Or is it?? — Baden

Like I said, it's a meta-theory. It describes how psychological thinking goes on, and so each psychologist thinks it describes his own theory - quite rightly.

Note here how it’s commonalities of discourses that defined the orientation under which the theory was interpreted and integrated into personal contructs. The directionality of travel had already been established by the prevailing (sub)cultural context in a way the various groups of intellectuals were clearly not aware of; otherwise, they would have had the means to challenge their assumptions! — Baden

Aren’t we talking here about the relation between freedom and determinism, the fact that the freedom of our ideas is constrained by the limits of our construct system?

“… man can enslave himself with his own ideas and then win his freedom again by reconstruing his life. This is, in a measure, the theme upon which this book is based.

Ultimately a man sets the measure of his own freedom and his own bondage by the level at which he chooses to establish his convictions. The man who orders his life in terms of many special and inflexible convictions about temporary matters makes himself the victim of circumstances. Each little prior conviction that is not
open to review is a hostage he gives to fortune; it determines whether the events of tomorrow will bring happiness or misery. The man whose prior convictions encompass a broad perspective, and are cast in terms of principles rather than rules, has a much better chance of discovering those alternatives which will lead eventually to his emancipation.”

Can’t it be the case that we are aware of the framework though which we are interpreting events, but that awareness is not by itself enough to allow us or require us to dump that framework in favor of another? After all, reconstruing is hard and frightening work, and our current framework may be working perfectly well for us.

I would argue that we always know implicitly what that overarching framework is that guides our motives and understandings, even if not at a level we can verbalize. Think about how the construct is organized in a hierarchical manner. If we want to subsume someone else’s system we can start by finding out the contrast poles to key core constructs. For instance, loyalty will have a unique contrary pole that may differ significantly from what the term means for us. In this way every construct is linked to every other such that the superordinate level defines and constrains the subordinate. We mustn’t confuse our inability to articulate in words the contrast poles of our core constructs with their being invisible or unconscious to us.

Telling someone their most cherished values are imports from their culture is not seeing how they USE these constructs, and that their defense of the importance and logic of these constructs must be taken on its own terms. This logic is not parasitic on some social discursive logic external to them but is primary.

@Baden

I would argue that we always know implicitly what that overarching framework is that guides our motives and understandings, even if not at a level we can verbalize. We mustn’t confuse our inability to articulate in words the contrast poles of our core constructs with their being invisible or unconscious to us. — Joshs

You stress out our freedom to adopt and reconstruct ‘that overarching framework that guides our motives and understandings.’ Yet, this account implies a particular conceptualization of what ‘is being invisible or unconscious to us.’ In principle, it is assumed that it can become visible and articulable. And this premise misses what Benjamin and Adorno have in common with postmodernist thinkers. They agree that we are impacted by the sublime that has always remained unthought and unrepresentable.
“This time without diachrony where the present is the past and where the past is always
presence (but these terms are obviously inappropriate), is the time of the unconscious affect. Ungraspable by consciousness, this time threatens it. It threatens it permanently. And permanence is the name for what happens in the lexicon of the consciousness of time. The decision to analyze, to write, to historicize is made according to different stakes, to be sure, but it is taken, in each case, against this formless mass, and in order to lend it form, a place in space, a moment in temporal succession, a quality in the spectrum of qualifications, representation on the scene of the various imaginaries and sentences.” (Lyotard, ‘Heidegger and “the Jews” p 17).

this premise misses what Benjamin and Adorno have in common with postmodernist thinkers. They agree that we are impacted by the sublime that has always remained unthought and unrepresentable. — Number2018

Since for Kelly, time doesn’t double back on itself , and therefore no event repeats itself, even the most predictably intelligible experience introduces an absolutely new aspect. We never fully own what we know; otherness and alterity belongs to temporalization.
And yet, as Heidegger argues, events always mater to us, are relevant and significant. This is because a pre-understanding operates to make the world familiar to us at some level. This pre-understanding is that frame , that totality of relevance, that makes the world
recognizable to us even as it contributes a foreign element each moment.

