Within the core of the labyrinth: The Minotaur. The Minotaur, the result of chimeric sex, is our monstrous self, the representation of our shame, our guilt, hidden within the inescapable labyrinth of our angst.

For the ancient Greeks, Theseus accomplishes the mission of killing the monster but needed a woman and a cord to escape from the labyrinth.

The modern human is a cordless Theseus. We are neither male nor female, and we are within the labyrinth, armed not with weapons or determination, but with cell phones. Within the labyrinth, we constantly take selfies to attest our presence, our location, our fleeting circumstances. Our images are sent to millions, but nobody cares, because nobody is outside the labyrinth. We are all within the labyrinth, which is now a crowded place full of humans taking selfies.

The modern labyrinth is not made of stone walls, is made of mirrors, liquid mirrors, mirrors made of metamaterials. The walls reflect and absorb us in a continuous kaleidoscope. We trespass the fluid walls and fractalize again and again, constantly multiplying ourselves with selfies. The labyrinth is no longer a place for discovery, for mystery, for optimism, for justice, or even revenge, but rather for mythical confusion (Borges, 1944).

Unlike the ancient labyrinth, the modern labyrinth does not have a distinctive entrance, a distinctive exit, or a distinctive purpose.  Its incommensurable complexity forces us within and without, a multidirectional entropy, which causes us to lose the reason for why we are within it.

The labyrinth in which we are immersed does not make us more capable, or knowledgeable, much less of better knowing ourselves (Basulto, 2015). In contrast to the Platonic idea of “Know Thyself” as the key to understand the world around us, the innumerable self-representations clutter our identity into an infinite imaginary, which makes impossible to discern neither us nor our surroundings. There is no self-recognition nor the attempt of cognition (Garcia Duttmann, 2014) within the stagnating frenzy of our labyrinthic angst.

The vision of a liquid kaleidoscopic labyrinth full of humans reflecting themselves ad infinitum is in the backdrop of a world with a power structure brought into being as a discursive construction of social imposition (Foucault, 1977). The process seems to represent an act of narcissistic self-recognition facilitated by a technology (Burns, 2015). However, it runs against and disrupts the staging steps of self-consciousness (Warfield, 2014).

The modern human appears as a futile and cordless Theseus. However, this fluid pan directional state may represent an evolving metamorphic process, from which a different human will develop, a species that would not rely on self-recognition as a tool for surviving.

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References:

Basulto D (2015) Plato: Know Thy Selfie. BigThink, New York, USA.

Borges JL (1944) Ficciones. Buenos Aires, Argentina, Editorial Sur.

Burns A (2015) Self(ie)-discipline: Social regulation as enacted through the discussion of photographic practice. Internat. J. of Commun. 9:1716-1733.

Foucault M (1977) Discipline and punish. The birth of the prison. Allen Lane Ed., London, UK.

Garcia Duttmann A (2014) Is there a self in selfies? FourbyThree Magazine, Issue 2, London, England.

Warfield K (2014) Making selfies/making self: Digital subjectivities in the selfie: Proceedings of the Image Conference, Berlin, Oct. 30.

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ALEJANDRO PERALTA SOLER, MD, PhD, obtained his medical degree and Ph.D. from the University of Cordoba, Argentina. He did postdoctoral training at The University of Pennsylvania and worked as a researcher at the Lankenau Institute for Medical Research, in Wynnewood, Pennsylvania. After completing the pathology training at SUNY Downstate, Brooklyn, and Cornell University, he worked as a pathologist at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina. He currently works as a dermatopathologist at Inform Diagnostics in Needham, Massachusetts.

Cellular, Culture, Environment, Identity, Social Change, Technology