Autophobia Is the “fear of being an individual”. Let’s face it: being an individual is a lot of hard work, and these days I’m unsure human beings are cut out for the job. Individuality has become about as much fun as dental flossing; no wonder it’s easier just to subcontract your identity to QAnon or Antifa. You may not get a million hits for your own Instagram post, but your newly adopted fringe group will get them on your behalf. It’s going to be easier to feel utterly alone and also part of a planetary movement.
The pathology bell curve I’m always curious about the point at which personality starts being recognised as a pathology. When does somebody go from being bubbly to being rattled to being a train wreck to being diagnosed with something scary? Maybe we should start describing people the other way around. So instead of saying “Sheila is kind of mellow and collects owl knick-knacks,” we say, “Sheila’s brain has a steady flow of dopamine and she is mildly on the spectrum with low-grade hoarding tendencies.” At least you’d know where you stand. You could also have a nature/nurture index, too, a number to tell people what percentage of someone’s behaviour can be excused by, say, bad parents or growing up in a small town.
High network worth individuals When the internet started for real in the 1990s, everyone thought it would only be used for the forces of good. What drug was everyone taking? And why were people so surprised when it went dark in 2016? Truth be told, it should have gone dark much earlier. I wonder sometimes if Donald Trump is out there quietly building a new internet, in parallel with the blockchainers building Web 3.0. At one point Trump was the most high network worth individual on Earth. He demonstrated that a single individual can transcend august institutions if that individual is networked enough. I wonder who’s now the most connected human being on Earth. Vladimir Putin? Elon Musk? How would you measure it? How do you reward it? (Maybe it’s still Kevin Bacon and always will be Kevin Bacon. Hi. I’m Kevin Bacon. You may remember me from such films as JFK or Footloose.)
The democracy plateau A curious subset of the implosion of individuality is the cratering of democracy, the dynamic of which is: “The internet has told me I’m incredibly special, so if I can’t be in the majority and have the world run my way then no one can run the world their way.” Does democracy have some sort of built-in suicide pill that sooner or later always gets used? And now that we seem to have dismantled consensus-based reality, what will replace consensus?
The hurt wars Everyone is outraged by everything these days, even when they’re not even remotely outraged. It’s mostly fake outrage, the emotional equivalent of Diet Coke. Maybe one day we’ll treat the extreme left and extreme right like racist grandparents you only see once or twice a year. Whatever you do, don’t bring up Greta Thunberg or vaccines.
Me. You. Us. Them. I wonder at what point people stop being people, the exact reversal process of watching newborns become adults. I’m dealing with the elderly much more, and I live in dread of the day someone close to me no longer remembers who anyone is. Maybe it’s the same with generations. We don’t really know when one generation ends and the next one begins. We try and predict the pleasures and hardships they’ll have to endure, but it’s the unintended consequences of the present that dictate the future.
I’ve been Zooming a lot this year, like everyone else, and I always end my calls by closing the lid of my laptop. Maybe that’s all death is: the laptop closing, nothing cosmic, just a gentle click as we stop using our app.
The Extreme Self: Age of You by Shumon Basar, Douglas Coupland and Hans Ulrich Obrist is published by Walther & Franz Köni
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