阅读韩炳哲《透明社会》，读后的理解与感受衍生。
曾经我对“透明”充满了好奇，因为是一个很难以想象的社会模式，我想象了一个乌托邦，也想象了一些灾难，但无论如何，无论现在我们对其做出推崇还是反对，都依然是建立在当下框架内的推测，这种推测的上限便是人类认知的边界。
看书的途中，我做了理解与衍生理解，部分想法充当了我的知识库，部分想法留在我的大脑里，无法与已有认知融合，但我依然决定留下它们。
在传统的古典叙事中，我们把“透明”视为对抗专制、追求自由的武器。但看完这本书后，了解到的新观点是：当透明成为一种新的绝对的意识形态时，它就走向了反面——变成了一种自愿的、去中心化的全景敞视监狱。
后隐私思想者们推崇“透明”与“暴露”并不是说人类被动失去了隐私，而是主动放弃隐私，甚至开始崇拜“没有隐私”的状态。
传统的全景监狱是奥威尔式的，现代的数字监狱是福柯式的。
现代人不再需要被强迫暴露。在社交媒体算法、优越思想的驱动下，人们把自己的生活、情绪、甚至最隐秘的创伤，转化为可以被测量、被点赞、被变现的表演，韩炳哲称之为“控制社会的色情化”。
每个人既是窥淫癖患者，又是露阴癖患者。人们主动剥夺了自己的外衣，并将其视为“坦诚”和“自由”的象征。
古希腊里有两个词是“Agora”，即广场、公共空间，和Oikos：家庭、私人空间。隐私提供了人们退回黑暗进行深度思考和孵化灵魂的温床。
当一切都暴露在没有阴影的光照下，社会就变得平滑。深刻的、异质的、具有颠覆性的他者思维，都会在“你不敢暴露”的围剿下变成迎合大众逻辑的快餐表演。
我想到了一句台词：“你要有在公众面前暴露你自身缺点的勇气，这样你才会进步，你才更坦诚。”
这句台词借用心理学中关于“接纳脆弱”，或者“反脆弱”这一类的叙事，但在社交媒体的语境下，实际上它被偷换概念了，它异化成了一种带有心理强制性的、表演式的赛博赎罪券。
为什么说是“心理强制性”？因为它给了一个模棱两可、看似自由的说法：你可以选择不暴露，但你不暴露就意味着你不坦诚，你心虚。
一旦对话进入这个语境，就已经不是在探讨“需要”与否，而是偷换成了需要你自证“你是否坦诚”，而无论你如何回答，其实你都进入了对方的陷阱——别想那只大象！
我常会问自己：因果是什么？有没有简化？有没有例外？是常态还是个例？
古希腊人区分Agora与Oikos，是想划分两种不同的精神情绪状态。Oikos不仅是住所，也是“黑暗”，这里的“黑暗”是指一种必经的冥盲，是逻辑、诗意与颠覆性思想在尚未定型时，免受外界过早评价的保护壳，或者说还在混乱中抽丝剥茧的自我孵化期。
当这句台词要求人们在公众面前暴露缺点时，实际把原本属于个体内部的精神流变，直接拉入Agora审判下。
但人们真的就因此进步了吗？
有没有简化？有没有例外？有没有通过刻意暴露，捏造“我很坦诚”的人设？
“缺陷”进入公共域，它会在评论区变成大众能够理解、能够共情、还能引起安慰的“缺陷”。
如何确认人们暴露的不是经过精美剪辑的、带有某种优越感的“假缺陷”？——这是韩炳哲所说的“色情化表演”。
这种要求人们保持坦诚和暴露的意识形态，在宏观上在推动文明走向一种高级的同质化。
过去，人类文明的跃进会部分程度依赖于“异质者”。因为新思想在初期很有可能是脆弱的、瑕疵的、甚至在世俗看来是荒谬的。
如果一个社会不断用“你不敢暴露就是不坦诚、就是懦弱”来施加软暴力，实际上是在剥夺个体不成熟的权利。
当然，我认为书里的一些观点稍微有点绝对，因为不能否认它非常多的正面意义。人际交往中这是具有治愈性的。在心理学中，向信任的人暴露脆弱是建立深层连接的纽带，它可以让人们更深地情感卷入，也是建立亲密关系的必经之路。
但当这种微观的、局部的“脆弱”，被放大并泛化为一种公共的、机制性的美德时，它就越过了理性的边界，成了对个体的隐性剥削。人们自以为在走向更高级的自由、进步和坦诚，实际上可能只是在用自己的隐私和痛苦，去排练一场精致的表演。
