This story cannot be that common statistically, but the theme of "Wokeness turned out to be as bad as my fundamentalist church" has popped up over the years, especially recently. The article is long, and I apologise. But it is not the author's intended theme that jumped out at me, but the whole concept of the artificial social media world that some young people are living in. Perhaps it is more common in those subcultures such as the sexual self-definition ones, where identity might require a separation from shared reality to sustain itself. It is right in line with Haidt and Lukianoff's Coddling of the American Mind, which shows evidence that the break from reality kept increasing until the HS Class of 2014, the first cohort to have had devices since middle school, and thus throughout their years of social development outside the family. Suicide, depression, and anxiety disorders exploded in this group and have remained high since.
This came up over at Grim's a few weeks ago, and while it is not a brand new idea to us, it is troubling me more. I keep thinking that such artificial worlds cannot remain aloft indefinitely, that they must plummet back to earth eventually. Yet perhaps they can. The emotional cost may be high, even devastating, but apparently it can be maintained, at least among some. Dale Kuehne, a friend from years ago who is a professor at St Anselm, wrote a book late in 2009 that has turned out to be prescient, Sex and the iWorld, about the change in relationships in the digital age. He pointed out then that it is a new thing for people, including especially the young, to define themselves without reference to input from others. You can lay claim to a gender even if your family and every friend you ever had tells you you are mistaken.
The conversations Appel describes over at Quillette seem to come from a sci-fi dystopian world, or something out of Tolkien or Lewis where a character has lost his identity, submerged in the will of another. They seem to be reciting or enacting roles rather than inhabiting flesh. Frankly, it sounds like some descriptions of possession. But it is not fiction. It may be filtered through an unsympathetic recorder, but the curious thing is that this recorder has OCD, so the content is especially likely to be accurate, even if the interpretation may be skewed.
We are somewhat used to the already-alarming idea that even normal children may be having their social development harmed, their identities weakened by living in two worlds, one of flesh and one in the ether. That some may even too equally inhabit those worlds we have heard, and worried. Yet I don't think I had fully grasped that there might be some whose lives were not merely dominated by their social media life and identity, but that it might even consume the original host, the human being born into the world as a baby two decades before. It is like encountering the Tragedian and Dwarf in The Great Divorce, or Weston in Perelandra, or the Mouth of Sauron or Grima Wormtongue in LOTR. Chilling.
The iPhone is one of the 9 rings?
ReplyDeleteThere's a thought. I thought of it as a witticism on your part at first, but there may be something serious to it.
ReplyDeleteI read the same article and was startled by the author's utter lack of self-awareness. He was fine attacking and deplatforming Trump supporters. He was fine attacking and deplatforming Christians. He was fine attacking and deplatforming all the -ists and -phobes that Woke doctrine hallucinates into existence every week.
ReplyDeleteBut when it's HIS turn . . . he's shocked! Hurt! Sad!
Sorry, Rainbow Boy. You helped build that guillotine. Stop whining and put your head in.
Yes. It seems to extend your power, but the longer you spend with it the less of the physical world you touch.
ReplyDeleteWherever there are struggle sessions, there is great evil.
ReplyDeleteAside: I’m glad I have had nothing to do with academia for almost twenty years. No doubt I’d be murdered for my opinions.
Massed produced rings of power, even, james. One available for each of us.
ReplyDelete"The conversations Appel describes over at Quillette seem to come from a sci-fi dystopian world, or something out of Tolkien or Lewis where a character has lost his identity, submerged in the will of another. They seem to be reciting or enacting roles rather than inhabiting flesh. Frankly, it sounds like some descriptions of possession."
ReplyDeleteDietrich Bonhoeffer, a German theologian who became a leading member of an anti-Nazi conspiracy, wrote the following while he was in prison awaiting execution:
"Upon closer observation, it becomes apparent that every strong upsurge of power in the public sphere, be it of a political or a religious nature, infects a large part of humankind with stupidity. … The power of the one needs the stupidity of the other. The process at work here is not that particular human capacities, for instance, the intellect, suddenly atrophy or fail. Instead, it seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence and, more or less consciously, give up establishing an autonomous position toward the emerging circumstances. The fact that the stupid person is often stubborn must not blind us to the fact that he is not independent. In conversation with him, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with him as a person, but with slogans, catchwords, and the like that have taken possession of him. He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the stupid person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil. This is where the danger of diabolical misuse lurks, for it is this that can once and for all destroy human beings."
Exceptionally good quote, Mr. foster.
ReplyDeleteI'll also speculate that a phenomenon identified by writer Andre Maurois is relevant here. He said that people who are *intelligent* but not in any way *creative* are eager adopters of the intellectual systems created by others, and apply these systems more rigidly than their creators would have.
ReplyDeleteIntelligent but not creative describes a high % of the denizens of today's academia, and a lot of journalists. They will eagerly latch onto something like Critical Race Theory and use it to 'illuminate' all aspects of life, as a child might obsessively apply a new word.
