When the mask consumes the individual: The tragic cost of the manufactured digital personality

“ Personality as the rôle of the individual in the group: The word personality is derived from the Latin persona, a mask used by actors. The etymology of the term suggests that its meaning is to be found in the rôle of the individual in the social group. By usage, personality carries the implication of the social expression of behavior. Personality may then be defined as the sum and organization of those traits which determine the rôle of the individual in the group. The following is a classification of the characteristics of the person which affect his social status and efficiency ”

“ The real meaning of persona is a mask, such as actors were accustomed to wear on the ancient stage; and it is quite true that no one shows himself as he is, but wears his mask and plays his part. Indeed, the whole of our social arrangements may be likened to a perpetual comedy; and this is why a man who is worth anything finds society so insipid, while a blockhead is quite at home in it. ”

“ Now, in reality, no good ever comes from personal influence, although in the first instance it might seem so. Personal, from the word persona, a mask, is only applied to the physical self or carnal mind; therefore we can receive no benefit from the personal quality of our friend, but we are benefited and uplifted by his freedom from personality, or in other words by the divine individuality flowing through him and expressed by his benevolence, his love, his cheerfulness, his wisdom. ”

“ In social intercourse he gives you the surface that he wishes the world to accept, and you can only gain a true knowledge of him by inferences from little actions, of which he is unconscious, and from fleeting expressions, which cross his face unknown to him. Sometimes people carry to such perfection the mask they have assumed that in due course they actually become the person they seem. ”

“ The mask or "make up," of personality, by which men may read each other's character, is evolved and developed from the instinctive physical expression accompanying thought, feeling and emotion. Just as the frown accompanying the feeling of annoyance or anger will, if repeated sufficiently [Pg 40] often, become fixed upon the countenance of the man, so will all of his general thoughts, feelings and emotions register themselves in his manner, gait, tone of voice, carriage and facial expression. ”

“ How can American consumers trust folks like your company to be caretakers of their most personal and identifiable information? And that's the question.
Thank you.
GRASSLEY: Thank you, my colleagues and Senator Nelson.
Our witness today is Mark Zuckerberg, founder, chairman, chief executive officer of Facebook. Mr. Zuckerberg launched Facebook February 4th, 2004, at the age of 19. And, at that time, he was a student at Harvard University.
As I mentioned previously, his company now has over $40 billion of annual revenue and over 2 billion, monthly, active users. Mr. ”

“ When we have discovered this rule, we shall have found the vocation of man in Society, which is the object of our present inquiry and of all the considerations we have hitherto set forth.
The social impulse is, in the first place, negatively defined by the law of absolute harmony; it must not contradict itself. The impulse leads to reciprocal activity, to mutual influence, mutual giving and receiving, mutual suffering and doing, not to mere causality not to mere activity, of which others are but the passive objects. ”

“ The man or woman who wishes simply to cut a figure "socially" will cultivate the wit, the gayety, the facility, the smartness, which are Page 158 the familiar ingredients of such a personality. The same persons will be singularly blind to abysses of ignorance which would be painfully in the consciousness of those who had set up for themselves ideals of erudition and culture. A laborer will live and move and have his being serenely in clothes and in surroundings that "would never do" for a professional man who had committed himself to live according to the social standards of his class. ”

“ The social impulse, or the impulse towards mutual cooperation with free reasonable beings as such, includes the two following impulses: the communicative impulse,—that is, the impulse to impart to others that form of culture which we ourselves possess most completely, to make others, as far as possible, like ourselves, like the better self within us; and the receptive impulse, that is, the impulse to receive from others that form of culture which they possess most completely, and in which we are deficient. ”

“ A man's self, apart from his mere physical body, consists in his peculiar organization of instincts and habits. In common language this constitutes his personality or character. We can infer from it what he will, as we say, characteristically do in any given situation. And a particular organization of instincts and habits is dependent very largely on the individual's social experience, on the types and varieties of contact with other people that he has established. ”

“ Chairman Grassley , Chairman Thune, thank you both for holding this hearing.
Mr. Zuckerberg, thank you for being here. You have a real opportunity this afternoon to lead the industry and demonstrate a meaningful commitment to protecting individual privacy.
We have learned over the past few months, and we've learned a great deal that's alarming. We've seen how foreign actors are abusing social media platforms like Facebook to interfere in elections and take millions of Americans' personal information without their knowledge in order to manipulate public opinion and target individual voters. ”

“ Facebook has become a main platform for social extremists and is fraught with hate speech, disinformation and misinformation. Action is only taken on 3-5% of hate and about 0.6% of violence and incitement on the platform.
3. Disastrous consequences of US export of its brand of democracy ⁠Without regard to huge differences in the level of economic development and in the historical and cultural backgrounds of countries around the world, the US seeks to impose its own political system and values on other nations. ”