I think you highlight here how the process of commodification neutralises the effectiveness of self-development by appropriating it under its rubric, fostering an instrumental attitude towards it that tends to undermine its proper logic, almost as if partaking in the commercial aspect of the process (buying a book, paying for a course) is the solution and partaking in whatever therapy offered just more work to get through to get our money's worth. — Baden

That would be the case if the goal would be individuality as it was conceived in let's call that "old-fashioned" culture. It now seems that consuming self-help/self-improvement materials is itself the goal, is what individuality is now all about. It's not anymore about "building character" the way early self-help of the Benjamin Franklin type would have us do (where they had definitive ideas about what "having character" means and there was wide agreement what "being a person of character" means). Per modern self-help, "building character" is still important, it's just that "being a person of character" can mean all kinds of things. It seems to me that modern self-help is, essentially, meta. And yet the people who do it that way seem to be happy, satisfied, productive, self-confident.

Since several posters said they don't watch television or follow social media (or only minimally), I'm not sure how much reference material or examples from the self-help movement are needed for illustration. For those who are not familiar with the phenomenon, it would probably take quite a bit.

as Heidegger argues, events always mater to us, are relevant and significant. This is because a pre-understanding operates to make the world familiar to us at some level. This pre-understanding is that frame , that totality of relevance, that makes the world
recognizable to us — Joshs

Undoubtedly, Heidegger's philosophy of time significantly supports your affirmation of an individual's capacities to maintain autonomy and adaptability. I would argue that phenomenology cannot provide
a relevant framework for understanding our current conditions. According to Heidegger, the Being of entities can only be grasped in the present through the awareness that something appearing 'here and now' has the temporal structure of a 'making present' of something. So, it is only through temporality the meaning of Being can become articulated. Yet, in our current environment, the totality of pre-calculated and pre-programmed situations precisely targets the moment of 'here and now'.
What is attacked would be space and time as forms of the given of what happens. The retreat of the given causes the phenomenological pre-understanding temporal structures not to operate 'here and now' anymore. Therefore, we no longer have a dominant temporal horizon for the event, framing and shaping our 'here and now'. There is no more future; it has already arrived as an overwhelming aggregate of pre-formed retentions. There is no past because it is separated from individual memory and "settled" in the collective digitalized network. Only the present remains, that is, the continuing time of perception, in which the perceiver cannot distinguish himself from the perceived.

Our personal identities are concerned more with general psychological character and our social identities more with occupation, career, status etc.—not that these don’t overlap or aren’t located on the same spectrum, but that personal identity tends to reflect ideologies of “individuality” (which in so far as they remain within the social sphere [in so far as we are “sane”, i.e. recognizably social actors] are just more social narratives) and social identity tends towards ideologies of the collective. — Baden

This distinction exists just on the fabulation level. It allows one to register the event, translate it into results, accumulate its consequences, and conceive strategies of extensive use of time. Yet, it does not allow us to construct a critical ontology of ourselves. Because on a more fundamental, grounding level, our ‘personal’ and ‘social’ identities are penetrated and constituted by the forces of the entire field of intensive operations. They incessantly contract and determine our present.

Note here how it’s commonalities of discourses that defined the orientation under which the theory was interpreted and integrated into personal contructs. The directionality of travel had already been established by the prevailing (sub)cultural context in a way the various groups of intellectuals were clearly not aware of;

otherwise, they would have had the means to challenge their assumptions! — Baden

Or else: It's unthinkable to them that what they make could be mere assumptions (and as such subject to revision); but rather, they believe that what they claim about another person is the ultimate truth about that person.
It's not about having the means to challenge one's assumptions; it's about allowing for the possibility that what one has might in fact be merely assumptions.

According to Heidegger, the Being of entities can only be grasped in the present through the awareness that something appearing 'here and now' has the temporal structure of a 'making present' of something. So, it is only through temporality the meaning of Being can become articulated. Yet, in our current environment, the totality of pre-calculated and pre-programmed situations precisely targets the moment of 'here and now'.
There is no more future; it has already arrived as an overwhelming aggregate of pre-formed retentions. There is no past because it is separated from individual memory and "settled" in the collective digitalized network. Only the present remains, that is, the continuing time of perception, in which the perceiver cannot distinguish himself from the perceived. — Number2018

Is this from Baudrillard? Doesn’t sound like Deleuze. You seem to read Deleuze through a critical theory lens. Are you familiar with Todd May?