在以前读福柯的书时，我记得一些例子。
早期基督教发展出多种自我揭露技术，其中既包括公开、仪式化地把自己呈现为罪人，也包括向精神导师持续吐露内心思想。重要的不只是说出了什么，而是主体通过语言承认自己需要被解释、被引导和被裁判。
这种公开暴露表面上是为了拯救灵魂和净化自我，但在权力结构上，它完成了两件事：
一，它让你承认自己是有罪的、残缺的；
二，它把你的裁判权交给了倾听你的集体和导师。
这样就在这个特定的场域里完成了权力的内化：当你把最隐秘的缺点说出口的那一刻，你就亲手为自己打造了一个无形的狗项圈。至少在那一刻、那个领域，你不再是一个独立的、拥有秘密的个体，你成为了集体凝视下的受审者。
在读现代邪教和精神控制相关书籍里，也提过这种解除防御机制的手段之一：公开暴露缺陷——羞耻感与防御解构——被集体温柔接纳——流泪感动——更加依赖权威——重建认同——更加死心塌地。
之后，当人们认为“我在这里的坦诚本来就是我自愿”时，整个献祭仪式已经完成——因为献祭不可怕，自己意识不到被献祭更隐蔽。
它不再说“你必须服从”，只是说“你应该更真实”。
只是应该。
这两个字的温柔劝说比命令更难抵抗。因为命令还能反抗，但“真实”“坦诚”“成长”“勇敢面对自己”这些词，本身带着道德光环。它们像柔软的绳子，套在人脖子上时甚至带着香味。
因此，你当然可以沉默，但沉默会被解释为逃避；你当然可以保留秘密，但秘密会被解释为虚伪；你也可以不展示创伤，但不展示会被解释为不够勇敢、不够成长、不够真实、修为不够。
于是，自由选择变成了道德陷阱。
解释权在谁手里？
这是偷换概念的路径。
阿甘本曾评价：“微笑着展示自己的裸体，这样一张美丽面孔所表达的唯一内容就是：你想知道我的秘密吗？你想揭开我的面纱吗？那好啊，看吧，如果你可以的话，好好看看我是多么彻底地、不可原谅地秘密全无啊！诚然，只有通过裸露来驱散美的魔力，只有对既无秘密也无意义的外表进行崇高而又可怜的展示，方能去除裸体的神学框架……进行色情展示的裸体肯定是“可怜的”，但却并不“崇高”。
高度可塑性、易受暗示性。
把向特定信任对象的私密倾诉，偷换成了向缺乏保护机制的公众集体的裸露。前者是心理疗愈，后者是权力降维打击的入口。
不过我还是觉得书里的部分观点有点激进，因为我想到了一些通过“暴露脆弱”达成的大规模、自发性的真实共情与弱者联结的事件。
所以最开始我时常会问自己的话通常都很有用……有没有例外？有没有简化？
不过同样，通过“暴露脆弱”达成的普遍同情与安慰，也有可能被人反利用。
在公共叙事泛滥、隐私被淡化的今天，我们应当如何重新定义“坦诚”与“尊严”的边界呢？如果一个社会开始把“保留秘密的权利”等同于“不真诚的嫌疑”，我们是否正在集体无意识地构建一种新型的、没有单一上帝的精神规训？
我想，韩炳哲所担心的“透明化”也来自于这些方面。
这样的透明没有让真相更多，而是让一切变得适合展示。人的痛苦变成了可理解的痛苦，缺陷变成有教育意义的缺陷，于是连“顿悟”都同质化了。
在这样的叙事框架里，连我说的话也可以被完美解释：他说的过于理性，可能只是因为他在“暴露”上倾向于表演，而我们本来就坦诚，我们不是表演。
那被指责的人是否也能用同样的说辞？
当所有事实都迁就于“我觉得”，解释权在谁手里？谁定义真相？
适合展示的事物变多，人们便步入了展示社会。
人的展示价值首先取决于漂亮的外表——也许会有人问，事实就是更漂亮的人或物更受青睐与关注，难道不是吗？
韩炳哲认为不是青睐、关注、羡慕的问题。
今天的偶像明星传播的不是内在价值，是外在标准，这是视觉暴政。
19世纪的巴黎，浪荡子们穿梭于人群，他们精心装扮，为了在繁华的都市里建立一种疏离感与个性。
