Bruce Lee On Selfie Culture
My best guess for how Bruce Lee would feel about today’s selfie culture
Like most, I knew about his famous “be water” quote.
As a child I imitated his explosive one-inch punch as best I could.
And in 2002 I even bought and played, and then returned for a full refund the Xbox game titled after him.
So I thought I knew a thing or two about the significance of Bruce Lee’s iconic status. He changed the game for Asian actors and helped grow martial arts into what it is today. He was a badass, and I understood that.
But then I read Striking Thoughts and learned about the undercurrent of wisdom that carried Bruce Lee into timeless memory. It was a glimpse into the ever-evolving and strengthening operating system of his that left me more inquisitive, open minded, and excited for life.
I finished the book and suddenly had a finer appreciation for this warrior-philosopher. Above all, Lee urged others to think for themselves. To question tradition, religion, dogma, and any resemblance of crowd think.
And so I can’t help but borrow his practical Taoist leanings to see what they might suggest about one of today’s emerging crowd behaviors —incessant selfie taking.
Among the many threads of wisdom that Bruce Lee marinaded in was his idea of the “Mirror Person.”
“A mirror person is one who always wants to know how he looks to others. Instead of being critical, he projects the criticism and feels criticized and feels onstage.”
Weird coming from an actor. Or so you would think. But he grew to embrace acting as an extension of himself. It was an opportunity to channel his unobstructed self expression into something larger than mere entertainment.
Lee had deeply rooted thoughts on what it took to achieve freedom and self actualization — both of which he probably felt were moving targets for the mirror person stuck on a path of self consciousness. And yet it seems to be the direction much of my generation is taking.
“Yes, there is a difference between self-actualization and self image actualization. Most people only live for their image, that is why where some have a self, a starting point, most people have a void, because they are so busy projecting themselves as this or that, dedicating their lives to actualize a concept of what they should be like rather than to actualize their ever-growing potentiality as a human being. Wasting, dissipating all their energy in a projection and conjuring up a facade, rather than centering their energy on expanding and broadening their potential or expressing and relaying this unified energy for efficient communication.”
Despite the millennial plight of “be yourself,” more people are holding their every move up to the mirror of social media. They are all but begging for the type of stage that Bruce Lee refused to perform on.
But these are different times. Culture has moved on since Bruce Lee’s death 44 years ago. It’s been ushered forward by the very technology that you and I literally could not live without. This technology accelerates both the good and the bad. It spreads awareness of things like inequality, but also gives people a way to objectify themselves ad nauseam. It makes the impossible of yesterday, possible today. Even if some of those things were better left impossible.
Technology is that magic wand that some of us are clumsily gripping and waving around, trusting that it will cast a favorable spell on our lives.
And so in these weird times, when not being a mirror person becomes increasingly harder to do, I’m left to only imagine what Bruce Lee would say about things like selfie sticks.
Does “be water” mean that he would roll with the times and rebrand himself into an Instagram star? Would he be winning the mannequin challenge and applying snapchat filters to his round-house kicks?
I can’t know for sure, but if there is a silver lining to the death of a such a brightly shining life force like Lee, it’s that it gives us the privilege of asking ourselves “what would he say if alive today?”
We can’t know how he would have applied his philosophies, or how his philosophies would have evolved, or if he would even care about selfie culture. But how lucky we are that he left behind such wonderfully practical Taoism for us to take an honest guess with. As for me, this is my best guess on what he would have to say:
- You are training for one, or for the other. For self consciousness or for self confidence. Constantly seeking applause in the form of likes for your image is the practice of self consciousness. Give it up to practice self confidence.
- Technology can be good when it is used. But it is dangerous when it starts using you. Know when one starts and the other begins.
- Once addicted to something outside of yourself, if it is non-essential, you have become a slave to it and to whomever keeps it from you. This is not Freedom.
- You are where your mind is at — whether with the audience or as the man in the arena. But not both.
What about you? If I’m missing an insight that Bruce Lee might have dropped on us today, comment below. It might just turn up the quality of someone’s life.
Matt Cartagena is creator of Overcoming Caffeine Withdrawal and lead coach at Caffeinewithdrawal.co.
