Expressions Of Individuality In Democracy
I gave a tentative description of what it means to be an individual here, including speculation about mechanisms. In this post, I will add some detail on mechanisms, and try to sharpen up the notion of individuality.
More on mechanisms
In his book The Evolution of Agency, Michael Tomasello describes self-monitoring as a feedback loop. We set a goal, then form a plan to reach the goal, and self-monitor to see how well the plan is working. Setting goals and making plans can also be seen as feedback loops. We consider possibilities,, consider their ramifications, and choose. Self-monitoring systems can be used to rank and to modify goals. The process of setting goals also seems close to the neuronal firing I discussed in the linked post.
That description suggests that our brains operate with nested and linked feedback loops. Years ago I read Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas Hofstadter. There are lengthy discussions of Bach fugues, Escher’s astonishing prints, and Gödel’s theorems. It left me with a strong sense that our neuronal structures use recursion to formulate plans.
In math, a recursive function is a series of calculations using a single equation. The value of the equation is first calculated using a seed. Next the equation is calculated again, using the result of the first calculation. This process continues until the result of two consecutive iterations is the same, or until the value gets too large. The Mandelbrot Set is reached by such a function. The calculations start with a simple equation, and each point in the plane is defined by whether the calculations converge or grow to infinity.
We can compare Tomasello’s feedback loops to Hofstadter’s recursion. The crucial point for our purposes is that small changes in the initial conditions of both might (or might not) produce radically different outcomes.
There are, I think, limits to the amount of variation in human brains. We have physical limitations at every level of our existence, and presumably that’s true of our brain activity. From birth we train our brains to do the things we need to do to survive. That strengthens certain neural activity and weakens the possibility of other, different thoughts and actions. This comment by community member PeaceRme gives an excellent description of the impact of domestic violence on people’s thought processes.
Tomasello says social norms play a large role in determining our behaviors. We are likely to try to conform our actions and our thinking to the norms of our group. When a person’s brain produces actions that are too far outside the range our society thinks is normal, we consider the person sick and take action to protect ourselves from them, maybe even to try to heal them.
Of course, this is all rank speculation. I enjoy the speculation; it’s fun to think about things you don’t fully understand. It’s delightful when things you’ve read at different times and for different reasons seem to fit together.
A closer look at individuality
Several commenters point out that people show individuality in their personal lives, so what’s my point. This comment by community member Eschscholzia is an excellent example. Another way to see this is to look at random bios on Bluesky. People describe themselves in terms of their interests, favorite sports teams, or basic political stances. These are indeed facets of individuality.
When I started this series, I was thinking that the question was something like: what part of your persona consists of choices you made after due consideration, and what part are habits you learned without conscious choice. For example, I have thought a lot about why I support democracy. On the other hand, I never thought about why I don’t like celery. I just don’t like it so there. I have given at least some thought to almost all of my political views. I give very little thought to choosing sports teams.
I think some things are more important than others. Democracy is more important than celery. The things that establish the conditions under which we all live are more important than the activities that give us pleasure. So, democracy is more important than my singing career.
I’ve been trying to read The Human Condition (1956) by Hannah Arendt. Shortly after I started it, I read a discussion of the book in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy to get an overview of the book.
Arendt thinks we have lost something important in the current era, something she sees in the past. This is from the linked article.
For Arendt modernity is characterized by the loss of the world, by which she means the restriction or elimination of the public sphere of action and speech in favor of the private world of introspection and the private pursuit of economic interests. …
Snip
Arendt articulates her conception of modernity around a number of key features: these are world alienation .… World alienation refers to the loss of an intersubjectively constituted world of experience and action by means of which we establish our self-identity and an adequate sense of reality.
Arendt describes the active life as consisting of three parts — labor, work, and action. Labor is the things we do to keep ourselves functioning, sleeping, bathing, eating. Work is the things we do to produce goods and services necessary or useful in our daily lives. Action is, in essence, our participation in public life. There we use our rational skills in politics, poetry, the other arts, In the process make ourselves, our true selves, known to others, and, I think, indirectly to ourselves.
Arendt thinks that action is the most important aspect of our existence. As to politics, she thinks the ancient Greeks had the power to make joint decisions about crucial matters, from war to the rules that make society better.