现在的展示走向了反面。由于社交媒体背后的经济学动力，比如点赞、算法、可见度设定了统一的漂亮标准，个体的面孔开始向同一种数字模具坍缩。
当我们用ps高度精确地抹去皮肤的纹理、调整五官的比例时，我们自以为在彰显个性，但客观来看，我们是在把具有深度的、带有岁月和命运痕迹的肉身面孔，加工成符合算法审美期待的透明面孔——模具、倒模？
自拍者把自己变成了橱窗里的商品，它一目了然，缺乏想象空间，留下的只有视觉消费。在这里韩炳哲的原句是“将身体和灵魂展示、表演给人看的色情作品”。
在这个闭环里，自拍照从一种记录生活的工具，演变成了一种社交通货，通过不断展示裁剪过的“美”，向数字社会契约纳税。
但在韩炳哲的论述里，我还是想要增加一些模糊的边界，即“展示”与“大量展示”之间的区别，因为我觉得最大的问题不是个体展示，“展示”本身是中性的，但里面的“竞争意识”却是暴力的。
于是有的人以此为乐，大量地拍摄、发布，这种长期高频的自我暴露非但没有加深人际间的认同，反而加剧了群体的孤独。因为在朋友圈的广阔广场上，人们交换的不过是流水线上的视觉拟像，每个人都在围观他人的表演，同时在自己的镜头前精疲力竭。
平台把自我展示转化为一种可重复获得社会性奖励的机制，使身体、目光、认同与欲望进入持续交换，还不用承担现实亲密关系中的责任与风险。
想到这里时，我再次得到了一个与我过往思维完全相反的认知——面具之善。
在绝大多数人的常识叙事里，“诡计、权力游戏、不透明、面孔背后的狡诈”几乎天然贴着负面道德标签，而“坦诚、透明、对称”则被尊奉为崇高的美德。
但韩炳哲借由尼采和福柯的视野，解释人类需要允许主体在不爆发直接冲突的前提下，通过试探、妥协和策略博弈来达成动态平衡。它承认人性的多维与复杂，给不同质的个体留出了盘旋和共存的余地。
尼采反对侵扰性的目光，反对普遍可视化，他捍卫外表、面具、秘密、谜题、诡计和游戏：“任何深刻的东西都爱面具；最深刻之物甚至憎恶形象和譬喻……在某些爱的行为和过度慷慨的行为背后，没有什么比手执棍棒痛打目击者更可取的了……面具背后不仅有狡诈，诡计中还有如此多的善、每一个深刻的精神都需要一张面具，甚至，每一个深刻的精神周围都有一张面具在不断生长。在面具的保护下，深刻的精神得以形成。面具如保护膜一般在精神周围生长。它将同者隔绝在外，保护着全然他者、新生事物日渐繁茂。诡计并不等同于狡诈。相对于由绝对命令所引导的行为来说，它的效率更高，暴力程度却更低。
当我们把一切不可预测性都从社会契约中剔除时，我们得到的可能不是一个更美好的社会，而是一个缺乏进化弹性的无尘室。
如果延伸到今天的科技语境，人工智能和大数据正在做的事情，我觉得就是在无孔不入地刺破这层保护膜。
当算法能够精准预测下一次点击、下一次情感波动时，它就在剥夺“面具背后的未知性”。一个没有面具的文明，它的精神厚度会变得像一张纸一样薄，失去了在黑暗里长周期孵化伟大异质思想的能力。
这种思维的逆转，让我去见缝插针地补全我之前的认知图纸，把部分“好坏对立”的观点边界再次扩展出一条灰色地带，或者只是纯粹允许对立观点同时存在。
因为我们习惯于忽略“保留面具、允许博弈”这种维系主体性尊严的生态基础。
甚至连“人”这个单词原意也是“面具”。
在后面的章节，韩炳哲提到亲密关系消灭了客观的游戏空间。我保留看法，但他的解释切入点是“自恋主体”。
即自己与自己的亲密关系，也就是“自恋”。
自恋所表达的对自己无距离亲密性。
在经验中，人们遭遇他者，而在经历中，人们只到处遭遇自己。
自恋的主体深刻融入自己，抑郁的自恋者溺毙在与自己的无边亲密中。
我认为这是一种个体能力，而这种能力在当今社会普遍缺失。因为“他者”是带刺的，是会带来冒犯、反思与认知震荡的。但在以用户体验为核心的数字化社会里，算法的底层逻辑就是把“他者”变成了可以预测的刺激，它喂养人们的自恋，让我们在数字丛林里走到哪里都只能“遭遇自己”。
