Harmful stimulation can never evade detection. Such a stimulus would simply go unnoticed and have no effect on our thinking or feeling. — Joshs

This seems to show that Kelly is fundamentally wrong, if you've made an accurate representation. The most formative period in a person's life is before the person knows what's going on. In a sense, the adults are taking advantage of the children by feeding them stimulus which directs them without them knowing that they are being directed. And some semblance of this persists through an individual's life. We are sometimes directed by others toward ends which we are unaware of, and we are even unaware of being directed. This is what allows for the reality of deception, along with milder forms, like subliminal advertising.

But at that early time, in a child's life, which I would argue is the most formative time, the child has no choice in the matter, and one's basic modes of thinking and feeling are being intentionally manipulated by "educators", and whatever stimulus the "educators" let in. By the time the child recognizes that there is purpose to what the adults are doing, such that the child might resist, or move to choose one's own influences, it is already too late to change what has been instilled.

The basic principle here is that the person must learn how to detect influencing stimulus prior to being able to choose which stimuli to accept. And this is such an extremely difficult task that even the most highly trained philosophers do not develop an enviable capacity.

What seems interesting is that as our society becomes more and more conscious and aware of the presence and potential harmfulness of influencing stimuli, the priority in teaching the children will be increasingly directed toward detection and judgement. This will create a base level problem, as it is directly adverse to the nature of teaching, the fundamental hypocrisy of teaching one not to be able to be taught, like teaching skepticism. The result as Baden implies, may be good, may be bad, who knows.

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

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

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

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

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

Zizek makes a similar point here:

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

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

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

. The lie migrates from the interpersonal to the intrapersonal. When we are forced to wear a mask, we tend to confabulate personal agency into a process of being dominated. We become the mask in the process of imagining ourselves separate from it. The inner lie, the gap we create between our personal narrative and our true social position allows the mask to remain and operate. And the more effective the lie, the better it may operate. — Baden

This view seems to rely on agency as knowledge. But this misses the pragmatic nature of interpersonal relations, which have to do primarily not with epistemological knowing but with partially shared discursive practices. My agency is expressed and defined in terms of how, through social interchange, I continually establish and re-establish what is at stake and at issue for me in partially shared
circumstances of interchange with others. Personal
agency can never be determined apart from the social embedded practices which form it, but neither can agency disappear into or simply be ‘dominated’ by social discursive structures, since practices are never completely shared. Each participant subtly redefines what is at issue in the ‘dominant’ performances of the group.

the person must learn how to detect influencing stimulus prior to being able to choose which stimuli to accept. And this is such an extremely difficult task that even the most highly trained philosophers do not develop an enviable capacity. — Metaphysician Undercover

There is no such thing as a ‘stimulus’ in some
objective sense, as if there were packets of generic meaning floating around the universe just waiting to invade our psyches like a virus. What constitutes a stimulus for you is different than what constitutes one for me, even if we are in the same room at the same time. We are not passive Lockean blank slates being impressed upon by the external Givens, as Skinner had it, but active construers and interpreters while still in the womb.

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

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

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

But who is the “true” me here?

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

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

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

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

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

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

But who is the “true” me here? — Baden

I would describe your true identity to be a pragmatic progressive liberal who pretends to be a conservative in order for reward. In the case described, your reward was to keep your job, implicating the economy. Another case might be to pretend your wife's burnt muffins taste good. What you're not is an ideologue, damning the torpedoes for the sake of an idealized self. That you are a nuanced self means you live in the real world, but it doesn't mean you are a suppressed self.

Do social influences define the self? Obviously. That type of swimmer I am is defined by the waters I swim in.

But I think your question is whether the current tides are making us worse swimmers, the type none of us want to be, tearing away at our souls, crushing our swimmer spirits. As in, we all just want to swim freely in the open sea, but the current influences are making it worse on us, and even making us think we're better for these influences. This is just so much angst against the current condition isn't it?

You've asked a few posters if they agreed that the current conditions are worsening our ability to express our true selves, and you've gotten mixed results. My question is whether the bulk of those who have bought into current days' society's rewards eventually die feeling duped or whether they feel themselves to have lived fulfilled lives. If it's the latter, then the irony is that it's you where the angst lies, not those you attempted to save from angst. You have all these kids running off the side of the cliff, tumbling, falling, busting themselves up, yet they are all convinced they are having the time of their lives, and you, the catcher in the rye, screaming for them to stop because you have a better understanding of the cliff, are the only one upset.

