The Extention of Idenity

Because it's not hard enough only to find and then daily validate our own identities in the face of society and chemical balances, the world has now become a constant and overpowering presence via social media. Though the 24 hour news culture is often decried, CNN and Al Jazeera have nothing on Twitter. My feed ceaselessly assaults me with news: death in Syria, rape in India, debt in Greece, idiotic political battles in America. Species are evolving, species are going extinct. Heat waves are killing, floods are drowning. I've never been completely certain of my self, my complete identity, and the determination of information from all places on all topics to challenge my thoughts and opinions incessantly forces a non-stop recalibration down to my bones.

But isn't it purifying to challenge your opinions? To constantly expand your viewpoint and knowledge? Couldn't this never-ending barrage be refining your stances down into some point of perfect catharsis? Perhaps a life devoted to ingesting Twitter is a more certain way to divide yourself down into nothingness than years of meditation. Nirvana, 140 characters at a time.

Or is it just a grown-up surrogate for cruel classmates and disappointed parents, second-guessing your every thought?

Of course, the derivation of all this and the challenges that leads to is, at most, only half of the issue. More importantly-- or at least more outwardly apparent-- is what you produce. Twitter and Facebook and every other social network turn each day of our lives into a global public speaking gig. How do you express yourself, how do you expose yourself? Did your follower count rise or fall today? Is that last snippet of consciousness you decided to broadcast going to get you fired, arrested, deported?

When am I me?

I speak for my company, I write for my company. No matter how often I type all opinions my own, I am always the same person that holds that position at that place, there is always that line between A and B. When am I allowed to speak, what am I allowed to say? Just how often am I okay to be me-- who ever that person may be today and tomorrow and the next day-- how much of what I feel and think can I to admit to?

If I am able to decide, even for a brief moment, where I stand on the ever-shifting ground beneath me, is that so much of a victory in a world where everything you ever communicate by keys can forever be used against you? No matter what your opinion, someone out there holds the polar opposite. Every opinion we hold is a crime somewhere.