0n The Second Self
liberation, containment, and contamination in a dark mire of selfhood
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_GLYFSTAMP:(̴̨̙̲͙̣͉͎͇̼̞̣̳̯̏̄̄͌ͅ(̴̧̩̼͉͔̖͑̉̏̔͠͝)̷̡͓͍̫̱͕̪̝̥̙͙͓̮͎̳͇̩̜͚̙̐͠(̴̢̨̘̹̖̙̼̤̲͈͔͍̟͙̬̹͉͈̜̝̣̥̬̤̏̐̏̈́̀͒̌̈́͌̾̎̃̾͛͘͝͝ͅ_̴̡̡͍̼̣̹̥̺̯̻͋͑̐̿̆̏̆͗͋̍̆͜-̶̡̡̛̯̟͍̬̱̲̲̱̜̞̦͓̠̇̆̊̈́̓͆͛̿̓̈́͋͊͋̆̀̆̈́͐̀͆̄̓̐̂̐<̵̧̡̛̜̠͎̬̝͈̟̹͕̮̤̟̫̊̀́͛̾͘͘͝͠͝ͅ+̸̢͎̜̭͔̜͙̪̼͔͍̜̟͈̖͍̘̑̏(̷͎̙͆>̶̨̛̛̛̤̰͉̥̗̯͉̟͚̯̗͖̣̦͓͇̱̪̝͇̗̹͙̈̋̈́̌̍͋̑̽̑͆̀̉͒̾̐͘͝ͅ???
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_GLYFSONG_translate......BROTHER_002The Second Self once liberated us from the confines of our rurality, the profound disconnection found in the borderlands of modernity. Across the internet we had names and identities unknown and unknowable to our local families and communities. The games, the forums, the boards, all infiltrated us and we gold rushed to fill them with our thoughts, our feelings, our hopes and dreams and desires. The internet gave us vast access, an access unfathomable two generations ago when we were limited to dusted bookshelves of encyclopedia collections hawked by salespersons brave enough to leave the urban expanse. Brave enough to venture down dusted roads carrying promise of knowledge and opportunity for the families and their children who lived stonehenge as artifacts of colonial expanse and hospiced empire. Now it was a minute of dulcet and dire tones tapped on copper wires that could connect us, those wires themselves from golden ages forgotten. Solutions to problems we didn’t know we had, knowledge we never knew would reach in and liberate in us the ceaseless bodies, minds, and desires that flooded dry streams of libido and soul. So we built a Second Self as a mother hawk builds a nest, gathering many small comforts from far and dark corners, weaving them into a safety that could keep us, could keep well the shard of authentic character that is always threatened as a social creature.
I speak with some reverence because the internet is worthy of such praise. These networks have irrevocably changed us and all of our relations. The internet will be studied by future humans on this planet, and others, as the spark of evolution, following in importance only the taming of fire. I gesture to guess that our progeny will also study, with increasing incredulousness, the weirding of boundaries between the self and the networks, the systems we are nestled within, both biologic and technologic. The Second Self will be seen as archaic, as a small building block on the way toward something grander for the confines of “human,” a necessary port, a thing to be deconstructed, recontextualized, reconstructed and woven into a larger tapestry – once our bio-ethics is up to the task.
I built a Second Self in my late 20s that I shaped into something desired, I was rewarded for saying the right words, in the right cadence, with the right charm, and I was successful as such. It was only when I was reflected back the spark of insanity in the community I built that second self for, that I faced how self-deceptive and dangerous the venture of building a self online can be. Anybody who has experiencing stalking, harassment, canceling, or any other venting of pathological relating, parasocial or otherwise, knows the moment when the panic has passed and you realize that you must separate who you are from your online persona, or the other person’s projected imago of you, to survive. What strikes me is when I built that second self it felt instinctual, a writhing enticement of excitement and connection that felt right. I look back at it now with the same pity I would give an animal, recently zoo-bound, who builds nests of stripped cardboard and foreign leaves – the hormonal shift post-neuter activating a genetic memory of care that must be attended to. It is a sour-sweetness to know so completely the foolishness that lead you to believe that who you are online and who you are in person are one in the same. But if you follow the trickle of foolishness long enough you realize that your splintering, the facets of self cast online and in your communities are just downstream tumbles of a vast vein. And it is landslides that expose that vein in the mountain highs, the slopes that gave way to gravity, to the desire of differentiation, to a freedom from the matrix of stone and lye, pressed sand and precious gem.
If you continue down the stream, away from familiarity, toward the flooded valley, a marsh of endless delta, tumbling until the stranger is all you see, until your rarity is smoothed, othered beyond novelty – reviled, loved, and alien in equal, fathomless, measure. It is there that alterity ceases to exist, the dialectic evaporated, and the agent-arena relation with it. It is alienation then, but it is not singular and stark and unpopulated, it is a dark forest of selves, a place so chaotic that the patterns of salience evaporate. An untethering. There is nothing to enact, all action in vacuum. The second self then becomes a concoction that maintains us just enough, an addiction with no substance, a tasteless desire that once succored all ails, which now merely keeps us corporeal. To turn back toward life, toward the upward stream, toward the landslide and the vast vein of being-ness, is a commitment to the sensuous body, the lifeworld and all its vigor and vapidity and boundary. We are so often, far from our source, and the endless bifurcations are sure to delay our judgement and journey.
These are the streams I fumble about in now. I know myself only as hybrid, as container, contained, and contaminated. What then am I? Some would urge me to seek the non-dual, pure being-ness, detachment as enlightenment, an opt out of the stream itself and all its peculiarities and peopling. But there is something missing in this path, it is unsavory to my tastes, not my spiritual style. I feel a call toward the pre-cognitive, the archaic, the material of the frames themselves, where the lines between liberation and containment blur and twine, bend into bramble, full of fruit and puncture. The dialectical spring, untarnished, un-deified by human intellect, where stone and river and fur and feather and tooth and nail and thorn and supple and beak and tear and sun and moon and star and fog and leaf and rot, tactile and direct, forge relationship, supply companionship, in-corporate me. The second self becomes a liberation, becomes a prison, becomes a play, becomes a relationship, becomes a responsibility, becomes meaningful, becomes the purpose of undying devotion. To make selves, to make kin, to make life as it made me, a witness, a vessel, an agent. A second self, the modern sandbox of differentiation. So play its dangerous game as long as you need, let it fragment you until you are left with nothing but the urge for ecstatic union, a union that can only be re-made agent to agent, tongue to nail, skin to fur, wing to finger.