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. — Baden

But it seems to me that not only what the dimensions, magnitude and form of the problem are , but whether there is seen to be a problem at all, is determined by the theoretical framework we embrace. In other words, the theory comes first, not after a problem has been identified. For instance, Zizek believes the modern world is sick, due to the hegemonic dominance of Capitalism. In this thinking he is joined by most of the members of the Frankfurt school. The sickness they see in the world is inseparable from their reliance on the notion of alienated subjectivity.

I think Habermas was among the first to break away from this pessimistic stance. His communicative action theory, although retaining the notion of subjectivity, saw discourse as motivated in the direction of rational agreement rather than domination and deception.

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

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”. A — Baden

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

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

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

So societal influences degrade the self, so you think about those things for intellectual development, which would arguably help you develop your self, which makes the destructive forces of the masses your constructive force.

I kind of like this. If I could spend my life in intellectual amusement observing the folly of the underclass, I would have a benefit otherwise unrealized if it weren't for that helpful amusing folly.

This is good.

It's like how I should be thankful for the poor for giving me the satisfaction of having someone to feed.

Yeah, I know you've not bought into all this, but I was just running with the idea of gaining value from interesting opportunities for thought even when what I was thinking about was how someone else was fucking up.

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

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

There in no such thing as increased human flourishing, as though there were one objective linear scale of meaurement. For one thing, the understanding of what flourishing entails ,how and why it is important, changes from era to era, culture to culture and person to person. — Joshs

I think this is very simply wrong. There are conditions under which all people will either be happy or unhappy. No one wants to be a slave, for example,

I doubt anyone is really happy when being exploited by others, or for that matter, when exploiting others. There is undoubtedly a basellne human nature which gets moulded by cultural influences, but cannot be negated by them.

What constitutes a stimulus for you is different than what constitutes one for me, even if we are in the same room at the same time. — Joshs

I disagree with the generality of this statement. It is very clear, that many things will stimulate numerous people. So many things constitute stimuli for many people. And, since your claim was that stimuli could "simply go unnoticed and have no effect on our thinking or feeling", you have no premise for such a statement.

You want to use "stimulus" in two different ways. Your prior use was such that a stimulus could have no affect on a person whatsoever. But now when I called you on that, you want to say that this does not qualify as "stimulus" for the person.

How do you account for that type of "stimulus" which appears to have no affect on a person, but really does? And when I say "appears to have no affect", I mean it appears this way to everyone involved, both observers and the individual involved. Once you accept the reality, that stimulus can affect a person, and have a real affect on one's thinking or feeling, without that person even noticing oneself to be affected, then you'll understand what I am talking about.

Which consequences are worth lying to avoid? What rewards are worth lying to get? And who decides?

Humans are capable of - and perhaps masters of - calculation, and recognising when lying is preferable to telling the truth. Perhaps it's for self-gain, perhaps it's to cultivate an image or maybe it's just to cheer up a friend. "Domination" is a narrow lens to look at this, and it's controversial, I could go down the road of challenging this description but I don't think it would lead anywhere. The particulars of this situation have a clear power dynamic, but it's not like the powerful have no use for lying or masks, instead, masks have utility in basically every and any social circumstance.

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

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

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

It's also odd to say this is worse today than before. In the Soviet Union, for example, society was founded upon telling lies. You'd lie about how much work you did, you'd lie about your beliefs, you'd lie about where you came from, lie about anything you needed to in order to survive. Most societies didn't have freedom of speech, few rights even existed, and those higher up the hierarchy could act with greater severity and quite arbitrarily. The boss can fire you or harass you, which sucks, but in the past, you could be killed, which seems significantly worse.