↪Number2018

According to Heidegger, the Being of entities can only be grasped in the present through the awareness that something appearing 'here and now' has the temporal structure of a 'making present' of something. So, it is only through temporality the meaning of Being can become articulated. Yet, in our current environment, the totality of pre-calculated and pre-programmed situations precisely targets the moment of 'here and now'.
There is no more future; it has already arrived as an overwhelming aggregate of pre-formed retentions. There is no past because it is separated from individual memory and "settled" in the collective digitalized network. Only the present remains, that is, the continuing time of perception, in which the perceiver cannot distinguish himself from the perceived.
— Number2018

Is this from Baudrillard? Doesn’t sound like Deleuze. — Joshs

This image of time ensues from Benjamin and Foucault's perspectives on Baudelaire's attitude to modernity.
For Foucault, Baudelaire aspires to overcome "the ephemeral, the fleeting, the contingent' character of modernity and recapture 'something eternal that is not beyond the present instant, nor behind it, but within it.' The task compels him to produce himself in a particular aesthetic mode. On the other hand, Benjamin's Baudelaire reveals
that the era he called modernity (modernité) expresses itself in various figures of shock. The inevitable contact of the poet with the crowd and the new content of sensual cause the anesthesia effects. Therefore, the shock becomes a remedy and a condition for the possibility of perception as such. You can't be modern without being shocked. Foucault and Benjamin agree on a necessarily aesthetic mode of our existence in the present. It is the time of perception in which the perceiver does not distinguish himself from the perceived. At the heart of the present strikes an instant of the intensive novelty. The newest replaces the new so that the endless repetition re-establishes the ongoing eternity.

For Foucault, Baudelaire aspires to overcome "the ephemeral, the fleeting, the contingent' character of modernity and recapture 'something eternal that is not beyond the present instant, nor behind it, but within it.'…At the heart of the present is an instant of the intensive novelty. The newest replaces the new so that the endless repetition re-establishes the ongoing eternity. — Number2018

This is Nietzsche’s eternal return of the same, which Heidegger depicted thusly:

“The "momentary" character of creation is the essence of actual, actuating eternity, which achieves its greatest breadth and keenest edge as the moment of eternity in the return of the same. The recoining of what becomes into being-will to power in its supreme configuration-is in its most profound essence something that occurs in the "glance of an eye" as eternal recurrence of the same. The will to power, as constitution of being, is as it is solely on the basis of the way to be which Nietzsche projects for being as a whole: Will to power, in its essence and according to its inner possibility, is eternal recurrence of the same.”

I read the OP but not this whole thread. Your OP is one where misinterpreting a few words seems like it'd cause problems but I did my best to understand it.

I understand that this OP is to be the result of concerns specific to the cultural and political environment in the US. As the conclusions tended to lead towards explaining cultural and political conflict and seemed to continually come back to concepts like freedom or change. I might be wrong on that, yet I don't want to talk about it at all but instead offer some different emphasis.

Our personal identities are concerned more with general psychological character and our social identities more with occupation, career, status etc.—not that these don’t overlap or aren’t located on the same spectrum, but that personal identity tends to reflect ideologies of “individuality” (which in so far as they remain within the social sphere [in so far as we are “sane”, i.e. recognizably social actors] are just more social narratives) and social identity tends towards ideologies of the collective. — Baden

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.

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.

Social media has taken away the barrier between the personal and social, all spaces are social spaces. It creates a state of being constantly on display, which creates constant social pressure. That social persona, however, is personalised and individualistic and exists on a page for one's exclusive use, presenting intimate details of one's life and thoughts. 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.

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.

Political and cultural topics have been subsumed into the social sphere, where I'm not sure the ideas themselves are taken that seriously at all. There's a need to have the right opinion, it's so common to hear about friendships being ended because of something someone said about Trump or something like that.

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

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 — Judaka

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

What a read. :up:

Though I will strenuously deny cartesianism if ever accused of it, I will gladly join forces with the cartesians in common ideological combat against social forces that I consider destructive. — Baden

:smile: Indeed, there are destructive social forces, as have already been proven through studies and experiments.

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.)

:up: :clap:

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

The hyperlinked comment addressed this topic in the exact way that I thought had been lacking, as did this recent post to me. I entirely agree with what you've written, and you've done a great job at laying out these issues, much better than I could have.

