Is identity linked to age? After all our experience is etched in our faces and there is a lot we are responsible for. Grumpy old people like us are sometimes surprised to find that a younger generation has also a fierce sense of morality – while according to a recent survey we are supposed to envy their sexual freedom.
What is confusing about personal morality is the blurring of a distinction between a technical offence – equivalent say to parking in a resident’s bay, or being late with tax returns - that has no shame attached, though the penalties are unavoidable and disproportionately severe, and an act that is not as ethic-free as some people would like to think - sleeping with a stranger, perhaps, or insider trading, or lying in public, where the penalties are unlikely and uncertain.
Identity is linked to shame, if we define shame as to do with an attack on our identity, our sense of ourselves being compromised.
Am I right that people don’t apologise as much as they used to? In public life the example at the moment has to be Blair, who has yet to admit he was wrong about invading Iraq. But I don’t remember other politicians doing much apologising. Blunkett writes his memoirs, when you might think it more appropriate to be contritely silent for a good long while. Whatever happened to the Profumo effect?
Those that are caught out now use their disgrace to enhance their celebrity status.
The political apology when it comes is to do with the faults of a previous generation – it’s like getting the Pope to apologise for the crusades - so it is not really an apology about oneself.
So we look at what is going on – I want to share the puzzlement of Freddie Truman, when he retired as a player and became a cricket commentator - I don’t understand what’s going off out there. Public life seems at times to be verging on anarchy, with blatant individualism at large in the land, corporate greed and celebrities demanding respect with seven figure contracts.
We could even feel some sympathy with Muslims wanting to distance themselves from the secular extravagances of our society. Wearing a niqab could be maintaining an appropriate modesty – or a way of symbolically holding your nose against the smell. But if we also want to distance ourselves from religious certainties, we have then to defend a liberal sensibility, in part Sermon on the Mount and in part the paradox of an unfounded rationalism and belief in progress.
My son, a Christian, has no sympathy with the air hostess, who wants to wear her crucifix. As he says, the airlines have a very strict dress code. This reminds me of the deep acting that Arli Hochschild described in air hostesses, where you have to play the part so well that it becomes part of your self. Blair is like that. (Paul Hoggett talked about this at last year’s OPUS conference.)
The state morality is not very helpful – a mix of performance targets and health and safety legislation, with an exaggerated respect for money as an indicator of social value.
This leaves the liberal sensibility struggling, I suspect, which may be why the account of OPUS global listening posts earlier in the year seemed to verge from commentary to self-parody in its repetitious cries of existential despair.
What other position can we take? A second marriage is supposed to be a triumph of hope over experience. Perhaps that has to be the approach that we take, as we look at Blair’s faded smile How else can we engage with the unapologetic failures of political leadership at the moment?
Why won’t Blair be impeached? (Discussed by Henry Porter in today’s Observer.) I suggest, because he only exists in his own deep acting, apparently – and a virtual identity is of its nature unaccountable. We can all do it, apparently. Construct our identity, and put it on YouTube, or a blog – like this.
What is confusing about personal morality is the blurring of a distinction between a technical offence – equivalent say to parking in a resident’s bay, or being late with tax returns - that has no shame attached, though the penalties are unavoidable and disproportionately severe, and an act that is not as ethic-free as some people would like to think - sleeping with a stranger, perhaps, or insider trading, or lying in public, where the penalties are unlikely and uncertain.
Identity is linked to shame, if we define shame as to do with an attack on our identity, our sense of ourselves being compromised.
Am I right that people don’t apologise as much as they used to? In public life the example at the moment has to be Blair, who has yet to admit he was wrong about invading Iraq. But I don’t remember other politicians doing much apologising. Blunkett writes his memoirs, when you might think it more appropriate to be contritely silent for a good long while. Whatever happened to the Profumo effect?
Those that are caught out now use their disgrace to enhance their celebrity status.
The political apology when it comes is to do with the faults of a previous generation – it’s like getting the Pope to apologise for the crusades - so it is not really an apology about oneself.
So we look at what is going on – I want to share the puzzlement of Freddie Truman, when he retired as a player and became a cricket commentator - I don’t understand what’s going off out there. Public life seems at times to be verging on anarchy, with blatant individualism at large in the land, corporate greed and celebrities demanding respect with seven figure contracts.
We could even feel some sympathy with Muslims wanting to distance themselves from the secular extravagances of our society. Wearing a niqab could be maintaining an appropriate modesty – or a way of symbolically holding your nose against the smell. But if we also want to distance ourselves from religious certainties, we have then to defend a liberal sensibility, in part Sermon on the Mount and in part the paradox of an unfounded rationalism and belief in progress.
My son, a Christian, has no sympathy with the air hostess, who wants to wear her crucifix. As he says, the airlines have a very strict dress code. This reminds me of the deep acting that Arli Hochschild described in air hostesses, where you have to play the part so well that it becomes part of your self. Blair is like that. (Paul Hoggett talked about this at last year’s OPUS conference.)
The state morality is not very helpful – a mix of performance targets and health and safety legislation, with an exaggerated respect for money as an indicator of social value.
This leaves the liberal sensibility struggling, I suspect, which may be why the account of OPUS global listening posts earlier in the year seemed to verge from commentary to self-parody in its repetitious cries of existential despair.
What other position can we take? A second marriage is supposed to be a triumph of hope over experience. Perhaps that has to be the approach that we take, as we look at Blair’s faded smile How else can we engage with the unapologetic failures of political leadership at the moment?
Why won’t Blair be impeached? (Discussed by Henry Porter in today’s Observer.) I suggest, because he only exists in his own deep acting, apparently – and a virtual identity is of its nature unaccountable. We can all do it, apparently. Construct our identity, and put it on YouTube, or a blog – like this.
posted by Tim at 1:11 PM
1 Comments:
From Andrew Collie.
The politics of identity and the processes of identification are intertwined. In analysis, of reflective thinking, we struggle to weaken those aspects of ourselves with which we realise we are over-identified. We do this so that we can have choice about our identities. Ultimately, we begin to realise that what we think of as 'me' is actually a series of role choices more or less constrained by our unconscious identifications.
By consciously shifting between roles in order to be most syntonic with a particular task, we loosen our identifications. the price is uncertainty, pscyhic homelessness and a closer aquaintance with vulnerability. The reward is greater freedom to choose who to be.
Post a Comment
<< Home