Untie your identity from your social image
We can clearly recognize the major collective identity covering all humans wherever they live — society. The late modernity within which the majority of the Western population live today consistently fights against such particular types of collective identity like race, nationality, religion, and gender. But the true equality of humans cannot be achieved without the neutralization of “the mother of all collective identities” — society.
It does not matter which particular type of society we mean: traditional, communist, theocratic, liberal — they all are the same in the present context. The social formations are always circumstantial, they reflect the coloration of the plumage of a particular elite. Any society is always about power and hierarchy.
And if so, only a true alternative for society — the dis-society (or post-society) is able to settle the problem of individual identity. Here, postmodernity steps on the stage again. The term “postmodernity” implies a very multifaceted phenomenon — a social paradigm that does not exist in a fully finalized form yet. Indeed, postmodernity is a wide field for speculations, rumors, and irresponsible philosophical foolishness.
Today, anyone can claim that there are many different “postmodernities”, and it can be the truth. But whatever type of post-society we mean, there won’t be the next edition of socialism-capitalism-liberalism as a result. This three-headed dragon will finish its days in the present aging modernity — the time knows its game well.
To turn a present-day consumer back into a human with a vivid idea of equality, a new concept of human coexistence is needed. It should not harass the natural human greed with unnatural approaches (both communists and fascists failed in doing so), but at the same time, it should temper consumerist appetites under natural limits. For this, it will be necessary to create (or at least to propose) some basic principles of the post-consumer society under a common idea of rejection of the global “greedism”.
But first of all, it is necessary to comprehend for which objective modernity has been fighting over the last 400 years. Aside from circumstantial details, modernity was fighting for a society of individuals having the right of a free choice. Ideally, this is the society of independent personalities capable of choosing their personal fates with their individual free will.
Has the objective been achieved? To what has modernity come finally?
It has come to a collective consumer having the right to choose from predefined options. Of course, there are many different options: work is here — leisure is there, sin is here — sainthood is there, authoritarianism is here — democracy is there, and so on and so forth. But anyone has to choose between rigorously regulated options. A huge listing of options is the very modernity (or Matrix) that severely forces us to either make a choice and be determined with one or another social convention or die in a confrontation with society.
It creates a vicious circle in which civil liberties are heavily steeped in social obligations. People in modernity are hooked-up for obligations all around. They are obliged to consume to be happy. If you cannot be happy, society will teach you how to. If you do not want to be happy, society will force you to be.
But what if not to be a unit of society with its endless lists of consumable options? We do not mean a particular social formation, we mean human society as a whole. It implies an ability to visit society from time to time at will. Since you are a true individual, keep staying in your utmost ontological aspect with which only “Me” and the Universe around exist — neither mates nor foreigners with their social conventions are to be available.
Moreover, even the “Me” should have several different versions to choose from: various personal identities matching the mood and relevant occasions. No obligations before the hierarchical structures of Matrix, no social coercion, no forceable consumption.
Postmodernity offers to kill all birds with one stone through total dissociation of individuals when each human being is to be an absolutely independent creature whose membership in one or another group of other individuals is completely voluntary and optional. Moreover, the very membership in the human race is proposed to be questioned as well. Transhumanism is working over this issue as the relevant technologies evolve.
Can you imagine a religious massacre or an ethnic conflict between post-human cyborgs? But this is not about cyborgs actually. The task is to provide each particular post-human creature with no taken-for-granted obligations to any conventional collective. Only the postmodern dissociation can liberate mankind from the violence of society.
How much protection against Matrix can the postmodern “plural” (or “liquid”) identity provide for individuals? The stake in this game is about the uncertainty that makes the personality of an individual too variable for Matrix. How can society control a creature who is John in the morning (45 y.o., married, plays “World of tanks”) being Mary in the evening (20 y.o., single, plays poker)? Conflicts between individuals can hardly disappear in such a case, of course, but both social oppression and forcible consumption can decrease significantly.