People do misrepresent themselves online, but in a conformist way, and yet also competitive, in a way that resembles how we usually think of high school. That's the only thing that I missed in your laying out of the issue. The literal social element of social media and the aspects of peer pressure and herd mentality, competition within social groups, and all of these normal aspects of social behaviour are magnified with social media.

I guess when it comes back to your OP, I don't understand this focus on an inner struggle and I want the emphasis to be on an external pressure caused almost entirely by social media. The psychological and social pressures are being produced on this massive scale, which is how we got to where we are. But I got the feeling from your OP that you were talking about something along the lines of inner turmoil or confusion or "personal paralysis"

Why is the emphasis not on peer pressure and social anxieties and the desire for validation being magnified in a toxic way by social media? The coercion and self-censorship it produces? Surely you see the political tribalism? That's not being caused by inner conflict.

Although I don't want to quote your OP piece by piece and say the same thing, I feel that what's lacking in your takes is any mention of the basic ideas of peer pressure that social media is exacerbating.

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) is not a bug but a feature of advanced society and the more “advanced” the society the more a feature it tends to become. — Baden

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.

I feel like I must be misunderstanding something...

Anyway, for doing something about social media, I think it related to the issue of consumer choice, and whether consumers should be allowed to decide what's good for themselves. It's kind of like portion sizes at fast food places, I think they should be limited because the consumer can't be trusted to make responsible decisions. We've already shown we can't, now we need to declare ourselves the loser and ask for help. Social media should be looked at for causing addiction and certain practices should be banned. Otherwise, not sure what can be done about it.

That was a bit dense, read it twice and only have a vague idea of what you may be talking about - you certainly put a lot of thought behind it, that I can't deny. So I'll try to take something out of it, that I find useful, maybe even in a form of a question:

I think you are correct that how our current socio-economic society is structured fosters a sense of isolation while at the same time fomenting an image of "individuality", in which we falsely or misleadingly only show those aspects of ourselves we want to show - and then feel like shit in real life, when we cannot live up to the standards of the fiction(s) we have created for ourselves.

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.

What I do see is a kind of mini-crisis in the topic of gender-identity, which is somewhat curious, in the sense that this out of all things is the topic of discussion, instead of something else.

Potential solutions? They say that genuine human connection helps with such things - in so far as these connections are truly genuine and not fulling in some box of things that one needs to do, which don't advance anything.

But why is identity specifically a problem? I agree it is, but it's curious that it's what's the cause of so many discussions. Clearing up what an identity is even more, could help I suspect.

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.

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.

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. — Baden

Previously on this thread, I contrasted your analysis of the relation between the self, identity and social conditioning with writers such as George Kelly. That may have muddled the point I was trying to get at rather than clarifying it. Kelly’s terminology can lend itself to an interpretation of his approach as wedded to the idea of a solipsistic Cartesian subject immune from social influence and conditioning, which feeds into your thesis that ideologies of identity , as Kelly’s might appear to be, “obscure their own function, which is to serve the social at the expense of the self.” In other words, Kelly’s seeming self-creating subject is an unwitting tool of dominating social forces.

Because I chose Kelly to make my point, I think my reservations about your thesis were obscured.

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.

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. 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.

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.

↪Number2018
For Foucault, Baudelaire aspires to overcome "the ephemeral, the fleeting, the contingent' character of modernity and recapture 'something eternal that is not beyond the present instant, nor behind it, but within it.'…At the heart of the present is an instant of the intensive novelty. The newest replaces the new so that the endless repetition re-establishes the ongoing eternity.
— Number2018

This is Nietzsche’s eternal return of the same
— Joshs

No, it is not.

This is Nietzsche’s eternal return of the same, which Heidegger depicted thusly:

“The "momentary" character of creation is the essence of actual, actuating eternity, which achieves its greatest breadth and keenest edge as the moment of eternity in the return of the same. The recoining of what becomes into being-will to power in its supreme configuration-is in its most profound essence something that occurs in the "glance of an eye" as eternal recurrence of the same. The will to power, as constitution of being, is as it is solely on the basis of the way to be which Nietzsche projects for being as a whole: Will to power, in its essence and according to its inner possibility, is eternal recurrence of the same.” — Joshs

Heidegger asserts the rollback of Nietzsche's thought to metaphysics. He misrepresents the doctrine of the will to power and identifies Nietzsche as an ally of Descartes.

