The Committee to Nuke Elysium

Trying to find yourself is a staple of the self-help literature, along with the striving for authenticity and building up your self-esteem. I probably wrote about authenticity and how you needed to practice it in my book** because way back in 2007, I thought it was a good thing, a necessary thing.

Now I’m convinced that’s all wrong. The self that matters isn’t some tightly defined, self-loving, individuated thing in the world. The self that matters is the mashed-up self, the networked self — the self made up of relationships and experiences and interactions and ideas. It’s way bigger and more powerful than the un-networked you.

These are some ideas I want to explore: combinatorial creativity, connectivist learning, the third person perspective in the creative process, and self-transcendence. What all these have in common is they all overturn the idea that the individuated self is primary…

…So we need to stop thinking so much about our individual selves — we need to transcend ourselves. Interesting that some of the most satisfied people combine a love of the new with persistence and self-transcendence. These seem like exactly the traits you’d need to succeed in a networked world. Neophilia (novelty-seeking, love of the new) draws you to new ideas, new people, and new experiences, giving you more material for the mashup that is you and the mashups you create. Persistence keeps you from being merely a dilettante, flitting from one new thing to another. And self-transcendence stops you from thinking that it’s all about you.