In preparation to begin examining the Renaissance, I've been teaching my European History class about the way people in medieval Europe viewed the world and their place in it. Today we discussed a medieval person's sense of identity. If you asked a medieval man, "Who are you?" What would he say?
Communal identity meant more than individual identity to someone living half a millenium ago. The man would have no last name and would explain his identity almost entirely in terms of his relationships--his family, his lord, his church. Even more importantly, his membership in groups would define him. Banishment served as one of the most powerful medieval punishments.
To explain the contrast to our identities, I found myself talking about facebook. We develop individual profiles, defining our independence by listing books and movies and music. We choose profile pictures that represent our selves the way we'd like to be perceived, or to defiantly state that we don't care how others perceive us. We selectively reveal and conceal. The privilege of privacy allows us to create a virtual self that may bear little resemblance to the selves that walk and talk through real space.
And yet, and yet...even as I illustrated the hyper-individualism cyberspace allows, even encourages, bizarre facebook groups popped into my head....are you a member of the I-turn-my-pillow-over-to-feel-the-cool-side group? Or what about the fans-of-lego-stop-action-spinal-tap-videos group? Then, of course, there's the endless tally of facebook friends to monitor. Maybe we aren't so different, after all. We still define ourselves by the groups we join and the groups that exclude us. But we have a mind-numbing degree of choice about how to mold our relationships to others. A medieval man was born into his relationships, for the most part.
I can't decide which I'd prefer: The security of knowing where I belong and feeling little privacy or the freedom of choosing where I belong and feeling little intimacy. Unfortunately (or fortunately?), we have no choice about when and where our lives begin.
Communal identity meant more than individual identity to someone living half a millenium ago. The man would have no last name and would explain his identity almost entirely in terms of his relationships--his family, his lord, his church. Even more importantly, his membership in groups would define him. Banishment served as one of the most powerful medieval punishments.
To explain the contrast to our identities, I found myself talking about facebook. We develop individual profiles, defining our independence by listing books and movies and music. We choose profile pictures that represent our selves the way we'd like to be perceived, or to defiantly state that we don't care how others perceive us. We selectively reveal and conceal. The privilege of privacy allows us to create a virtual self that may bear little resemblance to the selves that walk and talk through real space.
And yet, and yet...even as I illustrated the hyper-individualism cyberspace allows, even encourages, bizarre facebook groups popped into my head....are you a member of the I-turn-my-pillow-over-to-feel-the-cool-side group? Or what about the fans-of-lego-stop-action-spinal-tap-videos group? Then, of course, there's the endless tally of facebook friends to monitor. Maybe we aren't so different, after all. We still define ourselves by the groups we join and the groups that exclude us. But we have a mind-numbing degree of choice about how to mold our relationships to others. A medieval man was born into his relationships, for the most part.
I can't decide which I'd prefer: The security of knowing where I belong and feeling little privacy or the freedom of choosing where I belong and feeling little intimacy. Unfortunately (or fortunately?), we have no choice about when and where our lives begin.
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