"Recurrence" thinks the permanentizing of what becomes, thinks it to the point where the becoming of what becomes is secured in the duration of its becoming. The "eternal" thinks the permanentizing of such constancy in the direction of its circling back into itself and forward toward itself. What becomes is the same itself, and that means the one and selfsame (the identical) that in each case is within the difference of the other. The presence of the one identical element, a presence that comes to be, is thought in the same. Nietzsche's thought thinks the constant permanentizing of the becoming of whatever becomes into the only kind of presence there is-the self-recapitulation of the identical. (Heidegger, ’Lectures on Nietzsche’, p165)

Heidegger’s account of Nietzsche’s eternal return is entirely different from Foucault and Deleuze’s interpretations.


“What will to power brought to light? A reality that has being freed from (immutable, eternal, true) being: becoming. And the knowledge that unveils it does not unveil being” (Foucault,’ Lectures on the will to know’, p319)

For Foucault, there is no returning of the identity of the same.

“Mark the singularity of events. . . . Grasp their return. . . . Define their lacuna point, the moment they did not take place.” (Foucault, ‘Nietzsche, Genealogy, History’)

So, what is returning is the singularity of events, the difference itself. The eternal operates in the lacuna points, where the perceiver does not distinguish himself from the perceived. Through the figure of Baudelaire, Foucault re-affirms the reality of the Nietzsche’s Dionysian aesthetic existence, the construction of a singular subjectivity. The processes of self–affirmation, the resistant self-positioning cannot be merely achieved by applying psychological, cognitive, or informational methods and paradigms. One must traverse the unnamable lacuna points of the rupture with dominant social realities.

No, I read your OP and skimmed a bit from others, but little - I prefer to go in "new", as it were. Now you've added plenty of context and renders the notion more clearly, so thanks for that it is useful.

The issue here isn't to poke holes into an account - that can be done in almost any post concerning issues as large and complex as human relations and psychology, what we can do is provide some tools that help clarify some of the problems at hand.

We only have a data set of one here, ours, and the way its changed over time. So the question of the inevitability of such dilemmas necessarily arising need not follow. Given the results you point out, one can even question if this society should be deemed "advanced".

It's correct to point out how social media plays an important role in the identity crisis we currently face. Though this is merely a new phase of an old playbook, going back to the early 20th century, with the advent of PR and how companies realized how easy it was to manipulate people into consumers.

So we've had a consumer identity forced onto people that carry with them certain patterns of behavior that signal what makes for a proper "man" or "woman" and what a typical person of each gender should aspire to in each respective subfield.

Again, what strikes me is the degree of specificity in which gender has become an object of obsession. I don't quite understand why this topic is of such importance to many young people.

↪Number2018
For Foucault, Baudelaire aspires to overcome "the ephemeral, the fleeting, the contingent' character of modernity and recapture 'something eternal that is not beyond the present instant, nor behind it, but within it.'…At the heart of the present is an instant of the intensive novelty. The newest replaces the new so that the endless repetition re-establishes the ongoing eternity.
— Number2018


This is Nietzsche’s eternal return of the same
— Joshs

No, it is not. — Number2018

Mark the singularity of events. . . . Grasp their return. . . . Define their lacuna point, the moment they did not take place. (Foucault, ‘Nietzsche, Genealogy, History’). Through the figure of Baudelaire, Foucault re-affirms the reality of the Nietzsche’s Dionysian aesthetic existence.
— Number2018

So then it is the eternal return of the same.

Heidegger’s account of Nietzsche’s eternal return is entirely different from Foucault and Deleuze’s interpretations. — Number2018

I’m aware of that. I think Heidegger’s thinking goes beyond Foucault’s , Deleuze’s and Nietzsche’s. Since Foucault and Deleuze remain in close proximity to Nietzsche they misread Heidegger’s critique of Nietzsche. But rather than pursuing what I think separates Heidegger from Foucault and Deleuze ( which I would be happy to do in another thread) , I want to understand better how you are reading Deleuze. There are a wide variety of often incompatible interpretations of his work. I can’t tell which interpretation you align with merely from your quotes of him and your adoption of his jargon.

I would like to know how you are using his jargon, and to do that I think we will need to expand the conversation to include other disciplines.

