Terror of the (Non)-Self
Exploring the Scary Fault Lines of Personal Identity (Vol. 5; Issue 18)
Who among us has not reacted with disgust to the addiction to distraction, which is arguably worse than any (future) Bird Flu pandemic? The media scream of opioid and fentanyl dependency while ignoring an equally serious problem: enslavement by the mobile phone. In restaurants, grocery stores, movie theaters, or even walking on city streets, people crane their necks to stare into their phones. Greedy orthopedic surgeons salivate, awaiting millions of future cervical spine repair procedures. They anxiously purchase outpatient surgical centers, sterilizing sparkly new operating rooms in preparation.
But our desperate need to escape our selves is hardly new. T.S. Eliot writes, in his Four Quartets:
Distracted from distraction by distraction.
Why the constant need for diversion?
Many reasons, of course, but consider two simple ideas:
The stress of our daily performances, and the fear of being.
Judith Butler (2006), a UC Berkeley philosophy professor (who I despise because she, like me, was born in 1956 but she exponentially exceeds my scholarly production), believes gender is performed. It is a ridiculous idea that discards the contributions of biology. Nonetheless, her legitimate idea that, to some extent at least, we do perform gender roles, validates the fact that we perform in many different ways, and from the second we wake up every morning.
The social psychologist, Erving Goffman (1959), uses the concept of dramaturgy to understand how we do this, how we manage perform in social settings and even when alone. For example, front stage behavior refers to the performances we enact for the outside audience, adhering to social norms and expectations; we display back stage behavior when we relax at home, feel free to “be ourselves” and prepare for future performances.
But the truth is worse than that.
As noted, when you roll out of bed and look in the bathroom mirror, the performance already begins. Oh, shit, look at those bags under my eyes! Is my face beginning to droop? Even the internal dialogue is performative. What audience captures our attention? It is what Lacan (2002) calls the Big Other, namely the social norms that structure our unconscious minds and shape our desires. His idea resembles Goffman’s. The Big Other consists of the system of rules and meanings we internalize. It is a collective of societal forces, including language, culture, and laws.
The weight of these expectations, internal and external, bears down on us at all times. Gazing into our phones, whether reading the news or playing games, allows an escape. We are more than back stage; we are off stage.
What relief!
The problem of being dwarfs the chronic stage fright just discussed. For the sake of brevity, I rely only on William James (1890, 1920) to describe our fear of what lies beneath our tremulous identities. Our sense of self, who we are, our identities, are performative in and of themselves. Ergo, both themes, ongoing performances and fear of being, overlap.
Anyone traveling into their inner worlds through introspection, meditation, psychoanalysis, prayer, ingestion of psychedelics, or other methods have observed the tenuous nature of our narrations of self and other. James (1890) writes of different levels of consciousness, of phenomena lying in the sidelines “in the ‘fringe’ of consciousness:” He continues:
Letting the thing go involves withdrawal of the irradiation, unconsciousness of the thing, and... obliteration of the paths. (Ch. 16)
His words here are a bit confusing. He means awareness of levels of consciousness beyond the familiar. Those lie in the fringes. Sitting in silence, in the moment, experiencing the “self,” can terrify. Obliterating “the paths” can bring emptiness or oneness. From Judaism comes the Shema, a declaration of the oneness of God, reading:
Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one.
From Hinduism, specifically the Advaita Vedanta, comes the central concept of Brahman from which everything originates. The oneness implies that all existence is a single, unified reality. What you think of as self, Atman, is part of Brahman. Again, identity vanishes, and its absence can bring alarm. You mean, there is something that is “not me” in my consciousness?
Every religious tradition includes a mystical belief in something existing beneath our conscious identities. I return to William James who wisely used metaphors of rivers or streams to describe consciousness. He writes:
As we take, in fact, a general view of the wonderful stream of our consciousness, what strikes us first is this different pace of its parts. Like a bird's life, it seems to be made of an alternation of flights and perchings. (Ch. 9)
These “flights and perchings” elicit a type of anxiety that may well find soothing through scrolling. And, just when you think your identity offers some foundation to your experience, think again! James continues:
The total possible consciousness may be split into parts which co-exist but mutually ignore each other. (Ch. 8)
Again, do I have parts of myself ignoring other parts? Might this legitimately frighten?
Finally, and returning to those who explore the foundations of being (at their peril), James (1920) brilliantly notes the risks when he writes:
Most people live, whether physically, intellectually or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make use of a very small portion of their possible consciousness, and of their soul's resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger.
All addictions and compulsions share in restricting personal freedom. We habitually use only our “little finger” when we have access to our entire body-minds. Yes, indeed, we exist within “a very restricted circle of” our potential being. What a waste! But how unsettling to journey into those other levels of experience. Could an astral one exist? Might I lose my sense of identity entirely?
Regarding compulsions, if I must check the locks on my doors 25 times before I can leave in peace, I’ve lost a chunk of my life. The same idea applies to cell phones—only to a much larger degree. Global citizens spend an average of 4 hours and 37 minutes on their phones each day. They check their phones an average of 58 times each day.* And, really, we’re worried about opioids?
You get the point.
We feel the need to dodge the stress caused by performance of our social roles. We fear the emptiness (or the oneness) of peering beneath our identities. No one wants stress or fear, but much better ways to soothe these pains exist: living as authentically as possible; finding competency and purpose; striving to reduce suffering in others, and many, many more. But, alas, these will have to await forthcoming essays.
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*According to polling by the directory of the Group Managed Service Account (GMSA).
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References
Butler, J. (2006). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge.
Eliot, T.S. (1943/2018). The Four Quartets. London: Faber & Faber.
Goffman, E. (1959). The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. New York: Anchor.
James, W. (1890) The Principles of Psychology, Vol. 1. New York: Henry Holt and Co.
James, W. (1920) Letter to W. Lutoslawski (6 May 1906). Collected Essays and Reviews. NY: Cornell University.
Lacan, J. (2002). Ecrits. (B. Fink, Tran.). New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company.