Staying sane

Continuing with my recently published reflections about profilicity in this blog, I would like now to delve into what this so-called identity technology by Moeller and D'Ambrosio (2021), or better, its lessons, can do to help us keep our sanity.

Sanity?  Yes, in particular when winter comes...Rumours of Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). 

The above authors have a final section about sanity in their book "You and Your Profile" which is worth reading and reflecting upon.  The reflections on this section could help us better navigate our experienced complexities (for me it is winter!).  

Let me first explain sanity in relation to authenticity and then to sincerity.  

Authenticity

The rise of profilicity seems to be parallel to recent debates about another identity technology: that of authenticity.  In a nutshell, authenticity means pursuing the best version of our selves, that which best reflects our 'inner' identities, values and aspirations.  Authenticity, showing our 'true' inner selves is seen as a set of phenomena in modern societies by the sociologist Giles Lipovetsky (2024) and by the philosopher Byung Chul Han (2021).  To these, authenticity has become a right on its own that is vindicated in our societies by a continuous 'selfie' validation.  But it is not a free right to exercise.  It requires us to continuosly 'perform' in front of our digital cameras or platforms, to show that we work in ourselves towards our best versions.  The paradox emerges as becoming authentic results in being like everyone else (Moeller and D'Ambrosio, 2021).  

For Moeller and D'Ambrosio (2021), in its various manifestations, authenticity is being replaced by profilicity.  The striving for authentic self-performance, coupled with the of digital technologies, contributes to shape our behaviours and ways of thinking.  

We are continuously seduced to invest and curate our profiles, seeking validation with general peers or public audiences which do the same. This means that we increasingly work in second-order observations,  observing and being observed as being observed.  

In other words, we become somehow addicted to enter and maintain communication loops with people (profiles) that communicate back.  It could be that if we are lucky, one of these influential people notice our signals and signals back.  And then everyone else sees it.  

In my academic world, we get rewarded by being authentic (i.e. pursuing our own interests, being against the establishment, thinking originally, influencing policy or impact), but more importantly, we get rewarded by being noticed as being noticed.  Our 'rankings', for instance our h-index, or being cited by important authors in our domain (many which we will never know in person) reinforces this sense of being someone, in other words having an identity.  

Authenticity and profilicity as technologies are not free of consequences.  Striving always to 'perform' and impress (positively), being profiled in ways we do not expect (negatively) can arise our anxiety and sense of loss, inadequacy or an imposter syndrome.  Not getting the 'likes' we think we deserve can become an obsession or a trigger for more anxiety or depression.  

Sincerity

Moeller and D'Ambrosio also highlight another identity technology: That of sincerity.  This value becomes a technology when it is used to evaluate ones' conforming to expected social roles (for instance being a father or a mother).  Social roles are also expected to be assumed in other parts of life, for instance being a good educator or worker.  

In our modern world, we are expected not only to perform certain roles like the above mentioned, but also to signal such performance. Sincerity technology use could also have negative consequences.  Not fulfilling a social role to what is 'expected' can bring us shame or guilt.  

Having too many balls to juggle can then lead, if we are not careful, to insanity.

This is where sincerity can become profilicity for good.  Otherwise, our lives are transformed into threadmills where we run incessantly, in my case, fatherhood, being a son or relative, being a 'good' educator, citizen or even a volunteer (the reader can check previous blog posts about this).  

Sanity

In their book section, Moeller and D'Ambrosio (2021) show both the dynamics and consequences of all these three technologies (authenticity, sincerity, profilicity).  For them, sanity is about navigating the demands that we get by engaging in identity communications so that we develop a degree of inmunity to their demands.  

As mentioned before in a previous blog post, these authors talk about 'genuine pretending' as a way of flowing through life with ease.  Their reference to Eastern philosophy (Daoism, Zhuangzi) aims to offer us a humurous yet very powerful way of embracing life as it comes without attaching ourselves too much to rigid moral  or ethical principles, many (if not all) of which get deployed by these technologies as ways of thinking and acting.  

Staying sane would mean different things to different people.  To me and currently, it means abandoning heroic quests to do everything right (I have been fighting my perfectionism for at least a decade!).  In the day to day, it also means changing plans when my energy fades, saying no a bit more, and breathing and resting.  Maybe in the future my strategies to say sane could change.  These are the ones that work for me at the moment.  

I also have to accept that in my week and to remain sane, there needs to be time to improvise, talk to people and get angry if needed.  This goes against my upbringing as an easy to get on person, who feared authority and who dreaded to be seen as a bad son or bad student, if not a bad business analyst or family entrepreneur.  

So staying sane...also in winter.  No need to overdo in our identities.