I want to begin with a hypothesis and see what your reaction is. I hypothesize that , of the many readings of Deleuze , you resonate with those that I find in writers like Massumi , Protevi and Delanda. I want to focus on Protevi in particular, who I think reads Deleuze from a vantage close to the modernism of critical theory writers like Adorno.

Protevi crosses disciplines , moving between philosophy, anthropology, psychology and evolutionary biology. I’m hoping you can follow him into these areas so I can get a better sense of where you actually stand on Deleuze, on which Deleuze is your Deleuze.

Protevi writes:

“What Deleuze brings to the table is a wide-ranging materialist ontology, so that we can use the same basic concepts of self-organizing systems in both natural and social registers. This enables me to couple the “politic” to the “body,” to connect the social and the somatic. Basically, Deleuze lets us go “above” and “below” the subject; “above” to politics, and “below” to biology.

Cognitive science, even the 4EA schools, is still beholden to two unexamined presuppositions: first, that the unit of analysis is an abstract subject, "the" subject, one that is supposedly not marked in its development by social practices, such as gendering, that influence affective cognition, and second, that culture is a repository of positive, problem-solving aids that enable "the" subject.”


To summarize Protevi’s position, he believes subjectivities are influences from above by invasions from the social sphere and below by affect programs:

"Zahavi (2005) and Gallagher (2005), among others, distinguish agency and ownership of bodily actions. Ownership is the sense that my body is doing the action, while agency is the sense that I am in control of the action, that the action is willed. Both are aspects of subjectivity, though they may well be a matter of pre-reflective self-awareness rather than full-fledged objectifying self­-consciousness . But alongside subjectivity we need also to notice emergent assemblages that skip subjectivity and directly conjoin larger groups and the somatic. To follow this line of thought, let us accept that, in addition to non-subjective body control by reflexes, we can treat basic emotions as
modular “affect programs” (Griffiths 1997) that run the body’s hardware in the absence of conscious control. As with reflexes, ownership and agency are only retrospectively felt, at least in severe cases of rage in which the person “wakes up” to see the results of the destruction committed while he or she was in the grips of the rage. In this way we see two elements we need to take into account besides the notion of subjective agency: (1) that there is another sense of “agent” as non­subjective controller of bodily action, either reflex or basic emotion, and (2) that in some cases the military unit and non-subjective reflexes and basic emotions are intertwined in such a way as to bypass the soldiers’ subjectivity qua controlled intentional action. In these cases the practical agent of the act of killing is not the individual person or subject, but the emergent assemblage of military unit and non-subjective reflex or equally non-subjective “affect program.”

“A little more detail on the notion of a “rage agent” might be helpful at this point. Extreme cases of rage produce a modular agent or “affect program” that replaces the subject. Affect programs are emotional responses that are “complex, coordinated, and automated … unfold[ing] in this coordinated fashion without the need for conscious direction” (Griffiths 1997: 77). They are more than reflexes, but they are triggered well before any cortical processing can take place (though later cortical appraisals can dampen or accelerate the affect program).
In the berserker rage, the subject is overwhelmed by a chemical flood that triggers an evolutionarily primitive module which functions as an agent which runs the body’s hardware in its place.”"The vast majority of soldiers cannot kill in cold blood and need to kill in a desubjectified state, e.g., in reflexes, rages and panics.”

In the same way that Protevi treats bodily-affective aspects of behavior in terms of the non­intentional, unconscious influence of near-reflexive internal modular programs on a conscious subject , he models social influence via classical and operant forms of conditioning impinging upon the subject from ‘above the level of’ the subject’s normative aims. “….operant conditioning ….triggers an unconscious, automatic “read and react” mode in which soldiers fire individually on whatever human-shaped targets appear in their range of vision. Not a berserker rage, but a conditioned reflex. Here, the subject is bypassed by direct access of the military machine to reflexes embedded in the spinal cord of the soldier – as clear an instance of political physiology as one could imagine.”(Protevi 2004)

"Soldiers are acculturated to dehumanize the enemy by a series of racial slurs. This acculturation is especially powerful when accomplished through rhythmic chanting while running, for such entrainment weakens personal identity to produce a group subject". "Desensitization is merely an enabling factor for the role of classical and operant conditioning in modern training.

