Identity is a difficult question. As I read and watched the various items for the day I found myself wondering about the newness of any of this. Adolescence has always been time dedicated to understanding and constructing persona. Human identity isn't static and the problem of exactly who a person is seems fundamental to human history. Our current evolution seems to be a further iteration of the problem, but I'm interested in how much direct control the individual can have over the cultivation and curation of an identity. Humans have always wanted to create and capture the right affiliations to suit their self-image. Previously, though, doors and avenues were closed by lack of access.
As a teenager, I wanted to be different, to like things that others didn't, and to connect with a rebellion that simply wasn't happening in my hometown. Kurt Cobain and Eddie Vedder were rock stars who clearly had a bigger message than glamour and lifestyle, and I wanted to connect to them, to shape myself in tandem with them. Their music gave me an in-road, and what I could find to connect with them superficially, but I never felt truly connected. I knew the superficiality was there and couldn't overcome it. A teenager today can overcome that superficiality in tangible ways - following his favorite artists on instagram, twitter, facebook - but also by creating and engaging more deeply with the ideas that those artists might actually care about. So many of my students are doing the work of identity that I did in my 20's: generating an ethos, cultivating a persona, deciding exactly the type of person they want to be. How many personas did I never consider because I had no access to them? This era allows people in the throes of finding out who they are access to so many more possibilities and connections that can sustain those choices and provide stability and certainty for them to more confidently to become themselves.
This is large and small. My students who love anime can do so unabashedly because they can find millions of like-minded people online who can make them feel normal, accepted. My LBGT students in much the same way can find support no matter the size or composition of their communities.
The title of this reflection, though, is an allusion to Brave New World. I think the comparisons of the modern surveillance state (at least in America) to 1984 are inapt. We don't live in Big Brother's world and we most likely never will. Basic limits of space (go hide in Wyoming or Montana) combined with the proliferation of weapons and libertarian ideology will keep that a near impossibility. I always read that book to imply that the populace was cowed and forced into the state they were in not through some sort of force by the state or civil war, but by the threat of war and the need for security. No, we live in Huxley's world in which the corporate and business ethos is taking over many of the aspects of our lives. The question, of course, is where control is being exerted from. Of course, Henry Ford wanted to create demand for supply to feed. Huxley takes that out to the furthest possible extent. And the motto of the World State is apt: Community, Identity, Stability. This is what we're offered by our social media companies. You can belong to a group. You don't have to feel alone. You can define who you are. Could those desires be nefariously manipulated? Probably, but the most recent Facebook "controversy" over the psychological "experiment" they ran and admitted to illustrates that while we seem to be heading down a frightening path, Huxley's book is not necessarily prophetic. The fact that we discuss and worry about the issues of online identity and marketing manipulation is the key to the fact that it will have an incredibly hard time becoming absolute.
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