但实际上，没有通过认知训练的普通人很可能并不能接受自己身上全部的不堪。将这种不堪投射给他者，认为外部世界的荒谬，结果便是缩进自己的自恋个体里封闭。
当整个社会失去了打造场景距离的能力，传统的社会契约就可能面临重塑。因为一个由无法界定自身边界、缺乏稳定自我形象的自恋主体构成的社会，很难建立起长周期、深度的公共信任。人们在亲密关系中快速投入又快速抽离，因为大家消费的不是对方的肉身与灵魂，而是对方提供给自己的情感刺激价值。
影射到现代网络环境里，这是一种数字化的全景监狱，但边沁的全景监狱里的罪犯知道监视者的存在，而数字监狱的居民却活在“点赞”的幻想里，因为这个监狱的居民们互相超交际，通过自我展示和自我披露，参与到整座监狱的建造和运营里，自发维持秩序。
但曾经，放弃隐私是因为恐惧，而今天，促使人们放弃隐私的，是渴望被看见的自发需求。人们将自我暴露、展示、甚至是情感的宣泄，打包成全景监狱里的通货。技术奖赏“暴露狂”与“窥淫癖”——比如擦边——传统的、带有保护性质的羞耻感和隐私保护，就被数字虚荣所替代。
恐惧让位于不知羞耻地展示时，监控社会便趋于完美了。
突然想到了使用小程序和各种app时要求使用用户信息、要求读取位置等等。
为什么会觉得“很正常”“一直这样”“也没什么”？
因为监视并不是以“侵犯”为手段的。
透明消除了“不知”，不知便不信任，就因为信任不在场，人们便强烈呼吁透明。
个人理解中，“透明”消除秘密；“展示”消除距离；“自恋”消灭他者。
三种不同方向的透明共同塑造出一种新主体：不断暴露自己，却无法真正抵达他人；不断被看见，却越来越孤独；不断表达真实，却越来越像模板。
但一个社会若以信任为基础，便不会执意透明，如果一个社会民主，便不会不断强调自己的民主与荣耀。
那么应当透明的是权力、制度，不是人格、自我。
不羞于拥有秘密，不把外部的审判者内化，因为如果到这一步，人就已经不需要被审判了。人会自己把自己押上广场，自己解开衣服，自己朗读罪状，自己感动流泪感谢观众的接纳与爱，最后把这一切命名为成长。
——
Reflections and further thoughts arising from reading Byung-Chul Han’s The Transparency Society.
I was once deeply curious about “transparency,” because it seemed like a social model that was difficult to imagine. I imagined a utopia, and I also imagined certain disasters. Yet regardless of whether we now celebrate or oppose it, our judgments remain projections constructed within the framework of the present. The upper limit of such projections is the boundary of human cognition.
As I read the book, I formed both interpretations and further thoughts derived from them. Some of these ideas became part of my store of knowledge; others remained in my mind, unable to merge with what I already knew. Even so, I decided to keep them.
