Christopher Ebbe, Ph.D. 8-25

Marion Fourcade and Kieran Healy’s recent essay in Aeon.co (on-line, 8-21-25) argues that the growing use of personal data to define you as a consumer/voter/etc. by the internet, the government, and corporations is creating an image of you that could end up being not just an image but a definition of you, leaving you to possibly having to defend why you are actually not that image.  In other words, the internet image of you could be taken by many who do not know you to be more likely true than what you say about yourself!  Thus, we could all be faced with trying to “prove” who we are in contrast to that amalgamated image, somewhat similar to the dilemma of those caught in identity theft. 

You might even waver in your beliefs about who you are in the face of this overwhelming amount of data.  Persons who have little inner intellectual life will be more likely to doubt who they are, while people with a robust inner life will feel strangled by this digital chimera that reminds us of the struggle of some of Kafka’s characters.  Persons who have experimented with portraying themselves as different identities online may also be more prone to wonder who they “really are.”

We would all agree that in general a person who knows you directly (face-to-face in the same setting) knows you more accurately than those who experience you only through distant images or data points, but each of us is taking on another identity, if you will, to those at a distance—who we “are” to the rest of the world that is interested in using our supposed identity (in their minds) to manipulate us or gain something from us as consumer/voter/etc.

We can also agree that in a sense each of us adjusts our self-portrayal to our current circumstances.  We “are” a slightly different person behaviorally in the job, in a political meeting, with our family, etc., though we believe that there is still a true self inside that has continuity.  This role-playing, however, probably does slowly, with repetition, alter our inner sense of ourselves also and therefore our identity, too.  In each moment we believe that our understanding of these variations still adds up to who we already think we are, but this may be slowly changing—affected by our experiences in life as well as by our own attempts to maximize positive responses from the environment by altering our presentations to fit the circumstances.

While some of what we know about ourselves does not change (which high school you went to, your birth date, etc.), some does.  Our opinions about others, about government, even about ourselves changes slowly as we learn more and have more life experience.  We are not a permanent self.

All human beings have a desire to be accepted into the company of others, which we pursue by first conforming (to some degree) to the wishes of our parents, and then by shaping our behavior with others—our words and our actions—to elicit positive responses from them.   We also hunger to be “known”—i.e., to be accepted for who we “really are” rather than for our presentation to others, but we often suppress this need in favor of positive responses from others that we think we can only obtain by presenting a different picture of ourselves than we know deep down that we are.  If our presentation to others is significantly different from who we are to ourselves, we will be in a situation in which we have to plot how to continue getting the positive responses that we desire while not betraying our own sense of self too much.  Sometimes this is simple (we refrain from saying anything political at our once-a-year extended family dinner and then gripe about having to do that when we depart), but as the expectations of others become more complex or varied, it becomes much harder (politicians, for example), and our sense of self can become unclear even to ourselves. 

This is especially difficult if we take seriously the notion of God knowing everything we do at the same time that we do things that we don’t actually believe in and that are antithetical to who we think we are.  We can end up with serious ongoing guilt for deception and self-betrayal and with a need for forgiveness.  A person who was not bothered by misportraying himself to the world is a person who cannot understand or live by principles that we claim are important for the welfare of everyone involved in a relationship (honesty, responsibility) because the application of these principles often involves some pain or disadvantage for us and because the “bottom line” of what is gotten from the environment is all that matters to a person who does not feel even a little bad about misportraying himself.  This person would be a true sociopath, many examples of which we see in our politicians and leaders.  We should all learn to identify such people and know that they are untrustworthy.

Most of us will continue to alter our presentations in the world in minor ways based on the responses that we expect, but how far can we distort our presentation without having troublesome conflict within ourselves about our dissembling?  With regard to our own personal issue with misrepresenting ourselves to others, one solution would be to be totally transparent, which would mean not altering our presentation to the world at all, and simply accepting the consequences in terms of negative responses that we might not have gotten if we had dissembled.  This avoids the guilt about misportrayal but would require learning how to deal with the shaming that some others would no doubt try to employ in response to our transparency.  This option would also have some negative group consequences, since participating effectively in some group actions (like marching or listening to a speech) requires all of the individuals in the group to act only as directed by a rule or leader until some time after the group action, to avoid disrupting the group action.

One answer to the moral dilemma is to not allow ourselves to misrepresent ourselves in any way that would place the other person in some risk of harm.  This would mean not reporting our feelings in ways that might lead to pain—not saying “I love you” if it’s not true or could be reasonably understood as true; and, telling the person who is about to buy your car the full story about the car’s problems and history rather than using the “buyer beware” excuse.

As the internet continues to play a role in more and more parts of our lives, various users of purchased personal data will build even more hefty dossiers on each of us, containing an image of us that is almost certainly incorrect in some ways but may be quite convincing to someone who does not know us.  We will increasingly have to know ourselves well and manage our partial presentations of ourselves on the internet carefully in order to avoid actual harm to us by others’ uses of these distant images as well as to maintain our “right” to be the final arbiters of our identity.

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