This is something I intended to discuss anyway, but given Sunak’s blatant attempt to take control of the way people think of themselves as themselves, I’ll do it now.
So, in capping “low value” degrees, Sunak is dong two things: firstly, suggesting that if you are not motivated by profit and personal gain there is something ‘odd’ about you and, secondly, that if you want to pursue these “low value” degrees then you’re a ‘loser’ with no self-esteem. The more dangerous of the two is the second…Let’s look at the subtext: it essentially says that you value yourself so poorly that all you aspire to is an A&H degree. Not only that, but you’re prepared to go into public service and be supported by the “real people” who pay taxes. You obviously know that you’re not able to compete already. Your aspirations are poor, so you’re going to leave having a “real job” to others; they’ll earn loads, be able to support their family, provide all the benefits of the material world…but no, that isn’t for you, you’re ordinary.
This capping will be sold as “Look! We’re putting money into worthwile degrees that mean you too can be materially successful. Forget those other kinds of degrees; they’re for the lazy to look after the lazy (and feckless).”
So, back to the beginning. How is the self formed? What influences the formation of self? Can the self every be said to be a finished project?
Well, starting with the last question: Heidegger argues that we should not talk about ‘being’, we should talk about ‘becoming’ because the human person is in what we might call a constant state of flux. Ideas, concepts, notions of the self are constantly being created, modified, discarded. This idea becomes clearer if we refer to Nietzsche and the aesthetics of self-creation; Nietzsche sees the self as a work of art, that is constantly being made and re-made. The only terminal point for either Heidegger or Nietzsche is death.
There has been a tendency in philosophy, to see the self as being created in a kind of “splendid isolation”, discounting media and others as influences. Not exactly a realistic picture of how the self is formed. We choose from a variety of sources in recent years this ‘bank’ of sources has expanded, not limited to but including literature, TV, music, social media, parents and peer groups. When we consider the latter two, we must assess the first four’s impact. Is there a kind of circularity here? Do we, in constructing ourselves, reflect or refract these influences? We might also ask, in regard to reflection and refraction, how has this changed over past number of years? Are we now more prone to reflection?
When examining how we get, and develop, our moral values, can we still claim that these come from our parents? As the Church has lost its position as moral arbiter (because many of its exponents were found to have feet of proverbial clay), so have parents. Nowadays, there are other, more influential ‘bodies’ involved: TV (briefly: TV is about drama. Thus, what kind of morality does it inculcate in spectators? Being ‘kind’ and ‘thoughtful’ is not the stuff of good drama. Couple this with TV being bedded into ‘realistic’ settings, populated by relatable characters, and TV morality achieves a supposed ‘realism’ that it does not deserve); Music (the predominant form of music is to present the listener/spectator with a one-to-one format, whereby there is straightforward identification of singer with listener/spectator – what the singer expresses are feelings, sensations and reactions felt by the listener/spectator – who often has the desire to ‘be’ the singer); Film (this is designed to fulfil the desires of the spectator. We can say that film involves wish-fulfilment on the part of the spectator. A film character enables the spectator to think “I wish I could act in way X”. Again, most film narratives are enacted in a “realistic environment” which can cause the spectator to mistake a fictional environment for the one they inhabit); social media (in social media, the preceding forms of media meet. The spectator/user becomes the central character in a fiction of their own devising. They craft an image (or images) in the likeness of how they wish to be perceived (circularity again: where does this perception comes from? How is it formulated?). This image is then mistaken for a real person by others, and subsequently influences their self-crafting.
If we take a step back for a moment, and look at what we can call the history of the self, it seems that we have come full circle. The concept of the self ‘begins’ in the Renaissance with the Copernican Revolution. It si revealed that the earth is not the centre of the universe, it is merely another planet in orbit around the sun. The human person is displaced, as is the idea that God ordains one’s position in society. We might say that this period marks the beginning of the death of God. Once the absolute power of this God is questioned, we can see people beginning to fashion themselves (not in isolation – where God once held absolute power, other institutions rush in to fill the gaps). This self-fashioning takes the form of a persona devised to dominate public life. At this stage, there is no concept of a “private self”. Ot isn’t until the turn of the nineteenth century that the split between public and private self appears, most notably in Wordsworth’s “Introduction to The Lyrical Ballads“. What emerges from this is the now traditional idea of a public and private self, with the latter considered to be more authentic, more sincere. We can trace this back to Descartes’ split between body and mind, and to the work of the German writers Goethe and Schiller. This concept comes to dominate (in some respects, it still does), particularly the idea that the private self is the ‘true’ self, the public self being simply what one presents to the outside world. This public-facing self is seen as constructed with what one wants others to see as its guiding principle.
At the end of the nineteenth century we have the appearnce of Sigmund Freud. His theory of the unconscious is based on explaining our behaviours both to ourselves and the outside world. I’ll come back to Freud, so suffice to say for the moment: unacceptable behaviours and unfulfilled desires are surpressed into the unconscious, where they remain.These behaviours and desires battle for release, and can manifest themselves in overt behaviours and desires which appear to be unexplainable in terms other than referring to the unconscious as a cause. What’s interesting here is that, while Freud posits only the idea of an personal unconscious, Jung goes further, in that he adds the idea of a universal unconscious to the personal. This can also be “held responsible” for certain behaviours and desires. Perhaps we might see TV or social media as modern manifestations of this universal unconscious? TV can be said to cause us to behave in particular ways which, if we took the time to analyse, we would find originate in TV programmes.
Once we get to the end of the twentieth century and the and others all play an increasing beginning of the twenty first, social media has become a permanent presence in our lives.Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok and others all play a significant role in our lives. However, what these have also done is move us away from what was the dominant idea during the twentieth century, of a public and private self, back to the idea of a pulic self only. We create the selves that we want others to see (judge us by) online.; this is not confined to our psychic selves, but through instagram and photoshop, our physical selves can be crafted into the versions we desire.
Is it possible to talk about an authentic self anymore? There are so many persuasive influences in the contemporary world that it becomes increasingly difficult to see where the influence stops and the self begins. Privacy, we’re told, is a thing of the past – identifying an older generation, out of touch with modernity.
So. Wth all these influences and no concept of privacy (apparently), how does the human person make choices? And, more importantly, are these free choices?
Murmurs from the Forest 