She thinks the rise of totalitarian states, the rise of huge bureaucracies, and a change in our relation to work have changed us. We focus on material goods and our groups of friends and family, and we forego the power to plan for our future as a species.
I think this is right. Our highest and best calling is to contribute our thinking and our actions to making a society that will be better for us, all of us, and our children, all of our children. Of course that isn’t our sole goal, we want and need to attend to all our abilities, including the ability to experience pleasure.
Democracy gives us the opportunity to do both. We should consider our individuality to consist of our power of reason, our experience, and all our personal qualities, those we display in our family life, and among our friends. All democracy asks of us is that we use that individuality to form a shared intersubjective conception of reality, to identify our problems, and to devise solutions. We have the tools. We just need the will.
I think the nub of the issue is different people (different individualities?) see the same set of circumstances but come to different conclusions. As one consequence different groups of like minded people have different ideas about what makes up a better society for all of us and how to get there, i.e. what the problems are and what the correct solution set is. In democracy terms, the Federalist Papers Numbers Nine and Ten are a terrific example of this discussion and the problems that a democracy poses in trying to resolve those different ideas.
“The Opening”
This is the time
We will remember well
These are the signs:
That we will find ourselves.
So dry the wind will blow,
So high the sea!
Don’t close your eyes
Don’t look the other way;
No more disguise,
Now let us seize the day.
So dry the wind will blow,
So high the sea!
You say you can’t cry anymore
And who can fault you for that?
I say Love is an Opening Door;
It’s where we find ourselves!
Don’t turn your head
Don’t walk the other way
And like the prophet said:
Don’t wait another goddam day!
So dry the wind will blow,
So high the sea!
——-
(Line indents don’t seem to work in this format)
——-
Thanks Ed, for your deeply thoughtful commentaries.
Arendt is the “prophet” in that lyric, btw, even though I’m not aware of her ever having said or written that kind of carpe diem one-liner. It is, nonetheless, the unspoken message that her life’s work shouts at us right now — as we’re watching the thug who’s J6 Putch was averted, but who nonetheless skated easily out of comeuppance and then into that seat of power, where he will stoke and ride a tide of hate and grievance to rival Hitler’s. How that story unwinds in this iteration depends entirely on us.
Here’s a Poetry Foundation essay by Daegan Miller, published just 5 days ago, that explores Arendt’s lifelong relationship to poetry and poets, and how that intersected with her philosophy and writing (including her own poetry).
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/1646148/for-the-love-of-the-word
It’s well worth a read. I’ll be at our library checking out a couple of the books about her that the piece refers to.
Tears of blood
Stain our forefather’s face
A stress test
Our country must endure
To fail upends a hopeful dream
To wake in the dark
And suffer
What we have forgotten
We will never learn
“All democracy asks of us is that we use that individuality to form a shared intersubjective conception of reality, to identify our problems, and to devise solutions.”
But is democracy asking too much of us when some people think that forming a shared intersubjective realty means giving up their individuality? The irony of course is that many of these ardent individualists consume so much media from the conservative grievance machine that they end up with group think, unknowingly casting away any individuality they ever had to begin with.
Alternatively, Democracy asks nothing of us.
Democracy is a tool, a means of achieving a goal – in our case pursuit of happiness and all that.
Unfortunately we just learned that a critical mass of people no longer believe in democracy as the means to achieve our goals.
Isn’t that what Yarvin is saying in the NYTimes, “Democracy is done.”
On Monday the big test of that claim begins.
Let’s say some unelected asshole has a mortal fear of screwdrivers; perhaps he had a screwdriver-involved injury as a child, or his parents belonged to a sect which was antediluvian, clinging only to hammers and chisels.
Let’s say the #BrokenTimes platforms this asshole as they often do with revanchist morons, and he says, “Screwdrivers are done.”
Should we continue to believe that roughly a third of this country voted for an anti-screwdriver presidency?
There is no claim to be tested, just the stupidity of people who voted anti-screwdriver who are about to learn how life treats those without screwdrivers.
Ironically, we’re entering the age of Maslow’s Hammer.
No.
