> The self as [[{1.2a1a2a} many of us are turning our digital personas into personal or lifestyle brands|perfected brand]], the self as [[{3.4a} your online presence is a doppelganger|digital avatar]], the self as [[we are all data mine sites now|data mine]], the self as [[{7.1} the body as a means of control|idealized body]], the self as racist and anti-Semitic projection, the child as mirror of the self, the self as eternal victim. These doubles share one thing in common: all are ways of not seeing. Not seeing ourselves clearly (because we are so busy performing an idealized version of ourselves), not seeing one another clearly (because we are so busy projecting what we cannot bear to see about ourselves onto others), and not seeing the world and the connections among us clearly (because we have partitioned ourselves and blocked our vision). I think this, more than anything else, explains the uncanny feeling of our moment in history – with all of its mirroring, synthetic selves, and manufactured realities. At bottom, it comes down to who and what we cannot bear to see – in our past, in our present, and in the future racing toward us. > > Performing and partitioning and projecting are the individual steps that make up the dance of avoidance. What is being avoided? I think it’s our true doppelganger. What dairy Hildyard calls our “second body,” the one enmeshed with wars and whales, the one benefiting form the genocides of the past and adding our little drops of poison to the great die-offs of the future. The second body that perpetually mines the Shadow Lands for its comforts and conveniences. > > We avoid because we do not want to be bodies like that. We do not want our bodies to participate in mass extinction. We do not want our bodies to be wrapped in garments made by other bodies that are degraded, abused, and worked to exhaustion…. > > How could we? It is all so unbearable. No wonder we work so hard to look away… No wonder we would rather gaze at our reflections, or get lost in our avatars, than confront our shadows. *see also [[{1q.4a} triad of partitioning performing and projecting]]*