#15: Reinventing the Self

'Can the Republican Party reinvent itself?', the spin doctors ask. They also ask this of Governor Sanford; of John Edwards; of Michael Vick. In the old days, we only thought of "inventing" things, not people, and we used it transitively, not reflexively. Is it true that just about anything can be invented, even reinvented, and that some things can actually reinvent themselves? Judging from media talk, it seems a given that people at least really can 'reinvent' themselves, and even often should.

At first glance, this seems to be a new use of the word at odds with the way we used to use it, where it applied to things, not people, and described time wasted in doing what had already been done. 'Reinventing the wheel' was synonymous with useless duplication of work. The reinvented 'reinventing', on the other hand, does apply to human beings and it implies useful change. Such 'reinventing' is meant to be more than superficial and always carries with it a complete change of basic beliefs and attitudes. The new 'reinventing' is the seamless transformation of an unappetizing person into a marketable one, the beauty salon's 'make-over' at the level of personality. 'Reinventings' try to evade hypocrisy in two ways, by making the changes so seamless that they escape notice and by claiming true conversion if caught. Both of these strategies capitalize on the slipperiness of self and ride on the elusiveness of personality. After all is said and done, personal change is hard to document. But is personal change a 'reinventing'?

The apparent shift in the meaning of 'reinventing' reflects a gradual change in our view of the world from one in which people were selves that were reliably constant into one in which people owned designer selves that could be altered or discarded; from one in which selves were organic to one in which they were artificial. We moved from viewing our selves as our inner guides to viewing them as stories for influencing others. We moved, in effect, to a world in which the self became a kind of clothing accessory. This shift was no accident. As we became more dependent on the state, the need for inner guidance diminished, while our needs for excuse and popularity increased. But history was on the side of “reinvention” on a much larger scale than even this. In philosophy, the non-existence of the self was explicitly argued by Sartre, not surprisingly, since enduring character is not an easy find among the French. And even in technology, the power of computers introduced a new concept into films, that of “morphing.” Microchip technology enabled animators to seamlessly transform a person’s features into one completely different.

With all of those factors at play, it is easy to forget that the real shift was not in the use of 'reinvent', but in the culture’s movement from a living self that we are to a manufactured self that we own. The reason we can now 'reinvent' our selves is because our 'selves' have become inanimate things. But the shift was still an easy sell.

First, the reinventable self automated absolution. As an acquired artifact, a thing made by others, the defects of the reinventable self always accrued to its makers, whether they were parents, corporations, governments, religions, other races or other genders; and a self made by others could always be disavowed and its makers always litigated. The reinventable self denied not only original sin, but any sin at all. It was a mechanical excuse equal to any offense. It improved on confession by dispensing with contriteness, penance, or a forgiving priest. Perhaps it was this fact that led to 'being born again', a trope of the reinventable self, religion's effort to catch the wave. And second, the sell was supported by a cynical misreading of America's most cherished credo, that of the equality of men. Originally intended to imply equality before the law, it was first extended to equality of opportunity and most recently, though only tacitly, extended to equality of native ability. The original stated an axiom of civil law, the last was a futile attempt to legislate fact. But while nature ignored our legislative efforts and people remained stubbornly unequal, it was still clear to the supporters of native equality that the reinventable self was friendly to their cause, since it held that the only differences between people lay in the selves they possessed and those were always replaceable.

The popular wisdom of an earlier age understood that 'selves' were not always easy to discern. "She's trying to find herself," we used to say, as if selves could be concealed or mislaid. But even this earlier view clearly presupposed that everyone did in fact have a self even though they might not always see clearly what it is. A person's moral worth was thought to depend on the quality of this self and we called it 'character'. It was a kind of reliable permanent personal substrate that an acidic brew of commerce, technology and politics has managed to dissolve. 'Character' was the self that Socrates urged us to try to know and to which Polonius exhorted us to remain true, but 'character' is largely gone. 'Character' has been replaced by lexic parvenu 'persona'. This word implies less than 'character" but more than the old word 'role', which carried with it the smell of insincerity. 'Playing a role' suggested an intentionally camouflaged inner reality. When we take on a new 'persona', on the other hand, we are hiding nothing, we are actually transformed. This 'persona' is taken to run deep the way we used to think that character did, but it is new and improved, along with diapers and sanitary napkins, because it is disposable.

A world with fluid, shifting selves is an easy sell, especially since it's usually sold on the pay-later plan, but there is still a significant price, even if delayed. The moral, legal, economic, religious and political issues attached to this view are considerable and we are already struggling with them. Without a permanent self, who is responsible for debt or crime or child or country? And how do we determine which self was at home when the debt was incurred or the crime committed? If selves are dropped upon us by others, when, if ever, is it time for the family or the state to expect people to take ownership for the selves they have? A world inhabited by reinventable selves is a world in which everyone can blame, but no one is responsible, a world in which everyone can promise, but in which the promisers can disappear at will. If Nancy Pelosi could really reinvent herself (would that she would!), she might well be a better woman, but would she still be the woman the good people of San Francisco elected? How many reinventions will we allow our elected officials? Our spouses? Our friends? I don't know what the truth about selves may be, or even how we would recognize such a truth in the end, but we can and ought to ask ourselves in the meantime how well we like this world in which selves that have outlived their usefulness may be casually and painlessly replaced. Would it not be nice to live in a world in which people stuck to their principles, their spouses, their children and their countries even when things got tough?