which we call "identity" and try to separate from it other aspects, work, for instance, then we need a more clear idea of what an identity is. — Manuel

Not sure if you've read the whole thread. A lot of context is added later. But here's another shot at a definition with some simplified examples.

Identities are socially recognizable narratives that have some libidinal hold over us such that realizing them offers physiological rewards and punishments and is integral to the mechanism for accruing social capital (validation).

To break this down:

“Identities are “socially recognizable narratives”:
An identity is an evaluative or descriptive story we can tell about ourselves in a way that makes sense to other people. Being a mother is a (descriptive) identity. Being a good mother is an (evaluative) identity. Being a Selena Gomez fan is an identity. Being a Democrat or Republican are identities. These identities may overlap or nestle within each other and they may also interact with each other in different and more or less compatible ways.

“Identities have some libidinal hold over us due to the physiological reward and punishments associated with their functioning”:
We are invested in our identities and not in a purely abstract way. If a social narrative has no physiological hold over us whatsoever, it doesn’t form part of our identity (from our point of view). To say that we identify as this or that is to say we consider it part of our self, and our “selves” include our physical bodies which react to physical and abstract opportunities and threats in similar ways.

So, if one of our identities is “a good mother” and someone threatens that evaluative narrative by proposing a counter narrative (suggesting we are actually “a bad mother”), we are likely to experience a physiological response (analagous to that towards a physcial threat) in proportion to the degree we feel our narrative is threatened.

"Identities are tools for accruing social capital":
Returning to the example above: being “a good mother” is a form of social capital. It is a positive social judgement. Society values good mothers and so being a good mother has value. To the extent that someone can convince our social sphere that we are otherwise, we lose social capital. We are wired to seek value and defend our identities because this is also to defend our social capital.

Taking the above, we can see how problems may arise with 1) identities that conflict or where 2) there is a gap between our identity and a socially imposed identity. Our physiology may become programmed both to reward and punish us at the same time for the same action.

1) Identities that conflict

E.g. Two of my identities are as follows:
I am a good mother.
I am a strong adherent of belief system A/ I am an A

My child has just won an award at school for an essay that analyzes and points out some devastating ethical flaws in belief system A. My identity reward system is now in conflict with itself. As a good mother it should reward me for congratulating his academic success. But as an A, he has attacked my identity. The reward and punishment systems of the identities “good mother” and “A” are put in conflict but I only have one actual physiological system to deal with this.

2) A gap between our identity and a socially imposed identity:

E.g. I run a successful business that, due to adverse economic circumstances, fails. In order to make ends meet I am forced to take a job delivering pizzas. My identity as a successful businessman may disappear overnight in an abstract sense but, concretely, I am still programmed physiologically to expect validation of such through a form of respect and control that I can no longer command or exert in my new social position. So, my identity persists, but under constant assault.

We can see how mechanisms like social media may exacerbate the above problems. In scenario 1, the strong believer in A may belong to a social circle that constantly validates both her belief in A and her belief she is a good mother exacerbating the problem of these being put in conflict with each other. In scenario 2, the successful businessman may have a social circle that constantly validates material success. This was fine when he was materially successful but again exacerbates the problems he faces on losing such material success.

Holes can probably be picked in the above examples, but I hope they at least serve to illustrate in a practical way what I mean by identity.

Along with @unenlightened, I see banning more as an expression of incompatibility rather than a personal judgement, so if there is anything we can do in practical terms to reduce the stigma of the banned, I'm for it. However, I can hardly think of a more obvious incompatibility than refusing moderation, so this should remain a justifiable reason for banning, with the caveat that though we should have the right to ban for this reason, we don't have to if we think the situation is resolvable. That would be our judgement call. As for suspensions, I suppose we need to work out more systematically and transparently how they are used. Anyhow, that's how I would move towards addressing the concerns raised here.

