Authenticity Paradox

MissAdventurous

As Oscar Wilde said: “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”

This article was rather interesting read and I think the clarification of being your true, authentic self, and how the paradox of the more we seek authenticity in ourselves, how it is, in fact, we act inauthentic.

Keen on being an original? Of course! We should be OURSELVES. Not reflect our persona from someone or something else.

Figure since there's been so much debate on the forums you all would appreciate putting in your two cents on this small, light-hearted read. ?⭐?

Article: https://theartofcharm.com/art-of-dating/solving-authenticity-paradox-really/

HappinessHenry

@MissAdventurous Nice! Though I have to say that I disagree with the quote somewhat as I have had some success throughout my life being Oscar Wilde.

UKGuy

No-one can really be themselves because everyone has to fit into society's expectations. Society is a constraining device that pressures us all to behave in expected ways. There are a few brave souls who don't conform, but generally they are subject to scorn, ridicule or ostracism.

MissAdventurous

I think the polar opposite. Only from the brave side do I speak, but that is what society wants, not what or who I am. And that is a very okay thing in my book. If someone else has a problem with me, being me, that's their own mental jail cell, not mine. I rather live by example.

Though it is a tiresome path, it is worth every obstacle of letting oneself just BE.

UKGuy

You are what you are conditioned to be and the conditioning starts from birth. That's not to deny everyone has the potential for free will, but that is always tempered by society's expectations. The most obvious example is gender-specific behavior. That is taught by parents from birth and defined and reinforced by society.

MissAdventurous

That is only one point of view...and one I do not agree we have to follow into our adult life.

It is okay to unlearn things sometimes.

You will have your outlooks, and my, my own. But there really is no sense in trying to explain the grey areas in life to someone who see's black and white only. There is room for improvement and growth at any point, regardless of who or where you come from or your conditioning. The choice is, and always will be, on the individual.

But hey, that's what a good chat is for. Appreciate your insight. Ciao.

BoomerSpooner

I do not think what ukguy is saying is black and white. He is actually the one throwing in the grey by tempering the statement that absolutely be themselves. Just look at this forum, you may want to use profanity or tell an off-color joke because that is part of who you are but you cannot do it here because it violates site rules. All he is saying is society does influences how you act and you may not even recognize it sometimes.

Hey, if I could be myself I wouldn’t work and just hang out at a beach all day and throw stones at the windows at Mar-a-Lago, but I kind of like eating, retiring at some point, and having a decent place to live, and there it is—everyone is in some way composed of polar opposites that tear at us and some of these internal conflicts are directly or indirectly influenced by society.

hogboblin

Is this thread becoming about free will?

Golly. Exciting stuff.

BoomerSpooner

@hogboblin No that would be more about choices and religion and clockwinders. This is more about purely being yourself and if that being 100% yourself is even possible. I am skeptical of anything proposed in the terms of absolutes. There are so many grays and that is what ukguy is saying as well I believe. Experience, society, family—all these things condition who we are to some extent.

You are everything that you experience.

There is no way to not be yourself.

Now, the question of if you approve of yourself or not gets more interesting...

hogboblin

@FunCartel

Oh. @UKGuy did mention free will previously, “That's not to deny everyone has the potential for free will...”

I’d say that free will is extremely unlikely, to the point where one could comfortably claim that it doesn’t exist.

But! It seems like we’re focusing more on society, and how it affects one’s development. How it shapes who a person is.

I think one has tools thrust upon them (genetics, familial influence), and that they use those tools as a sort of filter for society. But, of course, those very same tools were produced by society—a culture, collection of beliefs, etc.

If anyone is ever free from the influence of society, it’s in the nothingness before birth, and the oblivion of death. As social creatures, we can’t escape this.

Even if one were to become a hermit in the wilderness, they could not reject the concepts that they were forced to absorb, that shape the very way they think.

So, to be authentic (I think), one should realize that inside their skull is the mental equivalent of Frankenstein’s monster.

But that doesn’t really allow for saccharine, self-congratulatory articles.

BoomerSpooner

@hogboblin I agree with that.

Babichev

I think of two different things: one is the concept of radical honesty. The other is something I heard Gary Snyder, the poet, say at a reading, that the ultimate discipline was to always do exactly what you want to do, and that assumes you really know what you want to do.

What is being authentic? Does it mean doing what you want in the moment, damn everyone and everything else and damn the consequences? Does it mean always saying what you think at every moment to every person? I don't think so.