I think this is very simply wrong. There are conditions under which all people will either be happy or unhappy. No one wants to be a slave, for example,

I doubt anyone is really happy when being exploited by others, or for that matter, when exploiting others. There is undoubtedly a basellne human nature which g — Janus

Maybe no one wants to be a slave, and the concept of slavery is today universally condemned as morally wrong, but that is a recent development. For most of human history slavery was common and accepted , and I wager that if you were to ask slaves in periods of history when slavery was widely present if they believed that there were situations under which they themselves would be morally just in owning a slave they would say yes.
Many slave owners sincerely believed slavery was not only just but benefitted the slave. So the idea that slavery is immoral and abusive exploitation that prevents overall
human flourishing is not a universal of history or human nature, but a contingent product of modern culture. I agree that humans have always desired ‘flourishing’ but this is like saying we want what we want.
What flourishing or exploitation means is relative to a value system, and value systems change. I think what evolves is our ability to relate to the ways of others different from ourselves and this allows flourishing to be shared more widely among different segments of culture.

But who is the “true” me here? — Baden

I believe this is the issue of "authenticity", which Heidegger dealt with to a considerable extent. You might think that the individual can look at oneself, and answer this question quite simply, who is the true me. The traditional sense of "authenticity" would have one looking for one's true identity or self. However, I believe that according to Heidegger we are fundamentally inauthentic. So this presents a sort of paradox, to find the true self is to find inauthenticity, and this is probably why we are prone to multiple identities. We cannot say that one or another is the true identity, because it's like asking what are you doing with your life, when the person is involved in many projects.

I believe that Heidegger holds that a human person has the capacity to be authentic, but this requires an understanding of one's temporal existence. We look to the future as possibilities for projection. We look at the past as having been thrown. So at the present we are in a sort of condition of falling, but not free-fall, because the reality of future possibilities. And when we look at the past as thrownness, what has put us in the present condition of falling, we must apprehend it as an intentional projection. From this we grasp the reality of past mistakes.

For most of human history slavery was common and accepted , and I wager that if you were to ask slaves in periods of history when slavery was widely present if they believed that there were situations under which they themselves would be morally just in owning a slave they would say yes. — Joshs

That a social relationship or arrangement might be acceptable to people on account of the fact that they have 'bought the narrative" does not preclude its harmfulness. If the narrative was bought it was bought because of people being conditioned by overarching ideologies, finding themselves lacking the resources to critique.

So, that some slaves may have thought slavery was part of the natural or divine order of things, does not entail that the slaves (or the masters) were happy about it. If slavery were a good, an aid to human flourishing, then why would it ever be abolished? .

Many slave owners sincerely believed slavery was not only just but benefitted the slave. So the idea that slavery is immoral and abusive exploitation that prevents overall
human flourishing is not a universal of history or human nature, but a contingent product of modern culture. I agree that humans have always desired ‘flourishing’ but this is like saying we want what we want. — Joshs

Perhaps some slave owners did sincerely (although how would we know?) believe that slavery benefited the slave, but if true that would have been a rationalization that ignored the reality of the conditions of slavery, and as such it has no bearing on the question as to what, in the most general sense, contributes to human flourishing and what detracts from it.

Today we still have slavery, albeit of a different kind, endorsed by modern popular culture; consumerism is a form of slavery, wage slavery its sibling.

What flourishing or exploitation means is relative to a value system, and value systems change. I think what evolves is our ability to relate to the ways of others different from ourselves and this allows flourishing to be shared more widely among different segments of culture. — Joshs

I don't think that what flourishing or exploitation consist in is merely relative to a value system. Have you ever seen mistreated animals living in appalling conditions of cruelty and neglect? We can see that they are miserable, that they are not flourishing, so I don't buy this idea of relativity. It is compassion or its lack that determines whether one can see whether others are flourishing or not.

I don't buy this idea of relativity. It is compassion or its lack that determines whether one can see whether others are flourishing or not. — Janus

You are a moral realist. What remains to be determined is whether your universalism concerning this aspect of human nature grounds itself on an evolutionarily adaptive instinct or a metaphysical a priori. If the former , do you agree with psychologists like Jonathan Haidt that there are a number of innate moral foundations? He specifies at least 5:

Care/harm
Fairness/cheating
Loyalty/betrayal
Authority/subversion
Sanctity/degradation.

But the catch is that while each of us has all of these , we have them in differing concentrations. The result is a relativism and political polarization over values.

