You might have seen the movie Breakfast at Tiffany's in which the main actress attempts to inject meaning and sense of mystery into her life by pretending to live a life that is glamorous. This is a very poignant picture of what many people do in our culture today. Glamour has become a way that ordinary people try to capture that sense of mystery. Celebrity worship, fashion magazines, and luxury goods all offer people the chance to take on the Glamorous public self. Having culturally lost a sense of the sacred, we grasp at what seems the closest replica of mystery and transcendence. We fall into the trap of worshipping the creation instead of the Creator.
I was speaking at a church service about faith and young adults when I was approached by some young women in their twenties who asked me why there were no eligible guys left in the church. I looked around and spotted a guy who looked the same age as them. He was over six feet tall, well built, and handsome. He stood talking to a friend in a casual stance. He was probably the hippest-dressed guy in the room. I nodded toward him and said to the girls, "What about him? Is he single?". They rolled their eyes at each other and said, "Yes, he is single - but no way." I said, "What? Are you kidding me - this guy is single? He looks like a male model!" One of the girls replied, "Yeah, but he does not know who he is." Despite the fact that he fulfilled all of the requirements for being attractive in our culture, his lack of self-awareness meant that he also lacked that indescribable quality that the term cool encompasses.
Our culture's obsession with the concept of sexy and cool goes beyond any addiction to sex or consumerism. On one hand, these concepts represent a diminishment of our humanity. Instead of moving us toward our true selves, they move us away from ourselves. On the other hand, both concepts attempt to capture a sense of self that our culture has forgotten. When we encounter someone with a special indefinable quality that we find intriguing, that person elicits a reaction in us that reveals that something else is going on. We use the purest senses of the words sexy and cool and glamorous to describe this mystery, this unknowability, this transcendence that we occasionally sense in people.
Source: Mark Sayers (2010), The Vertical Self, p.74-77
Tuesday, February 26, 2013
Saturday, February 23, 2013
Summary of Chapter 7: "The Social Self of Cool"
In many ways cool is the cousin of sexy. It is in some ways the male equivalent of sexy. Sure, guys can be sexy and girls can be cool, but you'll hear sexy more often attached to females and cool to males. Like sexy, cool is just as mysterious and hard to pin down. It is used to describe an inordinate number of situations, objects, people, and activities. Never before has a word been so often used but so hard to define. And just as our culture promises those who master the sexy social self a meaningful and fulfilling life, the same is promised to those who can master the cool persona.
The story of cool begins in a very different place than we might imagine. Three of the most common cool expressions - "That's hip," "I dig that", and "That's cool" - have their origins in African tribal culture, specifically in the Yoruba and Ibo cultures of West Africa. As cool moved beyond those who understood its original ethos, it began to change. No longer was it simply a tool of dignity and survival; it became a way of defining yourself as an adolescent growing up in the midst of modern social alienation. It didn't take long for marketers to realise how much money could be made from exploiting young people's desire to find identity through cool.
Cool became a way of being seen. It moved from an attitude to an aesthetic. Hollywood, rock 'n' roll and a booming consumer market ensured that cool became the perfect social mask to wear in an age in which media was beginning to dominate social consciousness. This version of cool is exactly the same as sexy; both are all about being watched. As people became less defined by their contribution to society and by their pasts, the new media landscape was all about producing the right image. Cool was a performance. Today, as we are so used to seeing the public performance, we no longer question it. Yet a closer examination of cool reveals fascinating insights into who we wish to be.
Cool offers middle-class people a chance to escape their self-consciousness and to be comfortable and affluent. The teenager from the leafy green, well-to-do suburb can, with a flick of his cap and a pair of baggy pants, take on the gangster persona in an attempt to have the street cred of the ghetto rub off on him. The performance of cool offers the social actor the benefits of imitating a cultural outsider without any of the social cost. Cool gives those who feel entrapped by the normality and conformity of modern mass culture a chance to escape into a fantasy world of false danger and fake rebellion. Meanwhile, beneath the surface we can find a deep desire to discover or rediscover personal authenticity.
