The False Self on Facebook

Why hasn’t humanity found a way to live in peace and harmony, to live together without destroying the environment on which we depend? In part we can turn to the influence of the narrative that we depend on for our identity and in turn our behavior. As an example, we have only to look at the recent development in technology called social media. I am referring to Facebook, Second Life, Myspace and Twitter for example. Peggy Orenstein in her article in The New York Times Magazine asks a critically important question, “Are Twitter posts an expression of who we are—or are they changing who we are?”  Or we could ask, are they an expression of who we have always been?

In P-B we are largely unaware of the distinction between our true self and our persona, which the dictionary tells us is “the role that a person assumes in order to display his conscious intentions to himself and to others.” In other words, our persona (and we have many possible personas to choose from at any given time) is a character that we create. It is a product of the false self deriving its identity from our physical, mental or emotional energy as it pursues power, pleasure or a sense of safety.

Our true self is our inner or largely private self and our persona is created for public consumption. As Orenstein puts it, the difference is between, “the authentic and contrived self [and] … If all the world was once a stage, it has now become a reality TV show; we mere players are not just aware of the camera; we mug for it.”  

What is the down side of all of this egocentric seeking of affection and esteem? To understand the answer to that question we can turn to the author David Riesman who in his impactful book, The Lonely Crowd (1950) warned that the character of Americans was changing from inner-directed to other- or outer-directed. William H. Whyte in The Organization Man (1956) blamed the influence of the corporations for mindless conformity and group-think in the 1950’s just as we can blame the social media today for our dysfunctional society.

“Sherry Turkle, a professor at M. I. T., interviewed more than 400 children and parents about their use of social media and cellphones. Among young people especially she found that the self was increasingly becoming externally manufactured rather than internally developed: a series of profiles to be sculptured and refined in response to public opinion…. So those moments in which you’re supposed to be showing your true self become a performance…. Twitter is outer-directedness cubed.”  Or, in other words, social media moves us more deeply into the illusion of P-B and away from the transformation of our identity that would enable us to behave in response to our intuitive inner wisdom.

“What becomes of insight?” asks Orenstein, “What becomes of reflection?” [and] “What happens to intimacy? The risk of the performance culture, of the packaged self, is that it erodes the very relationships it purports to create, and alienates us from our humanity.”  No matter what the technological or scientific triumphs that we celebrate in P-B we can count on their being usurped by the false self to serve its own ends. Novelist Meg Wolitzer described the effect of social media on high school-age users this way: The generation that had information, but no context. Butter but no bread. Craving, but no longing. 

Shifting paradigm is of the utmost importance or we risk moving further away from Simple Reality. The choice of a healthier story and identity recede as our delusional behavior intensifies and the false self leads us more deeply into the madness of trying to distract ourselves from the truth and beauty of the life we have been given. We don’t need the contrived identities derived from our social media; our true self is infinitely more rich and satisfying.

__________________________________________________________ 

References and notes are available for this article.
For a much more in-depth discussion on Simple Reality, read Simple Reality: The Key to Serenity and Survival, by Roy Charles Henry, published in 2011.