21
Being Your Self in The Office
“I never smile if I can help it,” Dwight says to the camera. “Showing one’s teeth is a submission signal in primates. When someone smiles at me all I see is a chimpanzee begging for its life” (“Conflict Resolution”). When Dwight and his Officemates speak directly to the camera they reveal the private side of themselves. For better or worse, our workplace, or “office,” often splits us into two spheres: an official self and a private self. Since most of us spend a large portion of our time working, the official or public self becomes a significant part of who we are. Yet we think we know someone better when they reveal their private “self.”
But what does it mean to know someone, and what exactly are we referring to when we speak of our “selves?” Philosophers have been discussing the problem of personal identity for centuries, yet there is no conclusive theory or definition of the “self” that satisfies everyone. Michael, Jim, Pam, Dwight, and the other characters of The Office struggle to define themselves in an artificial and often alienating environment. An examination of this cast of characters, this dysfunctional family of sorts, can yield valuable insights into the most noteworthy philosophical theories of the self.
In the episode called “The Injury,” Michael accidentally steps on his “George Foreman” grill, burning his foot. Although it’s a minor injury, Michael completely identifies himself with his injured body. The change in the condition of his foot changes his perception of himself from that of a healthy, able-bodied person to that of a disabled person.
Michael appears to embrace a materialist theory of personal identity—a theory that maintains personal identity, or the self, is identical to the physical body. In general, materialists believe that the world and everything in it, including the self, is composed of physical matter. There is no self other than the body and bodily processes, so if the body changes, the self changes. Michael is thinking like a materialist when he assumes that a minor change to his body changes his personal identity. He exploits this change by defining himself as disabled and believing he is entitled to enjoy certain benefits that the able-bodied do not enjoy.
But Aristotle’s (384–322 BCE) distinction between “substances” and “accidents” might help convince Michael that he has not really changed.1 Substances are unique and independent things, for example, a man, like Michael Scott. Accidents are things that can be said about a substance, like the fact that Michael has dark hair, or works for Dunder-Mifflin, or has burned his foot. Influenced by Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) adopts this distinction and claims that there is a fundamental difference between accidental and substantial changes. An accidental change occurs when a physical object undergoes a change, but despite the change, the object remains essentially what it is. None of its essential characteristics have changed. For instance, if a tree undergoes a change to one of its limbs, it remains a tree. It does not become some other physical object just because its branch is broken. If, however, the tree were to be chopped down, ground into wood pulp, pressed into a ream of paper, and stored at the Dunder-Mifflin warehouse, it would no longer be a tree, but a ream of paper. This is an example of a substantial change.
So we might conclude that someone with a debilitating injury, whether temporary or permanent, is still a person, and such changes to the body are only accidental changes. The person is not damaged essentially and still remains the same substance. Michael, or anyone else, is still the same person despite any injuries or accidental changes to the physical body. In defining himself as disabled, Michael adopts a materialist attitude, but distorts the concept of disability by equating his relatively minor injury with more serious physical disabilities (like being made into a ream of paper).
In the same episode, Michael calls the office to ask Pam to drive him to work, but Dwight volunteers to pick him up and dashes out to the rescue. While driving his car out of the parking lot, Dwight hits something, apparently injuring his head. Later, Dwight behaves even more strangely than usual. His speech is odd; he calls Pam “Pan,” and he stops mid-sentence in describing his office responsibilities. His self-awareness is diminished; Dwight doesn’t even realize his hand is raised at the disabilities awareness meeting. His perception is off; he mistakenly thinks that Creed is related to him, calling him “Dad.” And his disposition becomes sweeter; he starts being nice to Pam.
For the reductive materialist there is a scientific (that is, physical) explanation for Dwight’s behavior. Reductive materialists believe that mental states and processes can be reduced to physical states and processes. Mental activity, or lack of activity, can be explained in terms of brain activity. Dwight’s odd behavior, accordingly, is due to a change in his brain, likely the result of his auto accident. According to the philosopher René Descartes (1596–1650), what distinguishes us from “beasts” is the linguistic ability to express thoughts accurately and the capacity to act with rational deliberation.2 By these standards, a strict materialist might conclude, at least during the time that his speech and motor control are impaired, that Dwight may be no more than a beast (Dwight does, after all, think of humans as primates). According to Aquinas’ distinction, however, Dwight does not undergo a substantial change, but merely an accidental change. As if to confirm this, he types his name on the computer repeatedly, making Aquinas’ point—he is still essentially “Dwight.” There has been no substantial change to his personhood.
