This is now a serious response, Baden: — god must be atheist

Uh, oh...

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

OK, although part of what identities do is create needs and shape psyches.

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

Treating symptoms or curing the disease?

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

I don’t accept this. Having significant inner conflicts doesn’t necessarily equate to being suicidal not to mention successfully suicidal.

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

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. It takes imagination, strength, self-confidence, etc to pit yourself against a system that will label you a failure if you don’t play the game, regardless of what the game ultimately does to you. And it’s a process that by its nature occurs over a period of time and doesn’t advertise its downsides.

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

In a way you’re making my point for me here.

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

Yes, as I mentioned before, there’s always the danger of projecting our own psychologies onto the subject of analysis. I wouldn’t blame anyone for ignoring this on the basis that they feel perfectly happy and balanced with the way things are. And I am not condemning all forms of consumption.

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 you’re making my point for me again here, to be honest.

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

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. :smile:

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

I believe that. But to blame the lifestyle of nearly half of the entire globe and the society that supports that structure and lifestyle, because you were in the wrong job?? Yes, people do that. People do condemn Catholicism because of first- or manieth-hand news events of priests abusing children. People also hate minorities, and if something bad happens because of the action of a member of a visible minority group to them, then they will REALLY hate them. People who keep flunking at school or get beaten up by a thug every day in front of the girls' change room, hate school and hate every being that is inside that school.

You hate society because you were forced into making money while you rather would have poed poetry or swam with dolphins. I mean, I am not surprised, but I don't find your reaction all that fair. There are people in this world on whom the investor hat looks good, much like there are people who get robbed by a gang of Puerto Ricans and they will still go on demonstrations which demand to stop police brutality against Puerto Ricans. And most people do enjoy school... high school is cool... well, okay, in the first two weeks of the school year when they get back in September.

Your article was convincing to you, but not to others who do not feel that their personal lot in life is universally similar to everyone else's.

I don't for one moment deny that your sentiments were true. You described your experience, and that was a very insightful description. It is not applicable to all other people, though.

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

Postmodernists tend to lose themselves in abstraction to the extent they end up writing a kind of convoluted fiction that's very difficult to apply to the realities of life. Baudrillard is on the extreme end of the spectrum here. There's something in what he says and he writes very seductively but in another sense, you'd have to be jacked up on acid to take him seriously. McLuhan and Debord are better. But as I've mentioned, I feel most in tune with Frankfurt school thinkers, e.g. Marcuse, who are fairly down to earth.

No, I've been thinking along these lines since my twenties, far before I had that position. And I'm presenting a critique which I hope amounts to a little more than "hating on society". 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.

My subterfuge has failed. I thought I might drag you in but I fully understand you have more on your plate and the clarification is appreciated.

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

Yes, I am sorry this is not a perfect world, too. And the reason they don't reach their inner potential is not their inner turmoil, but a fiercely competitive environment.

I think you’re making my point for me again here, to be honest. — Baden

You're right. With that paragraph I strengthened your position as well as mine. It is a flip-flop switch; some say potato, some say patahto. Is the entertainment bad in a consumer society, because it makes people not entertain themselves in a different way, or is entertainment good, because it is good thing to be entertained.

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

Well... child mortality would be around 80%, famine and pestilence would wipe out a large chunk of the population on a regular basis, Visigoths and Vikings would slaughter the men, enslave their children and make concubines of their women... or else we work 8-9-10 hours a day and put up with that, in order to have good medicine, stability, law and order. And outside entertainment.

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

Guilt is a pain that forces the dragon to peer into a mirror and see itself. In Gnostic myths, this the gift of Sophia. Before she came, there was murder and insanity, but it all went on in darkness. Sophia split the psyche into actor and audience.

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

Fair enough.

I would like to mention the role of fantasy and the inner child in the role of conflicting identities. It seems that the sublimination of fantasy occurs more often than not nowadays than at any period of human history...

So, one can find a decent amount of joy in this parable of the subject subjected.

It's an interesting line. Can you elaborate on what you mean a bit? It's might gel with some of my own ideas.

@Wayfarer

Speaking of Marcuse, from "One Dimensional Man", which I'm currently reading, a salient quote I just came across:

"If mass communications blend together harmoniously and even unnoticeably, art, religion, and philosophy with commercials, they bring these realms of culture to their common denominator - the commodity form. The music of the soul is also the music of salesmanship. Exchange value not truth value counts. On it centres the rationality of the status quo, and all alien rationality is bent to it."

