Let’s talk about differentiation.

In psychology, differentiation is the process by which we develop a unique identity, separate from our families and even our societies. As we develop as individuals, we naturally gravitate towards a sense of self that is distinct from others and that gives us the sense of uniqueness that is necessary for that vitally important sense, the sense that we are valuable to society and we have a role to play.

This is most obvious in the behaviour of teenagers. In our teen years, we go through a process of trying to figure out where we fit in society and, at the same time, the need to develop an identity separate from one’s parents and family becomes intense.

That’s why “things that would piss off your parents” are so attractive to teens. By doing something their parents definitely would find bizarre or even offensive, they get that feeling of differentiation that they crave so badly at that age.

This is why every generation finds a way to offend their parents. For a while I thought there would be some logical end to that process, that eventually social progress would lead to a world where a teenage girl could literally walk around nude and nobody would care, but now I am not so sure.

Teenagers are nothing if not innovative.

But this differentiation process begins long before puberty. Even as children, we develop a sense of ourselves and who we are in relation to others. The need is not as strong, especially for the “only child”, but in all families, we naturally fall into roles we play within the family dynamic and each role fills a (often unspoken) need.

So, for instance, a child may become “the one with problems” in the family because that gives everyone something to focus on, and honestly, someone to blame for everything. Another might become the “good child” because that is the way they distinguish themselves from their siblings, and they serve as the glue that holds everything together.

One of the basic rules of social dynamics is that while a lot of social dynamics are dysfunctional, they all function. This parallels the way in which, in individuals, even maladaptive coping mechanisms solve some sort of problem.

Differentiation does not stop when we leave our teen years, of course. This need to compare yourself to others and try to figure out how we compare to them and how we are different from them in order to protect our own identity continues for our entire lives, although as we age, it slows.

That established, let’s talk about options.

Studies have shown that, past a certain point, the more options you give a person, the less happy they will be with whatever they choose and the less certain they will be that they got the right one.

It just makes sense. If you are choosing from a thousand options, the odds of picking the “right” one are a thousand to one, or so it seems. Society tells us that what matters is to get the one that’s right for you, but that doesn’t help much. There are still a lot of options and low odds of picking the one that is right for you, or so it seems.

Now let’s combine differentiation and options and start talking about the Internet.

We now live in a global village, just like Marshall McLuhan predicted. “Society” used to consist of just the people in your little town, or neighborhood, or sometimes just your kin, if you live in a remote rural area.

Even in relatively recent years, the real world of our inner lives only had to include the people we consider our peers (as well as friends and family), and this limited the number of people we could compare ourselves to and the number of options as to where you rank in the pecking order.

But now, the doors are flung open and we are, in our still limited ways, part of a community of practically the entire world. This village of ours has become mighty big. And I think it has an effect on how people feel about themselves.

Ever since the dawn of mass media with Gutenberg, and only accelerated by radio, television, and now the Internet, our pool of people in our lives has been increasingly taken over by people with whom we are not actually personally connected. Politicians, celebrities, figures in the news, even fictional characters end up multiplying the entities in our minds and making our mental villages a frighteningly complicated and competitive place.

People end up comparing themselves to people who are the social alphas of entire cultures, if not the world. People feel bad for not being George Clooney, who is famous all over the globe. And if you count the number of potential rungs between you and him on the ladder of success, you can’t help but notice that there is a lot of them.

We face a crisis in differentiation. How can you form an identity distinct from billions of other humans? Where exactly does our instinct for social status competition go when we are competing against all of humanity?

No wonder people end up feeling like they are nobody simply because they are not a celebrity. No wonder they are willing to do whatever it takes, no matter how humiliating, in order to stay on television. No wonder fame can drive people nuts and make them pathetically addicted to it.

If you are world famous today, that makes you socially dominant over billions of people. It doesn’t matter whether that makes sense in any logical or practical sense. Our social instincts are far too strong and run far too deep to be constrained by that. If we want to save the public self-esteem, we will need something stronger than that.

I can’t tell you what that will be. Something powerfully symbolic that makes it okay to be ordinary again.

I’ll work on it.

Talk to you again tomorrow, folks!