There's a wide variety of technological innovations, known collectively as cryptocurrencies, that are being lumped together here by some into one vague idea of dodgy speculative assets, money laundering schemes and so on. But I would challenge anyone to do an hour or two of real research into, e.g., Ethereum and not be impressed. Other than that, yes, cryptocurrencies are VOLATILE. That doesn't imply "dodgy". It simply means if you are investor, you have to have confidence enough in the long-term prospects of the technology you are investing in that you can stomach 90%+ drawdowns to get your eventual 1000%+ return. You also have to understand the market. Most internet start-ups, even wildly hyped ones, failed. Similarly, most cryptocurrencies will go to zero and some will do so because they were scams, ponzi schemes or otherwise worthless. But there will also be Amazons, Googles, and Apples. The right orientation towards cryptocurrencies imo is to see them as opportunities; first, for research and understanding, and then and only then, for investment. The majority of posters here don't seem to have got anywhere significant with the first step before giving their opinion on the second.

As I said above, I come at the issue from a generalised theoretical standpoint first and then go into some of the mechanisms. Social media is a big focus (I haven't talked about other media in detail yet) because the process is so clearly aimed at selling social capital, which is social validation, and which is competed for through the creation and utilization of socially desirable identities. Also, a lot of the points you mention are implied, e.g. I haven't mentioned the phrase "peer pressure" but it's implicit in an understanding of social capital.

The other part of this which I want to challenge is the characterisation of political disorganization and powerlessness. US society doesn't seem filled with indecision and irresoluteness... Isn't it the complete opposite? To me, it appears fanatical, social media facilitates this kind of peer pressure and herd mentality which drives users into a frenzy. The political mobilisation through social media is unlike anything ever before seen, simple hashtags can organise massive movements so quickly. — Judaka

This is a good point.

The thesis presented here then is that this phenomenon of multiple and fractured identity formation, the creation of self-conflictual selves (subjectively experienced in the long term as unhappy, meaningless and anxious selves, characterized by indecision, irresoluteness, and inaction — Baden

Firstly, I'm talking about long-term results. If we immediately felt the dissonance of self-conflict on using social media, we would be conditioned not to use it. I see this as an illness that develops over time, similar to the effects of drug use. In the long term, drug users tend to become unhappy, anxious etc, but those effects may not be visible at all in the short to medium term; the opposite is more likely to be the case, which is the reason people use drugs in the first place.

Another point is that what appears to be a very resolute individual online may be an anxious mess offline. The former can act as compensation for the latter. Especially if our online activist finds themselves constantly having to repress their political instincts for practical purposes when they find themselves in environments where social capital is distributed on much different grounds.

So social media is a very artificial environment where we have a misleadingly powerful level of control over social capital rewards. All we need to do is find groups of peers that share our interests and please them in ways that are usually quite obvious. The "real world" is not so simple, especially for adults. Most people have jobs where they not only lack control over their identities, they cannot fully express certain identities they have fostered to accrue social capital without actually losing social capital by doing so.

The more powerful the online conditioning, the more resolute and actively engaged we are with extremes of identities (again, online experiences tend to push us to the extremes because of competition for social capital) but also the more potential for inner conflict in less homogenous social capital environments. Paradoxically then, the very resoluteness of one identity can lead to a more generalised irresoluteness of the self.

Where my explanation would lose force would be in situations where online and offline social capital environments are very similar, in which case, the dynamic is much more sustainable. If you are, e.g. extremely "woke" and almost everyone you come across online and offline shares these views, it's much easier for them to sediment into a coherent self. Although, even in this case, because social media tends to push us to extremes; because regular media exposes us to a wide variety of conflicting ideologies; and because social capital does not in itself pay the bills, it's not necessarily the healthiest dynamic for sustainable personal development.

Maybe this visualization/rough schema of the part social media plays in the commodification of identity might help too.

I think the online social element is being criminally underplayed in your OP. — Judaka

Perhaps the OP might have better been about the context of social media, rather than commercial environment. Then I would agree with it. — jgill

The OP comes at things from a generalised theoretical standpoint. I deal specifically with social media later in this post and elsewhere. Social media is the main focus of the technological angle because it's the dominant market for social capital—especially in highly consumerised and technologically advanced societies, such as the U.S.—and social capital is what we manipulate our identities to accumulate.