Anarchist and provocateur Curtis Yarvin was published in the NYT? How droll. He’s been saying “democracy is at an end” to curry favor with billionaires for longer than Elmo has been promising his full self-driving car has been perfected [sic].
From his wiki bio:
“Yarvin has influenced some prominent Silicon Valley investors and Republican politicians. Political strategist Steve Bannon has read and admired his work.[11] Vice president-elect JD Vance has cited Yarvin as an influence.”
That quote isn’t doom-saying from his POV, IOW; it’s aspirational.
Yes, it’s what he wants, not what he fears or is. It’s what Tech Bros and other anarchists, such as Steve Bannon, are hoping and paying for.
“Hoping and paying for…”
Perfect.
Great article. As an Electrical Engineer (MIT, EECS Course 6, PhD), one thing that is drilled into us is the importance of feedback loops. Specifically, we learn the math and physics of why open-loop systems (i.e., those without sufficient negative feedback are inherently unstable).
Over the years, I have noticed two things about human behavior that relate to feedback loops.
The first is that the individual must have a stable internal feedback loop in order to accomplish anything useful as noted in the above article.
The second is that there are also societal feedback loops that are also very important.
Let me give an example of what I mean:
Most everyone’s everyday experiences: You do something someone dislikes and you get called out; No one trust you until they know you better; No one recognizes and praises you without knowing more about you; etc.
The life of a celebrity person: Everyone knows your face, wants to praise you, and be your friend; People constantly offer you stuff; The people in your inner circle are “yes” people; etc.
The first example above is a person living in a “negative feedback loop world” and the second is a person living in a “positive feedback loop world.”
As we all know, the person who lives in the positive feedback world is often “unstable.”
Unfortunately our current modes of communication via social media don’t give us meaningful feedback loops. We can spout as much as we want (and the bots are better than us), and the responses are rarely instructive.
ACK.
That’s a great observation. We see how feedback loops are specifically devised by the purveyors of social media to create engagement. It’s not just the replies, it also the thumbs-up (likes) the thumbs down and the banning. It’s actually a feedback loop algorithm.
While that’s obvious in and of itself I never thought about that way. What the hell is this doing to peoples lives?
We also see the shock of the celebrity who’s always being fawned upon (Elon prime example) when he get publicly told to stuff it when he ventures out of his little bubble of accolades and praise. It’s as though his very identity is threatened and he lashes out. Same with Trump.
How Tech Bros see their relationship with politicians and institutions of political power:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2025/jan/18/chris-riddell-on-the-new-american-gothic-starring-donald-trump-and-elon-musk-cartoon
I would like to introduce the work of French philosopher Michel Foucault into this discussion to raise a fundamental question about the way in which we think of the individual, especially since Ed introduced Arendt’s “The Human Condition” into the discussion today.
Foucault’s argument, from what I think of as his middle period of Nietzschean inspired genealogical analysis (see Discipline and Punish), is that the modern individual is fabricated in what he calls the panoptic machine. He takes, as the symbol and model of this new technology Bentham’s Panopticon, an architectural design for a prison based on surveillance and control. Foucault argues that since the French Revolution society has been pervaded by this new form of prison, which resemble schools, factories, barracks, hospitals and asylums, which all resemble prisons, and that in this panoptic machine, the modern individual has been fabricated. Our individuality, our very selves, souls, subjectivities – whatever you want to call it – has been produced by the anonymous and virtually autonomous workings of power that operate at a very fine grained level of materiality on our very bodies and that produces who we are: delinquents school children, workers, soldiers, patients, inmates, in short docile, disciplined bodies that are normalized and integrated into society with little remainder. In his telling, the modern self, the individual in the current discussion, is the product of a continuously functioning exercise of power in which we are all enmeshed. In short, power produces the individual.
What this means is that we, as subjects, have been produced by an anonymous power working behind our backs and without our knowledge. This is a radical thesis, indeed, and contrasts directly with Arendt’s ideas about human action and agency. It raises disturbing questions about that agency and our ability to consciously determine our individual and collective fates and so raises dire questions for democracy as Arendt understands it. Though it is true that Foucault never gave up on action, what he called resistance. His solution was smaller, more piecemeal undertakings of what he called resistance to the totality of the carceral archipelago. He was himself actively involved in prison reform and the gay rights movement, though it’s not clear that his philosophical position could legitimate his political positions.
