Am I a Butterfly or a Fossil?

In many ways, our internet footprint is ruining our lives.  Especially for young people. We've always been infected by the quest for "permanence" that is the static description of who a person is. Even if we as individuals have inserted ourselves into the dynamism of change and improvement, the society around us insists on characterizing "who we are", and in no way "who we are becoming."  Are we human beings or "things?" I am assuming there is difference.

Yes, we have a personal sense of identity.  But we are also identified by others. The latter seems to be profoundly affected by the assumption that we possess a set of static distinguishing features. People don't ask who we are becoming, they ask who we are. In today's world, that means our cache on the World Wide Web.

But even the static-oriented personal interviewer faces a problem. He wants to know your "is-ness," as it were. But what he gets instead is chaos.

In non-digital person, whatever a person's incidental thoughts are from moment to moment is highly unlikely to be orderly, consistent, or logically interrelated. As Susanne Langer  wrote, "the world of pure sensation is so complex, so fluid and full, that sheer sensitivity to stimuli would only encounter what William James has called... 'a blooming, buzzing confusion.'" Our being is, in a word, impermanent.

Turn instead to the past.  The absolutist on "who you are" examines your history, now with the advantage of Google, and then selects (by what criteria?) those things that are the essence of "you."  Note that the investigation is one of "was-ness" and not "is-ness." Startlingly, you are who you were, not who you are. And this effect is heighted for young people in the social media age.

So the past is more real than the present.  "For what I am," observes Alan Watts, "seems so fleeting and intangible, but what I was is fixed and final... and  so it comes about that I am more closely identified with what no longer exists than with what actually is!" I am a character of history, not the guy standing next to you in the elevator.

In the 60's and 70's we were all warned about our "Permanent Record."  It was really more myth than reality in those days; the government and big corporations really didn't know all that much about us as individual citizens.  It is creepy, though, to note that in the internet age, and in the post 9/11 age in particular, the idea of one's "Permanent Record" has become so much more a disturbing reality.

These records carry a greater weight than we possibly override at any moment of the here and now. We may see ourselves as Butterflies who are "becoming", but the agents of permanence see us as characters of the said and done. To them, we are fossils.

We can have careers with great accomplishment over decades. And then we make a mistake. That mistake then becomes the summary of our lives. In our age, we are remembered for the worst thing we ever did, not the general good we served. The media is largely to blame: "If it bleeds, it leads" is their mantra. But as society at large I wonder if we can take a larger, more considered view of our fellow man. Nah, it's not going to happen. It's way too much fun to hate each other.

nom de Twitter: @unrefuted
Email: myirrefutableopinion@gmail.com

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