Each of us wears a mask, sometimes even more than only one, it depends on the occasion.
There are rare moments when we stop to wear them.
Some people never stop, not even when they are on their own.
But what is the meaning of wearing them?
Certainly, to make oneself more desirable, fascinating and charming for the others, influenced by the primacy achieved in the sphere of public relationships by the "communicational" compared to the "actual”, by the “having to be” compared to the “being”.
But this is not the only reason.
There are rare moments when we stop to wear them.
Some people never stop, not even when they are on their own.
But what is the meaning of wearing them?
Certainly, to make oneself more desirable, fascinating and charming for the others, influenced by the primacy achieved in the sphere of public relationships by the "communicational" compared to the "actual”, by the “having to be” compared to the “being”.
But this is not the only reason.
The mask has a double function: to create a dissociation between the perception of one's inner world and the external world, to distance us from our true self, to avoid contact with the deepest (or intimate) part of us.
Today's hyper-connected human being is increasingly isolated and trapped inside an emotional cage, a claustrophobic self-definition.
Today's hyper-connected human being is increasingly isolated and trapped inside an emotional cage, a claustrophobic self-definition.
This is the result of the new social maps and the transformation of the ego into a new pagan idol, as Recalcati says, that social networks have generated giving life to an existential dimension dominated by relational dynamics that seem suffocating and vacuous loops. This form of permanent connection makes us all more disconnected and more distant from each other.
The mask of today is a digital mask.
Leaning back on our screens in search of something that fills the emptiness and silence of an expectation that we are no longer used to supporting, we become increasingly unable to "be there" and "listen" (being in the present, in the moment we are living, and listening to ourselves and others).
The illusive desire to find your own identity and your own place in belonging to a micro-trend or a particular social group finds expression in the slavish adherence to specific canons and impeccable performances, considered symbolic of that belonging. It’s the sharing of this restrictive and coercive codes that solidifies and setts off the cohesion of the group. The final result is a bubble in which to cultivate an image of oneself extremely far from your real self, in which it’s possible to vanish and to feel safe by avoiding any real and profound contact (and confrontation).
Falsely connected to each other, we are all buried in our solitudes, in a continuous digital flow within which to lose ourselves, annihilated and stunned by a hyper-connection that separates us instead of uniting us, making us fall into the void of that hedonistic inertia described by Fisher.
Bored and always too much connected, we become passive, unable to react to the frustration of an impossible desire to satisfy: having to be happy, always, all the times, at all costs because of the illusion of being able to have everything at once.
The "desire" is thus transformed into an imposed enjoyment, an "enjoyment without pleasure", narcotic, all-pervasive, bulimic and paralyzing that leads us to "be passive through the other (the digital device)" in the words of R. Pfaller and S. Žižek.
Unable to process a rapid and incessant flow of visual stimuli, with which it is unthinkable to keep up, we surrender to a fake pleasure, delegated (transferred), executed and enjoyed through the object (the digital device). We can use the words of Robert Pfaller to explain it better: "interpassivity is a pleasure of consumption delegated”.
This phenomenon respond perfectly to the contemporary need to be constantly active, connected, virtually present.
We are constantly connected but without actually being in connection to each other. We wear the most spectacular and eye-catching plumage to attract the attention of the others without really coming into contact with them, for fear.
Our dress thus becomes a disguise, a mask, which cages and hides our true self, relief and condemnation within a simulated reality in which appearance becomes substance.
Masks can thus be understood as the solution to cover and hide destabilized personalities.
Masks can thus be understood as the solution to cover and hide destabilized personalities.
This mechanism, the lifeblood and engine of social media dynamics’, becomes practice as it protects from any real exposure, from the possible dangers inherent in every real contact.
Faceless images can be seductive, sexy, political, scary, mystical, and hideous.
And nowadays anonymity becomes more and more attractive, fueled by the spasmodic desire of the media to constantly exhibit everything and everyone and intensified by the digital realm we live in.
The absence of a face become addictive.
And it is from here that the brush strokes and the masks, whose holes symbolize potential access doors, of contact, through which to show and glimpse traces of our true self, the unconscious desire to be really seen and the fear of exposing oneself.
