In part 1 of this blog sequence, I closed with the following:
"In other words, are there some groups for which the Internet is not a world
to escape to, to become addicted to, but one to embrace in order to live life
more fully? Are you one of them?"
I was discussing how the Internet enabled some people to actually be themselves by not being themselves, at least not being themselves in the habitual, self-handicapping way. Yet, remarkably, in research articles these types of people are labeled and discussed as being Internet Abusers (IA). That is, they are described as habitually using the Internet to the point of being, metaphorically speaking, addicted. As Mr. Spock would say, "Curious, Captain."
Let me flesh out a pivotal concept here and then build on it.
"Why don't you speak for yourself, John," were the famous words spoken to John Alden by Priscilla Mullins in 17th century New England in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem, The Courtship of Miles Standish. These were words of love and marriage that he couldn't bring himself to utter but could while representing and speaking for his friend, Miles Standish.
Cyrano de Bergerac, the tragic hero of French playwright Edmond Rostand's 18th century play of the same name, was a flamboyant but nose-challenged 17th century soldier-poet-duelist who loved his much younger cousin, Roxanne, but could not speak it in the open. He could, however compose the words of love to be spoken to her, if only through the mouth and visage of her suitor, the young Christian de Neuvillette, a callow soldier who loves and is loved by Roxanne.
In the French play, Lily (also a marvelous 1961 Broadway musical entitled Carnival), Paul, a lame puppeteer in a traveling carnival, falls in love with an innocent and charming girl who attaches herself to the carnival. Paul is smitten but too shy, too self-conscious because of his limp, to speak his heart. Only through his hand puppets can Paul express his ardor to Lily.
Do you see the pattern emerging here?
Last hint. I spent a week at a Club Med resort in the coastal jungles of Mexico, Playa Blanca, back in the late 70's, part of a mix of newbies and veterans of the Club Med experience. It's an adult summer camp where, not very long after you arrive, you leave all remnants of your conventional life behind. Most people started with typical summer clothing but things quickly changed and soon that sort of clothing disappeared into dresser drawers, replaced by body-freeing, dashiki-type garments. Money and bling? Not in this house! Money was no longer the overt medium of exchange; multi-colored, multi-denomination fake pearls -- popettes -- were. These were charged to your account and then used to purchase drinks and other consumables.
In the resort grounds there was no access to the outside world via electronics, minimal access to phone service (it was during the PCP [pre-cell phone] era), and travel was restricted to the resort compound (partly because there really were bandits in the vicinity who preyed on tourists). Oh, yes, one arrived at Playa Blanca after a 2-hour flight and then long bus ride through the jungle (passing men with automatic rifles guarding the camp's perimeter). You hit the compound yawning, bleary-eyed and a little dazed, at around 2 A. M. where you were met by a torch-carrying, broad-smiling welcoming crowd of staffers. All in all, this was a singularly disorienting entré into the world of Club Med.
To be a guest at Playa Blanca was, in effect, like being on an exotic Survivor locale, without the privations and challenges.
But it was what happened there that is so fascinating! In a brief ruffle of time people shed their identities, shed their psychic corsets and shed their city selves. They rigged up autobio-enhanced public selves, often used fictitious names, acted brash, made advances, laughed a little louder, smiled a little broader, moved a little slinkier. At dinner and during evening festivities and dances there were few wall flowers, few shrinking violets (now, why do flowers get such a bad rap?).
The Playa Blanca ethos was obviously truly liberating...to the point of libertinism. Love was in the air. I mean literally. During the day, of course, the guests rode horses on the beach, played sports, did exercise classes, swam, sun bathed, chatted. But when night fell so did inhibitions. In short order Play Blanca seemed like a fornicatorium. Bodies entwined were found indoors, outdoors, on pathways, off pathways, on group work-out floors. Carpe diem was the resort watchword. When the campers returned to civilization? They reverted, they confessed. But every year, like salmon, they came back to be "not themselves"...and have a ball.
Club Med was truly transformative. What it's like today, I have no idea.
So, the operative word here is "anonymity." The term "anonymity" can take many forms. It can be seen as de-centering or shedding one's ego, one's identity and usual self-observations, viz., if I am not "me," not the "me" I habitually live with and live as, not the "me" that I behave in accordance with, not the "me" about whom people have established sets of expectations that I inevitably behave in accordance with, if I am not that "me," then things can happen!
If I'm not tied to "me" and that repertoire of self-evaluations and self-judgments, actions and reactions connected with that "me," then I can try to be someone else. I can try out different versions of me. I can talk differently, think differently, feel differently. And maybe the new me can eventually become "the real me."
LSD does (or did) that for some. So does alcohol. Temporarily. So does moving out, moving away, going to some new town where, as Streisand sang in her throbbing hit song of the 60s, Gotta Move, "Someplace, where I can just be me."
Perhaps Streisand is singing about the "me that nobody knows." Perhaps she echoes the crie de coeur "they won't let me be me! They won't let me be other than what they see me as being." Recall the biblical observation "no man is a prophet in his own village" or family. We must go elsewhere, even into cyberspace, to be seen differently, respected differently, hailed differently. And too, perhaps, live differently. If we become, according to some schools of sociology, that as which we are addressed, then perhaps we must find the places and find the people who will address us differently.
But how?
Cognitive therapist and theorist George Kelly employed change experimentation as a therapeutic device in his theory of therapeutic role playing wherein patients adopt identities of those whose behavior they admire and go out into the world as these people (in their minds). Many found it behaviorally and verbally liberating. They saw that they could do what they believed they couldn't, at least when in their own skin.
Similarly, Assertiveness Training workshops in the 70s and 80s used role playing of sorts. They had people adopt the point of view of another and try acting and speaking in ways that ordinarily they found too intimidating to execute, too unworthy of their felt social value. Results were often expanded repertoires of self-perception and social conversation. The exercises disinhibited the unassertive.
Psychologist Phil Zimbardo did several studies which proved that when people literally wear masks they can behave more aggressively and, in another study, when they wear uniforms and play roles of guards or prisoners, their behavior changes dramatically in role-consistent directions. Sociologist Gustave LeBon found that same thing with crowds exhibiting either heroism or violence and labeled it an expression of a "group mind."
Yale psychologist, Stanley Milgrim, found that people will more readily inflict increasingly harmful shocks to "learners" the further physically removed they are from being observed by the learner; or they take courage from the presence of others to resist authority demands to inflict the shock.
Being unseen, or anonymous, or just not being yourself can bring out the brave, the good, or the darker sides of our personality. Ask any good screen actor.
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