Becoming an autonomous self requires others who refuse to be mirrors

Evidence

Moving on from “fusion” means a transition from being someone who is their relationships to someone who has their relationships. It entails a deep reconfiguration of how we make sense of our experience. In Kegan’s language, this means a shift away from a “culture of mutuality” to a more complex “culture of identity, self-authorship, and personal autonomy.” This shift depends upon encountering people and life experiences that demand something more than our reflection in the mirror. It requires individuals and situations that insist on our first-person voice, provoking us to carve out our own unique response to the world. — Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, 1446

Categorization

• DEFINE: Contrasts the “culture of mutuality” with the “culture of identity, self-authorship, and personal autonomy” Kegan uses to mark the developmental leap.
• XREF: Parallels the book’s broader argument: autonomy is exactly what surveillance capitalism’s mirror devices prevent. — connects to: Liberation-from-control paradoxically requires self-control by a prior autonomous self; The reflexive impulse to mirror others is part of our collective affliction — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror…, 714; Submission to external authority can constitute rather than constrain the self (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• The reflexive impulse to mirror others is part of our collective affliction #expands (0.80) — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 714
• The for-others requires a totality in which selfness and the Other are reciprocal structures #expands (0.78)
• Liberation-from-control paradoxically requires self-control by a prior autonomous self #complicates (0.75)
• The for-itself’s free spontaneity makes the Other’s existence possible #complicates (0.75) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 781
• Submission to external authority can constitute rather than constrain the self #expands (0.72)