In traditional classical narratives, we regard “transparency” as a weapon against authoritarianism and in pursuit of freedom. But after reading this book, I encountered a new perspective: when transparency becomes a new and absolute ideology, it turns into its opposite, becoming a voluntary, decentralized panopticon.
Post-privacy thinkers advocate “transparency” and “exposure” not because human beings have passively lost their privacy, but because they have actively abandoned it, even beginning to worship the condition of “having no privacy.”
The traditional panopticon is Orwellian; the modern digital prison is Foucauldian.
Modern people no longer need to be forced to expose themselves. Driven by social media algorithms and ideologies of superiority, people transform their lives, emotions, and even their most private traumas into performances that can be measured, liked, and monetized. Byung-Chul Han calls this “the pornographization of the society of control.”
Everyone is both a voyeur and an exhibitionist. People voluntarily strip away their own clothing and regard this as a symbol of “candor” and “freedom.”
In ancient Greece, there were two terms: Agora, meaning the square or public space, and Oikos, meaning the household or private space. Privacy provides a seedbed into whose darkness people may retreat in order to think deeply and incubate the soul.
When everything is exposed beneath a light without shadows, society becomes smooth. Profound, heterogeneous, and subversive forms of thought belonging to the Other are transformed, under the siege of “you do not dare to expose yourself,” into fast-food performances that cater to popular logic.
I thought of a line: “You must have the courage to expose your own flaws in public. Only then will you improve, and only then will you become more candid.”
This line borrows from psychological narratives about “accepting vulnerability,” or ideas such as “antifragility.” Yet in the context of social media, the concept has in fact been substituted. It has been alienated into a psychologically coercive, performative cyber indulgence.
Why call it “psychologically coercive”? Because it offers an ambiguous proposition that appears to preserve freedom: you may choose not to expose yourself, but if you do not, it means that you are not candid and that you have something to hide.
Once the conversation enters this context, it is no longer discussing whether exposure is “necessary.” Instead, the question is surreptitiously replaced with a demand that you prove “whether you are candid.” No matter how you answer, you have already entered the other person’s trap: don’t think of an elephant!
I often ask myself: What is the causal relationship? Has anything been oversimplified? Are there exceptions? Is this the norm or an isolated case?
The ancient Greeks distinguished between Agora and Oikos in order to separate two different spiritual and emotional states. Oikos is not only a dwelling but also “darkness.” Here, “darkness” refers to a necessary obscurity and blindness, a protective shell that shields logic, poetry, and subversive thought from premature external judgment before they have taken shape. It is, in other words, a period of self-incubation in which one is still drawing out threads from chaos.
When this line demands that people expose their flaws in public, it effectively drags a spiritual transformation that originally belonged within the individual directly before the judgment of the Agora.
But do people truly improve as a result?
Has anything been oversimplified? Are there exceptions? Do some people deliberately expose themselves in order to fabricate a persona that says, “I am very candid”?
Once a “flaw” enters the public sphere, it becomes, in the comments section, a “flaw” that the public can understand, empathize with, and even find comforting.
How can we be certain that what people expose is not a beautifully edited “false flaw,” carrying a certain sense of superiority? This is what Byung-Chul Han calls a “pornographic performance.”
On a macro level, this ideology that requires people to remain candid and exposed is pushing civilization toward an advanced form of homogenization.
In the past, leaps in human civilization depended, to some extent, on “heterogeneous individuals.” New ideas are often fragile and flawed in their early stages, and may even appear absurd by conventional standards.
If a society constantly imposes soft violence through the message that “if you do not dare to expose yourself, you are not candid; you are a coward,” it is in fact depriving individuals of the right to immaturity.
Of course, I think some of the book’s views are slightly absolute, because the many positive meanings of such exposure cannot be denied. In interpersonal relationships, it can be healing. In psychology, revealing one’s vulnerability to someone one trusts serves as a bond through which deep connections are formed. It allows people to become more deeply emotionally involved and is also an inevitable path toward intimacy.
