Unselfing

[W]hen the events for which the mask was designed are over, and I have finished using and abusing my individual right to sound through the mask, things will again snap back into place. Then I, greatly honored and deeply thankful for this moment, shall be free not only to exchange the rules and masks that the great play of the world may offer, but free even to move through that play in my naked “thisness,” identifiable, I hope, but not definable and not seduced by the great temptation of recognition which, in no matter what form, can only recognize us as such and such, that is, as something which we fundamentally are not.

Hannah Arendt, Speech upon receiving Denmark’s Sonning Prize in 1975. (From the Prologue in her book Responsibility and Judgment, ed. By Jerome Kohn, 2003.)

One of these days we’re going to have to give up our idea of having a self. If we don’t start practicing unselfing now — i.e., stop acting as if we’re the center of the universe — we will probably be forced to unself violently, as well as permanently; and worst of all, it will feel premature.

Obviously, and especially in the USA, the cult of Self has become such a default-reflexive article of faith that strolling over to greet our neighbors may require a good reason to seem plausible, and calling a friend or writing a personal letter may initally touch off more anxiety or wonder than gratitude. Electronic devices and the Covid-19 Pandemic intensified our separation.

In nature, diversity is life-promoting, while mono-crops increase risk for pestilence and disease die-offs. Human sequestration — unless reinforcing our identities among controlled, curated, imitation-copy tribes — hides the truth that we need one another, and need new ideas in order to grow.

If you’ve spent any time consistently on a computer and its social websites, built-in AI/machine learning has algorithmically isolated your news feeds, ads, search choices, your version of reality to self-reflect in, a shallow, commodifiable Self that diligently and willingly surrendered to the websites that they might hold and mine your attention and so better farm your pocketbook.

I don’t think we’re becoming happier, or closer to one another, or freeer, or closer to understanding why we’re still not getting ahead by crafting our Brands and delving deeper into the world of Self.

Why not unplug and Unself, just for a season? (Now that Black Friday is behind us.)

Here are some possible benefits of Unselfing:

• Delay catastrophic global warming
• Cross communicating outside bunkers may delay or forestall Civil War and all the death that war brings
• Discover we’re capable of living in a society vs. as isolated individuals overworked on promoting Our Brands
• Learn that we are not as separated from one another as we might think
• Slough off fear of those whom we once feared as being so Other that by mere existence they couldn’t help but appear as threatening
• Become less lonely
• Feel hopeful again
• Lessen our fear of dying, when it comes (your hospice advice today)
• Hear your real voice and feel comfortable using it
• Recognize honesty once you’re being honest, and see how truth creates relationship passports
• Become calm. “Calm is a form of resistance.” — John Berger
• Freedom from compulsion of performing, the need for partitioning, the urgency of and wearisome vigilance of constant projecting our shadow selves onto hated Other groups or feared (and ridiculous) conspiracies (Thank you to Naomi Klein for her 2023 book “Doppelganger”, which I can’t recommend enough, and from which several phrases come in this bullet point)
• Abandoning self-improvement projects as means of pre-guaranteed-to- fail substitutions of needful Giant Fix changes that require cultural shifts to site our way forward; and we need as many others, in thousands of coalitions, to effect change. Performing virtue on social media isn’t cutting it, but merely buffing out our Brands
• Seeing others in need, and stopping to ask questions (instead of assuming addiction and vice)
• Seeing imperfections or hurt as reasons for drawing closer, and intensify relationships
• Crossing over to seeing environmental degradation as like a sick or abused mother

“Nothing is more transient in our world, less stable and solid, then that form of success which brings fame; nothing comes more swifter and more readily than oblivion.” — Hannah Arendt, Ibid.