(this is an unedited rant, written as raw material to be subsequently edited into the book. The book will not be this rambly)
Authenticity is a complicated, subjective, layered concept. What does it mean for something to be authentic or inauthentic? Having thought about it long and hard, and having written and read several essays on the subject, I’ve arrived at a few points to navigate by.
1 – authenticity can be a political weapon
2 – who gets to decide what’s authentic and what’s not?
3 – maybe authenticity is a weason word we use for “quality”
4 – in a sense, either everything is authentic, or nothing is
5 – what “seems” authentic is often an act; and in a sense everything is an act
And yet, despite all of that, I think people often have a very real feeling that some things are somehow more or less authentic than others. I think maybe it might be more useful to transmute “authentic” to “sincere” – we’re all putting on an act 24/7, but how deeply, how honestly do you believe in that act? And are those beliefs grounded in anything, or is it just a sort of fanatical fervor?
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@vgr has an interesting point about how “a sufficiently advanced market economy is indistinguishable from the culture it simulates” – which is quite a trippy, mind-expanding concept – I take it to mean that the only difference between sincere and insincere is competence.
But we’re talking about something very personal here, very human. What’s the difference between something you sincerely want, and something that’s… not so sincere? It takes energy, effort and skill to get so good at working on your insincere, manufactured wants to the point that it comes across as sincere, particularly to yourself.
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Paul Graham has a quote about this in one of his essays:
“A friend of mine who is a quite successful doctor complains constantly about her job. When people applying to medical school ask her for advice, she wants to shake them and yell “Don’t do it!” (But she never does.) How did she get into this fix? In high school she already wanted to be a doctor. And she is so ambitious and determined that she overcame every obstacle along the way—including, unfortunately, not liking it.
Now she has a life chosen for her by a high-school kid.”
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Sarah Perry has a essay that starts with, “Authenticity is real. It is a repair process within the order of symbols, within the hyperreal, in which efforts to destroy the order of symbols are channeled into acts that strengthen and expand it.
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“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.” – The Velveteen Rabbit
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“I’m pretty sure I’m a sociopath. […] I’m intellectually convinced of the need for empathy. I choose to help other people. […] Sometimes I feel like Pinocchio. Was he a real boy? Yes, because that’s what he always strived to be.” – Humans of NY
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Okay, so having scanned through all of that reading, where are we at, re: authentic and manufactured wants?
The first thought that comes to my mind is that something being manufactured doesn’t necessarily make it inauthentic.
I find myself thinking of Irish Pubs. The modern concept of an irish pub is an invented one. It was invented by marketers. And there’s this whole game people play about whether you’re in a real irish pub or a fake one. The crazy and interesting thing is, we’ve come to the point where people are so invested in the invented idea of the Irish Pub, that “real, authentic” irish pubs now come across as fake! And “real, authentic” irish pubs have modified themselves to look and feel more like what people have come to expect of Irish Pubs TM. Because… the real pubs are too busy being real to care about being real. Now that’s some real shit.
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So! That was a big, roundabout journey thinking and talking about authenticity before we got around to even really properly thinking about wants.
I find myself thinking about Yoga now. The modern concept of yoga is such a precise, specific thing, a marvel of marketing. And yet. It’s entirely possible for you to look at an ad for a yoga class, decide that you’d like the idea of being that happy, smiley white lady in the tight pants and the Indian buzzwords, and then go down to the studio, meet real humans, make real friends, and make that ‘manufactured, marketed’ yoga a wholesome and nurturing part of your life. It’s a net positive thing for you! And you may or may not be interested in learning more about the history of yoga. Perhaps you may find that the origins of yoga actually don’t resonate with you, and you’re more into yoga as a sort of exercise class. That is also completely fine.
OK so… this is supposed to be a part of a book about figuring out what you want. What’s a person trying to do that, supposed to make of all of this?
Here’s my prescription. First, make a list of everything that you think you want. During this stage, don’t worry about whether or not your wants are “authentic” or not, “manufactured” or not. Just list them! List them all. Open up an excel spreadsheet or a word document, or bust out a pen and a notebook or a piece of paper, and just start writing. Go as quickly as you can and don’t think about it. As Ray Bradbury said, “in quickness is truth. The faster you blurt, the more swiftly you write, the more honest you are. In hesitation is thought.”
Write this privately, with no intention to publish it or share it with anybody else. This is between you and yourself. List out the weird, silly, shameful wants, the fetishes, the petty revenge goals. Want a million followers on Instagram, write that down. Don’t think. Just write. Blurt it all out. If you’re semi-uncertain about whether you really want something, fuck you, write it down anyway. The fact that you were thinking it at all means something.