Arendt, of course, claims that we create our very identities by engaging in speech and action, where we reveal who we are and often come across ourselves unexpectedly in such revelatory undertakings, where words and deeds have not separated from one another. In this sense, though Foucault rejects the Athenian model of the amphitheater for the panopticon as the model of modern self construction, it seems to me that action in Arendt’s understanding of the sui genesis creation of ones’ identity is precisely the antidote we need to resist the normalizing effects of the modern panoptic regime. As Foucault says, we are no longer in the amphitheatre, but in the panoptic machine, however, could it be the case that Arendt’s understanding of action as self creation offers us a path out of our modern prison?
It’s interesting that Foucault was heavily influenced by Martin Heidegger, Arendt’s early love interest in Germany just before she had to flee to escape being rounded up by Nazis (a nativist party not unlike the current GOP, that Heidegger himself would soon enthusiastically join).
Foucault studied Heidegger in the years right after WWII, as Arendt (20 years’ Foucault’s senior) had already made her harrowing personal exodus from Germany to France where she aided other Jewish refugees, and then when France became Nazified, making her way to NYC.
Her first foray into philosophy, in her 1929 German doctoral thesis, was a dissection and dismantling of St Augustine’s teachings on love.
Foucault’s early life was dominated by his struggles with being gay in a Catholic, chauvinist milieu, but he was cushioned by his upper middle class access to academia. The conflicts he experienced were much more of the internal variety than Arendt’s desperate flight for her life across the Continent, although his homosexuality, if it had been worn on his sleeve in the pre-war and Vichy years, would have been the equivalent of a yellow Star of David.
Foucault exhibited self-destructive behaviors in the early portion of his life, whereas Arendt’s lifetime M.O. was self-preservation (her chain smoking notwithstanding). She developed a very close, loving relationship with W.H. Auden in her waning years, such that he proposed to her that they live together, taking care of each other till one or the other died. Foucault’s death in ’84, of AIDS, was one of the earliest markers of that disease’s global scourge. In his latter years his personality had settled and he was regarded with affection and appreciation for gay rights and prison reform advocacy, along with a slew of other civil rights causes he championed.
Our lives are convoluted. So are the ways we develop to navigate them. Myself, I’m glad we have Arendt’s life-example and writings to consider and incorporate as we enter an era that portends as much danger as 1930’s Germany, when she was on the run and the world was basically blindsided. Her life and example are invaluable to keeping our eyes open today.
Foucault was a great thinker, and his late-life writings emphasize “parrhesia,” or “frank speech,” which Arendt was a keen practitioner of, and which will be critical to the work we have to do, here and now — and going forward.
I’m re-reading The Subject And Power by Foucault: and will take it up in a future post. I wrote a short series on it. Here’s the index: https://www.emptywheel.net/2022/09/02/index-and-introduction-to-the-subject-and-power-by-michel-foucault/
Every time I re-read Foucault, I see something new. As you say, it raises serious questions about individuality in our times.
For the purposes of our immediate situation, I’ll just say that even a docile body, even the most wretched victim of the panopticon, has to know that Trump is a repulsive human being. MAGAts know that, and voted for him anyway. That’s far past what Foucault is talking about. It’s much closer to Arendt’s view of the collapse of German society in the pre-Nazi era.
Foucault, Korzybski, Bateson. Buber. YES!! This is my point. About power and control. It’s a paradigm we live by and cannot see. A force we all perpetuate in invisible ways. We have all been altered by it.
And today we can identify the behaviors specifically, that facilitate , perpetuate and mimic, and therefore limit and dismantle individuality.
From a psychological individual standpoint point we end up forming closed silos instead of open processing brains.
Peaceful less controlling behaviors toward each other and in child rearing would potentially create a much broader feedback loop allowing us to process information about the world in a far more expansive way.
This source of power and control (greed in my opinion) is self limiting to all of humanity. What I am saying is that peace is much more effective than the power and control behaviors that leads to brainwashing and limits our options. Collectively.
Give peace a chance. Save the human brain. And mental illness would decrease significantly. Well that’s my dream theory anyway. Excited for the next essay!!
