Roles are more than a description of behavior. A role is a form of personal identity, a belief about one’s self. When an actor does a particularly impressive acting job, they are said to have “really enveloped the role,” meaning they went beyond the dialogue and blocking and truly assumed the identity of the character they were portraying. Roles are a fabrication, created by human beings as part of our pattern seeking nature. They have no presence or meaning past our own imaginations.
Human beings constantly construct and define roles. They tend to define people according the roles those people seem to be playing. People also tend to assume roles, which is to say that they define themselves according to the role they perceive themselves as playing. There are two major factors which lead to role playing: low self confidence and external influences. Low self-confidence leads to an inability to establish self-identity and external influences leads to an assumption of a pre-existing identity, the role.
Human beings have the authority to identify themselves in any way they see fit. This authority is theirs and theirs alone, it can not be taken from them. However, they can be persuaded to relinquish it. In order for this to happen, their self confidence must be sufficiently lowered so that they willingly hand over their authority. The vacuum left behind is quickly filled by roles.
A child who has not been filled with self confidence and has failed to develop a self identity will then look to the world around them for definition. They will define themselves based on how they are treated rather than their own observations. They will assume their given role and they will define themselves by it. A girl who is conventionally attractive will become a “pretty girl,” a boy who excels at sports will become an “athlete” or “jock,” a girl who doesn’t fit in socially will become a “weirdo,” and a boy who is attracted to other boys will become a “fag.” They will believe that these labels carry some divine weight. And with all the other kids reinforcing these roles they soon become hopelessly trapped, unable to see beyond their assumed identity.
The key to self identity is high self confidence. Self confidence is the humble recognition of authority over one’s identity. If a person has high self confidence then it does not matter what roles their environment pushes them toward, they will not relinquish their authority. A high school student might be pushed very strongly by her peers toward a particular role, but with sufficient self confidence she will not relinquish her authority. She will recognize that others are attempting to define her and remind herself that nobody has authority to do that but her. At that point the external influences become nothing more than irritating noise.
Self confidence is hard to establish, especially at a young age, and high school is a place where external influences are especially powerful because children actively label each other in an attempt to establish their own identities. But these problems persist far beyond childhood. People with low self confidence can spend their whole lives acting out roles, believing they are something that they are not, clinging to what little satisfaction they can find as they march onward down the path their role has laid out for them.
Alcoholics Anonymous is an example of people being pushed into roles. I appreciate the mission of AA, which is to help people who are having trouble with alcohol. But during AA meetings everyone introduces themselves as an alcoholic. I believe the motivation behind this is to help them admit to themselves that they have a problem. I am in favor of this. However, by calling themselves an alcoholic they are actually reinforcing the role that they have assumed. “I am an alcoholic” is a shortened version of “I identify myself by my alcoholism.” This is not the only way to interpret the sentence but it carries this weight. I think it would be more productive to say “I have a problem with alcohol that I want to address. I drink alcohol to the point where it disrupts my life and I want to stop.” This is also admitting the problem, also acknowledging personal responsibility for it, but not applying a label which could be internalized.
My whole argument boils down to one idea: We are all susceptible to roles and therefore we must always remember our authority over our identity.
The song “Time to Pretend” illustrates my idea very well by describing an extreme role, that of the celebrity. Many celebrities have enough self confidence to avoid succumbing to the celebrity role but the ones that do are a perfect illustration of the dangers of allowing yourself to be defined by a role.
I'm feeling rough, I'm feeling raw, I'm in the prime of my life.
Let's make some music, make some money, find some models for wives.
I'll move to
You man the island and the cocaine and the elegant cars.
This is our decision, to live fast and die young.
We've got the vision, now let's have some fun.
Yeah, it's overwhelming, but what else can we do.
Get jobs in offices, and wake up for the morning commute.
Forget about our mothers and our friends
We're fated to pretend
I'll miss the playgrounds and the animals and digging up worms
I'll miss the comfort of my mother and the weight of the world
I'll miss my sister, miss my father, miss my dog and my home
Yeah, I'll miss the boredem and the freedom and the time spent alone.
But there's really nothing, nothing we can do
Love must be forgotten, life can always start up anew.
The models will have children, we'll get a divorce
We'll find some more models, everything must run it's course.
We'll choke on our vomit and that will be the end
We were fated to pretend