Once you’ve made a comprehensive list (I recommend pushing yourself until you’ve listed out about 100 wants, but maybe you’ll be happy with 20 or 40. I say go for 100), THEN you can start examining them and thinking about where each thing came from, what each thing means.
Here I recommend doing what Tim Urban (Wait But Why) suggests – subject your wants to interrogation. It is extremely important that this is a two-part process. List the wants before you interrogate them. Do NOT pre-emptively fail to list a want because you suspect that it will not pass interrogation. This is a form of self-censorship, this is the Trump-ego in your head preemptively silencing a journalist before he gets to ask a question. Let the journalist ask the damn question. And then answer him.
The primary form of interrogation is simply to ask, Why? Why do you want a million followers? Why do you want to have threesome? And, VERY importantly, the point is to ask “why” from a place of kind, loving curiosity. (Yeah, I know this is dissonant with the word “interrogation” but I’m rolling with it.) You don’t want to scare your want off. You don’t want your want to give you a bullshit reason because you sound scary and it wants you off your back. No. This is a dialogue. You want to truly understand.
You want a million followers because you think it’ll make you feel more important? Why do you think that? Why is feeling important… important to you?
Pause! Remember – this is not about proving that your wants are legitimate or illegitimate. This is not about forcing your wants to prove that they deserve to be in your head. Don’t be an asshole to yourself. This is about understanding. This is about getting more details. There is no answer scheme at the back of the book for you to check these against. The point is to develop a high-resolution picture. Suspend judgement – that comes later. You can do all the judging you want later on. But in this part of the process, it’s all about understanding yourself. And this is a persuasion game, this is about building rapport. There’s no quick and easy hack to getting yourself to open up to yourself. You just need to really, truly be very open, very welcoming, curious, with all agendas suspended.
Unpause. So, suppose you want followers because you want to feel important. There’s two parts to this. One is the assumption that feeling important is what you want, and two is the assumption that getting followers will scratch that itch. Before you dig into the “this will get me what I want” assumption, you should dig into the “this is what I want” assumption. WHY do you want to feel important? When did you first start feeling this? What is your personal history, your personal relationship with this idea? Did your parents make you feel important or unimportant? What about your childhood friends? What does importance mean to you? You may find (or you may not!) that your desire for importance is really about proving something to yourself – what is that something? Do you want to prove that you’re capable of doing something big and significant? Is that because you currently believe that you’re not capable, or not worthy somehow?
Here’s a surprisingly simple and effective heuristic-hack thingy you can try: If you’re listing out your wants in a spreadsheet (my personal preference, because then you can have one column for wants, and then subequent columns with questions for each want), you could add the question “how much do I really, truly want this?” and give it a number score. These numbers can be completely arbitrary, it doesn’t matter – just getting yourself to score these things is a very illuminating process. For example, one of my wants is “complete 1000wordvomits by the end of 2018”. Another is “publish Introspect by end 2018”, and another is “do 10 pullups”. (No deadline on the last one because I’m not sure how long it’s going to take.) I get to put numbers on these, with 10 being “omg I want it so bad please please please”, and 1 being “ew, actually I want to NOT want this, get away from me”. I put 8 for all of these to start, just vaguely because they feel like an 8 class of thing.
A secondary rule I have is, no want should have an identical number to another want. (You don’t have to follow these rules, by the way. I’m just talking about how I do it.) If two things seem similar, ask yourself which you want more. And I realize… I want to publish introspect now more than I want to finish 1000wordvomits now. Because… I know I’ll be able to get it done quicker, and I want the feeling of fullfilment that comes with completing a project, and I expect to have some interesting conversations with people about it. So I’m making “publish introspect” 8.1, complete word vomits 8, and 10 pullups 7.9. That’s just the rule of heirarchies – no two things are allowed to have the same number. I do this with my video game reviews, too – and I have some oddly precise numbers like “9.14”, “9.13” and so on. It’s all arbitrary and that’s okay. The point is to get yourself to decide. And these are reversible decisions, so don’t worry about it! It’s like a sorting algorithm. You’re rearranging things and moving them around, it doesn’t mean it has to be fixed.
What about the “manufactured wants” problem? I think… I don’t think there’s anything intrinsically wrong with having wants that were suggested to you by marketers and advertisers. What’s important is not so much discerning whether-or-not the want is manufactured, but whether it’s true to YOU. And that is something you figure out by interrogating the want yourself; by introspection.