This is a piece I wrote for the thought-provocative zine In-Tension, led by Tony fry which negotiates the state of the world whilst also provides commentary and ideas that go beyond academia. My contribution addresses 'The Mind in Crisis' and invites rethinking ourselves through the lens of the impostor self/adult. Also in the same issue, interesting reads by Aura Rosalía Cruz Aburto, Ahtaram Shin and David Palazón, Chenxi CUI, Dulmini Perera, Anne Marie Willis, Tony Fry, Carolina Martinez Tolosa and Hector Tabares Rodriguez.
The state of the world is known. We are aware of the polycrisis unfolding and affecting us, directly but differently. Notwithstanding, we continue to move through our microworlds as if they were separate from each other. Fast and slow, the way of perceiving our realities has moved from our inherent ability of seeing the big picture (gestalt) to being conditioned in compartmentalising (cognitive myopia). In just a couple of centuries, we transitioned from an embodied understanding of the world to tunnel vision and developed an ‘ideal’ sense of self driving the impostor adult.
The globally projected ‘ideal self’ entails being a thriving individualist, fierce competitor, successful professional, homeowner and happy family human. It requires talents that must comply with money-making competencies correspondingly converted into material prosperity: possible for some, out of reach for most. All the above make the impostor adult worry about the future and climate change but without wanting to reform, believing in happiness that does not make them happy, and not thinking because they don’t have the time. Unpleasant thoughts and feelings are alleviated by being medicated or distracted via social media and more recently, chats with Chatbots.
The systems in place enable the impostor adult to keep going. They make them consume, promising a life that doesn’t materialise and then treating them for its absence. They keep them placid by the instant gratification social media achieves while disorienting public opinion. Additionally, these systems of industrial and industrialising worlds, convince them that AI is going to make their life easier by taking their cognitive skills away, whilst they have already activated their displacement by AI. Fear is encouraged to trigger the much-needed social polarisation, so the impostor adults don’t come together and push back.
By training the impostor adult’s mind to surrender its executive functions (planning, reasoning and problem-solving), the mind’s default becomes cognitive paralysis manifested as defence mechanisms and fight or flight. What this means is that the brain cannot process any information perceived as overwhelming, for which the threshold becomes too low. Considering how overstimulation and information-overload surrounds the everyday, not only in relation to the polycrisis but everything, it makes perfect sense that the mind goes predominately to two directions. The first takes place through defence mechanisms such as denial, as the refusal to accept any uncomfortable truth (potential loss of home, lifestyle or livelihood); dissociation (detaching from any given reality to avoid emotional suffering); and nihilism (life without meaning and unworthy of pursuing). The second, fight or flight, fuels a reactionary state of mind that gets validated through collective narcissism as seen in supremacist and nationalist sects, political polarisation and growing resentment toward the other.
These two modes play a significant part in submitting to un-care and the conformity currently threatening humanity. Un-care evolves in everyday life by disregarding the aftermath of our actions, absolving us from any responsibility, agency or resistance to a designed and well-executed societal breakdown. It goes hand in hand with mindlessness, the uninhibited giving in to hatred for the other, hedonism and catastrophic impulsiveness (also known as no filter or zero boundaries). Un-care and mindlessness together are fed by social division, isolation and individualism, translating into ‘I can’t change anything on my own therefore there is nothing I can do’ or ‘it’s all their fault’. Not caring becomes a state not only of mind but of being, resulting in accepting the impostor adult as here to stay and unable to reclaim cognitive sovereignty.
Who has a choice to undo this and how much of a choice? That depends on where we are situated. We of the Global North are different from the we of the Global South. Yet every single one of us is called to respond to a polycrisis unravelling when simultaneously losing our minds. There are numerous strategies nominated by psychology, but they mostly emphasise caring for the self. This doesn’t work. To be able to reinstate our cognitive and emotional functions to care, we need to see what’s happening in our own unique circumstances as a consequence of un-care and our role in it, individually and collectively. On the surface, it might seem hard to reconnect with basic human attributes such as caring for the environment we live in and taking collective responsibility to sustain it and subsequently ourselves. It is a challenge to see in the mirror an impostor adult and retreat to collective care. Yet there are pockets of activity in different parts of the planet that put up a good fight to adapt with what’s present, grounded in place-based, lived experience. There are researchers, activists and parents who are mindful of the changes that need to happen to be able to secure forms and spaces of living. Efforts are being made by communities with collective care that operate with rather against impermanence. To have a fighting chance as species, all this needs to come to the forefront along with a salvaged mind.
The alternative is bleak. Our impostor self has been deliberately designed to support the agendas of a given ideology but not to help us deal with the fear of change and repulsion from existing and impending loss. Being individualists or collective narcissists redirects ‘care’ only to “protect our way of life”, fuelling hatred and division. Willingly relinquishing our skills, knowledge and livelihoods to be replaced by machines takes away our ability to come up with responses to the polycrisis and the agency to implement them. Most importantly, the impostor self has a mind of un-care and won’t do anything to prevent the end.
