Synthetic personality and “from the outside in” are the most interesting because they create this idea that in modern society we create our personalities not from the inside, but from chemical additives we put in our bodies. It is not a bad thing to put caffeine in your body because it gives us a boost of energy, which some people desperately need to get through their day. On the other hand, putting caffeine into our bodies daily has made the majority of the people dependent on caffeine to feel like themselves. This dependency created what the author called a synthetic personality, which there is no saying that it is good or bad to have a synthetic personality if the majority of people have it, but there is a question of how real people are. Saying that we go through life with a personality we created with coffee, or however you take your morning caffeine pushes forward this idea that everyone has a mask on all day everyday that they only slightly recognize in sayings like “Don’t talk to me until I’ve had my coffee.” Now there is no saying that someone’s adulterated self is not their real personality, but the argument is that chemical additives create another personality because the chemistry in your body can not be like that without additives. This dilemma is not something we are usually faced with, as from very young a majority of people are told that it is what’s on the inside that counts. Telling someone that their personality is synthetic and made from the outside breaks down years of learning and self-confidence, and many people would run away from this idea to stay in their safety net of positive thinking. No one wants to believe that they are not completely authentic, but the word personality begins with the word persona, which means the aspect of someone’s character that is presented to or perceived by others. Throughout a person’s day they go through different personas as they interact with different people, so it is not a far reach to say that we create our personality from the outside in with caffeine when we already change our personalities ever so slightly based on our environment.
These two small phrases show a large change to people and society that coffee and all the other ways people take their caffeine have brought to the world. The world is different now because people can be productive longer, but also it’s different because a majority of people can’t function and don’t feel like themselves without caffeine to start their day. People no longer know how to be themselves without caffeine because they have never met themselves without their synthetic personality. Not feeling like yourself without it, and having withdrawals when you go a long period of time without it, sounds a lot like taking drugs, but the majority of people do not see caffeine like a drug that everyone is taking. It is common knowledge that recreational drugs, like marijuana, alter your personality, so if caffeine is a drug why do people not usually acknowledge that it alters your personality past giving you energy. A synthetic personality should not be a strange idea when other drugs are already attributed to creating synthetic personalities. The only large difference between caffeine and other drugs is that everyone is taking in caffeine in some form so the personality altering is on a larger scale than opioids, for example. The scale is what makes the idea that we have started building our personalities from the outside in so strange and interesting because it changes from a small group of people to almost all of the world’s population as there are so many drinks and foods with caffeine in them like coffee, tea, chocolate and soda.
