Post-Individuation

Apparently ancient Romans did not analyse their thoughts and feelings at all. They looked not inwards but to others to understand themselves. It was the opinion of others which dictated the opinion that a Roman ultimately held of him- or herself.

This Externalisation of personal awareness in the social construct was the first pit-stop on the road to ‘civilisation’ or socialisation of the animals that we were beforehand.

Fast-forward to the post-enlightenment era in the West, with the added benefit of 2000 years of our ‘personal’ Christian god that is shared by all. The ‘social’ in the inward-looking machine.

This second stage of personal awareness is known as Indivuation. Although this term has many meanings, I refer here to an individual in a social setting looking inwards for self-awareness and less so to the opinions of others.

Jesus met Jung and we are all now acutely aware of our weaknesses, here on earth as it were.

Oddly enough, Indivuation of self-perception is actually harder to adopt compared to just relying on the opinions of those around you since it takes a trained mental capacity to filter and de-construct these external opinions as simply those of other individuals.

These other individuals are not a monolithic social mass and as such there will be many different opinions; they are typically working with much less data on the subject at hand (you); and care less for the conclusions arrived at compared to the individual under consideration.

In other words, the ‘others’ with opinions are not only less qualified than the ‘self’ but less motivated to find the meaningful insights.

Indivuation actually helps to protect society and the individuals in it because it enables individuals to be less swayed by spurious and uncivilised movements, and also to correct behaviours that may be unsocial but also flying under the radar of social condemnation.

I suspect there will be a third age of post-Individuation where people will train themselves to care not even for their own assessment of themselves.

This Buddha-like state will be very difficult to achieve in a ‘social’ construct (but it is much easier in the ‘monkish’ isolationist state) since the useful tools of civility will have to be hard-wired into the brain for society to be facilely maintained.

The benefits of this post-Individuation state will be an ability to deal with social and technological complexity whilst by-passing performance-limiting anxiety.

I am starting to wonder if the apparent contentedness and vaguely self-unawareness of the Gen Y’s is not the first sign of this third Post-Individuation state?

If so, my assessment of them will have to shift a little. They may just be the necessary future.