Michael has been given the order to fire someone by the end of the day in the “Halloween” episode, but he’s having a hard time making a decision. So to prepare himself, Michael does some role-playing with Jim and has Jim “fire” him. Jim plays along but suggests that he should sit behind the desk in Michael’s chair. Jim then tries to confuse Michael by not relinquishing the chair and taking Michael’s phone call, pretending to be Michael. Jim “becomes” Michael, and even fields a call from a prospective employer inquiring about Dwight. (Jim had sent out some fake resumes on Dwight’s behalf.) Michael, of course, is not fooled by Jim’s role-playing. Even though Jim takes over Michael’s chair and desk and simulates his voice on the phone, he is not Michael. No matter how much Jim, who has a talent for imitating voices, talks or sounds like Michael, he can never be Michael.
We can distinguish between two sorts of identity: qualitative identity and numerical identity. If two things (or people) share qualitative identity they may look or sound the same (for example, two copies of the book The Office and Philosophy). But two things (or people) who share numerical identity are, in fact, one and the same thing (for example, the man who plays Michael Scott and the actor Steve Carell). Michael knows that even if Jim looks or sounds like him, they only share an incomplete qualitative identity; they are not numerically identical. For example, in “Product Recall” Jim dresses like Dwight and adopts his mannerisms. “Identity theft is not a joke, Jim,” Dwight responds, “millions of families suffer every year.” At the end of the episode, Dwight enters the office and does his best imitation of Jim. But Michael, Jim, and Dwight can never be deluded into thinking they are anyone else, despite any physical similarities.
Descartes imagined all sorts of things that we could be deluded about, but he said we can be sure of one thing: our identity. Descartes reasoned that it is possible to doubt everything—the senses, the physical world, even the truths of mathematics (since an evil demon may be deceiving us about such truths—well, it’s possible!). But the one thing we cannot be deceived about is our own existence. I know that as long as I am thinking, I exist. Even if my body is an illusion, my mind exists, that is, my thinking, questioning, reasoning, and doubting mind must exist in order for me to think, question, reason, and doubt. So Dwight can be assured that no matter how much Jim resembles or imitates him, he is not Jim, and Jim is not him.
Dualism is the theory that the person is a combination of mind and body. Descartes explains dualism by arguing that the mind is a separate substance from the body. This allows us to conceive of ourselves as a mind, or spirit, occupying the body. A person is a non-physical substance, a spirit or ghost, which resides in a material body. Jim is a kind of dualist because he seems to believe the mind or soul is something that is separate from but resides in or is connected to the physical body. He plays mind games with his co-workers, especially with Dwight, and acts as if personal identity is not dependent upon the body alone.
Jim practices his deceptive role-playing with Dwight in the “Drug Testing” episode. Because half of a marijuana joint was found in the parking lot, Dwight appoints himself to the role of questioner and begins an inquisition of the office employees. During his drug interview, Jim switches roles and begins to accuse Dwight of smoking pot: “Marijuana is a memory loss drug, so maybe you just don’t remember.” “I would remember,” Dwight replies. “Well, how could you if it just erased your memory?” says Jim. Dwight can’t be sure he never smoked pot, Jim argues, because if he had, the pot may have erased his memory of having smoked it.
Dwight’s self-image is tied to his title: “Assistant (to the) Regional Manager.” This title designates him as wholly dependent upon the manager, Michael, who has his own reasons to control him. Dwight desperately wants to change his title to “Assistant Regional Manager,” perhaps because this would give him some independence from Michael. As Assistant Regional Manager he would climb not just the corporate ladder, but the ladder of existence. He would gain in ontological status.3 Anything that has existence or comes into being has ontological status, and to question the existence of anything is to question its ontological status. As the Assistant to the Regional Manager, Dwight’s reason for existence is dependent upon the Regional Manager. That is, if the Regional Manager were to cease to exist, there would be no need for an Assistant to the Regional Manager. There would, however, still be need for an Assistant Regional Manager. Dwight wishes to concretize himself, as an independently existing entity. He wants to improve his ontological status. Otherwise he has a crisis of identity.
Dwight’s crisis is nothing new. According to the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), we all share an identity crisis. Nietzsche questions the very idea of a subjective self, and rejects Descartes’ famous cogito argument (cogito ergo sum, “I think, therefore, I am”) whereby we know with certainty that we exist, because we can think. Descartes argues that it is not possible to doubt one’s existence. In fact doubting my existence only affirms it, because I must exist (at least as a thinking thing, or mind) in order to do the doubting. So the very fact that I am capable of thinking means I must exist.
