There’s much about human experience that we “take for granted” and don’t think about. Or if we do, we don’t usually question things deeply. Today our experience of identity is undergoing disruption, as, if we can be present in a nearly unbounded number of “virtual places” at one time, and express different identities in each one, our sense of who we are becomes greatly more malleable, provisional, flexible, multiple.
We have always had multiple personas, inhabiting different identities when relating to different people. But generally, that was a fairly predictable process, within a fairly limited group of family, community, church members, co-workers, and miscellaneous friends and connections.
But in urban areas, the number of “connections” possible immensely exceeds those possible in rural areas, or formerly possible before the internet. Now that connection limit in rural areas is going away, although the physical connection is still greatly limited compared to cityscapes.
This might partially account for the extreme differences between rural and urban populations in the US, identity being more loose and flexible in urban areas, and more constrained and clearly defined in rural areas. And then there are the suburbs.
This is not to try to explain every social category in the US or the sociology thereof.
However, when one factors in the social reality of being anywhere anytime on the internet, as well as being “anyone” in that world, or being a series of “imagined identities”, “fantasy identities”, even “fake identities”…we are in a new world that needs new understandings.
Here’s an example of how ideas are changing from David Brooks, a formerly very committed social and political conservative writing for the NY Times opinion page recently. He’s trying a “do over” on understanding who we are and suggests we all need to do this in light of new theories of how our brains might work.
Opinion | How the Brain Shapes Reality and Imagination - The New York Times