One Thought

Most of us aspire to be authentic.  We praise those we see as authentic and criticize those we see as not.  We hold up authenticity as an ideal to strive toward.

But what is authenticity, exactly?   On a basic level, it’s is a kind of “realness” or “genuineness.”  When we interact with authentic people, we feel we’re interacting with a “real” ones, people free from pretension and without false fronts.  We like authentic people because we feel we can trust them.  Our relationships with them seem more deep.

As a concept, authenticity is far from clear.  Much ink has been spilled attempting to define it, and significant disagreement still exists.  Since disputes over semantics are rarely interesting, I’m not going to argue for a particular definition here.  Instead I want to determine what “authenticity-like” characteristics it actually makes sense to strive for.  My goal is practical: If I desire authenticity, what should I do?  What ideal should I seek?

True Selves

From a practical standpoint, authenticity should be both desirable and attainable.  Any type of authenticity that isn’t both of these isn’t very interesting and certainly isn’t very practical.  As it turns out, some common views of authenticity fall into this category.  Let’s thus first look at what authenticity is not.

One view of authenticity states that it’s about finding your unchanging, “true” self and acting according to its dictates.  Under this view, each of us has a true self that’s determined at birth.  This self is a collection of personality characteristics and dispositions; actions made according to it are considered authentic, and ones not are considered inauthentic.

This view is flawed.  Certainly it’s true that we’re born with certain dispositions — some components of personality are genetic.  Some people are more introverted than others, for example, and that difference is (at least to a degree) determined at birth.  But does that mean we each possess a true, unchanging self?  I don’t think so.  Though we do each start from a particular baseline, most aspects of our personalities are changeable.  Our ability to change isn’t boundless, but it is there.  A naturally introverted person can become more extroverted, and a naturally extroverted person can become more introverted.  Such changes sometimes even happen naturally — an young introverted person may become extroverted as she grows older (or vice versa).  Our “true” selves can change right out from under us.

The concept of a true self is flawed.  How can we act in accordance with one if our selves are in constant flux?  And, given that we can change our selves, why would we even want to pretend we can’t?  Not all aspects of our personalities are changeable, of course — some basic desires are outside our control.  But our personalities are, on the whole, malleable.  It’s in our power to change them, and we should do so when it makes sense to.  A bad-tempered wife-beating husband should do whatever he can to change his disposition (and therefore his behavior).  Not doing so would just be irresponsible.

But what about the parts of our personalities that aren’t changeable?  Isn’t it inauthentic to act in a way that contradicts them?  It can be inauthentic to contradict them, but it isn’t necessarily.  Why?  Because our most basic desires sometimes contradict each other.  A desire to do some subversive activity, for example, may conflict with a desire to “fit in” with the rest of society.  Both desires are genuine — neither is more or less authentic than the other.  In particular, a desire for the support and approval of others is just as real as any other desire.  There’s no magical dividing line between authentic and inauthentic desires.

So authentic desires can conflict.  Here’s the problem: The true self view suggests that it’s impossible to act authentically when desires conflict.  In such cases any action will contradict some desire.  Our “true” selves don’t guide us unambiguously — we need more than they provide to guide authentic action.  The true self view is simply not up to the task of describing authenticity.

Inauthentic Activities

A second view of authenticity contends that some activities are, by their very nature, inauthentic.  The view is that such activities cannot be motivated by authentic desires and motivations.  Something about them just is inauthentic.

I agree with this view to a point — some actions are, as a rule, inauthentic.  Lying, cheating, and manipulating fall into this category.  But this view of authenticity goes further: many seemingly-innocuous activities become inauthentic.  Depending on who you talk to, watching TV is inauthentic, playing popular music is inauthentic, wearing certain kinds of clothing is inauthentic, and so on.

This view is wrong — it might be inauthentic to play popular music (or do whatever else), but it also might not be.  Not liking someone’s actions is not grounds for calling them inauthentic.  Some actions may be more likely to be inauthentic, but that doesn’t make them inauthentic by definition.  Authenticity is not just about performing some approved set of activities.

Honesty

So what, then, is authenticity?  Put simply, authenticity is honesty.  To be authentic, you must be honest with yourself and with others.  A person who is honest with herself and others is authentic, regardless of what she does.  We may not approve of her actions, but we should still praise her for being authentic.

Being honest with yourself is being fully self-aware.  To be internally authentic, you must understand and acknowledge your feelings, desires, and motivations.  Denying their existence is inauthentic (and will probably lead to much internal strife).  You can try to change them, of course, but to do that you must first understand and acknowledge them.  Actions based on an honest understanding of your feelings and desires are authentic even if they sometimes contradict those feelings and desires.  It’s impossible to avoid contradiction.  The best you can do is be honest with yourself.

Being honest with others is trickier.  We’re not always going to say exactly what we’re thinking.  I’m not going to say “This tastes terrible” to someone who just cooked me a meal, even if that’s the first thing that comes to mind.  That would just be rude.

External authenticity isn’t being honest at the expense of all other considerations.  Rather it’s a sincere attempt to represent one’s feelings, desires, and motivations accurately to others.  Practical considerations are relevant, yes — an authentic person doesn’t need to be honest when doing so would just be a bad idea.  But authenticity does require a sincere attempt at honesty.

An authentic person reveals her emotions — she reveals when she’s happy, when she’s sad, when she’s feeling insecure or vulnerable.  An authentic person doesn’t put up a false front.  She doesn’t falsely represent herself for the sake of manipulating others.  She conveys her intentions honestly.

Natural Outgrowths

We’re authentic when we’re honest — both with ourselves and with others.  Honesty is the only path to authenticity.  Our “true” selves are nebulous, and our true desires sometimes conflict.  Actions aren’t inauthentic in and of themselves — only motivations and external representations are.

There are natural outgrowths of authenticity.  When we’re authentic, we tend to live fully-integrated lives that make sense as a unified whole.  We tend to have deep relationships with others.  We tend to understand ourselves.  Authenticity is an ideal worth striving for.