Nietzsche takes issue with Descartes’ argument by suggesting that we posit the word “I” in “I think . . .” because of a grammatical habit.4 Nietzsche says that there is no reason to assume an “I” behind the “thinking.” It’s merely the constructions of language that deceive us into assuming there is a subject, or ego, that must be responsible for thought. Descartes insists that the mind exists as a substance that accounts for thought, but Nietzsche deconstructs this concept and shows that it is the result of a confusion of language. So Dwight’s identity crisis is due to an error in thinking, since the self, according to Nietzsche, is only a fiction.
The “Diversity Day” episode illustrates a similar issue associated with the problem of personal identity. The purpose of Diversity Day is, presumably, to make the staff sensitive to racial stereotypes. Michael attempts to do this by putting labels on the foreheads of the office staff, designating them as representing particular racial and ethnic groups, such as “Jewish,” “Black,” “Jamaican,” and so on. The result is that each of the office staff is forced to interact with others as representatives of racial stereotypes, rather than as individuals. Kelly, the Indian “valley girl,” has no label on her forehead, yet Michael talks to her using an accent. “Welcome to my convenience store . . . would you like some googi googi?” he asks Kelly. She slaps him. Being a materialist, he can only react to physical appearances. He treats her as a racial stereotype even though she does not have a label on her forehead.
When confronting prejudicial thinking, it is tempting to think, like a dualist, of a substance (“soul” or “mind”) behind appearances. In fact, one argument against racial stereotyping is that it diminishes the true self or person, the non-physical element that lies behind any outward appearances. But the philosopher David Hume (1711–1776) rejects the theory that the self is an entity or substance that lies behind our perceptions. Hume argues that what we call the self or mind is more accurately a bundle of perceptions, and what we are referring to when we perceive ourselves is just a series of images.5 The mind, according to Hume, is like a theater where these perceptions successively make their appearances. But we construct this “theater” and call it the “soul” or “self.” We bundle our perceptions together into this artificial entity in order to connect them together. Our self, then, is merely a collection of perceptions, and has no ontological status of its own.
Dwight finally gets his title upgrade in “The Fight.” After his karate match with Michael, he is informed by Michael that he was only being tested, and that he has been promoted to Assistant Regional Manager. “I told Dwight that there is honor in losing, which, as we all know, is completely ridiculous,” Michael later says to the camera. “But there is, however, honor in making a loser feel better, which is what I just did for Dwight.” At the end of “The Fight” episode, Dwight is seen changing his title on his business cards and seems to be temporarily placated. Dwight is having a crisis in establishing his identity, but the rejection of the self by Nietzsche and Hume would likely be of little or no comfort to him.
Michael’s (Dysfunctional) Family Values
In addition to materialism, Michael can help illustrate the “social construction” theory of the self. For Michael, the family is the social structure that is most meaningful in constructing identity, though oddly we never hear much about his parents or siblings.
Michael sees himself (ironically, since he is in many ways the most childlike and immature) as the father of his office “family.” His need to view the staff as his family gives us a glimpse of Michael’s loneliness, as revealed in the video of himself as a child in “Take Your Daughter to Work Day.” “I want to be married and have one hundred kids so I can have one hundred friends, and no one can say no to being my friend,” says the young Michael. But Michael rarely behaves like an adult or parent. In the “Christmas Party” episode, he shows displeasure with his “Secret Santa” gift—a knitted oven mitten. Although he says that “presents are the best way to show someone you care,” he childishly manipulates the gift-giving arrangements in order to end up with a different gift.
In “Office Olympics” the characters struggle to establish a sense of personal identity by attempting to define themselves in a competitive environment. The “children” of the (artificial) family play games when Dad’s away, giving rise to sibling rivalry and competition. Dwight, for example, sees himself as the preferred sibling, the favored son, and leaves the office with Michael to help him buy a condo. When they return, the “children” feel compelled to give Michael and Dwight the gold and silver medals, even though they didn’t participate in the Olympics.
The sibling rivalry theme is illustrated in “The Fire” when Dwight displays his jealousy of Ryan, whom he sees as a lesser, younger, yet favored son. “Michael’s in there right now evaluating the temp . . . he hasn’t evaluated me in years,” he says to the camera. During the fire drill, Dwight grabs Ryan in a headlock. Michael yells at Dwight: “He’s not your five-year-old brother, Dwight . . . he’s a valued member of this company and . . . you know what? He knows more about business than you ever will.” Dwight’s ego is wounded, but he later takes delight in discovering that Ryan had inadvertently started the fire, and hopes to prove to Michael his moral superiority over Ryan.
