The artichoke version of the self

The Artichoke Version Of Self

Readings

Is There an Essential Human Nature?—The Artichoke View

Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities introduces us to Sherman McCoy, a Wall Street bond trader who, at the beginning of the novel, sees himself as a “master of the universe.” Arrested for vehicular manslaughter and financially ruined, he is taken from his elegant Park Avenue apartment to a downtown New York police station for booking. Somewhere during this dehumanizing experience, the “self” he thought was so durable begins to deteriorate. Stepping in to editorialize, novelist Wolfe tells us that we need the “whole village” of our social relationships to keep our “self” in place. Citing scientific data, Wolfe tells the reader that healthy college students, if subjected to total sensory deprivation, begin to hallucinate in a few hours. When deprived of constant feedback to fuel its image, the self, it would seem, simply disintegrates. If this is so, then was the self ever real to begin with?

The Protean Self

One artichoke view of human nature assumes that disintegration and re-formation of the self is not necessarily a bad thing. Based on Proteus—the shape-shifter of Greek mythology who was able to appear as a green tree, an old man, a blinding fire—this view agrees that we are nothing but our layers and finds this reasonable and healthy. Lacking a central core, as posited by the avocado view, we are able to respond to the lack of continuity we find in the world by adapting to it. If reality were stable and filled with meaning, it might make sense to strive for a core self; because it is not, the psychologically healthy approach might be to imitate Proteus and change with a changing world.

Psychiatrist Robert Lifton suggests that people could be hippies when young and, years later, conservative businesspeople, with no loss of identity or fragmentation. In this view, a “self,” like an artichoke, is composed of many layers, each of which is real and functional only at particular times or in particular circumstances. Viewing the self as a collage rather than as a single, unchanging picture might better enable us to move successfully among incomplete, changing realities. The world is unpredictable, so we need a whole collection of selves with which to meet it. Some would say that Bill Clinton's success as president of the United States was due in part to his ability to negotiate among a repertoire of “selves.” We might think here of a pomegranate that contains many seeds, each representing a version of the self. If planted, does each have the potential to become a core self? 36

PC games such as The Sims or SimCity give all of us the opportunity to try out alternative identities. Simulated identities or Sims are called avatars, a word used in Hinduism to describe the bodily incarnation of a god. Will Wright, creator of The Sims Online, envisions an entire online world, available 24/7. The Web site ( http://www.eagames.com/official/thesimsonline/home/index.jsp ) explains: “The Sims Online is a massive world built by thousands of players. Create a Sim and play as yourself or your alternate Sim persona. Explore neighborhoods, make friends, host events, or run a business. The only limit is your imagination.”

Dr. Sherry Turkle, a psychologist who directs the Initiative on Technology and Self at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), observes that the computer has become a metaphor for thinking about the self, with each computer window representing an aspect of the self and cycling through windows a way of thinking about relationships among them. “When people are online,” Turkle says, “they tend to express different aspects of themselves in different settings . . . They find ways to think about a healthy self not as single and unitary, but rather as having many aspects. People come to see themselves as the sum of their distributed presences . . .” 37

This certainly seems to be the case for Richard L. Stenlund, who spends forty hours a week as the mutant Thedeacon on the massively multiplayer game Anarchy Online. “It's a total release of the id,” he observes. “I think people are generally false . . . but in A.O. you can really let your true character out. If I want to be a pervert, I am able to do that in A.O. and be a pervert right off the bat.” Stenlund does seem to take a dim view of human nature: “The more you deal with people, the more you hate people . . . It just feels that everybody is so asleep in this world.” And, at the same time, other players in Anarchy Online applaud his “natural entertainer's personality” as well as “how helpful and patient” he is in assisting newer players. At times he functions as a “Dr. Phil-like self-help guru and mentor.” One example is his frequently accessed guide on “Making LOTS of money as a new player.” 38