In the feed for LinkedIn, I see an awful lot of people spouting jargon in pointless posts, apparently trying to pose as deep business intellectuals when they really don't have much to say.
@Trimegistus
ReplyDeleteDidn't Jesus say something about the measure of mercy one gives?
I have seen the Maurois idea before, which suggests it was probably from you. I don't know how would measure such a thing, but it seems intuitively true. I think that is the advantage of being a French intellectual, that you don't have to provide proofs for things. That environment attracts (or allows) a different type of intellectual. I think it is a riskier way to go because smart people can become enchanted with themselves and become completely untethered. Yet I think it good that a few groups do this, as I think it encourages broader associations between ideas.
ReplyDeleteAs for posing as intellectuals, I would be curious how many of them are indeed posing, knowing that they are not really trained and taking a flier, and how many really think that this is what being an intellectual is all about: sensing the popular mood of what looks like the smart people and doing the recommended paint-by-number (Do the work!). It must be art, right?
From the article:
ReplyDeleteI’m equally wary of the progressive activists who push a distinctly homophobic agenda that denies the biological reality of sex—and who claim that what we are attracted to isn’t male or female bodies per se, but rather male or female gender identities. This outlook effectively imagines away the existence of homosexuality....
This difference between the embodied and the imagined is exactly what I was talking about when the issue came up at my place. Your body knows whether it is male or female, and it produces pheromones to convey that information to every other body around you. Those bodies receive that information and process it, subconsciously but actually, so they know what you are too.
The new sexuality can only have arisen in conditions of isolation, where people are exploring their sexuality chiefly through things like online pornography or TikTok or similar imaginary contexts. Then there are no pheromones to light up your brain with the awareness that the other beside you is female (or male, if like him you're that way). There are only visual stimuli, no smells, no touch, no feedback from another body to help your own find its way.
As I said in the earlier discussion, for those who inhabit the online world persistently this imaginary sexuality ends up having a certain degree of reality in terms of their own experience: a search term like 'otherkin' might end up reliably bringing them content that gets them going. Thus, it ends up seeming like it might be something that really is important to who they are as a person.
But as you say, this can lead to people adopting 'identities' that aren't rooted in anything except their own imagination -- and which are, therefore, impossible for other people to understand, connect with, or respond to except by blindly accepting or rejecting their claim. You can't even really grasp the claim you're being asked to accept, because it's rooted in something to which you have no access: their imagination. Your embodied self knows what it is and tells everyone around you; the imaginary self may or may not fully grasp what it is dreaming of, and it can never fully communicate it to anyone else. You begin in isolation and are imprisoned there.
Systems are very plausible when you don't know what you don't know. It's even better when you get to be one of the enlightened vanguard.
ReplyDelete@ Grim - "You can't even really grasp the claim you're being asked to accept, because it's rooted in something to which you have no access: their imagination."
ReplyDeleteWhich is why it is a bottomless pit of resentment.
The trending phrase "It's not about you, but it's about you" is striking. There are people who think spouting any meaningless paradox makes them deep. No wonder they're capable of arguing simultaneously that their choices must be respected in every way, and that whatever identity they choose to adopt on any particular day is not a choice but inborn and inescapable.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was younger I didn't think we'd degenerate into the Monty Python "She's a witch" skit so quickly. If it makes me want to take up arms and barricade my house, does that make me QAnon? A visiting friend asked us in all honesty the other day to explain QAnon to her, after she got it into our head that we're not just Republicans (which she has known for decades) but actual Trumpers. Her face literally drained of color, the first time I can remember seeing someone embody that cliche. All I could say was I had no clear idea what QAnon was, never having been on it, but I imagined it must be like the frantic embrace of conspiracy theories not just on the dumber sectors of social media but most of the BlueAnon mainstream press.
@Texan99 -- your anecdote reminds me of the past 17 years of interactions with a relative of mine. Her immediate reaction to everything I said or thought seemed to be "how awful that you don't understand how awful you are" and "your reactions, or lack thereof, prove how awful you are". Half those years, we've not spoken to each other. Once upon a time, we were best friends.
ReplyDelete@Tex: I think there are even odds that Qanon is a government plot to limit the harm done by the crazies; all that 'Trust the Plan' stuff is perfectly designed to keep people from actually doing anything, but it's insane enough that it's hard to imagine sane people coming up with it. Ask Ymar to explain it to you. He's a devotee, I gather.
ReplyDelete@Grim - Agreed, and to your first comment, Jesse Singal recently pointed out that a lot of the new identities also sound like the extremely immature sexuality of early teens. Things like "fraysexuality":
ReplyDeletehttps://www.wellandgood.com/what-is-fraysexuality/
@bs king: That's a strange claim to be sure; although the opposite claim, 'only gets sexually attracted to someone with whom they have an emotional relationship,' sounds better as a way of managing your life. It's probably not commonplace, but I can see how it might be advantageous.
ReplyDelete