But when this microscopic and localized “vulnerability” is magnified and generalized into a public, institutionalized virtue, it crosses the boundary of reason and becomes a form of hidden exploitation of the individual. People believe they are moving toward a higher form of freedom, progress, and candor, when in reality they may merely be using their own privacy and pain to rehearse an elaborate performance.
When I previously read Foucault, I remember encountering several examples.
Early Christianity developed various technologies of self-disclosure. These included publicly and ritualistically presenting oneself as a sinner, as well as continuously confessing one’s inner thoughts to a spiritual director. What mattered was not only what was said, but that through language, the subject acknowledged a need to be interpreted, guided, and judged.
On the surface, such public exposure was intended to save the soul and purify the self. Yet within the structure of power, it accomplished two things:
First, it made you admit that you were guilty and incomplete.
Second, it handed the authority to judge you over to the collective and the mentor who listened to you.
In this particular setting, the internalization of power was thereby completed. The moment you spoke your most private flaws aloud, you personally fashioned an invisible dog collar for yourself. At least in that moment and within that sphere, you were no longer an independent individual who possessed secrets. You became a defendant beneath the collective gaze.
Books about modern cults and mind control also mention this as one of the methods used to dismantle psychological defenses:
Public exposure of flaws → dismantling of shame and defenses → gentle acceptance by the collective → tears and emotional overwhelm → increased dependence on authority → reconstruction of identity → even more unquestioning devotion.
Afterward, when people believe, “My candor here was voluntary from the beginning,” the entire sacrificial ritual has already been completed. Sacrifice itself is not frightening; what is more concealed is being unaware that one has been sacrificed.
It no longer says, “You must obey.”
It merely says, “You should be more authentic.”
Merely should.
The gentle persuasion contained in this word is more difficult to resist than a command. A command can still be resisted, but words such as “authenticity,” “candor,” “growth,” and “having the courage to face yourself” carry moral halos of their own. They are soft ropes that even give off a fragrance as they are placed around a person’s neck.
Thus, you may of course remain silent, but silence will be interpreted as avoidance. You may of course keep secrets, but secrets will be interpreted as hypocrisy. You may also choose not to display your trauma, but that refusal will be interpreted as insufficient courage, insufficient growth, insufficient authenticity, and insufficient self-cultivation.
Free choice therefore becomes a moral trap.
Who holds the power of interpretation?
This is the path by which concepts are substituted.
Agamben once wrote:
“Smilingly displaying her nudity, the only content expressed by such a beautiful face is this: Do you want to know my secret? Do you want to lift my veil? Very well, then look. If you can, look carefully at how thoroughly and unforgivably devoid of secrets I am! Certainly, only by using nakedness to dispel the enchantment of beauty, only through the sublime yet pitiful display of an appearance that possesses neither secrets nor meaning, can the theological framework of nudity be removed… Nudity displayed pornographically is certainly ‘pitiful,’ but it is not ‘sublime.’”
High plasticity and susceptibility to suggestion.
Private disclosure to a particular trusted person is substituted with exposure before an unprotected public collective. The former is psychological healing; the latter is an entry point for power to launch an attack from a position of overwhelming dimensional advantage.
Nevertheless, I still find some of the book’s views somewhat radical, because I can think of events in which the “exposure of vulnerability” produced large-scale, spontaneous, and genuine empathy, as well as solidarity among vulnerable groups.
That is why the questions I often asked myself at the beginning usually proved useful: Are there exceptions? Has anything been oversimplified?
Yet similarly, the widespread sympathy and comfort achieved through the “exposure of vulnerability” can also be exploited in reverse.
Today, when public narratives proliferate and privacy is increasingly diminished, how should we redefine the boundary between “candor” and “dignity”? If a society begins to equate “the right to keep secrets” with “the suspicion of insincerity,” are we collectively and unconsciously constructing a new form of spiritual discipline without a single God?
I think these are also among the sources of the “transparency” that Byung-Chul Han fears.
This kind of transparency does not produce more truth. It merely makes everything suitable for display. Human suffering becomes suffering that can be understood; flaws become flaws with educational significance; even “epiphanies” become homogenized.