Source: Mark Sayers (2010), The Vertical Self, p.65-73
The story of cool begins in a very different place than we might imagine. Three of the most common cool expressions - "That's hip," "I dig that", and "That's cool" - have their origins in African tribal culture, specifically in the Yoruba and Ibo cultures of West Africa. As cool moved beyond those who understood its original ethos, it began to change. No longer was it simply a tool of dignity and survival; it became a way of defining yourself as an adolescent growing up in the midst of modern social alienation. It didn't take long for marketers to realise how much money could be made from exploiting young people's desire to find identity through cool.
Cool became a way of being seen. It moved from an attitude to an aesthetic. Hollywood, rock 'n' roll and a booming consumer market ensured that cool became the perfect social mask to wear in an age in which media was beginning to dominate social consciousness. This version of cool is exactly the same as sexy; both are all about being watched. As people became less defined by their contribution to society and by their pasts, the new media landscape was all about producing the right image. Cool was a performance. Today, as we are so used to seeing the public performance, we no longer question it. Yet a closer examination of cool reveals fascinating insights into who we wish to be.
Cool offers middle-class people a chance to escape their self-consciousness and to be comfortable and affluent. The teenager from the leafy green, well-to-do suburb can, with a flick of his cap and a pair of baggy pants, take on the gangster persona in an attempt to have the street cred of the ghetto rub off on him. The performance of cool offers the social actor the benefits of imitating a cultural outsider without any of the social cost. Cool gives those who feel entrapped by the normality and conformity of modern mass culture a chance to escape into a fantasy world of false danger and fake rebellion. Meanwhile, beneath the surface we can find a deep desire to discover or rediscover personal authenticity.
Source: Mark Sayers (2010), The Vertical Self, p.65-73
Saturday, February 16, 2013
Summary of Chapter 6: "The Social Self of Sexy"
The screech of the car's tires announced their arrival in the petrol station parking lot. Their purple sports car bore a Playboy bunny sticker and pumped out bass lines. They both disembarked from the vehicle as if they were arriving at an awards show. They were in their midtwenties and wore the classic contemporary uniform: miniskirts, tight-fitting tank tops, dyed blonde hair, perfect tans, and expensive make-up. Their physiques gave away the fact that these girls spent a lot of time toning up at the gym. As they filled their gas tank, they tried to act casual, but it was obvious that they were anxious to know if they had an audience. Unfortunately, I was the only one in the parking lot, and as they walked inside to pay, they both glanced at me with their best seductive looks. Wow.
As the young women drove away, I realised they were acting out a learned script. Beneath the make-up and grooming, beneath the diligently learned visual cues of seduction, it was obvious that these two girls were actually deeply insecure. They were not at all interested in me; I was simply playing a key function in their performance. I was their audience. They wanted to be noticed. They wanted me - a man - to affirm that their carefully orchestrated act of 'sexiness' made them people of worth. They wanted to know that the public 'self' they had crated had been a success. It probably wound't have mattered if I were female; I'm sure they would have been just as happy to be recipients of female envy as opposed to male appreciation. Both would have confirmed their social currency - the sense that they were worthwhile human beings. Both would have aided them in their misguided attempts to find their true selves.
We are a culture obsessed with sexy. It is one of the most dominant disposable identities we encounter. The word sexy is now a cultural phenomenon. To label something sexy is to say that it is desirable and connected to pleasure and power. Today, in the age of the horizontal self, in which delayed gratification is downplayed and temporary pleasure is valued, the media mask of 'pleasure (and power) provider' carries enormous cultural currency. What is important is not what is going in someone's real life but the show she or he is putting on for the audience of her/his peers.
