Authenticity is a sham

[none]

https://aeon.co/essays/a-history-of-authenticity-from-jesus-to-self-help-and-beyond

Authenticity is a sham
From monks to existentialists and hipsters, the search for a true self has been a centuries-long project. Should we give it up?
...
‘Be yourself. Everyone else is already taken.’ This popular quip, often misattributed to Oscar Wilde, appears without any apparent irony in self-help books and blog posts celebrating authenticity. Understandably, they take the dictum to ‘be oneself’ as a worthy, nearly unassailable goal. Our culture is saturated with authenticity: we’re forever ‘finding ourselves’, ‘self-actualising’, ‘doing you’, ‘being real’, ‘going off the beaten path’, ‘breaking free of the crowd’. We spend our youth trying to figure out who we are; our later years trying to stay true to ourselves; and the time in-between in crisis about whether we are who we thought we were.

But ‘Wilde’s’ quote, inauthentic though it might be, suggests something foolish at the heart of authenticity. All this introspection can seem gratuitous. Why expend so much effort trying to be something we can’t help but be? ‘In the end,’ as the author David Foster Wallace put it, ‘you end up becoming yourself.’
...
27 April 2021

interesting article
there is both transcript and audio of the article.
anybody into this type of thing, self searching and all that?
seems like programming run amuck, maybe I'm wrong..

 

[rousseau]

I found the article challenging to read as the author seemed to jump from point to point, but avoid any real central idea.

But personally I'm not as cynical about the phrase 'be yourself'. It's a cliché yes, but there's a reason for that: being comfortable with our true wants and desires is an important part of a content life. Maybe the idea of authenticity gets taken too far sometimes, but what I observe from those younger than me is that they make an effort to be open and honest with each other. It's a culture of communication and acceptance that everyone has their unique quirks, and that that's ok.

To me this is a positive thing.

 

[untermensche]

It used to be a sham.

Now it is a scam.

 

[DBT]

Wherever You Go, There You Are.

 

[fromderinside]

True, true, true ... (no disrespect rousseau), but any opportunity to show untermensche how the petard works it an opportunity that must be taken.

 

[Bomb#20]

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTwV3vG73cU&ab_channel=jpeoplemover[/youtube]

 

[untermensche]

True, true, true ... (no disrespect rousseau), but any opportunity to show untermensche how the petard works it an opportunity that must be taken.

?

It is impossible to not be authentic.

Whatever you do it is you doing it.

Even if you try to imitate another.

It is you doing the imitation.

A person is what they are. Don't be deluded into thinking they are something else, like a mindless robot.

 

[fromderinside]

so much for multiple personalities then.

 

[untermensche]

Doesn't follow.

Multiplicity is the authenticity.

 

[fromderinside]

association by -icity?

 

[Rhea]

I feel like there’s some truth to this (I haven’t read the article, since it sounds unneeded for the discussion, just talking on the concept).

Take for example, those who try to conform to fundamentalist religion and finally “find themselves,” as it were by realizing they just can’t embrace it. That they can’t authentically foow it and they have to leave in order to be themselves.

 

[untermensche]

But before that they were their authentic self too.

A deluded self.

Humans are not born rational.

It must be learned.

The irrational self is the authentic self.

Until it isn't.

It is impossible to not be authentic. The idea is meaningless.

Even if you are lying and putting on a total act that is your authentic self choosing it and doing it. It is your act.

 

[fromderinside]

True, true, true ... (no disrespect rousseau), but any opportunity to show untermensche how the petard works it an opportunity that must be taken.

?

It is impossible to not be authentic.

Whatever you do it is you doing it.

Even if you try to imitate another.

It is you doing the imitation.

A person is what they are. Don't be deluded into thinking they are something else, like a mindless robot.

Wind him up and off he goes in a direction very predictable. Nope. Not authentic.

Appearance is the sham.

 

[untermensche]

Are you saying your time here is a sham?

True.

But that is your authentic self.

 

[fromderinside]

Nope.

 

[untermensche]

Your sense of authenticity disagrees.