Do you watch commercials?

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.

No, I don't. How about you?

You can also find the story of Pinocchio as an interesting parable somewhat related to this thread.

No, I don't. How about you? — Baden

Only accidentally. I don't have a tv. I don't do Facebook or Twitter. I might be out of touch.

Can relate to that. I've never owned a TV and don't do social media either.

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

Let me try to relate this (clumsily) to my thesis via some quick thoughts concerning art vs entertainment.

So, it’s easy to see how the structure of modern society alienates us from art. Art to have value must negate, must probe, attack, bring hidden conflicts into the light, it should not be entirely comfortable because its function cannot simply be to reflect the status quo in a way that maintains it. And if it requires of us some cognitive effort to meet its demands all the better: it's often through this deliberate focusing of energy that its transmission is facilitated. This does not mean that art cannot be entertaining but that that is not its function. Its function is to edify and to open us up, what pleasure or discomfort accompanies that process is not an end in itself but incidental to a more important end.

Pure entertainment, including perhaps that of identity fantasies such as those you mentioned, tends to have the opposite function, not of uncovering, but of covering up, not of challenging, but of reassuring. Not of placing a demand on us, but of removing all demands. Its pleasure is its success and a lack of pleasure is its failure. It is entirely well suited to GMBA’s hypothetical worker because it facilitates the processing of stresses that would make their job unbearable if left unchecked. So, its function is simply that nothing changes. It affirms not negates as one would expect an ideological agent of the current system to do.

So, entertainment allows for fantastical identities to be quickly processed and to obscure through simple opposition our identification with our drudgery. But the drudgery and the fantastical identity, or the result of its processing, are just two sides of the same social coin. The fantastical identity presenting as such negates its own reality and affirms the reality of its opposite but does so in such a way as to obscure the process of its own self-destruction. What is presented obviously as fantasy and narrativized as such is narrativized under a more dominant identity that dictates we can never be what we want to be, and as that process is experienced as pleasurable, or at least comparatively so, for this is how our libidinal energies are organized through social submission, it is constantly reinforced.

Another way of putting this is that art should open a space in us for novel identities that are confrontational but not fantastical in a sense that ultimately separates their realization from us. Pure entertainment maintains the separation by feeding us identity narratives that, by their nature, are subservient to a narrative of social submission, and are therefore inherently non-confrontational and unstable but self-reinforcing in so far as their processing is experienced as pleasurable or a distraction from the unpleasant realities of our social domination.

I think you can be more direct and precise by stating the holidays we engage in and religion like Christmas, the new years resolutions we make, and Halloween, or Guy Fawkes Night, as typical examples of subliminal of fantasy in our daily lives and in our calendar years.

The Internet organization called Anonymous is an interesting case in point.

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

Yes, I understand this too. And I have certainly watched this process with people going to jail who bring out a particular person to survive in there only to find they have been taken over by it forever. I've watched some basically very sweet people become monsters. Cue the inevitable Nietzsche quote. As for myself - I'm not aware of any selves other than one which doesn't swear and one which does... The Polite Company Persona.

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

I think that the Marcusian model , with its reliance on libidinal energy and it’s notions of social conditioning, is too reductive and monolithic. It forces us to see ourselves as pushed and pulled and shaped by the same abstract encapsulated forces within ourselves and in our cultural environment.
It misses the fact that there is no such thing as consumer society or late capitalism. Not as some singular monolithic entity. There are many subcultures within the larger culture, and many ways in which economic, political and social aspects of culture interaffect each other. We dont all live within the same circumstances of culture because we don’t interpret the meanings of our interactions with others in the same way. Our identities aren’t formed by culture in a one-way manner , they are formed by the way we integrate and interpret culture on the basis of our own history and worldview. The way we adapt our behavior to the different propel in our lives is not a question of putting on an identity but rather of playing a role. To play a role with respect to family , friends and others is to make use of our understanding of how others see us. It is to anticipate how others will react to us on the basis of this understanding. The role we play with others is shaped by our sense of the regard others have for us. The inner conflict you are talking about takes place when others , or ourselves, act in ways that we can’t make sense of, that confuses us. In other words, it is when our role construal breaks down and ceases to be an effective guide for understanding our relationships with others that we experience conflict.

In general , people today are more psychologically self-aware than in previous eras. How well they adapt to stress and change is not a function of their exposure to some monolithic label like ‘consumer culture’ or ‘capitalism’ but the permeability of their ways of construing themselves and others.

