This is now a serious response, Baden: — god must be atheist
The fragmentation of the self is not haphazard. It is directed by the person's needs, which is in turn shaped by his biology, psyche, and socio-economic status, as well as his level of intellect, highest eduation level achieved, marital status, and not in the least the colour of his skin. Other factors play into effect, as well: his height, his looks, his Myers-Briggs learning inventory.
The fragmentation is therefore not random, and not haphazard.
The fragmented society's individuals clump together by their preferences, needs, and fulfilment levels. — god must be atheist
Social cohesion, mutual support, even if not said but only implied by approval of similarity by lifestyle, reduces the impact of the inner conflict. — god must be atheist
There is a hard-and-fast proof to the notion that people's inner conflicts are not significant: hardly anybody commits suicide. — god must be atheist
Most people are happy, sort of, while they imagine that they could be happier if some of their needs were better satisfied. This, of course, is a fallacy, and it is perpetuated by the Hollywood-style tabloid journalism.
In all, you may be right, it is hard to tell from here. But even if you are right, it is not a problem of significant proportions, either for society, or for the individual. In other words, people are complacent enough to stay with the status quo. When the status quo is really not good, they rebel. So since there have been no rebellions in a long time in Western consumer societies, this is another indication that the situation is not as dire as you depict. — god must be atheist
The fragmentation is apparently adequately handled by the selves. While the society the selves live in promotes inner fragmentation, according to you, still, the same society provides outlets to alleviate the potential suffering of the self: by the clumping of like selves together, and by being diverse and vibrant and constantly changing enough to divert the attention of the self from his inner conflicts (if the inner conflicts due to fragmentation of the self indeed exist at all, of which I am not convinced) so they don't get consumed by thoughts of their inner conflicts generated by a consumer society they are a part of. Because of the distractions. (Mentioned this last bit for the benefit of those who forgot how the sentence started by the time we ended up here.) — god must be atheist
This is an interesting concept you raised, Baden. You look at the effect in a negative, pessimistic light. I just happened now to look at it from a positive, optimistic light. — god must be atheist
Why? Because most of us wear the same one hat at the work place; typically and historically for 9-10 hours a day. We get stressed out and we just want to go home and plutt ourselves in front of the TV until dinner is ready, then we crawl to bed to die until resurrection of us the next morning, to go to work. — god must be atheist
I think the separation of the self from the multitudinality of the identities we need to fill in our changing roles in our lives is not a bad thing. It is a good thing. — god must be atheist
I don't, to be fair. I did spend a couple of years primarily as a financial speculator though and that was a mask that I found harder to remove and less compatible with identities I value far more than I would have liked. — Baden
Somehow, the thought that immediately sprang to mind was Jean Baudrillard and Marshall McLuhan. We are transformed into actors playing roles in the spectacle of modern existence portrayed in the various media and hypermedia and assign ourselves values in accordance with the roles we adopt or are accorded by culture. Also that pecular pomo text I've encountered on the Internet, 'the society of the spectacle' by Debord. Don't know if I'm barking up the wrong tree here. — Wayfarer
But part of my point is that the potential for rebellion is quashed through the creation of people who consider themselves happy enough in a benign way not to rebel but are still too paralysed or weakened by inner conflicts to develop their potentials. — Baden
I think you’re making my point for me again here, to be honest. — Baden
Maybe. Although I would like to think there are better options than spending 9 or 10 hours getting stressed out in an identity that’s forced on us for practical reasons, just so we can consume mass media to de-stress enough to do it all again. Maybe you’re the pessimist and I’m the optimist here. — Baden
I just want to clarify my own position that identity is always fragmented; it is something one does in thought, to reflect on oneself, that divides one between the identifier and the identified - the reflection and that which sees it - and simultaneously divides one from the world, which becomes 'other — unenlightened
I don't want to argue with you further along these lines though, especially because the argument is not personal to me. It's not an original pet theory or anything and I fully expect it not to resonate with everyone. — Baden
It seems to me that the fantasy of a child is engendered by society nowadays with RPG games and all those first person games. I think the role of fantasy manifests in the enduring popularity of traditions like Halloween despite the pagan tradition that it is.
I also think that the promise of being rewarded for good deeds in the after life is a source of fantasy for many people.
Just some random thoughts. — Shawn
But it helps make the point that contrary to the idea that identities are tools that can be picked up and disregarded for practical purposes (as their malleability and lack of distinct boundaries compared to “selves” might suggest), they are psychologically sticky and tend to interfere with each other’s expression and compete for libidinal energy in a potentially destructive and paralysing way such that yes, they may not be reconciled as you said, or worse, we blind ourselves to what it means to have a reconciled self/identity structure that consistently and productively channels our energies outward because we know nothing other than the circular process of anaesthetising undesired identities with the temporary salve of desired ones. — Baden
Do you think people are becoming deeper, more thoughtful and more in touch with themselves? Do you think modern societies are progressing away from frivolousness, stupidity, and superficiality towards character, intelligence and creativity? Do you think there is less and less evidence of mental conflict evidenced through reduced levels of mental illness, unhappiness, anxiety and drug use? Or are you positing this is as a positive potential in current society that has yet to be realised? — Baden
So, my argument is not so much that an individual must be doomed to internal conflict if they live multiple roles but that the commodification of identity, the reduction of identity ideologically to a form of fashion, as if we all happily can be anyone simply on the basis of certain physical and mental skills, capabilities and attributes is a dangerously misleadingly orientation that serves and helps reproduce an increasingly consumerist environment at the expense of sustainable and fulfilling self-development. — Baden
That's interesting. Can you tell me a bit more? Is this to do with identities of work or etc? — Baden
Fundamentally then, modern society facilitates the greater and greater separation of identity from self, or, more specifically, the proliferation of identities that do not tend to reconcile themselves in a stable self but form unstable selves that are defined largely by inner conflict. — Baden
A philosopher by the name of George Allan wrote about the self in a similar vein. Here I provide a passage from his essay arguing against the existence of a separate self from what the environment, society, or culture has created. This is his attempt to explain that our understanding of the world, and the continuing shaping and reshaping of this understanding is first, and foremost, "mesocosmic: -- the world as we know it. It is the world that fits our size in all its practical glory. His critique against a metaphysical view of self:The freedom of identity a technically advanced consumer society facilitates (identity commodified / personal paralysis packaged as endless novelty) contains within it the anaesthetic that neutralizes a more valuable freedom, the freedom of resistance against an orientation towards the self that dictates that a self must consume even the self and in as many flavours as possible in order to fully experience itself. — Baden
Yet as we push toward the extremes of size and duration in a metaphysical attempt to comprehend and encompass the full range of actual and possible experience, this willingness to give primacy to changing complexity dwindles and finally disappears in a flurry of assertions regarding the extramundane requirements of whatever is first or last, foundation or universal. However much the world may appear to be transitory, and in significant ways is acknowledged as actually being so, we nonetheless insist that there must be a sustaining receptical within which all that flux goes on, an origin or end that lies beyond its tremulous proceedings, a truth that escapes its ever-shifting relativities. Understanding, meaning, and purpose cannot function for us in the absence of some reality that transcends the pervasive experience of temporal passage....
This line of reasoning has no metaphysical justification, however.The assertion of something at the extremes of experience is no more than a failure of nerve, a flight from reality into comforting illusion. Found order is the idol of eternity metaphysics...
George Allan... his essay arguing against the existence of a separate self from what the environment, society, or culture has created — Caldwell
What do you think? — Caldwell
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