10 _ News from Nowhere
20_ Feature_ Changing Myself_ Oliver Burkman
26 _ Feature _ Leaving Boldly _ Patrick Stokes
34 _ Interview _ The continuity of the body shapes personal identity _ Eric T.
Olson
46 _ Comic _ The Ship of Theseus _ Corey Moller
48 _ Feature _ The era in which smartphones are our minds _ Tom Chatfield
54 _ Feature _ Social Media, a Battleground of Competing Egos _ Clarissa Seebeck Montefiore
60 _ Feature _ A world where virtual identities pretend to be real _ DBC Pierre
70 _ Feature _ Data is not you _ André Dao
78 _ Feature _ The Soul in Clothes _ Marina Benjamin
88 _ Feature _ The group you belong to determines your identity _ Tim Dean
94 _ Feature _ History, Nation, Identity _ Maisha Cherry
102 _ Feature _ Racial identity is linguistic identity _ Mariana Alessandri
110 _ Feature _ Memory and Identity _ Nigel Warburton
116 _ 6 thinkers _ Identity
118 _ Interview _ A Society Without Forgetting _ Kate Eichhorn
136 _ Reading the Classics _ Two Identities Within Me _ Robert Louis Stevenson
142 _ Reading the Classics _ The Labyrinth of Personal Identity _ David Hume
158 _ I don't want to read the classics! _ Herman Melville
164 _ Our Library
168 _ Interview _ My Life Philosophy 13 Questions and 13 Answers _ Idil Gaziulusoi

Social Media: A Battleground for Competing Egos

Issue 17 of New Philosopher explores the broad and profound world of identity under the theme, "Who Am I?"
Identity is an age-old topic that has been discussed since the existence of mankind, but it has always been a topic that provides new food for thought.
In the past, identity was explored primarily by philosophers, but today, ordinary people express their identities through countless words on various social networking services.

It's no exaggeration to say that social media is now a playground, or rather a battlefield, of all kinds of words, as we've been leaving so many records ever since.
So, some people say that it is a place where all of our identities are revealed.


In her book Social Media: A Battleground of Competing Selves, author Clarissa Sibeck Montefiore cites her encounter with a chef whose outer self (the image she presents on Instagram) is different from her inner self (her everyday life), arguing that the world has become one where almost all modern people are accustomed to living with a dual identity.
He describes the psychology of modern people who, regardless of reality, find satisfaction in accumulating likes on posts and images on social media that may seem like deception.


“Sometimes I think about that female chef.
He wasn't a bad person.
He must have been an anxious person.
Perhaps I found solace in the fantasy-filled Instagram life, where I could control everything.”

Humans, who are bound to be weak and insecure beings, always have no choice but to rely on something.
One of them is ‘clothes’.
In “The Soul in Clothes,” author and editor Marina Benjamin argues that for some, clothes evoke memories and nostalgia, and ultimately serve as a mechanism for defining one’s own identity.
We all have our own style, and that can often be linked to our identity.
However, clothes also served as a kind of protective shield that reinforced status and class, and concealed identity by hiding within them.


“It is no coincidence that high fashion has its origins in theatre.
The world of disruptive, cutting-edge fashion demands unconditional trust.
Perhaps this is why Barthes focused on the "synchrony" of fashion. In a way, it seems like all clothing in the world functions in this way.
“In a way that disguises something seamlessly rather than conveying it as is.”

Identity that changes constantly, identity that remains constant

Kate Eichhorn, who teaches cultural and media studies at the New School for New York, vividly demonstrates in her interview, "A Society Without Forgetting," how "forgetting," one of the elements that makes human life flexible, is connected to identity, and how a single line left on social media, in particular, persistently follows modern people through their lives.
Describing the story of a woman who lost her job as a reporter at a magazine because of a potentially racist post she made on social media as a teenager, Eichhorn emphasizes that the mindset of the younger generation, and the identity it encompasses, is constantly changing.


“What I’m trying to say is that students tend to be more open-minded and liberal when they go to college, so we shouldn’t deny them the opportunity to go to college based on the attitudes they displayed in high school.
But that's exactly what's happening right now.
I'm really worried.
“People change between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five, or even thirty.”

If identity changes over time depending on age and environment, there are certainly identities that do not change.
In "Racial Identity Is Linguistic Identity," philosopher Mariana Alessandri points out a new yet old phenomenon of modern society's hatred that requires speaking American English to be accepted as a member of American society.
He laments the reality of various systems taking away one's "mother tongue," pointing out the reality of schools forcing children to take "pronunciation classes" from a Mexican-American philosophy professor who speaks perfect American English as a fifth-generation immigrant, and the reality of large American cities looking askance at children who do not speak New York English.
Even though one's mother tongue contains not only one's individual identity but also one's national identity.


“Where I live, almost everyone has brown skin, so my students never have their American identity questioned because of their complexion.
But linguistic racism constantly threatens their identity.
When schools discourage the use of your native tongue and you are told that your everyday language is unintellectual and un-American, self-awareness, the lifelong task of philosophers, becomes a daunting task.”

An era where fake identities are mistaken for real ones

Modern identity is also influenced by technological change.
For those who live a second life in various social media and online role-playing games, even that is their 'real' identity that defines them.
In "The World Where Virtual Identities Pretend to Be Real," novelist DBC Pierre introduces a friend who collects items for war as well as hobbies like fishing in online role-playing games.
The friend even "dated" in that space, even to the point of genuine "love." DBC Pierre sees the friend as living out his true identity there, as well as in real life.
There wouldn't be a problem if they only revealed their identity in online games, but there are many people all over the world who create virtual identities and cause accidents.
There are countless people today who pretend to be who they are not, such as men pretending to be women, or pretending to be persecuted in Syria when they are not there.


“Moreover, because of the conditions of living as humans, we have developed a keen and innate sense of the identities of others over a long period of time.
Cheating is nothing new.
We already think of anxiety as a trait of boasters, and vulnerability as a trait of shy people.
We can read human codes backwards and upside down.
You can do it without even thinking about it.
A fabricated identity, or even a complete fiction, is a code to the intelligence that devised it.
We can decipher the intelligence that created the fiction through the fiction.
Even the intelligence that created the fiction knows this fact.”

If you think about it, the history of mankind can be said to be a history of contemplating identity.
This may be because the world of identity is that wide and deep.
It doesn't end with you establishing or forging your own identity.
Only when a society's identity is healthy can all its people maintain a healthy life.
Let's embark together on a journey into the world of identity that defines our lives.