As you surf the Web, social media, and news/talk radio and TV shows, are you truly capable of separating similitude from dissimilitude? There are other instances when such a distinction is easy for you. For example, you know how to distinguish between the two when you watch a movie. A movie is obviously a similitude as evidenced by its two-dimensionality or by its requirement for special glasses to see it in 3-D. And you know that actors get paid to simulate. But when you immerse yourself in media that freely switch between truth and falsehood, you probably struggle in hopeless befuddlement over what is purportedly “true” or “real.” Yes, an actor simulates, but don’t all of us simulate to some extent? And to simulate, don’t we also need to dissimulate? When we put on masks accepted by a culture, don’t we also have to mask who we truly are?
Sometimes I find myself to be as simple as a fish in a pond, wanting to accept my reality as the only one and wanting to believe that all fish swim in the same pond or one that is irrefutably similar. But at other times…
I can understand dissimilitude because few people want to reveal what they are behind the social masks they sometimes wear, a factitious identity being preferable to a “true,” and possibly embarrassing, one. I also understand that in our desire for individuality, we might want to hide, to misrepresent ourselves in acceptable masks lest others recognize our dissimilitude. I find anyone who claims to wear no mask somewhat difficult to believe. Certainly, I sometimes catch myself wearing one at times. I’m sure that if I were to find myself in the presence of Queen Elizabeth or the Pope, for example, I might tend to assemble all the manners my mother taught me in an attempt to mask temporarily my rather ignoble nature. I also believe that even a professed open-to-the-world personality that some free-spirited naturist or Burning Man or spring break partygoer professes would probably, upon close investigation by an experienced psychologist, break like a rubber band on a cheap Halloween mask, revealing an underlying and socially determined—and restrictive—model of behavior. I say this in light of an ancient memory of mine, one that harks to a study I remember reading years ago about how people behave when they are drunk, and I recall it in the context of signs that in our own times we are “drunk” on media.
In addressing how people act when they are drunk, MacAndrew and Edgerton wrote, “Over the course of socialization, people learn about drunkenness what their society ‘knows’ about drunkenness; and, accepting and acting upon the understandings thus imparted to them, they become the living confirmation of their society’s teachings.” (88) * Apparently, drunk people act in accordance with drunken behavior in its cultural archetypes and stereotypes. As another researcher also wrote, “One feature of drinking…is that it is essentially a social act.” (429) ** This doesn’t contradict what we know about physical addiction, but is rather a recognition that even alcoholics have a tie to their culture. Some social influence governs that first drink and the behavior it subsequently induces. But my focus is not drinkers and their behavior as simulations of cultural stereotypes. It is on the emulation of stereotypes or cultural archetypes insinuated into a broad spectrum of media and manifested in the actions of those drunk on those media. Those inebriated by their media addiction behave as the media sanction certain behaviors.
I believe the same principles that apply to similitude and dissimilitude with respect to drunken behavior also apply to behavior in those who drink copiously from the spigot of modern media. There is a difference between the young and old in such behavior that parallels the use of alcohol in societies. I say this with respect to another study on behavior associated with drinking. Blum and Blum in 1969 noted a difference between behavior in cultures with a history of drinking and cultures newly introduced to alcohol. *** Here’s what they found, but, as you read it, note my brackets in which I substitute “adults” and “youth” for “cultures” and “addiction to social media” for “drinking”:
"...In those cultures [adults] where drinking [addiction to media] is integrated into religious rites and social customs, where the place and manner of consumption are regulated by tradition and where, moreover, self-control, sociability, and ‘knowing how to hold one's liquor’ [knowing how to behave independently of media influences] are matters of manly pride, alcoholism problems [masked and imitative personalities] are at a minimum, provided no other variables are overriding. On the other hand, in those cultures [youth] where alcohol [addiction to media] has been but recently introduced and has not become a part of pre-existing institutions, where no prescribed patterns of behavior exist when ‘under the influence,’ where alcohol [addiction to media] has been used by a dominant group the better to exploit a subject group, and where controls are new, legal, and prohibitionist, superseding traditional social regulation of an activity which previously has been accepted practice, one finds deviant, unacceptable and asocial behavior, as well as chronic disabling alcoholism [disabling risky behavior]. In cultures where ambivalent attitudes toward drinking [media enabled behaviors] prevail, the incidence of alcoholism [drug use, risky behavior, exhibitionism] is also high." ****
Hope all those brackets didn’t make the original unnecessarily complex. The point is rather a simple one: We act as we are expected to act. We simulate similarly, and we dissimulate as we manifest our society’s stereotypes. Ironically, our dissimulating masks our simulating and vice versa.
Can you see a parallel between behavior associated with the consumption of alcohol and behavior related to a consumption of those forms of media I listed above? The inexperienced simulate and dissimulate in one way; the experienced, in another. Both act as representations of culture, at times simulating and at other times dissimulating.
*MacAndrew, C. and R. B. Edgerton, Drunken Comportment: A Social Explanation. Chicago, Aldine Press, 1969.
**Heath, D. B., Sociocultural variants in alcoholism. In Pattison, E. M. and E. Kaufman, Eds. Encyclopedic Handbook of Alcoholism. New York. Gardner Press, 1982.
***I would invite you to browse the quotations found at the site upon which I stumbled: https://www.peele.net/lib/sociocul.html#ii I found it by accident when I was looking for the study by MacAndrew and Edgerton I had read all those decades ago. Memory, as you know, can be general rather than specific—as was my recall of that study I read all those decades ago—but the access all of us have to a readily available encyclopedia of reports makes retrieving easier today than it has ever been. So, I’m thankful for Peele and his addiction website for finding the specific words of MacAndrew and Edgerton for me.
