Virtual Discrimination

An interesting article on discrimination against virtual persons via h+ magazine.

We Are Fractal Sheep

Some interesting commentary on the nature of human behavior from boingboing.

Helicopter Parents

A wonderful quote from the New York Times that wonderfully grasps the essence of the confusion between effective parenting and ego gratification.

In this era when children symbolize emotional fulfillment rather than free household labor, we cling to the belief that if we just do everything right — starting with what a woman eats before she’s even pregnant — we can protect them from pain or failure or sadness. We can make them perfect and, in the process, prove ourselves beyond reproach.

The article itself is good for other reasons too.

The End of Solitude

A wonderful read from the Chronicle of Higher Education.

The Real Depends on the Virtual

A interesting article from airroots on how the real world is dependent on the virtual world. This virtual world being the abstract one of friendship -- connections that have no basis in the physical world through kinship, but rather operate on another plane. It makes an interesting argument that new communications technologies are not inferior to formal literacy and verbose communications systems, but rather a more accurate reflection of our own internal abstract interaction mechanisms.

A slightly different, and perhaps more anthropological, interpretation of "virtual" than perhaps many of us are used to.

Follow-up

Someone asked, so a follow up ...

It's a dead end discussion anyway. Easy enough to say that our socially-defined roles are in conflict with themselves, the functional role and the ideal role no longer corresponding to each other, but where do you go after that?

In other words: you may be a free individual, equal to me because of your humanity, but your a still just a janitor, how dare you say "hi' to the CEO.

But it is not the issue of conformance. It is the issue of abstracted ideals traditionally being the demense of the elite, and being elite, the elite were provided with a support structure that promoted this abstracted ideal self. But today, when everyone has an abstracted ideal self in a model of equality and freedom, the social support networks don't function, since they are still largely focused on one's role in society rather than the ideal they profess to support. It is not that the model is wrong, it is just that it has no support structure to bolster it, so it comes off feeling like nothing more than an empty promise to too many. Given our current political systems, the only way to preserve equality is through hierarchy ... go figure. If something requires that it be its own antithesis in order to function, what does that say about it? Definitely a thorny question.

But the point it was all coming out of was that the self of freedom and equality is an abstracted self, and in that sense a fictional, contrived, or constructed self that is often at odds with the socially perceived and socially defined self. Perhaps then the first step in the idea of constructed selves that is in line with modern attitudes toward self, as well as the ability of real people to become fictional through the process of media, as well as the ability of fictional people to become real through the same vehicle.

Socially Support the King!

Okay, last time I suggested that a strong platform of humans rights creates an interesting conundrum. It assigns an arbitrary, idealized definition of self to all individuals that has no bearing on nor interaction with their role in society. It is not a social standing, but an abstract ideal. Furthermore, I suggested that such an abstract ideal was formerly reserved for nobility and the clergy, the members of which represented high level abstract notions of nobility and divinity.

Although interestingly stated, we probably haven't escaped basic anthropology yet.

So the next step and question has to do with the significance of this assertion. What happens when people lose strong, clearl defined identities for abstract and arbitrary ones? What happens is lots of discourse about the loss of self. But interestingly, though some nobility and clergy have gone insane in dramatic ways, that can mostly be explained by huge amounts of inbreeding and the fact that power attracts the eccentrics. So, if the nobility and clergy of days gone by could keep their sense of self when functioning as metonym for social abstractions, why can't everyone else.

Well, it seems there are a few reasons. The simplest is that being a member of an exclusive club ensures that the number of people arguing about what it means to be a member of said exclusive club means. In fact, there is a strong impetus for conformity so that you don't get kicked out of the exclusive club.

In other words, and the more important reason, there is a social support network, either positive or negative in its agency, that assists in creating a strong sense of self for nobility and clergy.

However, when the idealized self is abstracted out to all people, the support network does not scale with it. This is where the problem resides, and where all the discourse about the current loss of self comes from. It is not the self that is lacking, but the social support network that is now faced with many contradictory messages. On one hand, the social support network is supposed to promote one's role in society. On the other hand, one's role in society has been redefined as mutuable and fluid, something to be countermanded by one's right to change their station in life. And this mutability is in direct conflict with older social networks which attempt to define one's role in older more static social models. We have conflicting social messages that are not necessarily commensurable.

So the question then is not how to instill a strong sense of self in people again (which would involve a rather draconian solution), but rather how to create social networks that can support and promote a sense of self within the context of a deep self that is, in the end, and unrealizable ideal. Certainly the unrealizable ideal is not the issue. Pure nobility and pure divinity are also both unrealizable ideals, and yet there were social support networks to keep them in place.

It should be noted that some people are perfectly successful in the new social model, so it is not something inherint in human nature, but rather a contextual factor. I would propose that these successful people come in two categories: those who cling successfully to the old models of social station, and those who have found away to define themselves comfortably as mutable and have found a sense of self external to social station.

So, if the latter is preferable, what is it about these people that allows them to comfortably define themselves as mutable? How broadly can such a definition of self be spread to others?

Which is a good question to end on.

Creative Fictions

The world is going virtual. I will be there waiting for it to catch up.

What is identity when a fictional character can have a concrete and real presence in the world? A question to ponder. Ponder. Ponder. Ponder. It is something I am good at. Now, if I would just stop pondering and act.

Can a fictional character influence the real world? Yes! For instance, not all the world religions can be right, since some exist in diametrical opposition to each other. Therefore, even if some of them are fictionalized accounts of deeper underlying truths, they are still fictions, or at least myths. And look at the impact they all have had. But to avoid religious debates, which I just flat out refuse to engage in with anyone who professes to actually believe anything, because when that happens I find myself face to face with someone willing to defend their very identity, violently if necessary, against things so simple as questions, let's try a less contentious example.

How many of us were influenced by the stories of Dr. Seuss? How about Winnie the Pooh? Peter Pan? Alice and her trip through Wonderland? Alice, in particular, has become a global meme that has spread like wildfire, infecting, especially, Japan, or so it seems. The Japanese love Alice. She is a fictional character, but the sheer number of morality plays they have teased out of her ...

The benefit of fictional characters is that they allow us to step aside from ourselves and explore morality plays in the safety of the written word, or the movie, or the theater play, or any other media where people can be fictions created to entertain and to instruct. From fiction we learn without being threatened by the reality of what we see.

Perhaps one of the greatest failings in the newest computer media, like games, both online and stand-alone, is the loss of the character. The actors in the game are not longer characters, but mere placeholders for the people behind them, or place holders for some single-dimensional concept, such as "something I have to kill before it kills me". Many online games allow players to become actors that are nothing but mythic versions of the players.

A fictional character is a character. They have dimension and depth. They are their own people. Even when the actors portraying them are not present, they are still there, simply being, as a shadow that reflects the real world back at itself for introspection. How do we avoid losing something that precious in the trend away from communal media and toward more shallow forms as individualized entertainment, as well as the backwash of this trend back into communal media.

Marshall McLuhan said that electronic media will destroy plot and narrative. Will it also destroy the fictional character, the people who are not that we turn to for wisdom