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

Thanks for the reply. My opinion is that modern consumer society facilitates (encourages) playing multiple roles and thus provides opportunities unthinkable to previous generations. I recall as a child living in rural Alabama seeing farmers trudging behind a mule forcing a plow through the dirt, trapped in their limited worlds. I don't see consumer society as dystopian, but as liberating.

I’m not sure how to respond to this. On the one hand I want to defend my thesis (I’m pretty sure I’m supposed to do that :smile: ). On the other hand it feels odd to try to convince those whose experience of society is positive, and who can put a plausible positive theoretical spin on how it functions, that it’s actually destructive in fundamental ways. My instinct is more to shake your hand and say, “Well done!” Whether or not society is basically shit, you’re managing to orient yourself in a constructive way towards it and part of that constructive orientation is focusing on the opportunities it presents rather than its limitations. I want to be the guy who spreads joy not misery. I run a chocolate factory ffs. But I must defend my thesis...

Another problem with defending my thesis is it’s hard to falsify. I can easily work your objections into my position by pointing out that reactions such as yours are exactly what one would expect if the process of ideological identity formation, which obscures itself in favour of social reproduction at the expense of a deeper experience of self, worked. The vast majority of people are supposed to experience some level of happiness with the way things are and not believe in the practical reality or even necessity of alternatives. Otherwise, the system wouldn’t be able to efficiently reproduce itself. And so I just highlight the point I made in the OP about the social immune system, et voilà your objections are neutralised.

Convenient, but not very convincing. So, how do we get around that to something more objective that might form the foundation of a more fruitful discussion? E.g. might present opportunities for falsifying the idea that the quality of human experience tends to be eroded by the advancement of consumerist thinking and the increased prevalence of social engineering technologies, particularly in relation to the commodification of identities. One way to start might be if you addressed my former questions. I am curious to know if you think, regardless of your personal experience or theoretical convictions, that modern societies are progressing in a manner conducive to increased human flourishing and what objective metrics you consider relevant in determining that. My questions present some possibilities but feel free to present your own.

There is some truth in this, for sure.

That's interesting. Can you tell me a bit more? Is this to do with identities of work or etc? — Baden

It does have something to do with work. My life in the trades has been an interaction with stuff and learning or not learning how to be better at shaping it. That has happened in the context of production as exchange that you refer to but there is a personal element where the good and bad decisions pile up for me to notice for myself rather than only being a value translatable to a social currency.

On a more general level, there is a way we are stuck with ourselves that is not fully represented by mapping the roles we play. I am not suggesting the opposite approach of viewing experience only as an isolated event. I don't know what sufficient reason addresses the difference. I view the difference to be self-evident.

Great topic and OP!

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

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

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:
I added bolding on some words for emphasis.

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...

What do you think?

Sub specie aeternitatis.

Btw, I agree with your thesis.

Ok.

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

Thanks for the reference! I agree in that it is only from an analysis of the social that a coherent concept of self can arise. I don’t see how we get at any kind of purely metaphysical self. To me the self (socially named as a "person") is a social atom, the most discrete functioning social unit. As long as you are a functioning social unit (e.g. physically discrete and linguistically located) and you can make a stable and clear judgement on who you are in contradistinction to others, you qualify as a self under my conception. So, a self is a set of identities that may work well together or may not, but that can at least coherently locate itself in its social structure (i.e. among other selves).

To further clarify, we can make an analogy between a self and a word, which locates itself within language due to having meaning in that language and as such is a discrete functioning unit within it. Selves, similarly, are discrete physical units that have social meaning and recognize themselves as selves through the lens of the social. Being discrete physically (in a loose sense, e.g. conjoined twins are not fully discrete physically but can qualify as selves) is then a necessary but not sufficient condition of selfhood. We do not qualify as selves when we are born nor when we’re insane. In the former case, we have yet to be integrated (through language) into the world of selves and in the latter we have disintegrated the self – we no longer are a functioning social unit and have no stable or clear judgement on who we are (that does not preclude having an identity just that the identity cannot be stable because it is not reconciled socially – the woman who believes she is Joan of Arc has an identity but can never function as that self (in our society) because (our) society rejects her self-judgement).

Note in the previous example, there is no “metaphysical” basis for deciding whether the woman who believes she is Joan of Arc is a self. The deciding factor is her capacity for functioning as a social unit with a socially reconciled clear and stable self-judgement. In a society whose culture considered it possible for historical figures to reincarnate, for example, our insane woman might no longer be insane, she could be a self, she could be Joan of Arc.