Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World

by Naomi Klein

Oscar Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, which tells the story of a vain and lustful man who, after having his portrait painted, makes a demonic deal to stay young and beautiful forever. As Gray holds on to his youth, the face in the painting grows older and uglier, a kind of virtual doppelganger. When Gray tries to destroy his gruesome double, he is the one who ends up shriveled and lifeless on the ground.

the unmissable warning carried by The Picture of Dorian Gray: if you seek eternal youth, and deny your aging double its reality, you’ll both end up dead.

The idea that each one of us has a look-alike walking around somewhere means that no one is quite as special or unique as we might have imagined ourselves to be.

That was why so many of us starved ourselves, gagged ourselves, wasted valuable brain cells hating our bodies or dreaming of plastic surgery instead of doing the work we were there to do. It was exhausting us, distracting us, robbing us of our rightful power and place in the world.