As I have been arguing, it is time for us to make a jump in collective intelligence and benefit from what we know of quantum physics, integrating their principles into our way of living and allow 21st century individuals benefit from being like quarks:
· Accepting that virtualizing space should be used for individuals to live their lives more fully while also improving performance in their work
· Enabling spherical time development so that individuals can get back in touch with natural life-progressing rhythms without being overly taxed socially or professionally… and actually improve society and productivity.
· Integrating our “selves” into an “Integrated I” freeing us to cultivate our true selfhood and therefore contribute greater diversity to the benefit of collective intelligence and progress
Part 4: Identity need not be definitive
Looking around, on TV, in the press, in the movies, in scientific journals and books, in advertising, we can see we’re living in a performance society. This has been true of the United States for a long time and seems increasingly true of European countries. Of course not everyone wants to honor that and there are more and more movements towards cooperation and interdependence, but on the whole, to “make it”, you’ve got to perform at most every moment and, it seems, against most everyone (including “invisible competition” coming from workers in other countries, as the current economic crisis readily illustrates). A competitive interpretation of Darwinism reigns and we’ve got to compose with that as individuals wanting to pursue self-fulfillment and happiness within our societies (this is clearly something to be reconsidered but I’ll get into that in another post in the future).
In this competitive performance society, Western countries’ common conviction seems to anchor success is one’s individuality, and the identity with which others associate. Enabled by relative material comfort, media-age communication habits, and social networking capabilities, people seem to build and solidify the identities they project in order to show the world the great life we have created for ourselves, to stage our great performance. Instructed by the societal “then and than” logic, we seem to have enjoined a kind of “positive slope rhetoric” with which our exploits, even our challenges, are colored, so as to make our lives appear “more than” (or at least “as much as”) others’ (harder, smarter, more clever, more cheeky, more audacious, more complicated, cuter, lazier, etc.).
All of these efforts allow for a more or less successful “marketing of me” with which we perform. It comes out in every crack: we have to be “google-able” to land that new job. We have to show how even our downtime and our leisure time are productive, performant, enviable. I spoke with a good number of recent graduates who explained the importance of qualitative experiences on resumes: it isn’t enough to travel, you have to have traveled somewhere exotic in a new hip way, and have published a blog about it, etc.
This marketing relationship with our own lives clearly impacts our “real” lives as we increasingly make our choices based on their resume value. Back in the 60’s, David Riesman had identified peer-approval logic. Currently, thanks to internet and other people-connectors, this peer approval has extended to include most every actor of every relational level. Our “peers” are not only our social circle but now include our employer, our future employer, our parents and friends’ parents, etc. Suddenly, our behavior (or at least what we or others post on facebook of us), must be crystalline at all times, must be palatable for the general public (consider the woman who lost her teaching credentials simply because someone else published a picture of her drinking a beer). We are forced into performing rather than actually living.
Performing rather than living has some unintended consequences.
As much of our performance is responding to societal criteria and approval, and building up whatever “projected identity” that is most winning/marketable/attractive, we are distancing ourselves from our natural talents and preferences, allowing ourselves to fall away from our personal center of gravity. Like in Plato’s cave, we are rigidifying and reinforcing our projections but, as a result, we are under-nourishing our personal, core identity and its development, its growth.
It’s a great paradox: in the context of believing that identity empowers individual liberty, we’re actually losing control over our own liberty as we limit our identity to watered-down, LCD societal expectations. Indeed “performance” is often in itself a redundant logic, reproducing others’ acts instead of building one’s own life with one’s own creativity. In this time of individualism, we are making ourselves clones.
This has far-reaching repercussions in today’s landscape in which we have the ability to increasingly man-make ourselves. At every level:
- Body (including plastic surgery, botox at increasingly young ages, a normalized expectation of seductivity with which we’re pressured to be seductive to all people at all times… and which used to be mainly women’s lot but which is increasingly enslaving men too (Nickel, L’Oréal)…
- Personality (molded to what’s most efficient and attractive to potential employers/ partners, etc. with which we tend to create memes instead of creating something new or more specific to oneself)…
- Aspirations (for girls, “being hot” (The Lolita Effect), for going on 30s: having it all and having something to show for it (Midlife Crisis at Thirtysomething)…
- Choices (limiting our personal activities in terms of Resume value and employability including sidelining important personal potential (either losing out on love, children all together or living them ‘in absentia’ as we have nannies etc. take care of it), trying to be more masculine than an alpha male at the executives’ table (“flight from woman”)…
These strategies have a cost. They make our identity “taxidermist” as it rigidifies into a kind of still-life or snapshot despite our hyperactivity.
So what? First of all, let’s consider the toll it takes of keeping up appearances – especially those we’ve projected and which are estranged from our personal core competencies. Open up any journal or talk around you to discover the extent to which we, as a society, depend on medicated success (taking uppers to get a 4.0 GPA, taking uppers just to get through the day while remaining “pleasant, and pleasing”…). Close to 10% of American adults were on anti-depressants in 2008 (before the financial crisis!), and the UK has seen a 43% rise in antidepressant prescriptions in the last four years. And this goes without mentioning other strategies to which people are resorting to try to get a hold on their lives (over-indebtedness, eating disorders, dependence on shrinks …).