In addition to the affective aspect of heightened desensitization, simulation training constitutes a new cognitive group subject. The instant decision of “shoot / no shoot” is solicited by the presence or absence of key traits in the gestalt of the situation. Such instant decisions are more than reflexes, but operate at the very edge of the conscious awareness of the soldiers and involve complex subpersonal processes of threat perception (Correll et al 2006). In addition to this attenuation of individual agency, cutting-edge communication technology now allows soldiers to network together in real time. With this networking we see an extended / distributed cognition culminating in “topsight” for a commander who often doesn’t “command” in the sense of micro-manage but who observes and intervenes at critical points (Arquilla and Rondfeldt 2000: 22). In other words, contemporary team-building applications through real-time networking are a cybernetic application of video games that goes above the level of the subject (Fletcher 1999). In affective entrainment, instant decision-making, and cognitive “topsight” the soldiers produced by rhythmic chanting and intensive simulation training are nodes within a cybernetic organism, the fighting group, which maintains its functional integrity and tactical effectiveness by real-time communication technology. It’s the emergent group with the distributed decisions of the soldiers that is the cyborg here, operating at the thresholds of the individual subjectivities of the soldiers“

Do you agree with Protevi that this analysis of the ‘above’ into the political and the ‘below’ into the biological is compatible with Deleuze?

That was a good read, Baden. Thanks for sharing it.

You're welcome. :smile:

It's a bit hard for me to comment on the irresoluteness of people who are resolute online... Even guessing how frequently that is the case would be beyond me. However, much of what you've described again doesn't seem like an inner conflict. 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.

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.

In the real world... We can choose our friends and partners, including our friends at work. We'll gravitate towards people who share our values, and away from those who don't. Some may experience that their job is very different from their online experience, but I think the opposite is more common. If you're a liberal truck driver or a conservative university lecturer, I suppose things might be quite hard for you, but for the majority, you'll be around like-minded people.

Managing multiple identities has always been part of social life, and we've got many tools for dealing with the problems presented there. Many of them aren't productive, and some aren't so bad. But the modern era isn't exacerbating the problem of conflicting identities, it's allowing people to demonize and ignore conflicting perspectives.

We can hear the news from the source we want, be part of the circles we want, and present the image of ourselves we want. So how does that produce an environment of many identities that conflict? Don't we have an unprecedented ability to manufacture our environment both online and offline to suit our needs?

Here, technological progress, particularly through mass and social media, provides us with the “freedom” to tie ourselves in ever more convoluted psycho-social knots which present themselves to us as novel experiences or experimental or disposable identities, while having the same fundamentally stultifying character of limiting our ability to narrativize a coherent and unified self in a meaningful social context. — Baden

What are these sprawling, numerous, conflicting identities that paralyse people? Is the modern US characterised by group paralysis or mobilisation?

Social media has created new forms of political pressure, where small numbers of people who very actively condemn something can cast a glaring spotlight on something, which causes huge businesses or governments to react in ways they'd never have done for a small physical protest.

Either our social state is of increasing radicalisation and tribalism, or of "personal paralysis" and inner confusion. What sounds more typical for you? A conservative who listens to conservative news sources, uses conservative websites, has conservative friends, has a job with predominately conservative co-workers, lives in a town that's predominately conservative, or just some odd mismatch of random belief systems all over the place?

Facebook is a personalised page with intimate details of your personal life and thoughts. Twitter allows you to follow people and see content from those you like and/or think like you, it forms echo chambers. They're not suited for pivoting from one identity to the next, they entrench users.

Is social media exacerbating conformity, herd mentality and radicalisation, or the proliferation of endless conflicting identities? Are they not mutually exclusive? Or am I missing the point in taking things in this direction?

Possibly. But do you think this is what is happening in practice? 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

Your questions suggest some shared understanding/assessment about what constitutes "becoming deeper, more thoughtful and more in touch with themselves" or "character, intelligence and creativity" or "unhappiness". As well as a share understanding of the verifiability of trends correlating certain social factors (e.g. "commodification" of identities) with "mental illness, unhappiness, anxiety and drug use". Both suggestions would require further elaboration to become more rationally challenging.

Anyways, there are some other questions your questions suggest in turn: 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. Indeed, even self-interest, money, or power can themselves constitute identities to be consumed by those who possess them.

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.