Zizek believes the modern world is sick, due to the hegemonic dominance of Capitalism. In this thinking he is joined by most of the members of the Frankfurt school. The sickness they see in the world is inseparable from their reliance on the notion of alienated subjectivity. — Joshs

I have encountered the Frankfurt School only later in life. It is pessimistic - I do wonder how many potentially productive lives were derailed by One Dimensional Man - but I still think that elements of their critique are spot on. I'm particularly thinking of the way that 'the establishment' (online and other entertainment media, advertising, social commentary, mass economics) overtly or covertly encourages ways of being that benefit capitalism by the stimulation of desire (New! Sensational! Don't miss out!)

Saying that I also recognise that liberal culture provide far more opportunity for dissent and non-conformity than did any of the forms of Marxist culture that we have seen so far, so I take any form of Leftist critique with the appropriate grain of salt. But I still think they represent a perspective that needs to be heard. (I wonder whatever became of the critics of 'corporatism'?)

You are a moral realist. What remains to be determined is whether your universalism concerning this aspect of human nature grounds itself on an evolutionarily adaptive instinct or a metaphysical a priori. If the former , do you agree with psychologists like Jonathan Haidt that there are a number of innate moral foundations? He specifies at least 5:

Care/harm
Fairness/cheating
Loyalty/betrayal
Authority/subversion
Sanctity/degradation.

But the catch is that while each of us has all of these , we have them in differing concentrations. The result is a relativism and political polarization over values. — Joshs

I don't consider myself to be a moral realist. I think of morality as a sense, and as you note people have this sense, with its accompanying "moral foundations" that you listed there, in "different concentrations" which I take you mean in different degrees, but also in different combinations.

I don't think these differences result in "a relativism" though, since care, fairness, loyalty, authority and sanctity are arguably generally admired, while harm, cheating, betrayal, subversion and degradation are generally deprecated, in most if not all human societies, for very pragmatic, but I think also aesthetic, and even compassionate, reasons.

Authority and sanctity are the principles which I think allow of the greatest range of interpretations and thus of some relativism.

I don't see human morality as inherently different to the kinds of normative behaviors that can be observed in social animal communities.

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. — Joshs

No, it is not. The figures of Nietzsche’s Dionisius, Foucault’s Baudelaire, and Deleuze’s Proust and Kafka have not returned the identity of the same. On the contrary, their subject of return has been becoming. The author himself, a figure of a character, literary, conceptual, and aesthetic components of the work compose a singular multiplicity. The work and the producer have simultaneously become and effaced; they have acquired the temporary, fragile, self-sufficient modus of existence. “Eternal return affects only the new, what is produced under the condition of default and by intermediary of metamorphosis. However, it causes neither condition nor agent to return on the contrary it repudiates these and expels them with all its centrifugal force. It constitutes the autonomy of the product. It is repetition by excess which leaves nothing of the becoming-equal”. (Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, p 90).

I hypothesize that , of the many readings of Deleuze , you resonate with those that I find in writers like Massumi , Protevi and Delanda. — Joshs

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

I used to read Massumi’s books. He is interested in the problem of our autonomy and subjectivity that we deal with in this thread. But, as far as I know, he has not solved it yet.” The call to go beyond ideology is a call to attend to the novelty of the situation, and to find ways of conceptualizing the current mode of operation of the capitalist process, and the new kinds of spin-off effects it produces, that can grasp its novelty and complexity. How can a relational approach give us a new understanding of capitalism as a self-proliferating What are the new figures of that relation? Is the figuring still a question of personification? If so, is identification still at the basis of the figures of capital? What does it mean to ‘personify’ a derivative? A credit default swap?” (Massumi, ‘Politics of affect’, p 90)
Regarding DeLanda, I think that Ian Buchanan’s critique of his ‘assemblage theory’ is entirely appropriate.
Also, I looked through Protevi’s book. His themes, style, and vocabulary are very close to Deleuze and Guattari’s. Yet, it seems that he cannot grasp the singularity of our current situation. He analyzes limited domains and cuts off a few essential dimensions of the Deleuzian conceptual framework. I will clarify my position by applying Deleuze and Guattari’s perspectives on writing. “Subtract the unique from the multiplicity to be constituted, write at n -1 dimensions, in the middle of things… A system of this kind can be called a rhizome… There is no longer a tripartite division between a field of reality (the world) and a field of representation (the book) and a field of subjectivity (the author). One cannot write sufficiently in the name of an outside”. (Deleuze and Guattari, ‘A thousand plateaus’, p 23). Thus, Protevi does not write at n – 1 dimensions. To add one more dimension of the unique, higher principle of writing means to follow a pre-given, pre-calculated hermeneutic, interpretative, scientific or transcendental method or paradigm. It results in the return of the same, of the identity of the supreme instance. Indeed, D& G’s view on writing ensues from Deleuze’s interpretation of internal return. For them, to write means to deconstruct themselves to achieve the production of the new.

