{"id":4446,"date":"2014-04-29T11:35:19","date_gmt":"2014-04-29T17:35:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/?p=4446"},"modified":"2014-04-30T10:08:23","modified_gmt":"2014-04-30T16:08:23","slug":"identity-overload","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.roughtype.com\/?p=4446","title":{"rendered":"Identity overload"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"7761795588_8b4d5d00e9\"<\/a><\/p>\n

“With social media, the compelling opportunities for self-expression outstrip the supply of things we have to confidently say about ourselves,” writes<\/a> Rob Horning. “The demand for self-expression overwhelms what we might dredge up from ‘inside.'”<\/p>\n

My trigger\u00a0finger is itching to give that\u00a0a +1.<\/p>\n

The struggle with the limits of what’s\u00a0“inside” \u2014 the struggle with the limits of\u00a0personality<\/em> \u2014 has long been the\u00a0source of the best art. We tend to characterize\u00a0art as “self-expression,” but that’s really more a description of bad art. The immature artist, as Eliot wrote<\/a>, is constantly giving in to the urge to vent\u00a0what’s inside, whereas the mature\u00a0artist seeks to escape that urge.<\/p>\n

The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality. … The bad poet is usually unconscious where he ought to be conscious, and conscious where he ought to be unconscious. Both errors tend to make him \u201cpersonal.\u201d Poetry is not a turning loose of emotion, but an escape from emotion; it is not the expression of personality, but an escape from personality. But, of course, only those who have personality and emotions know what it means to want to escape from these things.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Social media turns us all\u00a0into bad poets.<\/p>\n

Implicit in Eliot’s argument is, I think, the idea that the self is forever overreaching. Personality wants to expand to fill all available space. Resisting the self’s inclination to artificially inflate what’s inside, and thereby overwhelm\u00a0what’s inside,\u00a0has always been hard, but it becomes much harder when the\u00a0available\u00a0space for the self is made\u00a0both explicit and infinite, as happens with social media and other documentary systems of self-expression.<\/p>\n

The Dolls, prophetic as always:<\/p>\n