Source: Mark Sayers (2010), The Vertical Self, p.57-64
As the young women drove away, I realised they were acting out a learned script. Beneath the make-up and grooming, beneath the diligently learned visual cues of seduction, it was obvious that these two girls were actually deeply insecure. They were not at all interested in me; I was simply playing a key function in their performance. I was their audience. They wanted to be noticed. They wanted me - a man - to affirm that their carefully orchestrated act of 'sexiness' made them people of worth. They wanted to know that the public 'self' they had crated had been a success. It probably wound't have mattered if I were female; I'm sure they would have been just as happy to be recipients of female envy as opposed to male appreciation. Both would have confirmed their social currency - the sense that they were worthwhile human beings. Both would have aided them in their misguided attempts to find their true selves.
We are a culture obsessed with sexy. It is one of the most dominant disposable identities we encounter. The word sexy is now a cultural phenomenon. To label something sexy is to say that it is desirable and connected to pleasure and power. Today, in the age of the horizontal self, in which delayed gratification is downplayed and temporary pleasure is valued, the media mask of 'pleasure (and power) provider' carries enormous cultural currency. What is important is not what is going in someone's real life but the show she or he is putting on for the audience of her/his peers.
Source: Mark Sayers (2010), The Vertical Self, p.57-64
Saturday, February 9, 2013
Summary of Chapter 5: "Pop-Culture Memories of Wholeness"
When it comes to the influence of the Christian faith, a great forgetting has occurred (similar to movie Memento in case you've seen it). The average citizen of the West is almost totally unaware of the extent to which Christianity has shaped his or her worldview. So many have forgotten the ways in which the biblical imagination has shaped our arts; our concepts of justice, equality, and human rights; our ideas of personhood, of goodness, and morality. So much of what we value as a culture is born out of Christianity; yet average people are unaware of the mountain upon which they stand. This could not be more true of our concepts of identity.
Just think of all the movies you have watched. Think of the way the woman screams when she is confronted by the killer in the horror movie. Think of the hardened cop who bends the rules to bring crooks to justice. Recall the way the seductress dances, the way the devilishly hip criminal delivers his lines, the way the quarterback celebrates his touchdown. All of these memories provide a sort of storehouse of instructions of how to act. With no set identity given to us anymore, we delve into that storehouse to know which way to act, which way to be, which identities or roles to perform. Our culture offers us disposable identities - for example, the sexy identity, the cool identity, the glamorous identity. Yet when we look behind these identities, we find elements that point us back to a true sense of self. Listen closely enough, and you will hear echoes of wholeness, forgotten shadows of our true selves.
On one hand, these social selves, i.e. sexy, cool and glamorous, take us away from our true selves. They move us toward parody and the perversion of our humanity. Yet when we dig deep enough behind the clichés and performances, we find tiny grains of truth, memories of wholeness. To move forward effectively toward our true selves in our culture today, we must examine these social selves and their power to influence our behaviour both negatively and positively.
The next chapter will examine some of the identities commonly acted out in today's youth and young (and also not-so-young) adult culture.
Source: Mark Sayers (2010), The Vertical Self, p.54-56
Just think of all the movies you have watched. Think of the way the woman screams when she is confronted by the killer in the horror movie. Think of the hardened cop who bends the rules to bring crooks to justice. Recall the way the seductress dances, the way the devilishly hip criminal delivers his lines, the way the quarterback celebrates his touchdown. All of these memories provide a sort of storehouse of instructions of how to act. With no set identity given to us anymore, we delve into that storehouse to know which way to act, which way to be, which identities or roles to perform. Our culture offers us disposable identities - for example, the sexy identity, the cool identity, the glamorous identity. Yet when we look behind these identities, we find elements that point us back to a true sense of self. Listen closely enough, and you will hear echoes of wholeness, forgotten shadows of our true selves.
