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
Saturday, February 16, 2013
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
Thursday, December 20, 2012
Summary of Chapter 2: "From Image of God to Public Image"
In the past, people didn't seem to struggle with the question of identity in the way we do today. Other questions were at the forefront of their minds, and they derived a sense of self from a commonly held standard. Now, I don't for one second paint a sanitized version of the past. Christian cultures have often failed to see the image of God in other cultures and, sadly, sometimes committed abominable actions in the name of Christ; but on the whole, the idea of God-given identity was foundational to a person's sense of self. The belief that humans were created in the image of God was the center point of an understanding of self. This framework of identity, with its Judeo-Christian belief in God-given identity and a Greek belief in virtuous living, can be described as "the vertical self". The vertical self explains the way that identity is developed by being part of a greater order. At the top of this vertical order is God, and humans look upward to measure their behavior against a greater moral good.
Today, the way you see yourself and understand your identity is not unique. You feel the way you do because you are a product of a culture that has shaped you to process the world in a particular way. Let's talk a quick Sociology 101 tour of the influences that make you see yourself the way you do:
Source: Mark Sayers (2010), The Vertical Self, p.7-20
Today, the way you see yourself and understand your identity is not unique. You feel the way you do because you are a product of a culture that has shaped you to process the world in a particular way. Let's talk a quick Sociology 101 tour of the influences that make you see yourself the way you do:
- Weird science: The rise of the modern era was directly linked to the rise of science. No longer were our identities governed by the laws of the Kingdom of God, but rather by the laws of the jungle.
- Losing my religion: The rise of science and the modern era meant that all religious belief was questioned. Western cultures shifted faith in God to faith in our own human potential.
- "I'm kind of a big deal": Radical individualism has shaped our self-identity.
- Making it: A person's function became more important than his or her character.
- Cheesy love songs ... well, sort of: Songs, movies, and novels all speak of romantic love being the most important thing in life. We are told that when we fall in love, we will "find ourselves"
The secular individual can only look sideways - hence the contrasting term horizontal self. It looks to others for a sense of identity rather than to something larger than oneself, thus finding a sense of self in one's status within society. The horizontal self looks to the world for approval and acceptance. Identity is exchanged for imagery.
When it comes to our identities, it is as if we are now homeless. We desire to find a home, a place where we can be accepted and loved unconditionally for who we are, but the age of the horizontal self means that we must keep on the move, constantly trying to play by our culture's rules of identity and constant competition with those around us for attention and affection.
Source: Mark Sayers (2010), The Vertical Self, p.7-20
Sunday, December 16, 2012
Chapter 1 of Mark Sayers' Book: "Modern Identity"
Pick Your Personality
In front of me I have catalogue for cell phones. The front cover of the catalog does not feature a phone or any image at all. There is nothing to show that this catalog is even selling phones. All there is on the cover is one simple word that sumps up our age: me. As I open the catalog, I discover that each page extols the virtues of the latest models of phones for the coming season. Each page features a model or models who in some way attempt to match the "personality" of the phone. Welcome to the world in which we are told we can be anyone we want to be, where identity is no longer based in a sense of self but rather in the imagery we choose at any particular moment. Cool, sexy, glamorous: these are the new social virtues.
How did we begin to lose our identities?
We are at a unique time in history. Our world has gone through intense political, economic, social, and technological change. If you lived one hundred years ago, you would have had a very different set of social expectations placed upon you. Your social success was directly connected to your character and community involvement. However, today we no longer look to social institutions and community to find our sense of self; rather, we seek to "be free", to "express ourselves", and to "be happy with ourselves". But how do we achieve these things? We have unprecedented personal freedom, but our freedom is accompanied by a haunting sense of being lost. To find a real sense of self, to discover who we really are, we first must work out how we got in the position we are in.
Source: Mark Sayers (2010), The Vertical Self, p.1-6
In front of me I have catalogue for cell phones. The front cover of the catalog does not feature a phone or any image at all. There is nothing to show that this catalog is even selling phones. All there is on the cover is one simple word that sumps up our age: me. As I open the catalog, I discover that each page extols the virtues of the latest models of phones for the coming season. Each page features a model or models who in some way attempt to match the "personality" of the phone. Welcome to the world in which we are told we can be anyone we want to be, where identity is no longer based in a sense of self but rather in the imagery we choose at any particular moment. Cool, sexy, glamorous: these are the new social virtues.