Need to reiterate the quite reasonable risk that I've missed something, but anyway. What continually popped into my mind while reading your OP was the handful of documentaries I've watched about Facebook and Facebook addiction. In one case Mums in their 30s to 40s, would post pictures about their holidays, children, and pets. What they'd eat, and do for the day, and the excitement that came with a like of their picture or a nice comment. Presenting all the good parts of their lives, while leaving out the bad. Some treated it like it were a full-time job. — Judaka

Yes, FB and other social media platforms offer a form of social capital instantiated in likes and comments in return for monetizable member engagement, i.e. the product they sell to advertisers. Members pay for social capital with attention, a portion of which is coverted into their online personas, and a portion of which, through ad revenue, is converted into the respective platform's profits. So, members compete with each other for likes and comments through the creation and use of online identities and the platforms inject advertising into the process. These platforms then compete, both against each other and more generally against real-life forms of social capital, to be providers in the social capital market.

Because such accrual of engagement involves the competitive utilization of quite malleable forms of identity (as it's easy to misrepresent yourself online), these platforms nudge us towards more marketable/commodified identities-—to which we take an increasingly instrumental orientation. Our identities become a means to acquire easily processable social capital in the form of the rewards you describe. We move away from being ends in ourselves, which more organically accrue such capital through a form of self-realization that leads us to be valued by others because we value ourselves, towards means-to-ends, self-manipulated selves for whom identity, at the extreme, becomes little more than a means to satisfy an addiction to the physiological rewards offered by likes and comments.

So, the mechanism described is a means to process identities into superficial forms of social capital, the byproduct of which processing is profits for the social media company and advertisers. Another way to say this is our identities, our relationships with ourselves, are transformed into the mechanism of consumption for profit, and because the process both alienates us from opportunities to develop stronger selves and strengthens the commercial entities that profit from such alienation, it tends to be self-fulfilling.

In a separate case, there was a documentary on how multi-level marketing schemes would attract mothers who perhaps had had their children leave home. To sell accessories, cosmetics or clothes, and to present this image of themselves on social media as living a great life. As things would start to go poorly, they couldn't face the shame of admitting their failures online and so felt forced to maintain the lie. They preferred to continue their losing strategy than embarrass themselves to friends and family. — Judaka

Nice example. Here, the investment in social capital, which should, in a healthy dynamic, be facilitative of increased opportunities to accumulate real capital, becomes diseased and the process reverses.

So, I guess my question is, doesn't this create the condition where social identities are deeply individualistic?

I don't really see this "proliferation of identities" that conflict with each other, perhaps I'm misunderstanding what you mean. What I see is that the enormous social pressure has created an environment in which you're not really free to "explore" different identities at all. In fact, if you mention the wrong political idea online, the worry is the grave social implications it will have. And people would rather lie about doing well than admit there's a problem because they're focused on the social image they're cultivating.

In consumer culture, a teenager will follow social influencers and conform to what's happening on social media to fit in and cultivate an image. If there's any intent to cultivate an identity, it's because it's trending and there's a need to follow to fit in. However, for adults, it's probably more likely to see the goal of presenting success to others, a happy family and marriage, etc. — Judaka

There's a proliferation of identities when identity becomes unmoored in this way from the self because when identity becomes commodified, integrity no longer matters. But that doesn't imply a true diversity of identity. There are a million way to sell yourself to your fellow FB, instagram, Twitter etc. members, but there are common threads that tend to work. So, the differences may be quite superficial.

Should reiterate that the fact that this process plays out differently depending on the person involved (as pointed out by others above) doesn't necessarily obviate its general social destructiveness*

Edit: (The upshot of this is that social media with its progressive technologising of the market for social capital and aim of monopolizing this resource in a way that generally fails to fulfil its evolutionary logic (i.e. productive reciprocity) is simultaneously destructive both to positive self and social development.)

Lol. She asked me!

A generalised insult against the whole team by PM.