On one hand, these social selves, i.e. sexy, cool and glamorous, take us away from our true selves. They move us toward parody and the perversion of our humanity. Yet when we dig deep enough behind the clichés and performances, we find tiny grains of truth, memories of wholeness. To move forward effectively toward our true selves in our culture today, we must examine these social selves and their power to influence our behaviour both negatively and positively.
The next chapter will examine some of the identities commonly acted out in today's youth and young (and also not-so-young) adult culture.
Source: Mark Sayers (2010), The Vertical Self, p.54-56
Tuesday, February 5, 2013
Summary of Chapter 4: "Life, the Movie"
Welcome to life as a movie. At weddings in the past, the bride and groom were merely bit players in a community event. But approximately twenty years ago that changes, and weddings became more about the wants and desires of the bride and groom. Today, they are full-blown media events in which the lines between entertainment and real life become blurred. They are now about delivering a celebrity-for-a-day experience - attempting to bring the mythology of movies into everyday life. And this is not just happening with weddings.
The advent of the cinema was key in destroying the line between stage and real life. Today, Hollywood starlets will sometimes spend days preparing for a red carpet appearance. It is a major preproduction. The combined effect of this makeover is that the starlet looks very different than she does in her normal, everyday life. Pretty much all celebrities are actors these days, whether they make a living acting or not. Celebrities play a key role in our culture today. They offer a framework for how we should behave. As with the saints of the Middle Ages, their lives are held up to be emulated. However, as a result we fall into a trap that celebrities have been experiencing for years: the split between the public self and the private self, a sort of identity confusion.
In our culture today, once a camera is turned on, everything changes. Almost subconsciously we begin to act differently. Put simply, people tend to act out what they see on the screen. Media theorist Douglas Rushkoff calls this a "media loop": we are influenced by the media we watch and consume, so we start to act ourselves and turn our lives into media events. Both feed of each other: our media reflects our culture, but it also shapes our culture and us.
The entertainment age and the horizontal self have led us to divorce what we believe from what we experience, see and feel. The elephant in the living room of contemporary Christianity is people's ability to simply sit in church, to consume the experience the way one would a great sporting event, a thrilling movie, or an exciting theme park ride, and then to dispose of it, totally unchanged at the soul level. Christianity becomes just another social self to put on and take off - like a pair of jeans. We, as the church, will find ourselves in the same predicament as those with the worldview of the horizontal self - focused on the external and the temporal, engrossed with sensation, obsessed with refining our image - all the while forgetting that we are created in the image of the Creator.
Source: Mark Sayers (2010), The Vertical Self, p. 36-53
The advent of the cinema was key in destroying the line between stage and real life. Today, Hollywood starlets will sometimes spend days preparing for a red carpet appearance. It is a major preproduction. The combined effect of this makeover is that the starlet looks very different than she does in her normal, everyday life. Pretty much all celebrities are actors these days, whether they make a living acting or not. Celebrities play a key role in our culture today. They offer a framework for how we should behave. As with the saints of the Middle Ages, their lives are held up to be emulated. However, as a result we fall into a trap that celebrities have been experiencing for years: the split between the public self and the private self, a sort of identity confusion.
In our culture today, once a camera is turned on, everything changes. Almost subconsciously we begin to act differently. Put simply, people tend to act out what they see on the screen. Media theorist Douglas Rushkoff calls this a "media loop": we are influenced by the media we watch and consume, so we start to act ourselves and turn our lives into media events. Both feed of each other: our media reflects our culture, but it also shapes our culture and us.
The entertainment age and the horizontal self have led us to divorce what we believe from what we experience, see and feel. The elephant in the living room of contemporary Christianity is people's ability to simply sit in church, to consume the experience the way one would a great sporting event, a thrilling movie, or an exciting theme park ride, and then to dispose of it, totally unchanged at the soul level. Christianity becomes just another social self to put on and take off - like a pair of jeans. We, as the church, will find ourselves in the same predicament as those with the worldview of the horizontal self - focused on the external and the temporal, engrossed with sensation, obsessed with refining our image - all the while forgetting that we are created in the image of the Creator.
