In which our regular writers toss around
subjects a little more volatile than usual.
You may remember Ms Dolezal from a flurry of media scrutiny in 2015 when it was revealed that the leader of the
Spokane chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People wasn’t really a person of color after all, but was in reality a little
blonde in blackface.
Tom: IC, I don’t understand. Society says it’s not only okay but morally
imperative for me to self-identify as a woman if that’s how I feel about
myself, even if I have been born biologically male. It will defend my right to call
myself any made-up gender I like, even to the point of stripping you of your
right to disagree with me about it in the public space.
That Ol’ Social Construct
So what’s wrong with me identifying as black? Isn’t race just a social construct?
Immanuel Can: That’s a good
question, Tom. I really don’t think that the Left understands what it wants us
to do about these things. On the one hand, it says we are to accept everything
a person can want to do or be, to the point where a man is supposed to be a
woman, or in some cases, an animal. But then they say that if you cross over
other lines, like say the boundary of “race” (which they also insist is an
unreal term anyway) then you are said to be guilty of “cultural
appropriation” — that is, of stealing somebody else’s identity and using
it for your own purposes. Naughty, naughty.
You’ve got to feel sorry for those who are trying to be politically correct: it’s got
to be hard to keep up with all the internal contradictions.
Identifying as an NHL Goalie
Tom: It is. Now, in
bringing this up, I’m not intending that we should sit here and pile on
Ms Dolezal. When I was growing up I identified as an NHL goalie, so I can
relate to wanting to be something you for which you haven’t got the genetics
and which no amount of wishing and fantasizing — and for that matter, no
amount of hard work — will ever make you. But we’re living in a generation
that has been told since kindergarten that you can be anything you want to be,
and I suspect way too many of these poor kids have internalized that lie.
IC: Well, we were raised with some of that “positive self-talk”. But
it’s taken on new forms and intensity lately. I think it has a lot to do
with the Internet, because there one can not only imagine oneself to be someone
or something else, but can also cause others to buy into and reinforce the
delusion. All you have to do online is say, “I’m a 17 year old girl,” and
instantly that’s what everybody thinks you are, and that’s how everybody
treats you whether it’s true or not. So with no consequences you
can experiment with new versions of you for as long as you like. The
material constraints are gone.
The New Alt-Person
Tom: Some of it’s the Internet, for sure. I mean, people have always
fantasized about living different lives from the ones they’ve got. Men used to
read Louis L’Amour and women would read Harlequin romances. But I wonder if
we’ve ever seen anything like the scale and intensity with which wish-fulfillment
is being acted out in our society today, whether it’s in the form of
sex-reassignment surgery, gender identification, alternate Internet
personalities, renaming, obsessive cosplay, body mutilation, virtual reality,
online role-playing … whatever.
It’s one thing to try on another person’s
shoes occasionally. It’s a bigger step to take that new “self” out and walk it
around in the real world, and an even bigger one to try to live it 24/7. It’s
Alt-Personhood.
IC: Exactly. Didn’t the Lord tell us that it is what comes OUT of a person that is defiling? Well, the Internet invites, magnifies our impulses, and nurtures them with its artificial life, and then puts them on show. It gives
our delusions and darker instincts a much wider and more sustained scope than
anything that has come before.
To imaginatively play with the idea of being a cowboy hero or a
romantic heroine is one thing: but to take that identity on for a length of
time, to sweep others into believing it and reinforcing it to you, to create
relationships and ‘worlds’ based on it, to explore it in exotic detail, to
invest one’s soul into that new identity, and to enjoy it more than one’s real
life — these are new phenomena that have only the faintest and least-telling analogy to the older
kind of daydreams and fantasies.
Fanning the Flames
Tom: I was going to ask
why this is so pervasive, but I think you’re answering that. The Internet is
the primary enabler, and we should probably add in liberal Western governments
looking for votes from lobby groups, our cultural monomania about the rights of
the individual, the rampant Leftism in our universities, a decreasing emphasis
on the need to grow up, affluence combined with an excess of leisure, and a
number of other factors.