I think worrying about being authentic is kind of silly. Or trying to be authentic. I think more useful is honest self-examination. What do I really want to do? Why do I want to do it? How much of myself do I want to reveal to this person in this situation? Why? If a situation makes me feel uncomfortable or unhappy, why is that?

Sometimes we make a choice to give up something we want to do in this moment because what we want in the long run is more important to us.

One of the things I've noticed over the years is that the more I reveal myself to the people around me, the more they reveal about themselves to me. I end up in an environment that's accepting of who I am and over time I discover things about myself I never would have imagined.

I have a friend who was born in another country but then grew up in the States. He's wrestled with his identity and trying to fit in. Here, people think of him as a foreigner, even though he's spend most of his life here and doesn't remember living in the place where he was born. However, in his native land, they think of him as an American because he has spent most of his life here and his language skills in his native tongue are imperfect. In each place, he tries to fit in because he wants to be accepted. He's just now, in his early 30s, realizing that he's spent his life trying to fill the expectations of the people around him.

As for free will: I think research has shown we don't have nearly as much of it as we think, yet I think we have to act as if we did have free will. How else do we take responsibility for our actions?

@Babichev: As someone who doesn't believe free will is terribly likely to exist, I handle the responsibility question so: "responsibility" and "fault" are two different things. If I have a muscle spasm, and knock a jar off a counter, it's not my fault... but it is my responsibility.

Everything in life is like that. I choose what I choose, do what I do, say what I say, because I am who I am—and I am who I am because of a whole chain of cause and effect going right back to the beginning of the universe.

Not my fault. Nothing I do or say or think or choose was really chosen, freely, by me. But it's all my responsibility, whether I was forced into it obviously (by current circumstances, say) or more subtly (for instance, via social pressure). If someone grabs my arm and jerks it into knocking the jar off the counter, and I can't hold them responsible for some reason, I'll take the responsibility.

You can't hold a chain of past events responsible for things. You can blame things on it, sure, but the only way for past events to come to life and clean up messes is through you.

Babichev

Nicely put.

MissAdventurous

@Babichev reading your point of view, I enjoyed it very much.

geoff1000

We are very much limited, by how others interpret what we do.

If I feel sexually attracted to a waitress / shop assistant / Pro-cuddler / random woman in the street, it would be very unwise to tell them. I might think it is merely a compliment, but they will think I have an intention to act on that feeling, which will make them very uncomfortable.

Many fathers would say they love their children, but the word "pedophile" literally meaning "a person who loves children" is probably not a word they would want to use to describe themselves. A "bibliophile" however, means someone who very much enjoys reading ; rather than someone who uses a book mechanically for sexual gratification.

A big part of life is "spin", emphasising an aspect of something ; like the vicar at a tea party who says of his rotten egg that "parts of it are very good".

Think of a doctor, with a patient who will die without an operation which has risk. Saving their life involves doing the operation very accurately, but first persuading them that the risk is low enough that it is worth trying.

A boss once criticised me for honesty. I would rarely say that I was "sure" of something, because I set my personal bar very high ; but the "company standard" was to say "sure" at 99 or even 90%.

Authenticy really only works, if everyone applies the same interpretations, but that is difficult. The English billion has 12 zeros, but English firms which wanted to show high turnover, started quoting in American billions with only 9 zeros. Manufacturers of electric vehicles quote the range in kilometres instead of miles, to give a bigger number ; and everyone else has to follow suit, to not seem worse.

Authenticy can be very dangerous. Many parents would kill others or themselves to save their children, but it probably wouldn't be a good idea to tell them.

Authenticity is individual, personal and subjective.

It's often a value judgement of another's demeanor based on perception. In short, others see you as being authentic or not. Whether or not you view yourself as such or are even trying to be such.

And it's also subject to individual standards of what it means to be authentic or not.

I can try to be myself and for myself only. Whatever that means is also often dictated by how and what I project to others.

Does that make me authentic?

Maybe. Maybe not. It all depends.

I can only be as authentic as I can, as I know myself and as I feel comfortable. And the same is true for others.

There is often the free will of choice. A choice that comes with consequence of some kind. Hence an expectation or presumption of responsibility.

There is also the free will driven by circumstance. As in the 30 year old young man who was taken to the US as a child. His free will is what he chooses to do with being born elsewhere and growing up here. How he chooses to deal with the duality and challenge of living through and in that experience.

MrPaul

I think that being authentic is different from trying to be authentic. Trying implies innate inauthenticity. Just be.

geoff1000

I would tell a different joke to : my grandmother, my brother, or my neighbour's 7 year-old daughter.

I'm not convinced that it is "inauthentic", to behave differently in different company.