Source: Mark Sayers (2010), The Vertical Self, p. 36-53
Sunday, February 3, 2013
Summary of Chapter 3: "Finding Yourself"
We have now entered a new age of anxiety about who we are. The horizontal self places the incredible burden of finding and forging an identity upon the individual. We find ourselves in situations of constant self-questioning and self-examination. Our cultural climate dictates that all truths must be questioned, so with no truth to hold on to and any Utopian dreams of changing our culture in tatters, all that is left are interior feelings, the distraction of romantic love, and the lure of pleasurable experiences. The rules of the game keep changing. And so, to discover a sense of identity, individuals must constantly reinvent themselves.
I spoke to a group of college students recently, and they said that the biggest pressure they have in their lives is to "keep up" - keep up with the right look, the right music, and the right technologies. Many in the group shared with me that they were overwhelmed by the pressure of keeping up. They desperately wanted to just give up, but the fear of social isolation was too much, so they gave in to constant reinvention.
When we have multiple self-images we find ourselves with conflicting values and views. Because we have retreated to a culture based on publicity and the acting out of multiple identities, our moral choices do not matter. What does matter is being seen as having the right opinions. Instead of letting our actions show our convictions, we speak empty platitudes through our blogs, bumper stickers, and T-shirt slogans. In the age of the horizontal self, backing up our opinions with the right behaviour is seen as neither essential nor necessary. It is not as important that we are good as it is that we appear good.
However, in reality, what you believe is not what you say you believe, what you believe is what you do. Think about this phrase for a moment.
We are paralysed by not knowing who we really are. Instead of having well-defined identities, we have a churning sea of conflicting feelings and desires inside us. When we don't know who we are, we find it hard to know what we should be doing. We may have the right qualifications, we may have the skills and talent, but often we fear we will make the wrong decisions about our futures.
When we don't know who we are, we become slaves to our feelings. The momentary emotions that we feel begin to dominate our lives, and we become what we are feeling in that moment. When we don't know who we are, we become entrapped by circumstance. We give up trying to find out who we are, and instead we act. We treat life as if it were a movie - our disposable identities are the roles that we play. We look to the media to provide those identities.
Source: Mark Sayers (2010), The Vertical Self, p. 21-35
I spoke to a group of college students recently, and they said that the biggest pressure they have in their lives is to "keep up" - keep up with the right look, the right music, and the right technologies. Many in the group shared with me that they were overwhelmed by the pressure of keeping up. They desperately wanted to just give up, but the fear of social isolation was too much, so they gave in to constant reinvention.
When we have multiple self-images we find ourselves with conflicting values and views. Because we have retreated to a culture based on publicity and the acting out of multiple identities, our moral choices do not matter. What does matter is being seen as having the right opinions. Instead of letting our actions show our convictions, we speak empty platitudes through our blogs, bumper stickers, and T-shirt slogans. In the age of the horizontal self, backing up our opinions with the right behaviour is seen as neither essential nor necessary. It is not as important that we are good as it is that we appear good.
However, in reality, what you believe is not what you say you believe, what you believe is what you do. Think about this phrase for a moment.
We are paralysed by not knowing who we really are. Instead of having well-defined identities, we have a churning sea of conflicting feelings and desires inside us. When we don't know who we are, we find it hard to know what we should be doing. We may have the right qualifications, we may have the skills and talent, but often we fear we will make the wrong decisions about our futures.
When we don't know who we are, we become slaves to our feelings. The momentary emotions that we feel begin to dominate our lives, and we become what we are feeling in that moment. When we don't know who we are, we become entrapped by circumstance. We give up trying to find out who we are, and instead we act. We treat life as if it were a movie - our disposable identities are the roles that we play. We look to the media to provide those identities.
Source: Mark Sayers (2010), The Vertical Self, p. 21-35
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