My Take | When you become your online profile
- People used to develop an identity and become who they were by adhering to social roles or discovering their ‘inner’ selves. Now, Macau philosopher Hans-Georg Moeller argues, it’s mainly through social media and online self-profiling, and the public validation that comes with it
Like Meno, the dim-witted interlocutor of Socrates, I suddenly realise why I have no online profile after talking to Macau philosopher Hans-Georg Moeller.
Quite simply, I am technologically obsolete. I am still mentally analogue in a hi-tech world, destined to fade into digital and physical oblivion. Strangely, though, I feel fine and liberated, and even feel sorry for my two children who have to grow up in, and navigate through, the treacherous world of inescapable social media in which to find and define themselves.
A philosophy professor at the University of Macau, Moeller may be the most intriguing and provocative public intellectual you have never heard of. A while back, he had a dust-up with world-famous Canadian psychologist and, for lack of a better word, self-help guru Jordan Peterson, who was not happy with Moeller’s critical analysis of the global Peterson phenomenon.
As one critic of the exchange puts it, Peterson has so far got away with it because he has been mostly challenged by hacks who are dumber and less educated than he is. Here, though, you have someone who is smarter and more erudite, not to say much calmer; Peterson recently keeps breaking down in tears during live interviews for no apparent reason.
I have been bingeing on Moeller’s YouTube channel, Carefree Wandering, in the past few weeks. I highly recommend it; it will be time well spent.
Your most recent book, co-authored with Paul D’Ambrosio, is called You and Your Profile: Identity After Authenticity. Is it fair to say that in an age saturated by social media and LinkedIn-like job resumes, you are your online profile?
That’s the main thesis of the book, the main form in which we develop and achieve an identity through the profile that we raise, and then having it validated publicly. That’s one way of how we achieve an identity.
It’s not the only way. We operate with three different concepts: sincerity, authenticity and profilicity [self-profiling]. All three are identity technologies; they represent different ways in which we shape an identity and successfully communicate an identity and become ourselves. Sincerity is a traditional form of identity formation, a function of our orientation in social roles, specifically in Asia, that is still common in family and also professional roles. By successfully committing ourselves to certain roles, then we can become who we are, in the Asian context.