Within such a narrative framework, even what I say can be perfectly explained away: this person is excessively rational, perhaps only because he tends to perform when it comes to “exposure,” whereas we are candid by nature; we are not performing.
Could the accused person not use exactly the same argument?
When every fact is made to accommodate “what I feel,” who holds the power of interpretation? Who defines the truth?
As more things become suitable for display, people enter a society of exhibition.
A person’s exhibition value first depends on an attractive appearance. Perhaps someone might ask: Is it not simply a fact that more beautiful people or objects receive more favor and attention?
Byung-Chul Han believes that the issue is not one of favor, attention, or envy.
The idols and celebrities of today do not transmit inner value, but external standards. This is visual tyranny.
In nineteenth-century Paris, dandies moved through the crowds, dressing themselves meticulously in order to establish a sense of detachment and individuality amid the繁华 of the modern city.
Today, exhibition has moved in the opposite direction. Because the economic forces behind social media, such as likes, algorithms, and visibility, establish a unified standard of beauty, individual faces begin to collapse into the same digital mold.
When we use Photoshop to erase the texture of the skin with great precision and adjust the proportions of our facial features, we believe we are expressing individuality. Objectively, however, we are processing embodied faces that possess depth and bear the traces of time and fate into transparent faces that conform to the aesthetic expectations of algorithms. A mold, a casting?
The person taking the selfie turns themselves into a commodity in a shop window. Everything is visible at a glance, leaving no space for imagination and nothing but visual consumption. Byung-Chul Han’s original phrase here is “pornographic works in which the body and soul are displayed and performed for others.”
Within this closed loop, selfies evolve from a tool for recording life into a form of social currency. By continually displaying a cropped and edited form of “beauty,” people pay taxes to the digital social contract.
Yet within Byung-Chul Han’s argument, I still want to introduce a degree of ambiguity at the boundary between “display” and “mass display.” I do not think the greatest problem lies in individual acts of display. “Display” itself is neutral; it is the “competitive consciousness” within it that is violent.
Some people therefore take pleasure in photographing and posting themselves in large quantities. This long-term, high-frequency self-exposure not only fails to deepen interpersonal identification, but intensifies collective loneliness. In the vast public square of social media feeds, what people exchange are merely visual simulacra produced on an assembly line. Everyone watches the performances of others while becoming exhausted before their own camera.
Platforms transform self-display into a mechanism through which social rewards can be obtained repeatedly, placing bodies, gazes, recognition, and desire into continuous circulation without requiring people to assume the responsibilities and risks of intimacy in the real world.
At this point, I once again arrived at a realization completely opposed to my previous way of thinking: the goodness of masks.
In the common-sense narratives of most people, “stratagems, power games, opacity, and cunning behind the face” are almost automatically assigned negative moral labels, while “candor, transparency, and symmetry” are revered as lofty virtues.
Yet through the perspectives of Nietzsche and Foucault, Byung-Chul Han explains that human beings must allow subjects to reach a dynamic equilibrium through testing, compromise, and strategic negotiation without erupting into direct conflict. This acknowledges the multidimensionality and complexity of human nature, leaving room for heterogeneous individuals to maneuver and coexist.
Nietzsche opposed intrusive gazes and universal visibility. He defended appearances, masks, secrets, riddles, stratagems, and games:
“Everything profound loves a mask; the most profound things even hate image and metaphor… Behind certain acts of love and excessive generosity, nothing would be more desirable than to take up a stick and beat the eyewitness… There is not only cunning behind the mask; there is so much goodness in stratagems. Every profound spirit needs a mask. Indeed, around every profound spirit, a mask is continually growing. Under the protection of the mask, the profound spirit is able to take shape. The mask grows around the spirit like a protective membrane. It keeps the identical outside and protects the wholly Other and the new as they gradually flourish. A stratagem is not the same as cunning. Compared with behavior guided by absolute commands, it is more efficient and less violent.”
When we remove all unpredictability from the social contract, what we obtain may not be a better society, but a clean room deprived of evolutionary resilience.
Extending this into today’s technological context, I think what artificial intelligence and big data are doing is puncturing this protective membrane from every possible direction.