Second, carrying around a “still-life identity” is like using one’s identity for defensive or offensive purposes instead of constructive or developmental purposes. This stifles growth for ourselves and creates antagonism rather than cooperation with others.
Third, the more energy we allocate to maintaining a fixed posture, the less we can build new muscles, create new synapses, or foster new discoveries. It is increasingly accepted scientifically that every experience, every interaction, every activity strengthens some neural circuits at the expense of others. It follows that maintaining a still-life identity undermines our potential and reduces our possibilities. The more statue-like we become, the less we breathe or oxygenate our beings. Meanwhile, we’re writing a chronic of a failure foretold! No matter how hard we try, we won’t ever be able to entirely do away with nature, which will always rear its head. Keeping up with appearances becomes less and less natural and requires more and more energy. It’s totally unsustainable.
Clearly, we have developed unhealthy relationships with perfection leading to all types of indigestion due to immobility (decision paralysis, excessive risk management, cynicism vs. over-inflated optimism…). I’ll comment on this in an ulterior post.
Finally, it may or may not behoove us to build up such projections for we may be crystallizing aspects of ourselves we think are most winning when in fact our self-analysis may be faulty or may quickly become obsolete (cf. Dan Gilbert whose research shows that humans, as subjective beings, misperceive reality then use those misperceptions to build a mistaken view of the future).
What will quantum do for all this?
1. The flexibility of being more than on being at once gives a greater margin of maneuver when it comes to building our identity. I’m not talking about role acting via avatars or fictitious identities over the net. I’m talking about integrating our dualities and inconsistencies into one, evolutionary being who is enriched by its versatility and multiplicity.
Consider Sartre's insight into our being which can be applied to our identity. For him, to be, "être", describes all that isn't human (objects, animals) for they are described by their physico-chemical properties whereas humans are also decribed by their potential. For Sartre, this is a kind of "anti-being" ("le néant"). To be "anti-being" is to accept that "I" could not have been... and contingentally, that "I" could be something else and still have the liberty to become.
I call the quarkishness of simultaneous being and anti-being “fertile identity” with which identity shifts from being a still life snapshot requiring high maintenance to a springboard for further growth, exploration, discovery, progress.
Why a springboard? Because the learnings we acquire in one aspect of our lives allows for exponential development in others (cf. blog time)
Because giving oneself to growth builds understanding and knowledge in a way that "living in abstentia" cannot. Oftentimes the best relational bonding happens during downtime. When we don’t participate in the actual building of aspects of our lives, we don’t internalize the learning curve, nor do we really reap the fruits of our labor. Take the example of Dawn Lepore interviewed in this week’s Business Week who regrets having missed out on raising her kids. This shouldn’t have to be the case.
Because attempting perfection for each of our roles pushes us to look at each facet of our lives in a fragmented way instead of viewing the whole, not only leaving us blind to mid to long-term gains but vulnerable to burn-out, statistically rising in Western countries.
Because going against our personal, natural inclinations can never be fully controlled. On the other hand, if we embrace our natural rhythms, we can bask in the facility inherent in going with the flow instead of corseting ourselves against it. Of course this is not the message society is giving us – especially to young women hoping to “have it all” (family and career). But if we can rewrite our societal myths and integrate the quantum, there is no real obstacle / we can overcome the current obstacles. We can choose how our society is formatted.
Because, the ability to roll with the punches, to deal with the surprises life will always reserve for us, our survival and well-being depends on our flexibility. For no matter how hard we plan, life will always bring out the unexpected (or worse, we might miss out on the unexpected entirely! We need to welcome evolution even when it doesn’t come according to plans.
2. Perpetual motion and a bildungsroman “growth visa” for women
Consider Sartre's insight into our being which can be applied to our identity. For him, to be, "être", describes all that isn't human (objects, animals) for they are described by their physico-chemical properties whereas humans are also decribed by their potential. For Sartre, this is a kind of "anti-being" ("le néant"). To be "anti-being" is to accept that "I" could not have been... and contingentally, that "I" could be something else and still have the liberty to become.
I call the quarkishness of simultaneous being and anti-being “fertile identity” with which identity shifts from being a still life snapshot requiring high maintenance to a springboard for further growth, exploration, discovery, progress.
Why a springboard? Because the learnings we acquire in one aspect of our lives allows for exponential development in others (cf. blog time)
Because giving oneself to growth builds understanding and knowledge in a way that "living in abstentia" cannot. Oftentimes the best relational bonding happens during downtime. When we don’t participate in the actual building of aspects of our lives, we don’t internalize the learning curve, nor do we really reap the fruits of our labor. Take the example of Dawn Lepore interviewed in this week’s Business Week who regrets having missed out on raising her kids. This shouldn’t have to be the case.