****Blum, R.H. and E.M. Blum, A cultural case study, pp. 188-227, in Blum, R. H., et al., Drugs I: Society and Drugs. San Francisco, Jossey-Bass, 1969.
Sometimes I find myself to be as simple as a fish in a pond, wanting to accept my reality as the only one and wanting to believe that all fish swim in the same pond or one that is irrefutably similar. But at other times…
I can understand dissimilitude because few people want to reveal what they are behind the social masks they sometimes wear, a factitious identity being preferable to a “true,” and possibly embarrassing, one. I also understand that in our desire for individuality, we might want to hide, to misrepresent ourselves in acceptable masks lest others recognize our dissimilitude. I find anyone who claims to wear no mask somewhat difficult to believe. Certainly, I sometimes catch myself wearing one at times. I’m sure that if I were to find myself in the presence of Queen Elizabeth or the Pope, for example, I might tend to assemble all the manners my mother taught me in an attempt to mask temporarily my rather ignoble nature. I also believe that even a professed open-to-the-world personality that some free-spirited naturist or Burning Man or spring break partygoer professes would probably, upon close investigation by an experienced psychologist, break like a rubber band on a cheap Halloween mask, revealing an underlying and socially determined—and restrictive—model of behavior. I say this in light of an ancient memory of mine, one that harks to a study I remember reading years ago about how people behave when they are drunk, and I recall it in the context of signs that in our own times we are “drunk” on media.
In addressing how people act when they are drunk, MacAndrew and Edgerton wrote, “Over the course of socialization, people learn about drunkenness what their society ‘knows’ about drunkenness; and, accepting and acting upon the understandings thus imparted to them, they become the living confirmation of their society’s teachings.” (88) * Apparently, drunk people act in accordance with drunken behavior in its cultural archetypes and stereotypes. As another researcher also wrote, “One feature of drinking…is that it is essentially a social act.” (429) ** This doesn’t contradict what we know about physical addiction, but is rather a recognition that even alcoholics have a tie to their culture. Some social influence governs that first drink and the behavior it subsequently induces. But my focus is not drinkers and their behavior as simulations of cultural stereotypes. It is on the emulation of stereotypes or cultural archetypes insinuated into a broad spectrum of media and manifested in the actions of those drunk on those media. Those inebriated by their media addiction behave as the media sanction certain behaviors.
I believe the same principles that apply to similitude and dissimilitude with respect to drunken behavior also apply to behavior in those who drink copiously from the spigot of modern media. There is a difference between the young and old in such behavior that parallels the use of alcohol in societies. I say this with respect to another study on behavior associated with drinking. Blum and Blum in 1969 noted a difference between behavior in cultures with a history of drinking and cultures newly introduced to alcohol. *** Here’s what they found, but, as you read it, note my brackets in which I substitute “adults” and “youth” for “cultures” and “addiction to social media” for “drinking”:
"...In those cultures [adults] where drinking [addiction to media] is integrated into religious rites and social customs, where the place and manner of consumption are regulated by tradition and where, moreover, self-control, sociability, and ‘knowing how to hold one's liquor’ [knowing how to behave independently of media influences] are matters of manly pride, alcoholism problems [masked and imitative personalities] are at a minimum, provided no other variables are overriding. On the other hand, in those cultures [youth] where alcohol [addiction to media] has been but recently introduced and has not become a part of pre-existing institutions, where no prescribed patterns of behavior exist when ‘under the influence,’ where alcohol [addiction to media] has been used by a dominant group the better to exploit a subject group, and where controls are new, legal, and prohibitionist, superseding traditional social regulation of an activity which previously has been accepted practice, one finds deviant, unacceptable and asocial behavior, as well as chronic disabling alcoholism [disabling risky behavior]. In cultures where ambivalent attitudes toward drinking [media enabled behaviors] prevail, the incidence of alcoholism [drug use, risky behavior, exhibitionism] is also high." ****
Hope all those brackets didn’t make the original unnecessarily complex. The point is rather a simple one: We act as we are expected to act. We simulate similarly, and we dissimulate as we manifest our society’s stereotypes. Ironically, our dissimulating masks our simulating and vice versa.
Can you see a parallel between behavior associated with the consumption of alcohol and behavior related to a consumption of those forms of media I listed above? The inexperienced simulate and dissimulate in one way; the experienced, in another. Both act as representations of culture, at times simulating and at other times dissimulating.
*MacAndrew, C. and R. B. Edgerton, Drunken Comportment: A Social Explanation. Chicago, Aldine Press, 1969.
**Heath, D. B., Sociocultural variants in alcoholism. In Pattison, E. M. and E. Kaufman, Eds. Encyclopedic Handbook of Alcoholism. New York. Gardner Press, 1982.
***I would invite you to browse the quotations found at the site upon which I stumbled: https://www.peele.net/lib/sociocul.html#ii I found it by accident when I was looking for the study by MacAndrew and Edgerton I had read all those decades ago. Memory, as you know, can be general rather than specific—as was my recall of that study I read all those decades ago—but the access all of us have to a readily available encyclopedia of reports makes retrieving easier today than it has ever been. So, I’m thankful for Peele and his addiction website for finding the specific words of MacAndrew and Edgerton for me.
****Blum, R.H. and E.M. Blum, A cultural case study, pp. 188-227, in Blum, R. H., et al., Drugs I: Society and Drugs. San Francisco, Jossey-Bass, 1969.
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