How did we begin to lose our identities?
We are at a unique time in history. Our world has gone through intense political, economic, social, and technological change. If you lived one hundred years ago, you would have had a very different set of social expectations placed upon you. Your social success was directly connected to your character and community involvement. However, today we no longer look to social institutions and community to find our sense of self; rather, we seek to "be free", to "express ourselves", and to "be happy with ourselves". But how do we achieve these things? We have unprecedented personal freedom, but our freedom is accompanied by a haunting sense of being lost. To find a real sense of self, to discover who we really are, we first must work out how we got in the position we are in.
Source: Mark Sayers (2010), The Vertical Self, p.1-6
Sunday, December 2, 2012
Preface and Introduction to Mark Sayers' book "The Vertical Self"
In the coming weeks, we will have a look at Mark Sayer's outstanding book and briefly digest the main points of each chapter. If you like the summary of this blog, please consider buying a copy of the book.
We need to Change the Conversation
Christian leaders are engaged in a conversation about what kind of church shape will be most effective in the soil of 21st century Western culture. All our attempts to reshape Church in the West will at best be sabotaged and at worst fail because there is a huge unnamed problem with people inside the church. Slowly, inch by inch, we have replaced the biblical command to be holy with the quest for status. One of the reasons the early church grew at such a phenomenal rate was that the lives of the early Christians spoke so strongly to their neighbours. There was something different about them, something that spoke of another reality, an alternative way of living, to the culture around them. I believe that we need a revolution in how we think about church. But I believe, perhaps more importantly, that we need a revolution of the self.
Introduction
It is so easy to feel discouraged today as a believer in our secular culture, to buy the line that no one really cares about the spiritual anymore. Yet I realized that deep down, each one of us, Christian or not, is searching for that name of the white rock in the book of Revelation. We all crave to find our true identities. Each one of us, at a profoundly deep level, no matter what we believe, is being drawn, cajoled, and beckoned by God to our true selves, to find ourselves as God sees us: redeemed and perfect. Yet at the same time, this desire in us is derailed and sabotaged by our culture, which offers imitations of our true identities - faux identities, pseudoselves, and images instead of the image of God. This book is about the quest to find our true selves. It is rooted in the belief that in God's future we exist totally redeemed, exactly as he wants us to be.
Source: Mark Sayers (2010), The Vertical Self, p.xvii-xxiv
We need to Change the Conversation
Christian leaders are engaged in a conversation about what kind of church shape will be most effective in the soil of 21st century Western culture. All our attempts to reshape Church in the West will at best be sabotaged and at worst fail because there is a huge unnamed problem with people inside the church. Slowly, inch by inch, we have replaced the biblical command to be holy with the quest for status. One of the reasons the early church grew at such a phenomenal rate was that the lives of the early Christians spoke so strongly to their neighbours. There was something different about them, something that spoke of another reality, an alternative way of living, to the culture around them. I believe that we need a revolution in how we think about church. But I believe, perhaps more importantly, that we need a revolution of the self.
Introduction
It is so easy to feel discouraged today as a believer in our secular culture, to buy the line that no one really cares about the spiritual anymore. Yet I realized that deep down, each one of us, Christian or not, is searching for that name of the white rock in the book of Revelation. We all crave to find our true identities. Each one of us, at a profoundly deep level, no matter what we believe, is being drawn, cajoled, and beckoned by God to our true selves, to find ourselves as God sees us: redeemed and perfect. Yet at the same time, this desire in us is derailed and sabotaged by our culture, which offers imitations of our true identities - faux identities, pseudoselves, and images instead of the image of God. This book is about the quest to find our true selves. It is rooted in the belief that in God's future we exist totally redeemed, exactly as he wants us to be.
Source: Mark Sayers (2010), The Vertical Self, p.xvii-xxiv
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