Because attempting perfection for each of our roles pushes us to look at each facet of our lives in a fragmented way instead of viewing the whole, not only leaving us blind to mid to long-term gains but vulnerable to burn-out, statistically rising in Western countries.
Because going against our personal, natural inclinations can never be fully controlled. On the other hand, if we embrace our natural rhythms, we can bask in the facility inherent in going with the flow instead of corseting ourselves against it. Of course this is not the message society is giving us – especially to young women hoping to “have it all” (family and career). But if we can rewrite our societal myths and integrate the quantum, there is no real obstacle / we can overcome the current obstacles. We can choose how our society is formatted.
Because, the ability to roll with the punches, to deal with the surprises life will always reserve for us, our survival and well-being depends on our flexibility. For no matter how hard we plan, life will always bring out the unexpected (or worse, we might miss out on the unexpected entirely! We need to welcome evolution even when it doesn’t come according to plans.
2. Perpetual motion and a bildungsroman “growth visa” for women
- Applying the quantum spherical, integrated space-time helps us accept that life is perpetual evolution and movement. As long as we seek to convince others of our happiness by creating Kodac moments, we won’t succeed in acquiring happiness. But once we channel the dynamic of growth, with its slow moments and fast moments, troubled times and easy times, we can take on a whole new perspective of happiness and success. It’s unsustainable to give free reign to our societal dread of difficult times and determination to avoid them.
After all, there is no such thing as “successful life insurance”! But perhaps we can manage “life ensurance” : rent for mistakes and for spontaneity. As has said Gilles Clément, « La réalité biologique est l’imprevisibilité ». Integrating the quantum can include reinstating a bildungsroman approach to create a “growth visa” for women and a dedication to living deliberately. So many are about men and their hero myth whereas we need to construct one for women enriched with our creative potential and the motherself.
3. This leads me to a third benefit of integrating the quantum in our societal outlook : exploring the fullness of both the masculine and the feminine in each of us. Westerners know about the concept of the yin and the yang but this too is a perspective yet to be fully assimilated. So many conversations are about gender, post-gender, performativity… but these postures seem to me prey to the still-life identity I described above. The quarkish Idea of carrying both the masculine and the feminine at once would enable us to have better access to our whole nature and ourselves. Instead of working to be the alpha male or the archetype of femininity, we could integrate relativity, thus improving our empathy for others (the basis of imagination) and our creativity, our constructiveness.
It would also free us from trying to beat men at their own game and instead empower women to redefine the rules on our own terms… The point here is certainly not to level all differences but, on the contrary, to foster (real) diversity while rendering traditional boundaries & stereotypes permeable … enabling us to demand acknowledgement of our talents (cf. "Lehman sisters") as we do what comes naturally, with all the pleasantness and aggressiveness that each of us embodies. This is a vast subject that I will treat in a separate post. Suffice it to say that we’ve still a lot of work to do on this topic!
After all, there is no such thing as “successful life insurance”! But perhaps we can manage “life ensurance” : rent for mistakes and for spontaneity. As has said Gilles Clément, « La réalité biologique est l’imprevisibilité ». Integrating the quantum can include reinstating a bildungsroman approach to create a “growth visa” for women and a dedication to living deliberately. So many are about men and their hero myth whereas we need to construct one for women enriched with our creative potential and the motherself.
3. This leads me to a third benefit of integrating the quantum in our societal outlook : exploring the fullness of both the masculine and the feminine in each of us. Westerners know about the concept of the yin and the yang but this too is a perspective yet to be fully assimilated. So many conversations are about gender, post-gender, performativity… but these postures seem to me prey to the still-life identity I described above. The quarkish Idea of carrying both the masculine and the feminine at once would enable us to have better access to our whole nature and ourselves. Instead of working to be the alpha male or the archetype of femininity, we could integrate relativity, thus improving our empathy for others (the basis of imagination) and our creativity, our constructiveness.
It would also free us from trying to beat men at their own game and instead empower women to redefine the rules on our own terms… The point here is certainly not to level all differences but, on the contrary, to foster (real) diversity while rendering traditional boundaries & stereotypes permeable … enabling us to demand acknowledgement of our talents (cf. "Lehman sisters") as we do what comes naturally, with all the pleasantness and aggressiveness that each of us embodies. This is a vast subject that I will treat in a separate post. Suffice it to say that we’ve still a lot of work to do on this topic!
Here’s the point: for all of us 99% across the world, we need to rethink our society and start putting to better use our history and collective intelligence to make strides and informed choices. We can see the way things are. We can see how we don’t want things to be. Now we need to collectively think about how we want things to be in order for us to make it happen. I am convinced we can use some of scientists’ knowledge and hypotheses of quantum physics to metaphorically inform our sociological and societal systems.
I will stop here and come back in later blogs for the fifth benefit of integrating the quantum into our current way of living:
1. Space need not be physical
2. Time need not be linear
3. Individuals need not be singular
4. Identity need not be definitive
5. Love need not be crystalized
Rendez-vous next Thursday for a new bite from the apple. In the meantime, share your comments based on your own knowledge and consciousness!
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