This relates to my discussion on living a ‘symbolic’ life as opposed to a ‘naturalistic’ one. The symbolic life is a somewhat trance-like state where the individual is hyper-focussed on some form of interior ‘identity’ and seeks to accumulate symbols in their life that validate that identity in order to generate meaning and narrative sense/structure in a life that, if lived ‘authentically’, would feel deeply confusing. The identity is very much ‘real’ in the sense that any identity is real, but the symbolic identity generates incredibly powerful feelings that allow it to be a perfect substitute for living in the natural world - to feel ‘more real than real’. People, places and activities are not ‘good’ in their own right but rather because they fulfil symbolic meaning, and without the symbols life can feel genuinely hollow and meaningless.
This state is sought after due to a desire to escape from trauma, but it is fueled by a powerful cultural lexicon of ‘aesthetics’ which are easily accessible due to internet access and a childhood of heavy media consumption. Nostalgia is a form of symbolic life, where millenials are buying super mario merch not because their current selves actually feel any genuine fondness for the characters or even play the games, but rather because they wish to hold onto that symbolic child-like state.
A symptom of the symbolic life can be a form of arrested development already - like age-regressors and otherwise emotionally immature people who cling to nostalgic symbols. But nothing is more fuel to the symbolic fire than the imagined audience - something that the youth is being primed into having due it no longer being imagined but now being literal. It must be said here that the symbolic life is deeply performative (and consumer-based) as much as it is deeply personal. It’s much more easy to live your symbolic life when you can get everyone else to play along (as long as they’re not privvy to how much they’re being used as pawns), and the easiest way to do that is via performance which is via consumption. And in a social structure where everyone is trying on ‘aesthetics’ to fit in and documenting that publicly, the social pressure piles on and we’re all collectively encouraging each other that living symbolically is the only way to live. So it’s a double whammy - the imagined audience that sustain the legitimacy of your symbolic life are now also the literal people who are directly encouraging you that your symbolic life is the true version of you!
I also want a make a note that a perfect priming tool for a symbolic life is spending a lot of the time interacting with ‘the world’ through a screen, thereby increasing its legitimacy and decreasing the legitimacy of the naturalistic world. I’ve started to notice that if I re-evaluate my laptop and phone as nothing more than big fancy books, their influence starts to slip away somewhat, and touching the fabric of my bedsheets has a different emotional quality, in a sort of emotional version of re-focussing my eyes.
What we have is a world where people are encouraged to think that ‘real life’ is via the screen and everything else we do is just sort of flavour; our physical bodies only making sense in the context that we use them to type messages to other people. And in some sense, yes, the ‘whole world’ is available through the screen, in frankly a dizzying capacity - I can learn a whole lot more and interact with a whole lot more of people via my digital life, but it’s important to remember that the human experience is primarily tactile before anything else. Our words and our big thinky brains are only part of the picture, and the majority of the time the people I’m speaking to online are not friends who care about me as a flawed individual but rather a literal audience. It is only the people in my natural life who will be able to love me in much more physical terms - body language, hugs, gentle touches of affection.
There was a post I saw a while back by someone commenting on ASMR and how online videos have gotten a lot more ‘sensory’ and I believe that the phenomenon of these videos also relates to how we’re using symbolic sensory stimuli to substitute real tactile feeling.
I do not think all is lost, although I am very nervous about our children being primed for living a symbolic life judged by an imaginary audience. It’s much easier to break away from the symbolic life when you can remember the ‘before times’, and I’m fortunate that in my teens I have many fond memories of merely existing in my room, seeing the light come in through the curtains, and being otherwise wholly ‘present’ in the moment. Mindfulness is indeed a great way to break the trance, but if you don’t believe it’s worth it - after all, what’s the point of doing things if other people can’t see them? - then it’s much, much harder to break the spell.
vaporwave
turnnoffyourmind
dailybridgerton
izzy806
prguitarman
kianamaiart
baratheonpilled
ellievsbear
discoholicmusic
