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WHAT THE SELFIE CAN'T CAPTURE
The selfie is an intriguing phenomenon. It highlights an endpoint of a long social trajectory we might call the death of the soul. Not that a soul can die, of course. But social scientists wonder if perhaps we moderns have replaced the concept of the soul with the self.
The soul is quite different from the self. One is immortal, one mortal. The soul's natural inclination is toward God—either THE God, or a lesser, material deity. Meanwhile the self naturally inclines toward... itself.
The idea of the soul has been with us since ancient times, when it was imagined as an essence that post-dates the body—and in some theories, pre-exists it as well. The soul was often conflated with the mind or consciousness. It dwells within the body for a time but its destiny was much grander. The self has a surprisingly shorter history. It's pinpointed to18th-century political thinker Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose ideas promoted the French Revolution and Age of Enlightenment. Thrones fell, as did religious adherence, on his watch. In that transition, we traded a concern for the life of the soul for an obsession with the self.
The rise of self-awareness over communal identity and allegiances came at a price. In the Age of Enlightenment, melancholia and chronic anxiety became features of modern life. Enthroning the self isn't healthy. It's not strong enough to live up to the role of being its own deity. Meanwhile, the soul patiently awaits a resurgence. Which is central to your existence?
—Alice Camille,
reprinted with permission from TrueQuest Communications
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