02.22.07
Personas
Sometimes, it would be much easier to write here if I were an anonymous internet personality, but recent events have caused me to worry again about ‘Public Joe’ vs. ‘Private Joe’ and whether or not there exists a ‘Real Joe.’ It is a fact that I act differently in different situations and with different people. This is not unusual, as I’m trying to live up the expectations of a situation to make a social experience more pleasant. This is what people do. These days, I’m not doing it to get people to like me, but to facilitate conversation.
It’s a popular notion that ‘you are what you do when you think no one’s watching.’ I’m unconvinced as to the truth of that. I’m unconvinced that we are anything other than what we are currently. I think it’s a fiction that we have an Inner Me that we either express or do not express. That’s an easy sell-out: “I’m not being the Real Me, who is a good, good person.” It lets us feel good about ourselves without actually being good. So if I am, at the moment, acting like an asshole, I am, at the moment, an asshole. Really, what way have we to judge what kind of person we are than by the actions we commit?