THE UNITED SELF

2 Aug 2022

self and identity - a biography of our self - who we are - our identity

https://youtu.be/ZD52aZ5Jh7A

"personality modernity and the storied self"

modern

modernity means modern times. Especially in the West ("The West" by this time in the 21st century includes many non Western countries like South Korea or Japan, according to the following framework...).

we have to make a difference between pre modern or pre-industrial times and times since the industrial revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries.

what makes our time "modern" is: capitalism, markets, democracy, the nation-state, the dominance of Science and Technology.

drivers

and we should look at social, political and economic changes as causing, driving, the changes to our idea of self, of who we are.

characteristics of people's living in modern Western times

1. a scepticism towards religion and other traditional sources of authority and a preference instead for a data-driven approach based on science, reasoning, objectivity, evidence, positivism etc ... a belief that if we take an evidence-based approach this will lead to improvement in our world

2. difficulty in keeping a coherent sense of one's modern self across the past, present and future and across even yesterday compared to today or tomorrow.

also keeping up that coherence or integrity across the different roles and contexts and situations that we operate in.

it's especially challenging for people living in societies with a lot of diversity or to put it another way, a low homogeneity.

For example, societies with different ethnic and religious mixes.

3. there's also more emphasis on our uniqueness rather than on conformity with the tribe or group and this is challenging because at the same time as we seek to be different we also seek to remain connected.

Six characteristics of the modern self

1. work in progress. we are all a work in progress, we are a project we are working on, the "I" is forever improving a "Me". it can be thought of as a reflexive project reflexive because we are turned towards our self we are changing our self.

this is modern because compare with pre modern times where a person was given a role or a position or a post and told to get on with it. they were not responsible for creating a unique self or innovating and updating a persona.

2. Agency. in pre-modern times it was the king, or the church or mosque, or the tribe that assigned us a role; but today, we have to work out our own identity and roles in a more day-to-day context of family and work and friends.

3. multi-layered and deep. compare the simple role that Hindu people in Bali have and live by, compare that with the situation in which modern man or woman find themselves. A modern person has multiple roles and overlapping roles all depending on the context and the person and so on and this complexity creates a challenge to know who we are and is why many people are Forever on a voyage of self-discovery and why self-help groups are so popular

so before it was the church or mosque that was a moral authority, but these days, in the absence of that moral authority, it is us, we ourselves, who decide our own beliefs and values and and finally are our own identity and it is the search for this authentic identity that drives the projects to modernise ourselves

4. self development. we saw in the points above that the self is a project, for which we are responsible, and this project of ours is a voyage of self-discovery, adaption and improvement - a work in progress. now consider this as a series of projects, over the longer life that we live.

At the start of the 20th century, the average lifespan was maybe 50 years, but by the end it had reached 75 years and splits into different phases.

We go through different phases in that time span and so we have evolving roles and contexts and thus projects with different objectives for our self, as we mature and develop.

5. Coherence. we go from childhood to adolescence to young adulthood to middle age to old age or maybe more phases than that ("the seven ages of man") and we have different roles and contexts to adapt to that we also look for a coherence across all those phases so that we have a story to tell, a narrative, which stitches everything together and brings us one coherent picture of who we are.

this coherent narrative is our auto-biography and it's really important, this sense of coherence across the different phases of our life, because it's how we construct our idea of who we are, in other words our identity, our sense of self

6 connection and the "pure relationship". the 6th and final characteristic of modern selves is that two separate selves can connect to each other to form what we all look for, which is a pure or perfect relationship, in terms of connectedness, love and intimacy.

Modern love is not something dictated to us by our parents or arranged by the group or or determined by the church or mosque it is something we choose for ourselves in order to fulfil our deepest needs and desires, needs and desires that we have defined and which are part of our uniqueness.

the two persons, each true and authentic to themself, have a relationship which is honest and open and flexible and negotiable between the two of them. The focus is on both parties achieving what you might call self-actualisation or self-transcendence. Of course, anyone who's been in a modern romantic relationship knows that this is a pure fiction! ... but nonetheless it is an ideal and a vision that we can aim for.

Summary. we saw in the points above that the self is a project about constructing our sense of identity, who we are. We are responsible for this project. It is a voyage of self-discovery, adaption and improvement - a work in progress seeking uniqueness, connectedness and authenticity. It is a series of projects, over the longer life that we live. Like ying and yang, we seek union with another like-minded soul .