Readings on the various roles people play in public life. As you write this essay, you need to look at how we relate to each other and ourselves.
Potential topics:
● We hear a lot about the virtues of being connected, and we find ourselves at the center of a new world in which the pleasures and pay-offs of “connectedness” are taken as an increasingly indisputable fact of life. Does this new cultural ideal live up to its billing?
● As we spend more and more of the day plugged in, are we losing the capacity to think of ourselves as a community?
● Living at the center of a world in which we are perpetually in contact, constantly communicating, and boundlessly informed, are we using all our vaunted access to remain truly connected?
● Are the roles we play a true reflection of who we actually are?
● Do we live in a culture that allows us the full agency to create our own roles? If we don’t, how do we negotiate those cultural expectations that demand we take on only those roles that are scripted for us?
● How do we create the cultural leeway to think, choose, and identify for ourselves?