Sunday, October 17, 2010

the pastiche personality

What does dramaturgical consciousness tell us about the psyche of the millennial generation? Many psychologists--perhaps most--agree that in a diverse, complex, interconnected world of increasing novelty and fast-changing contexts, with children growing growing up in both cyberspace and real space, and in both a parallel and linear temporality, multiple role-playing and myriad identities are becoming the norm. They disagree as to whether dramaturgical consciousness is necessarily leading to an advance in consciousness or possibly a disintegration.

Kenneth J. Gergen acknowledges that in a globalizing world that is connected at the speed of light, “we engage in greater numbers of relationships, in a greater variety of forms, and with greater intensities than ever before.” We are awash in relationships, some virtual, others real. Where privacy was the coveted value of a bourgeois generation which defined freedom in terms of autonomy and exclusivity, access is the most sought after value of the Millennial Generation, which defines freedom in terms of the depth and scope of one’s relationships. Exclusivity has become less important than inclusivity, and the competitive ethos is beginning to be challenged—albeit tentatively—by an ethos of collaboration.

In the era of dramaturgical consciousness, where one’s very identity is relational and exists only to the extent one is embedded in a plethora of relationships, to be denied access is to be isolated and to cease to exist. Alone time—as distinguished from being lonely –continues to shrink and is already approaching near zero in a 24/7 interconnected world. In a time society, every spare nanosecond becomes an opportunity to make “another connection.”

We live in a world in which getting and holding one another’s attention becomes paramount, and relationships of all kinds become central to our existence. The old idea of “mine versus thine,” which fostered the sense of a predictable “one-dimensional self, is giving way to the new idea of inclusivity and a “multidimensional self.’’ Gergen observes:

The relatively coherent and unified sense of self inherent in a traditional culture gives way to manifold and competing potenials. A multiphrenic condiction emerges in which one swims in ever-shifting, concatenating, and contentious currents of being.

Like improv artists caught up in ever-changing contexts and fast-moving story lines, each vying for our attention, we are forced to shift into new roles and switch back and forth between different sets and scripts so quickly that we risk slowly losing ourselves in the labyrinthine network of short-lived and ever-changing connections and experiences in which we find ourselves embedded. Gergen warns that:

This fragmentation of self-conceptions corresponds to a multiplicity of incoherent and disconnected relationships. These relationships pull us in myriad directions, inviting us to play such a variety of roles that the very concept of an “authentic self” with knowable characteristics recedes from view. The fully saturated self becomes no self at all.

Gergen worries that in the new world unfolding,

the self vanishes fully into a stage of relatedness…One ceases to believe in a self independent of the relationships in which he or she is embedded…thus placing relationships in the central position occupied by the individual self for the last several hundred years of Western history.

Most postmodern thinkers welcome the new sense of a relational self, suggesting that by breaking down the barriers of “mine versus thine,” we open up the possibility of a more tolerant, multicultural approach to socialization in the twenty-first century. Jean Baudrillard, for one, sees an unfolding globalized society in which “our private sphere has ceased to be the stage where the drama of the subject at odds with his objects is played out.”We no longer exist as subjects at all, argues Baudrillard, but, rather, “as terminals of multiple networks.”

Robert J. Lifton has another take on the shift in consciousness. Lifton believes that dramaturgical consciousness–having multiple personas is a coping mechanism, a way for the psyche to accommodate the escalating demands being placed on it in the emerging hyper-real global society. Lifton argues that playing roles and having multiple personas, far from representing the disappearance of self, is really a more plastic and mature stage of consciousness in which a person is able to live with ambiguities and complex and often competing priorities. Being able to live and experience as many potential realities as possible, sometimes even at the same time, says Lifton, requires a protean consciousness.

Gergen seems to share some common ground with Lifton, but with reservations. It’s not that Gergen is pessimistic about where human consciousness is heading. He would agree with the philosopher Martin Buber’s analysis of human nature. Buber believed that “in the beginning is the relationship.” Gergen sees a complex globalizing world in which human beings are becoming increasingly embedded in relationships of every style and kind. His concern is that the relational demands on our attention and psyche could overwhelm our individual and collective consciousness and plunge identity into chaos.

Gergen raises an important qualification that dramaturgical theorists often ignore or skirt. That is, that the dramaturgical way of thinking is unique to the modern age. He notes that,

The sense of “playing a role” depends for its palpability on the contrasting sense of a “real self.” If there is no consciousness of what it is to be “true to self” there is no meaning to “playing a role.”

By the time Shakespeare wrote that “All the world’s a stage, /And all the men and women merely players,” the self was already developed enough to understand when it was playing a role—the mind could separate itself sufficiently from its behavior to consciously take on a persona or mask and know that it was doing so. Today the self has to take on so many new roles and continually shift from role to role so quickly that it runs the risk of withering away altogether.

As the dramaturgical self becomes even more plastic and thespian, and such behavior comes to be thought of as normal, the very idea of authenticity recedes in importance. To be “authentic” presupposes an immutable core self, an autonomous psyche. In the era of dramaturgical consciousness, however,

the pastiche personality is a social chameleon, constantly borrowing bits and pieces of identity from whatever sources are available and constructing them as useful or desirable in a given situation.

The dramaturgical self, then, is open to two very different interpretations. Sociologist Louis Zurcher suggests that if we abandon the idea of the self as “an object” and think of it more as “a process,” then the self is open “to the widest possible experience” and becomes truly cosmopolitan.

But Zurcher also warns that the mutable self can just as easily lead to a more pronounced narcissism, as individuals lose a sense of an authentic self to which they are beholden and accountable and become mired in deceit after deceit—a Machiavellian existence—where role-playing becomes instrumental to advancing endless self-gratification.

Gergen, in the final analysis, appears guardedly optimistic about the future of human consciousness. He holds out hope that in an increasingly interconnected and collaborative world, made up of ever more embedded relationships that transcend traditional boundaries that separate “mine from thine,” that “we can move from a self-centered system of beliefs to consciousness of an inseparable relatedness with others”—I and thou. That’s possible, but only if we retain a sufficient sense of self as an “I” to allow the empathic impulse to grow.

While each of us is a composite of the relationships that makes us up, it is the unique constellation of relational experiences that separate one person from another. There is no in inherent contradiction in believing that the self is made up of the sum total of experiences that an indivdual is embedded in over a lifetime, and the idea that those same embedded relationships and experiences make one a unique being, different from all others. It is only by keeping that distinction in mind that empathic consciousness can continue to grow and become the psychic and social glue for a global consciousness.

If the sense of self as a unique ensemble of relationships is lost, and one becomes only a “we,” empathy is lost and the historical progression toward global consciousness dies. That’s because empathic awareness is born out of the sense that others, like ourselves, are unique, mortal beings. When we empathize with another, it’s because we recognize her fragile finite nature, her vulnerability, and her one and only life. We experience her existential aloneness and her personal plight and her struggle to be and succeed as if it were our own. Our empathic embrace is our way of rooting for her and celebrating her life.

If we fall prey to an undifferentiated global “we,” we may find ourselves back to square one, when we lived in an undifferentiated mythological fog, with little sense of self and only a rudimentary sense of empathic distress built into our biology. Maintaining a dialectic balance between an ever more differentiated sense of self, embedded in an ever more integrated relational web that encompasses the world, is the critical test that might well determine the future prospects for our survival as a species.

- Jermey Rifkin


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