The atomized self
Postal Portals #5
This letter is a response to Bridging Paradoxes and Discovering Beauty, a letter from Spencer Chang to me.
Spencer,
I haven’t read The Hobbit actually; I’ve never been drawn to the fantasy genre, at least if you separate it from science fiction. But what you’ve written about Bilbo Baggins listening to his heart is true: pursuing an ‘adventure’ as one’s authentic self is thrilling and worthwhile. I’m glad you sense that you’re on the path to the pinnacle of belonging you described: belonging through authenticity.
I want to offer a parallel, or maybe intersecting, axis to model the self: the holistic self vs the atomized self. I’m thinking here about the self with respect to relationships in the broadest sense of that word, so bonds like self-work, self-friends, self-romantic partners, self-family, self-community, self-home.
Emerging from COVID and resuming the social interactions that were on pause throughout the last year, I’ve thought about what I missed most in my relationships, and how to restart them, looking towards better connection all around. And a particular subset of that reignition is dating. How do I want to offer myself in a romantic relationship? How can I best be myself to be the best part of a relationship?
The conclusion I’d say I’m arriving at now is that being one’s whole self is critical to healthy relationships. Compromising the whole of the self, atomizing oneself, is anathema to long-term connection. Perhaps this doesn’t come as a surprise to you, but it definitely necessitates reflection in the context of today’s commodification of the consumer-individual.
In our digital economy based on advertising, ‘segmenting’ individuals is imperative. There’s the 18-24’s, the working mom’s, the military veterans, the high rollers. While advertising companies, of course, have much more sophisticated models that add layers of complexity to today’s ‘segments,’ it’s easy to see what the upshot is: as a segment gets more specific, fewer and fewer people belong. To market to an authentic consumer is to market to a segment of one.
To that end, does it make sense for a social-model based on individual consumption to understand a holistic self? Even with sophisticated models, it seems to make more sense to lump people into this segment or that segment rather than combining segments to have a tiny group of ‘golfer-grandma-expats-who-like-gelato,’ right? And if that social model informs our thinking even outside of its purported purpose (advertising), well, where does that leave us?
Perhaps one of the key international proponents of ‘neoliberalism,’ Margaret Thatcher claimed ‘…there's no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there are families.’ I wonder if those words were an assessment of the 80’s or more of a prediction for neoliberalism’s terminal state. Either way, I see the axis of belonging vs authenticity as a manifestation of this idea, of the segment of one. When a society (I’m sure Thatcher is turning in her grave when I use this word), places as much emphasis on consumerism as ours does, then that society can’t help but start to view its constituents as consumers first, and whole persons second.
As you start to ‘rage’ and fight to be your authentic self, I think it’s worthwhile asking, is that authentic self atomized or whole? How do you authentically be in your relationships? How can we avoid relationships, romantic or otherwise, where we consume an atomized version of one another?
When I think about dating and I’m on the apps looking around, I have to stop myself from segmenting and shopping for men. I’ll think to myself, ‘I’m a cocktails guy, not so much a beer guy,’ but haven’t I just segmented both myself and my prospective partner? It’s easy to categorize and use heuristics when it comes to dating on apps, but perhaps it’s not as natural as it seems. Maybe that’s because the atomized self feels like it can belong more easily, even when the holistic self is what’s required for deep belonging.
As a final thought, I want to revisit my comment on expending decision making energy at work and how that looms over personal decision making outside of the workday. I’m home visiting my parents now, in part because my eyes have been aching and I need to visit my eye doctor. The most likely diagnosis: eye strain from excessive screen use. A quick search online shows that most experts recommend something like 6-8 hours of screen time a day. So depending on which end of that range I choose to trust, I end my workday with a balance of 0 to -2 hours of screen time for personal use. Amazing. This letter is being written in temporal debt that my eyes will pay back eventually. How can we atomize ourselves and believe a work life balance can exist when we give so much to work it leaves pittance for life? I suspect the holistic self’s relationship with work might look quite different than the atomized relationship the mantra of ‘work-life balance’ promotes.
Yours,
Avery