All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts…
That’s Shakespeare, As You Like It, circa 1600.
Before we proceed, a disclaimer. My Operating System is Purple, which means I don’t particularly value consistency. And my primary Inner Aspect is the Trickster, for whom the concept of authenticity is irrelevant if not anathema. (Also if I do have an authentic self, she’s an angry bitch; but since I don’t prize authenticity, I make an effort to restrain her self-expression.)
That doesn’t render my perspective on authenticity suspect or problematic. It just means I’m someone who would question it. But I’m not the only one.
In a 2015 article in Philosophy Now, Dr. Ben G. Yacobi, physics professor at Harvard University and Imperial College, London, noted:
The concept of ‘authenticity’ is a human construct, and as such it has no reality independent of minds.
He was, of course, talking about personal authenticity—or authenticity of the self—not the authenticity of objects.
Antiques Roadshow attempts to authenticate objects. The closest we can come to authenticating people is via fingerprints, DNA, or dental records. Trying to apply this concept to one’s self, however, is a dicey proposition for several reasons.
One
Is there a commonly accepted understanding of what is meant by authenticity in the context of one’s self? No, there is not. That’s because what people consider to be authentic depends on the set of beliefs they hold about the nature of the world, human nature, and the intersection of the two.
Two
How can you determine your own authenticity—let alone someone else’s—if you don’t really know yourself? Cognitive scientist Scott Barry Kaufman, in a 2019 article for Scientific American, said:
Often people do not know what they are really like or why they actually do what they do.
This is obviously true, since our conscious awareness of who we are—which we take to be a full awareness—does not include the contents of the unconscious, which are not only vast but also inaccessible. Our motivation for what we do derives largely from the unconscious, but since we have no direct knowledge of it, we are compelled to explain ourselves via whatever we happen to know.
Three
Which aspects of yourself do you consider to be authentic and which do you consider to be inauthentic? For most people, taking this question seriously requires a belief in a “true” or “real” self and assigning specific aspects to that self. The problem is that there is no “true” or “real” self. And as Kaufman goes on to say:
While people spend so much time searching for their real self, the stark reality is that all of the aspects of your mind are part of you.
Or, as I would say, try to be some other way than the way you are being. You can’t.
Furthermore
Striving for authenticity can be a powerful barrier against transformational change. Instead of aiming forward, aspirationally, toward who we want to become, we aim backward at who we think we were or ought to be. We would be much better served by cultivating plasticity instead of authenticity.