Essential to your peace strategy would have to be listening to other people. Really listening, that is, not just waiting for signifiers of assent or disagreement that might allow oneself to jump back in and talk some more.
Listening is hard. It’s really a skill. You must allow another, completely separate individual to take up space in your consciousness that you may be in the habit of keeping to yourself and your own worries, habits, concerns, or what have you. Then you must devote actual thought to showing that other person that you heard them–or revealing you did not, and thus letting them speak yet again until both of you share an understanding.
Who does that? I know you do, PeaceRme, or you wouldn’t make the points you do. But who else? I did not become myself until I let other people inside in this way. It took a lot of work. I recommend it.
Great comment, Ginevra. I used to be a better listener than I am now. I think it is one of the reasons I took the actions I did in regard to the white supremacist harassment at the branch I once managed. At that time I acted as a kind of translator for people who talked past each other (until it became clear that the high status people only cared about their egos and maintaining control.)
But since then I think my skills have declined. Maybe because of the relentless barrage of disinformation and consequent chaos. It is so exhausting. But now it has even become boring. Trump has become so boring and predictable and a waste of time. He is just like Mitch McConnell or Newt Gingrich or all the other masked MAGA who are such a drag. Surely the Democrats and Independents can find a way to be more engaging.
Democracy is more important than celery.
It depends how hungry you are.
I agree. My father (Z’L) used to say something like this all the time. That food to eat and a roof over one’s head come first. (Inadequate nutrition was an issue for him growing up.)
He was right. There’s no democracy without life; so survival comes first.. May his memory be a blessing.
LOL. On paper. Not if you’ve ever tasted real hunger, or didn’t know how you would feed your kids this evening or next week. See, Maslow’s Pyramid.
I think we’re in agreement here. Ed wrote that Democracy is more important than celery. I should’ve put quotes perhaps.
I have another book to recommend: the Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness & Healing in a Toxic Culture by Gabor Maté.
Democracy is not possible without connection between each other (the loss of an intersubjectively you mentioned above.) Modern American (and increasingly global) culture consists of people having one way interaction with a television to get their information, consists of people purchasing their food at a grocery store where they never meet the 100s of people responsible for getting it there (thus the ease to hate immigrants who harvest our food), consists of people interacting through social media (and television) with toxic bots and 2-dimensional photos and exposure to lots and lots and lots and lots of expensive advertisements meant to convince them to purchase something they don’t need or could actually do them harm, that they learn to tune out. What are Americans tuning into if they are paying attention to Congressional hearings? Toxicity. Hatred. Captured souls. Corrupted souls. Individuals who sold their souls to the devil in exchange for political power. To do what with? To address climate change? To address poverty or homelessness? No, of course not. They want the power so they can burn it all down. Democracy is not possible without connectivity. And we have very little of it in modern America.
Since my own encounter with fascist behavior in the 90’s, I’ve struggled to understand it. I read an article in 2016 about how our brains have grids that it uses to map thoughts. I can’t find that article, but the one below is a close approximation. It may coincide with the concepts of feedback loops and recursive functions.
Also, I mentioned in one of your previous posts that in trying to resolve particular challenges, I became acutely aware of the cultural influences of group dynamics. It all boiled down to status, control and position. So, the other article is about status perception and social hierarchies.
“The Brain Maps Out Ideas and Memories Like Spaces” – Quanta Magazine, 1/14/19
https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-brain-maps-out-ideas-and-memories-like-spaces-20190114/
“Understanding Social Hierarchies: The Neural and Psychological Foundations of Status Perception” – 2/20/15
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5494206/
A great study in the UK on health outcomes and life expectancy with respect to hierarchy.
Whitehall Study
“The studies, named after the Whitehall area of London and originally led by Michael Marmot, found a strong association between grade levels of civil servant employment and mortality rates from a range of causes: the lower the grade, the higher the mortality rate. Men in the lowest grade (messengers, doorkeepers, etc.) had a mortality rate three times higher than that of men in the highest grade (administrators). This effect has since been observed in other studies and named the “status syndrome”.[3]”
Leads one to wonder whether or not the subconscious strives for status for health outcomes.
“It’s good to be king”
-Mel Brooks