In the present day and age of Western Civilization, technological culture reigns supreme. With endless portals spanning the globe, users can craft virtual identities that often supplant, mask, and enhance what is real. The facebook profile, the myspace, the linkedin homepage: these verbose, colorful, and neatly organized portraits portray surface details but not the inner man. Even if the descriptions used are accurate, technological identities only take us so far into the human person. The deeper crevices of personality-the laughlines, the noticeable bruises of hardships overcome, the essence of our nature-rarely surface in an online profile, blog, or email.
It takes years to know someone well; in fact it takes a lifetime. Words and descriptions alone are not sufficient to know a person. Neither are interests, favorite songs, or quoted authors. True knowledge involves both explicit and tacit streams of personhood. Therefore, an online identity is not a complete identity, just as a description of a flower is not itself a flower and never will be.
We long to be known deeply, and loved deeply. And so many search for love, relationship, and friendship online but fail to find the eternal spring to fill their deepest cravings. We may claim to know someone because we've talked to them over the phone, exchanged some facebook messages, or chatted it up on google; but until a hands-on lived life together begins, the true knowledge is quite limited.
Meanwhile, by focusing so exclusively upon the images that we portray through virtual methods, I wonder how self-aware we really are. Do we suddenly know ourselves better, deeper, more significantly, because we can describe what makes us tick in a few sentences? Do the videos, pictures, and status updates we post, at some level begin to define us? As we probe our selves for words that describe, how much closer to the true self have we really come?
The technocrats have developed self-promotion vehicles aplenty for savvy networkers, information-gushing journalists, and lonely wanderers seeking affirmation. But how can one discern distinctions between the true self and the false self in an information-saturated, but relatively relationally shallow, culture? Similarly, how can one live thoughtfully into the true self, perhaps choosing to live "off the grid" as much as possible, while also remaining an active part of society? Furthermore, how can one, in turn, spur society into deeper levels of personhood and meaningful community?
These are questions that I want to explore at greater depth, and plan to do so over the coming weeks. In crafting this introductory discussion, a few reading selections have already surfaced:
Subjects without selves : transitional texts in modern fiction By Gabriele Schwab
Meaning By Michael Polanyi and Harry Prosch
The tacit dimension By Michael Polanyi and Amartya Sen
Personal knowledge : towards a post-critical philosophy By Michael Polanyi
The World Cafe: Shaping our Futures Through Conversations that Matter by Juanita Brown and David Isaacs
Community: The Structure of Belonging by Peter Block
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1 comments:
really enjoyed your musings here. another book to add to the list: "against the machine: being human in the age of the electronic mob" by lee seigel
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