… nothing more than feelings…

What are these strange things we call feelings?

When I’ve dabbled in Jung’s work, I enjoy his notions of Conscious and unConscious, rational and emotional. In a ying/yang sense, I think it’s fairly descriptive of our constitution. The problem is, our culture teaches us to praise the rational, and reject the emotional. Men aren’t supposed to cry, women are weak for doing so. One might even extend the rational/emotional to male/female. And then you bring in the dynamic of power, where men are strong, women are weak, men hold property, women marry the men, etc etc. But what does this lead to If those like Ayn Rand are correct, that man is a rational being, not emotional, and emotion is weakness, that means we never focus on it, never develop it, and never emotionally mature.

Words do give us power to control emotions. If you have words to describe different types of emotions, then when you feel an emotion, you can identify it, and figure out how to process it. For example, shame and guilt need to be handled quite differently. Shame is an emotion based on who you are (“I’m ashamed to be a Jew!”), whereas guilt is an emotion based on what you’ve done (“I feel guilty for robbing the bank.”) One is tied to being, the other is tied to action. If you do something wrong, you can learn to not do it again, and thus have resolution. If you are ashamed of who you are, you might be able to reflect on positive elements of yourself and gradually cheer up. This isn’t to say this isn’t difficult, but it *is* possible.

Why aren’t we taught to handle our emotions? Why can’t we embrace them, both happy and sad, and rejoice in that we are able to feel? The more we do, the more we become acquainted with ourselves, and the less harm words can do to us. “He called me a wetback, but I know that’s not true.” and so on. How can we use our self-explorative knowledge of our feelings to own ourselves, and also to contextualize things and work our way through them? Could we turn our response from “He called me a horrible name” to “Why should I care what he calls me? Do I respect his opinion?”

I believe in facing dark shadows. I do not believe it is easy, and I believe it takes a lot of courage. Racism, sexism, all these isms…. they are a product of power imbalances within human relationships. Are there ways we can explore to begin to balance these dynamics without compromising ourselves? Or should I both not give up a position simply so someone else can have it, but at the same time not take it when someone else should have it?

One of the challenges of rationalism is that it tries to recreate the world and nature in logic, in provable definable quantifies and qualities. But feelings don’t fit into that. Do I need to justify my feelings to others? No, but I can work on owning my emotions to ensure that others don’t affect my emotions in ways I do not consent.

Perhaps I’ll have more on this later.

A rumination on identity

This post is more a collection of recent ruminations than anything else, but I feel they are worth sharing. For the last year and change, I have been studying two primary concepts: where we get our notion of identity from, and how trust plays into this.

As many of you know, I was suspended from my Google+ account in July 2011 for violating their “real names” policy. The challenge was, Google didn’t seem to really know what a “real” name was, nor how to differentiate it from their other internal phrasing, “common” name. After leading a rather public fight insisting that “aestetix” is indeed a common name, they reinstated my account, then suspended it again two weeks later. This left me with two questions I am still trying to answer:

1. Why did getting suspended from Google over this policy upset me so much?
2. Where do people get the notion of what a “real” name is?
   There is actually a third question that is much less obvious, but a personal realization I’ve had after running into these battles:
3. Why aren’t we allowed to use multiple names on most computing systems?

The first question is personal, and one I feel is very valuable. Over the years, I’ve seen a lot of people whom I have met that were using “handles” gradually drop the use of their handles, often connected with other events: graduation, getting a job, and other integrations with the “real” world. I sense there is a lot of social pressure on people to avoid things they are told are “immature” or “gimmicky.” And in all fairness, I agree that if you’re doing something immature or gimmicky, perhaps you might change, although I’d suggest first asking *why* you consider it so. I think there is a fine line between shallow imitation of an art and practicing of it, and when someone is exploring new ideas, I feel it is important to encourage them. I covered this somewhat in my HOPE9 talk when I introduced my linking of Joseph Campbell’s “Hero’s Journey” to eventual maturation of a hacker handle. In the same way that we don different behaviors and skillsets based on clothes we wear, titles we hold, I think operating under various names has a similar continence.

The second question is much more broad, and one I think everyone might try asking themselves. When I see or hear a word, how do I know it is a name? And following that, how do I know it is “real” or “fake”? Eva Galperin of the EFF used the phrase “name-shaped names,” which I really like. It seems that we all have a sort of internal lexicon of vocabulary, and each new phrase or word we hear gets compared to what we already know. Where that lexicon comes from is extremely fascinating to me. Is it a sense of familiarity? If I grow up with a friend named “Bob” I will probably consider “Bob” a normal name, but what if later on in life I meet someone who has a name I’ve never heard before, or it’s pronounced in a funny way? Why does it seem funny to me? What should my reaction be?

The other element that is fascinating is why we seem at times to be incapable of recognizing or at risk of developing fears of names that are unfamiliar. If we have a set outlook on the way the world works, which includes knowing what seems “legitimate,” do we then ascribe something outside of that frame as “illegitimate”? Or when we’re uncertain, do we fall back onto an established procedure or policy, disdaining any notion of personal agency to the perceived authority of the matter? Why do we fear this so much? Is it simply a fear of the unknown, an arena unlabeled by our waking Conscious to fit within the identified or identifiable? Naturally, these are difficult questions.

My final thesis question is very applicable to computer systems, especially as sites like Facebook and Google push to make the world more global. What are the downsides of forcing people to use the names on an ID as the one displayed on your online profile? First, I would suggest that creating an implied link between an ID and an independent company is dangerous, leading users (not citizens) to the false belief that it is not only ok but required to hand over data to the companies. Second, it empowers the company with authority one normally gives to the government, but without the restraints provided in the Constitution. Third, it overly empowers the purpose and importance of the government issued ID to begin with. Are we then to assume that the name granted to you by a government is somehow more important and more “real” than the one you are known by? Fourth, it empowers a system which requires you to maintain trackability and relegation to the government in the first place. I have more reasons, but these hopefully start to demonstrate why I feel relying either on a website profile or a government ID reduces personal autonomy.