“ Oh, dear students, be not deceived by the mask of Personality which you may happen to be wearing at this moment, or by the masks which are worn by those around you. Realize that back of your mask is the great Individual—the Indivisible—the Universal Life, in which you are a centre of consciousness and activity. ”

“ You will learn soon enough as you grow to be a man that beneath the respectable assumptions of our social life there is an endless intricate world of subterfuge and hidden and perverted passion,—for all passion that wears a mask is perversion—and that thousands of people of our sort are hiding and shamming about their desires, their gratifications, their true relationships. ”

“ Another may impress us with his power, and so exercise ascendency over us, either by grossly performing the act, or by exhibiting traits of personality which convince our imaginations that he can and will do the act if he wishes to. It is in this latter way, through imaginative inference, that people mostly work upon us in ordinary social intercourse. It would puzzle us, in many cases, to tell just how we know that a man is determined, dauntless, magnanimous, intrinsically powerful, or the reverse. ”

“ By force of an impulse springing directly from the delicacy of his perceptions he is continually imagining how he appears to his interlocutor, and accepting the image, for the moment, as himself. If the other appears to think him well-informed on some recondite matter, he is likely to assume a learned expression ”

“ Here, then, we have a simple manifestation of a moral force that acts upon every one of us in countless ways, and every day of his life—the imagined approval or disapproval of others, appealing to instinctive emotion, and giving the force of that emotion to certain views of conduct. The behavior that connects itself with such social sentiment as we like and feel the impulse to continue, is so much the more likely to be judged as right; but if the sentiment is one from which we are averse, the behavior is the more likely to be judged as wrong. ”

“ They are likely to acquire a conventional smile and conventional phrases for polite intercourse, and a cold mask for curiosity, hostility, or solicitation. In fact, a vigorous power of resistance to the numerous influences that in no way make for the substantial development of his character, but rather tend to distract and demoralize him, is a primary need of one who lives in the more active portions of present society, and the loss of this power by strain is in countless instances the beginning of mental and moral decline. ”

“ It is precisely the act of intercourse, the stimulation of the mind by a personal symbol, which gives a formative impulse to the vague mass of hereditary feeling-tendency, and this impulse, in turn, results in a larger power of interpreting the symbol. It is not to be supposed, for instance, that such feelings as generosity, respect, mortification, emulation, the sense of honor, and the like, are an original endowment of the mind. Like all the finer and larger mental life these arise in conjunction with communication and 80could not exist without it. ”

“ In the second place, it is an instinct which, while it embodies one of the deepest and potentially most invigorating passions of the soul, tends automatically to fall out of vigorous and constant activity with the expansion of societies. It is the common character of large societies to suffer heavily from the restrictive effect on personality of the social instinct, and at the same time to suffer in the highest degree from the debilitation of the common social impulse. ”

“ It has been one of my chief efforts in this book to show that the social instinct, while in itself the very foundation of society, takes, when its action is undirected and uncontrolled, a principal part in restricting the completeness and efficacy of the social impulse. This instinct is doubly responsible for the defects which have always inhered in society through the personal impoverishment of its individual constituents. ”

“ There are instances where good people, well acquainted in business and upon the street, have lived neighbors for twenty-five or more years, and yet not invited each other to their homes, to take dinner together, nor to have a social hour or evening. They live so near each other that they can almost shake hands, from door to door, yet never call, nor associate together; they are perfectly exclusive. That is not a wise nor a good way, especially when, as Latter-day Saints, we should be looking after the welfare of mankind, by preaching the gospel in word and in deed. ”

“ The achieved outcome marks the difference between action and a cooped-up sentiment which is expended upon itself. The eye hungers for light, the ear for sound, the hand for surfaces, the arm for things to reach, throw and lift, the leg for distance, anger for an enemy to destroy, curiosity for something to shiver and cower before, love for a mate. Each impulse is a demand for an object which will enable it to function. Denied an object in reality it tends to create one in fancy, as pathology shows. ”

“ For with all its extravagancies and uncertainties, its effusions and reticences, it remains a standing proof of a life wherein growth is normal not an anomaly, activity a delight not a task, and where habit-forming is an expansion of power not its shrinkage. Habit and impulse may war with each other, but it is a combat between the habits of adults and the impulses of the young, and not, as with the adult, a civil warfare whereby personality is rent asunder. ”

“ Thus enslavement to custom and license of impulse exist side by side. Strict conformity and unrestrained wildness intensify each other. This picture of life shows us in an exaggerated form the psychology current in civilized life whenever customs harden and hold individuals enmeshed. Within civilization, the savage still exists. He is known in his degree by oscillation between loose indulgence and stiff habit. ”