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

Deconstruction of subjectivity as a way of existence and the production of the new was inherited by Foucault, Deleuze, and Derrida from Nietzcshe. I discussed one of its modes in my previous post. Are these strategies still in effect? Have the leading postmodernist thinkers' conceptual frameworks and practices remained relevant in our situation? Today, it looks like the problem of the construction of an autonomous self–affirming subjectivity, the resistant self-positioning existence, has not been rigorously articulated and resolved yet. As Deleuze put it in 'Postscript on the societies of control': "Many young people strangely boast of being 'motivated,' they re-request apprenticeship and permanent training. It is up to them to discover what they are being made to serve, just as their elders discovered, not without difficulty, the telos of the disciplines. The coils of a serpent are even more complex than the burrows of a molehill."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Note the contradiction btw between this and:

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

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

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

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

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

What is instinctive is just what is not calculated. — Baden

I disagree, humans are instinctively calculative, Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in the Everyday Life is a book I could recommend on this topic.

To be politically calculative is ingrained into our human nature and operates consciously and subconsciously. The primary benefit of this subconscious element is the importance of appearing non-calculative. You can only trust a calculative person to act in their best interests, and that doesn't inspire trust, and we're instinctively aware of that. The book I recommended does go into it, but even just observationally, there's incongruence between what people say and do that's only explained this way.

There's a learned element as well, of course, we learn quickly as very young children the need for social calculation. To play by the rules, to share, and to do things that help cultivate friendships and make us likeable. We're punished for unacceptable social behaviour by authority and the by social repercussions. I'm autistic, so I'm actually pretty awful at this, and I have to do a lot of this calculation consciously because it doesn't happen as automatically. Autism has potential value as a way to look at for contrast from what's normal. The complexity people normally navigate with such ease is taken for granted and becomes invisible, but when someone can't do it well, it stands out.

But what I've presented relates to the operation of a more generalised context where “lying” is proposed as a defence against the domination inherent in being on the wrong side of an asymmetric power relation that establishes itself as a mode of life — Baden

I've already said this, but deception works in the exact same way without the power dynamic. The power dynamic is incidental. The boss definitely also wears masks and is likely just as deceptive and calculative as PC worker.

I struggle to see any merit in challenging your interpretations, because I don't see how any of these points relate back to any greater argument or your OP. Western capitalism is less tyrannical than what preceded it or what exists elsewhere, and western democracies are less tyrannical than alternatives.

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

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

Considering how "the truth" can change so much based on who gets to describe it, I'm unsure of what you're trying to say.

But what you can’t deny is how the effort at deception functions socially, its impotence, and its even facilitative role in a power dynamic that maintains the employee as a tool of the boss and the company machinery in which they are embedded. — Baden

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I'm not suggesting liberal democracies are worse places to live than theocracies, dictatorships or other tyrannies. — Baden

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

And I think the idea we can think our way out of being controlled through deception where such deception primarily functions to make us more comfortable being controlled is contradictory. — Baden

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

It seems appropriate to put a link here to another discussion where i have been pontificating on identity at some length. It's a very long thread, I'm afraid.

But who is the “true” me here? — Baden

My answer to this question is that you are the sum your relationships to society. To understand social capitalism, I think it is useful to look at the bankrupts. If 'influencers' are the social capital millionaires, then the bankrupts are the sufferers from all the new psychological illnesses - gender dysphoria, anorexia, bulimia, depression. One might say, looking at the physical relations of these illnesses, that the virtual world is exploiting the body in the same way that modern society has been exploiting the environment. And the losers are suffering from lethal mental waste being dumped on them.

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