Earl R Smith II, PhD
Chief@Dr-Smith.info
Dr-Smith.info
According to many modernist social theorists, questions of identity center on an ‘authentic knowledge’ of the ‘self’ and of the shelves of others. It was generally accepted that there was a unique core within each person which formed the very foundation of who they ‘were’. According to these theories, most of that foundation was laid down during the early or ‘formative’ years. Those early ossifications constituted the fountainhead from which the mature individual arose.
Accepted theory very often described the journey to adulthood in terms of a distancing or estrangement from the ‘authentic self’ that had come into being during early childhood. The metaphor of a constructed and presented mask was often used to describe this process of distancing. Adults were said to be prone to construct a synthetic version of their ‘selves’ – a face that they presented to the world – one which they saw as more acceptable – effective – and more seductive in a sense.
At some point – whether as a result of an epiphany or disenchantment with keeping up appearances – so the theory goes, the individual would turn inward and seek to reunite with their ‘authentic self’. This inward turn and resulting reconnection with the ‘true self’ was the basis of the idea of being ‘born again’ – once from your mother and a second time from the inauthentic world that you have constructed and falsely accepted as real. According to accepted theories, this journey back to the core was one that every individual had to make in order to become a person in their own right.
Much of the self-help literature of the last decades is focused on helping with that journey. With the idea of a guide or guiding light center stage, many authors produced volumes designed to help people towards the path which would lead them to a reunion with their ‘authentic self’.
But these theories have seemed to have a false ring to them lately. The first decade of the 21st century seems to have solidified a radical shift in reality – a true paradigm shift – which turns this approach to questions of identity on its head.
The rise of the virtual world – the advance of the information age – and the march of technology with the new capabilities that it brings – the death of traditional societies – the post-modernist tendencies toward devaluation of all values and sanctification of some – have resulted in a shift of the priority balance between the ‘authentic’ and ‘virtual’ definitions of reality. In fact, the very term ‘authentic’ as been appropriated by the virtual world and re-manufactured into an entirely new and counter intuitive meaning – counter intuitive, that is to say, from the perspective of the authentic as defined in the modernist tradition. That which is considered authentic within the post-modernist world is the very definition of inauthentic in the modernist one.
There are some echoes of modernity which remain in this new – post-modernist – definition of authenticity. There are also echoes of the concerns that drove the efforts to drop the masks and return to a more authentic relationship with self. In fact, authenticity (in its particular incarnation) is venerated in both the modernist and post-modernist perspectives as the holy grail of personal growth and fulfillment of one’s destiny. The words used can sound eerily similar while their meanings are jarringly different.
Perhaps an example might serve to highlight what I am getting at. The whole idea of identity theft comes to mind. In modernist terms, identity theft was defined in terms of the self-induced or society-induced estrangement from self that modern society forced on the forming of adult – either you gave your identity away in some arrangement with the world as you found it or it took that identity in exchange for your continual participation in society. But at some point, you could complete the journey back – reunite – reclaim your true self. So, the struggle that every human was engaged in was one to reclaim that identity and become their authentic self.
But the virtual world has successfully promulgated a different set of ground rules – an entirely new definition of what constitutes identity – one that relates to the residual, cumulative detritus of the life of an individual. Personal identity is linked to an avatar – a synthetic and entirely digital version of a person – which is taken by the post-modernist world to be that person. Like modernist society, post-modernist society insists that an individual ‘create’ a synthetic self which ‘stands in’ for the real person in virtual space. But the post-modernist world goes one incredible step further – it then insists that this virtual avatar is the authentic self of the person and that the details of the actual person are irrelevant or simply inconvenient distractions. In post-modernist lingo, “Sure you can set out on a journey of self-discovery. Go ahead and ‘find yourself’. Just remember that none of that really matters when it comes to your identity – who you really are. And, by the way, don’t bother trying to recover your virtual identity – you don’t own it – it is the property of others now.”
The immediacy of the post-modernist crime of identity theft is agonizingly apparent immediate to anyone who has been its victim. ‘Reality’ intrudes roughly when it becomes completely clear that this virtual identity is considered significantly more real than the authentic self so venerated by modernist theorists. What is even more painful is the realization that much of this synthetic self has been created by others with often little or no connection to the physical person. In modernist terms society is a series of faces and names – places and events – which ‘conspire’ to alienate a person from their true self. But in the post-modernist world, there are no names or faces – places are virtual, and events manufactured realities. The manufactured reality is taken as real and the person from whom it was lifted is demoted to the category of the irrelevant. The difference comes into high relief when an individual is required to prove a negative – that you’re not the person which your virtual self has been taken to be.
The post-modernist world-view is built on the assumption that reality is populated by virtual beings who happen sometimes to have connections to the non-virtual world. But, so that order can rule in the virtual world, that non-virtual world is considered largely irrelevant – so irrelevant that the death of an individual in the corporeal world is not considered a reason to consider them dead in the virtual one.
In the post-modernist world, you give up control over your identity in order to function – then you lose control over that identity as it becomes the property of others – then it becomes something that can be stolen – a piece of property that has value and can be exploited.
One rather ironic similarity between modernist and post-modernist interpretations of identity is the nature of the grounding of responsibility. In both cases, it is the actual physical person who is recognized as the ultimate resource for funding the costs incurred. But the implications of this responsibility are quite different. In the modernist world you may have to make amends to society for the results of your action – to pay your debt for having been inauthentic. But in the virtual, post-modernist world debts are incurred because of the actions of others – others with whom you have no interaction. If someone steals your post-modernist identity you are tasked with proving that an identity which you only partially participated in creating is authentically you and not some other person claiming to be you. But this virtual reality is not you – and, in its details, was never you. And you thought that Alice had it tough in Wonderland!
© Earl R. Smith II, PhD