“ Why not rather condemn impulse and exalt habits of reverencing order and fixed truth?
The question is natural, but the remedy suggested is futile. It is not easy to exaggerate the extent to which we now pass from one kind of nurture to another as we go from business to church, from science to the newspaper, from business to art, from companionship to politics, from home to school. An individual is now subjected to many conflicting schemes of education. Hence habits are divided against one another, personality is disrupted, the scheme of conduct is confused and disintegrated. ”

“ Then comes the reaction of disillusionment, and men turn all the more fiercely to the pursuit of narrow ends where they are habituated to use observation and planning and where they have acquired some control of conditions. The separation of warm emotion and cool intelligence is the great moral tragedy. This division is perpetuated by those who deprecate science and foresight in behalf of affection as it is by those who in the name of an idol labeled reason would quench passion. The intellect is always inspired by some impulse. ”

“ It is not merely incidentally, as a grateful addition to its normal task, that psychology serves us. The essential nature of the standpoint which calls it into existence, and of the abstraction which it performs, is to put in our possession the method by which values are introduced and effected in life. The statement of personality as an object, of social relations as a mechanism of stimuli and inhibitions, is precisely the statement of ends in terms of the method of their realization. ”

“ To affirm personality independent of mechanism is to restrict its full meaning to a few, and to make its expression in the few irregular and arbitrary.
The anomaly in our present social life is obvious enough. With tremendous increase in control of nature, in ability to utilize nature for the indefinite extension and multiplication of commodities for human use and satisfaction, we find the actual realization of ends, the enjoyment of values, growing unassured and precarious. At times it seems as if we were caught in a contradiction ”

“ Military pacts cannot help nations whose social injustice and economic chaos invite insurgency and penetration and subversion. The most skillful counter-guerrilla efforts cannot succeed where the local population is too caught up in its own misery to be concerned about the advance of communism.
But for those who share this view, we stand ready now, as we have in the past, to provide generously of our skills, and our capital, and our food to assist the peoples of the less-developed nations to reach their goals in freedom—to help them before they are engulfed in crisis. ”

“ In the chapter on the "Social Nature of Man," we examined in some detail the way in which praise and blame modified a man's habits. The total result of this process is to give a man a certain fixed set of overt habits that constitute his character and a more or less fixed consciousness of that character.
On the other hand, a man's character and self-consciousness may develop more or less independently of the immediate forces of the public opinion to which he is exposed. ”

“ It is no new observation that the influence of an author becomes in time something apart from his books: a certain generalised or abstract personality impresses itself on our minds, long after we have forgotten the details of his opinions, the arguments by which he enforced them, and even, what are usually the last to escape [Pg 260] us, the images by which he illustrated them. Phrases and sentences are a mask: but we detect the features of the man behind the mask. This personality of a favourite author is a real and powerful agency. ”

“ The person, in other words, is the visible or tangible phenomenon of something inward—the phase or function by which an individual agent takes his place in the common world of human intercourse and interaction, and plays his peculiar and definite part in life. [4] But this totality of consciousness, so far from reducing man to a 'mere manufactured article,' gives to personality its unique distinction. By personality all things are dominated. ”

“ Man is a dual being. He is spiritual and he is physical. The latter is dependent upon the former for intelligence and life. The body without the spirit is dead, but the spirit is an immortal and an independent principle and being. It is the more important part, yet man bestows more thought and labor upon the body, as a rule, than upon the better part. Neither should be neglected, least of all, the spiritual. This is truth, and it is the truth that makes man free. ”

“ Then there is the instinct of making—the constructive impulse. The child’s impulse to do finds expression first in play, in movement, gesture, and make-believe, becomes more definite, and seeks outlet in shaping materials into tangible forms and permanent embodiment. ”

“ And so the expressive impulse of the children, the art instinct, grows also out of the communicating and constructive instincts. It is their refinement and full manifestation. Make the construction adequate, make it full, free, and flexible, give it a social motive, something to tell, and you have a work of art. Take one illustration of this in connection with the textile work—sewing and weaving. The children made a primitive loom in the shop; here the constructive instinct was appealed to. ”

“ To say that the welfare of others, like our own, consists in a widening and deepening of the perceptions that give activity its meaning, in an educative growth, is to set forth a proposition of political import. To "make others happy" except through liberating their powers and engaging them in activities that enlarge the meaning of life is to harm them and to indulge ourselves under cover of exercising a special virtue. Our moral measure for estimating any existing arrangement or any proposed reform is its effect upon [pg 294] impulse and habits. ”