In the parable of the “Prodigal Son,” the older brother is jealous of the younger, prodigal son, who gets into trouble through carelessness yet is accepted back into the family by the father. Ryan is not castigated by Michael for his carelessness with the fire, but accepted back into the family, after a few jokes at his expense. Dwight, who sees himself as the older sibling, is jealous. He is also jealous of Jim, who temporarily goes to work at the Stamford branch. Upon their reunion in Philadelphia in “The Convention” episode, Michael greets Jim with: “the pro-gi-dal son . . . my son returns.” Michael can be identified as the father in the parable, who accepts and favors his wayward “son,” despite Dwight’s resentment and jealousy.
Social constructionism is the theory that the self is defined by social relationships and institutions like the family. According to this theory of personal identity, we try to establish our identities by overcoming alienation and discovering ourselves in our relationships. The philosopher G. W. F. Hegel (1770–1831) claims that the self only exists when it is recognized by others.6 In other words, for Hegel, other selves are essential to the discovery of our own self, and we, in a sense, produce our selves in relation to others.
In the “Performance Review” episode, Michael seeks the acknowledgment and approval of others to maintain a sense of himself. It is the morning after a romantic evening with Jan, and Michael asks Pam, because she’s a woman, to interpret Jan’s phone message. In doing so, Michael shows that he needs the recognition of others in order to define himself, particularly as a man who can satisfy women sexually. He wants his “performance” to be reviewed favorably by Jan (and by Pam) and to be approved of. One needs, as Hegel states, acknowledgment from others in order to have a sense of self.
We watch shows like The Office because we are concerned with individual characters as they exist in relation to others. What makes them interesting is not a succession of perceptions, as Hume described in his bundle theory, but our desire to know what happens to an enduring personality over time. How will things work out between Jim and Pam? Will Dwight leave the company if he can’t achieve his ambitions? How will Michael react if he finds out that Dwight has been talking to Jan about replacing him?
When we care about a character we come to know his or her personality. But we’re back to our opening question: What does it mean to know someone? According to the social constructionist, the self is not a metaphysical essence or substance, but something that we construct through our interactions with and acknowledgment by others. Jim is not simply feeling love—he loves Pam. Dwight is not simply jealous, he is jealous of Jim and of Ryan. Personality is a function of the other people we interact with and is determined by the theatrical roles we play. Each person treats the other as an audience, in front of whom he or she forges an identity. There is no “real self” lurking behind these dramatic roles; rather, we are what we make ourselves to be. The most authentic self is the one that we have been acting or portraying the longest and is the most adaptable to our changing situations.
Many of the most engaging characters are victims of their own imagination. For them, the self becomes divided and fragmented, a collection of conflicting forces. Like many of us, they struggle to overcome the public/private split of their personalities. Dwight is a character who catches our attention because he is always in conflict. If he were satisfied and content, he would be less interesting dramatically. His comment to the camera about never smiling shows that he sees himself through the eyes of others. It is his ambition, his jealousy, and his competitive nature that make him an intriguing character.
Defining the self is never an easy task. For the social constructionist, it is our interaction with others that brings our public and private selves into focus, and it is through the acknowledgment of others that we become aware of ourselves.
NOTES
1Aristotle makes this distinction in his book Categories, from The Basic Works of Aristotle, trans. R. McKeon (New York: Random House, 1941), p. 9.
2Descartes is not a materialist but advocates dualism, which will be discussed in the next section. René Descartes, Discourse on Method, from The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, trans. J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, and D. Murdoch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), vol. 1, p. 140.
3Ontology is the branch of philosophy that is concerned with the nature of being or existence.
4Nietzsche writes: “For, formerly one believed in ‘the soul’ as one believed in grammar and the grammatical subject: one said, ‘I’ is the condition, ‘think’ is the predicate and conditioned—thinking is an activity to which thought must apply a subject as cause.” Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. W. Kaufmann (New York: Random House, 1966), p. 67.
5Concepts of the mind or self, says Hume, are “nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in perpetual flux and movement.” David Hume, Treatise on Human Nature (London: Penguin Books, 1969), p. 300.
6Hegel writes: “Self-consciousness exists in itself and for itself when, and by the fact that, it so exists for another; that is, it exists only in being acknowledged.” G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), p. 111.