But whatever may be fanning the flames, there’s a root problem in the human heart. Where is
all this discontentment with ourselves as we are naturally constituted really
coming from?
IC: I think there is a flip side, Tom; and some of what you say hints
correctly at it. The traditional sources of a strong sense of self —
economic and social stability, culture, family, career, faith and
relationships — are all fragmenting or turning liquid (as sociologist
Zygmunt Bauman puts it). Then there is rampant consumerism, wherein people
‘buy’ new identities with clothing and other material items. Then there’s
data overload, which everyone is experiencing today. And all these things
cause today’s people to be less anchored, sure, committed and located
than previous generations have ever been.
Tom: Let’s take that as read. And however we may have gotten here,
there’s no denying we are seeing a huge increase in emotional and mental
fragility.
Toughen Up, Buttercup!
What I’m wondering is how it benefits our
society to indulge this, which is essentially what we’re doing. When we see
this sort of behavior, instead of saying, “Let’s get you some help, dear”
(which would be a kinder response), we’re instead reinforcing what can only be
described as a delusional state of mind on the part of a significant percentage
of the population. That would seem to be a recipe for disaster down
the road.
IC: True. But do you actually think, Tom, that all this is
happening just because people are being coddled? Is it any kind of
solution to say, “Just toughen up, buttercup!”
Tom: Oh no, absolutely not. For one thing, they can’t toughen up. They’re currently incapable of doing much more
than scrambling for a safe space and a plush toy with which to soothe
themselves. But a major step in being able to deal with these issues is
understanding that such behavior is genuinely defective, dysfunctional and
wrong, not just another perfectly acceptable lifestyle option, or even a
product of systemic oppression that will go away if we reorder society to
eliminate the allegedly abusive elements. We have to locate the problem where
it actually exists in order to deal with it.
No Simple Answers
But I entirely agree with you that there
are no simple answers here … well, I mean, it’s simple in the sense that the
answer is Christ, as all answers are. But getting people to understand and
accept that is a process. It’s not simple at all. We got here by allowing
decrepitude and evil in all sorts of areas of society. Sorting that out on a
macro level may not even be possible at this point. But I firmly believe we can
help at the individual level if we love and care like the Lord did, and that
begins with an honest diagnosis of the problem. Saying “Society did it to me!”
won’t cut it. Likewise, forcing others to say, “You’re okay the way you
are” doesn’t really help you much either.
IC: No, that’s true.
That first reaction just makes them permanent victims, and the second pretends
there’s nothing victimizing them in the first place. But “Don’t agree to be a
victim”: maybe that’s a starting point.
Tom: Yeah, I like
that. Go watch some Jordan Peterson video on YouTube. He’ll teach you not to
play the victim. But there’s more to it in the Christian worldview than just
taking responsibility for who you are and how you conduct yourself. I’m
thinking now of what Paul says to the Romans about our self-assessments:
“For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of
himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment.” There’s are first clue to sorting out the mess in each of our heads: asking
ourselves Who are we to God?
Who Am I to God?
IC: Well, that’s another key, isn’t it? Who I am or who I want to be
are both matters for God to decide. We all need to learn to be grateful to the
Lord for the abilities, boundaries, physicality, limitations and opportunities
that come to us because we have been made a particular self located in a
particular set of circumstances. There isn’t any gratitude in the attitude that
says, “I can make myself whatever I want to be.”
Tom: Yes, or even the attitude that says, “I need to be something
different than what I am.” Now, I can totally understand feeling that way from
an unsaved perspective, where the sense is that I’m nothing more real or
significant than a giant blob of miserable, pulsing tissue. But when we’re
talking about an eternal being for whom Christ died, and who is conscious that
he or she was bought with the price of his shed blood, the real question is not
“What can I make myself into that will please me more than this current iteration,”
but rather, “Why was I made the way I was? What does the Lord want me to do
with this?”
IC: Right. And then
the self you have is a given, a gift … and your job is to steward
that gift … to make sure you value it, use it rightly, and do with it
everything that God intended for you to do. As for, so to speak, “turning in
your hand for a new set of cards”, that’s not an option anymore.
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