The Kind of People Who Want to Know What Kind of People They Are

I recently read Walker Percy's Lost in the Cosmos and have since been looking at the world through the lens he introduced.

Percy's argument is that the fundamental human problem is that we are subjects trying to be our own objects. That is, we are frustrated by our attempts to define ourselves--as a species and as individuals--the way we define everything else.

The problems that arise from this are endless but most relevant in modern America is everyone's need to define what kind of person they are.

A few weeks ago, New York made the connection between Jonah Peretti, the critical theorist, and Jonah Peretti, the founder of Buzzfeed. Critical Theory has a rundown here.

It seems that Peretti wrote an article for the journal Negations that predicted the future web sensation, albeit in anti-capitalist terms. "Late-stage capitalism" produces consumer "schizophrenia," is the basic idea. The takeaway is that what companies and consumers end up exchanging are identities.

Think Apple vs. Windows vs. Linux. Or Starbucks vs. indie coffee shops. Or, dating back generations, Ford vs. Chevy. One's consumer choices define what kind of person one is.

The reverse can also be true. If one is the type of person who cares about social justice, of course one is going to buy Fair Trade certified products. If one doesn't, then obviously one isn't really that type of person. The consumption and the identity are indivisible.

I've discussed before how this is working politically. The populace is divided into smaller and smaller segments, each of which is positioned against a perceived majority. If one is the type of person who is kind and considerate, of course one is going to support teaching children safe ways to have gay sex. The identity and the moral choices are indivisible.

Buzzfeed really has mastered this element of modernity. Every five-minute quiz is based around viewing oneself as a fixable object in the cosmos. Who am I? Well, if I were a member of One Direction, I'd be Harry. I'd be happiest living in a Tuscan cottage. I'm definitely an 80s kid and my spirit plushy is a Pound Puppy.

But Buzzfeed's attitude is basically harmless, except in its perfection of shallow distraction. If Percy's description of the human condition is accurate, then Buzzfeed is like trying to stave off hunger with an endless supply of potato chips. Buzzfeed gives the reader a tiny definition, then a thousand more in the hopes that it will satisfy the desire for one complete definition.

The happy truth is that most Americans aren't "smart" enough to be ruined by Percy's existential misery. Irritated, manipulated and lost, maybe, but not ruined.

Take, on the other hand, NYT's article on Jill Soloway, creator of Amazon's transgender drama, Transparent:

In college at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, she tried her hand at playing the ideal college student — “makeup, hair, cute clothes” and “dating horrible, gross dudes.” She even tried to pledge a sorority, but a poorly timed dermatologic event pre-empted this. One day she was taking a walk on the shore of Lake Mendota in Madison with some of the friends she’d made, still very much preoccupied with cuteness, when she saw a bunch of people — “like hippies, feminists, demonstrators, political kids, people who fought” — wading in the water, just having a good and un-self-conscious time. These, she realized, these were her people.

Emphasis is, of course, mine, but it should be obvious that Soloway is acting precisely as Percy describes--she's trying to find a definition for herself first and be herself last. Finding that perfect definition, she will find freedom, or at least the absence of self-consciousness.

[A side note:  Percy's arguments help make sense of Esther Vilar's definition of love in The Polygamous Sex. She explicitly states that love "defines" an individual "completely." If the definition is incomplete, then it is not truly love. Percy would probably agree to her terms but point out that the only complete definition can come from God, who loves us more completely and more truly than any individual human ever can. This would cause Vilar to vomit.]

Lest the reader think that Soloway was simply having a typical college-age "finding oneself" moment, consider this recent event:

Soloway was greeted heartily by workers around the back lot as she made her way to the set of “Transparent.” She had mixed feelings about all the chumminess: Yes, it’s only hello, but sometimes you just want to get to work. She said “hi” back, of course, because what are you going to do, but even a small exchange like that can lead Soloway to rant on gender roles. “I don’t have the privilege to just stand there and go, ‘Hi,’ ” Soloway said, mimicking the men.“ ‘Look at that walking by. I’m trying to have sex with that.’ ”

 Here's another:

Soloway has managed with “Transparent,” which is part cutting-edge TV show and part gender-studies utopian experiment, to keep alive the questions that have preoccupied her for years: If we are living in a post-gender-binary world, what is all this talk about feminine and masculine styles? How can you be a good feminist and also love watching beauty pageants and “The Bachelor” and the “Real Housewives” franchise (which Soloway does very much)? If gender isn’t important — if it’s just a construct — why is it so important?

And this:

 “I have the same problem with alcohol that I do with femininity,” she says. “With alcohol I can’t figure out how much to drink before I feel drunk. With femininity, the moment I put it on and see that I look like Daisy Fuentes, I’m a real estate agent and I have my own bus bench.”

Can there be any doubt that this woman is broken? Percy would describe her as having a "reentry" problem--she spends so much time transcending the real world with her intellectual theories and artistic translations that she can't handle saying hello to a group of blue collar men. She's so wrapped up in the objective identities she's defined for herself that she can't enjoy the Miss America pageant without hours of self-reflection. She can't do anything that comes natural to her without comparing it to the definition she has for herself.

It's people like Soloway that give me hope. Their path is a dead end and their misery is proof. Keep trying to make it work and the absurdity will only become clearer.