This is a strong diagnosis of identity fragmentation at the individual level.
The deeper implication is institutional: systems built for stable selves are now governing populations with split agency, phantom incentives, and outsourced will.
That mismatch, not despair alone is what’s driving volatility across markets, politics, and organizations.
I’m a musician/performance artist by vocation, and I’ve always been weirdly bad at recording, archiving, and sharing my work in non-real time. I have colleagues, friends, and teachers who record, archive, and distribute obsessively, but it’s just not something I think about. I have struggled to pinpoint why it’s not a natural or intrinsic priority for me, and I think you nailed it in this piece. Internally I am inherently more impelled toward the connection that can only come from the “high friction” of real-time, ritual/ritualistic performance.
Recordings are great, but I live for a good ol’ fashioned “ya had to be there” kind of experience.
I’ve been experiencing the despair of weakness much of my adult life. I found myself comparing myself to just about every concocted identity I could, fictional ones, perceived inner lives of others, historical figures I conjured in my imagination, hero’s I imagined meeting in an elevator. I did this both before the internet and in the long years afterward (and I haven’t even used social media for at least 10 years). I checked almost every thought against a my “identity,” or weighed the thought to understand what the resulting identity would be. I only recently realized that emotions are constructed and are probably experienced differently by each individual, and they are arbitrarily named, so actually just more like information than defining in any actual way. Somehow this insight helped free me from a portion of this condition. It’s been a process.
We’re giving value to the system and it’s not giving anything back to us. People get off on social media in the form of chemical release, but we’ll be hollowed out in no time as it works us to death.
"...the collapsing engagement of the workforce."; are you perhaps putting the cart before the horse? Look at the working environments and economic systems they inhabit and wonder why they create these fantasies. When the fantasies fail as substitutes, the reckoning will be paid. It's not rocket science.
What “Zoomed In” Real Self would you predict arriving? Nondigital events, experiences, exposure as “flesh time” over “face time”? In other words, the human appearing, speaking, connecting beyond presenting the digital online, and reacquainting in human expression in real time? The collapse of time and space has connected us, but the collapse of subtleties noted has estranged us. To plan a “pivot day” seems the key, unlocking screen focus and finding time to include in person expression as a balance.
This is a strong diagnosis of identity fragmentation at the individual level.
The deeper implication is institutional: systems built for stable selves are now governing populations with split agency, phantom incentives, and outsourced will.
That mismatch, not despair alone is what’s driving volatility across markets, politics, and organizations.
I’m a musician/performance artist by vocation, and I’ve always been weirdly bad at recording, archiving, and sharing my work in non-real time. I have colleagues, friends, and teachers who record, archive, and distribute obsessively, but it’s just not something I think about. I have struggled to pinpoint why it’s not a natural or intrinsic priority for me, and I think you nailed it in this piece. Internally I am inherently more impelled toward the connection that can only come from the “high friction” of real-time, ritual/ritualistic performance.
Recordings are great, but I live for a good ol’ fashioned “ya had to be there” kind of experience.
Am I just getting dense, or are some of those charts basically uninterpretable?
I’ve been experiencing the despair of weakness much of my adult life. I found myself comparing myself to just about every concocted identity I could, fictional ones, perceived inner lives of others, historical figures I conjured in my imagination, hero’s I imagined meeting in an elevator. I did this both before the internet and in the long years afterward (and I haven’t even used social media for at least 10 years). I checked almost every thought against a my “identity,” or weighed the thought to understand what the resulting identity would be. I only recently realized that emotions are constructed and are probably experienced differently by each individual, and they are arbitrarily named, so actually just more like information than defining in any actual way. Somehow this insight helped free me from a portion of this condition. It’s been a process.
We’re giving value to the system and it’s not giving anything back to us. People get off on social media in the form of chemical release, but we’ll be hollowed out in no time as it works us to death.
"...the collapsing engagement of the workforce."; are you perhaps putting the cart before the horse? Look at the working environments and economic systems they inhabit and wonder why they create these fantasies. When the fantasies fail as substitutes, the reckoning will be paid. It's not rocket science.
Stop complaining, and evolve.
What “Zoomed In” Real Self would you predict arriving? Nondigital events, experiences, exposure as “flesh time” over “face time”? In other words, the human appearing, speaking, connecting beyond presenting the digital online, and reacquainting in human expression in real time? The collapse of time and space has connected us, but the collapse of subtleties noted has estranged us. To plan a “pivot day” seems the key, unlocking screen focus and finding time to include in person expression as a balance.