Writer and cultural commentator Aaron Renn wrote recently about the dissolution of identity in the United States, contending that if we don’t know who we are, we will never know what to do. Renn writes frequently on issues facing young men in America and the challenges of living well in the secular world. He writes,

The reality is that a lot of people in top positions of our society act as if they want you living like Simba. They want porn available for you to watch. They want you betting on the big game on your phone. They want you focused on “experiences” and consumption, like hitting the latest hot travel destination or going to the new farm-to-table restaurant that just opened.

They want you to define yourself as an atomized individual without much of an identity beyond consumer.

-Identity Is the Foundation of Everything – by Aaron M. Renn (aaronrenn.com)

The novelist David Foster Wallace noted something similar in an interview he had in 2003. When asked about the premise of his novel Infinite Jest, Wallace said that there’s a certain kind of emptiness and sadness that attends a lot of American life, particularly for the upper middle class which enjoys a certain level of comfort and material wealth. The broader issue, though, is living in an economy that, as Renn articulates, that treats the human person fundamentally as a consumer. When advertisers and Big Tech organizations offer their products as ways to gratify personal desire and to self-actualize, we forego some deeper human needs (like silence, for instance, or living for a higher, transcendent purpose).

Social media offers a simulation of the communal experience, turning it private and catered to the needs of the self. Now, companies want to use AI to create virtual sex partners and therapists. All for the atomized self. Where is this headed? If Wallace saw it widespread in ’03, how has this economic strategy translated itself into the digital realm?

With all the challenges and noisiness of the age, Renn asks us as simple question: Who are you?