When algorithms can accurately predict the next click and the next emotional fluctuation, they are depriving us of “the unknown behind the mask.” A civilization without masks will see its spiritual thickness reduced to that of a sheet of paper. It will lose the ability to incubate great and heterogeneous ideas through long periods in darkness.
This reversal in my thinking led me to fill the gaps in my previous cognitive blueprint wherever I found them, extending another gray zone into the boundaries of certain views based on an opposition between “good and bad,” or perhaps simply allowing opposing perspectives to coexist.
We are accustomed to overlooking the ecological foundation of subjective dignity created by “retaining masks and allowing negotiation.”
Even the word “person” originally meant “mask.”
In later chapters, Byung-Chul Han writes that intimacy eliminates the objective space of play. I reserve judgment on this point, but his point of entry is the “narcissistic subject.”
That is, an intimate relationship between the self and itself, namely, “narcissism.”
Narcissism expresses an intimacy with oneself without distance.
In experience, people encounter the Other; in lived experience, they encounter only themselves everywhere.
The narcissistic subject becomes deeply absorbed in itself, while the depressed narcissist drowns in boundless intimacy with the self.
I believe that this is an individual capacity, and that this capacity is widely absent in contemporary society. The “Other” has thorns. The Other can bring offense, reflection, and cognitive shock. Yet in a digital society centered on user experience, the underlying logic of algorithms is to transform the “Other” into a predictable stimulus. It feeds people’s narcissism, making it possible for us to walk through the digital jungle and encounter only ourselves wherever we go.
In reality, however, ordinary people who have not undergone cognitive training may be unable to accept everything unbearable within themselves. They project this unbearable part onto the Other and regard the external world as absurd. The result is that they retreat into the enclosure of their narcissistic individuality.
When an entire society loses the ability to create theatrical distance, the traditional social contract may have to be reshaped. A society composed of narcissistic subjects who cannot define their own boundaries and lack stable self-images will find it difficult to establish deep, long-term public trust. People rapidly invest themselves in intimate relationships and then rapidly withdraw, because what everyone consumes is not the other person’s body and soul, but the value of the emotional stimulation that the other person provides.
Projected onto the modern online environment, this becomes a digital panopticon. Yet the prisoners in Bentham’s panopticon knew of the watcher’s existence, whereas the inhabitants of the digital prison live within the fantasy of “likes.” Through hypercommunication, self-display, and self-disclosure, the residents of this prison participate in the construction and operation of the entire prison and spontaneously maintain its order.
In the past, people surrendered privacy because of fear. Today, what drives them to surrender it is the spontaneous desire to be seen. People package self-exposure, display, and even emotional outbursts as currency within the panopticon. Technology rewards “exhibitionists” and “voyeurs,” including those who post borderline sexualized content. Traditional shame and privacy, which once served a protective function, are replaced by digital vanity.
When fear gives way to shameless display, the surveillance society approaches perfection.
I suddenly thought of the way mini-programs and various apps request access to user information, location data, and so on.
Why do we think that this is “perfectly normal,” that “it has always been this way,” and that “it does not really matter”?
Because surveillance does not operate through “violation.”
Transparency eliminates the “unknown.” The unknown creates mistrust, and it is precisely because trust is absent that people so strongly demand transparency.
In my own understanding, “transparency” eliminates secrets; “display” eliminates distance; “narcissism” eliminates the Other.
Three forms of transparency moving in different directions collectively shape a new kind of subject: one who constantly exposes the self yet cannot truly reach another person; one who is constantly seen yet grows increasingly lonely; one who constantly expresses authenticity yet increasingly resembles a template.
But a society founded on trust will not insist upon transparency. If a society is democratic, it will not constantly emphasize its own democracy and glory.
What should be transparent, then, is power and institutions, not personality and the self.
We should not be ashamed of having secrets, nor should we internalize the external judge. Once that point has been reached, a person no longer needs to be judged. They will drag themselves into the public square, undress themselves, read their own indictment aloud, weep with emotion, thank the audience for its acceptance and love, and finally name the entire process “growth.”