There are some valuable lessons in Andrew Potter’s Authenticity Hoax — lessons most people probably don’t want and won’t accept. Here’s some of the synopsis from the AuthHoax blog (I don’t see the need to rewrite it):
For many, the search for the authentic is a powerful source of meaning in a secular age, fostering a unique personal identity and value system in a world that seems indiffernent to their deepest spiritual desires. This demand for authenticity — the honest or the real — is one of the most powerful movements in contemporary life, influencing our moral outlook, political views, and consumer behavior. Yet according to Andrew Potter, when examined closely, “authentic” lifestyles or activities—from the cult of the organic to ecotourism, Oprah to Obama, yoga to artisan cheese—are actually a form of exclusionary status-seeking.
Plumbing threads of pop culture, history, and philosophy, The Authenticity Hoax reveals how our misguided pursuit of the authentic exacerbates the artificiality of contemporary life that we decry. At best, it results in an endless cycle of status-seeking; at worst, it leads to a reactionary and stagnant political agenda that rejects the best of what the modern world has to offer.
Yeah, it’s exactly the kind of discussion I enjoy. This came out as I was putting my book together (but waited to read it — or I’d never finish, as there would be another book after this, another after that, and so on). It very closely overlaps with a lot of the research I did.
Specifically, one of my late finds was an article by Dan Ariely and Michael Norton on “Conceptual Consumption.” It’s an interesting idea, using an economic metaphor as a lens for various identity and experiential needs — for example, when we’re consuming a meal, we’re not just physically consuming the food but also “consuming” ideas that frame that experience, such as how a choice might reflect one’s identity (e.g. people will order food they will enjoy less for the sake of not ordering the same thing they did last time, or the same as someone else at the table).
Most fascinating to me is the fact that we can never really get outside of conceptual consumption (or whatever you want to call it). Criticism and theory are kinds of conceptual consumption too. The aspects of our nature and heritage that lead us to obsess over authenticity might be the very same factors influencing skeptics and antagonists to scoff. People who ridicule organic food have their own tastes, and I would assume those are just as deeply influenced (albeit quite differently) by the ideas connected to those preferences. There’s always a kind of narrative involved, whether it’s a narrative about one’s impact on the environment, or a narrative about being sensibly frugal, a narrative tied to a particular experience (e.g. ballpark hotdogs and movie popcorn can’t really be that good), or a narrative integrated into one’s family and ethnic background.
Whether it’s the 100 Mile Diet, the Paleolithic Diet, Veganism, Fruitarianism, Baconism, the Mediterranean Diet, the Secret French Diet, the Atkins Diet, or the South Beach Diet (or whatever it’s going to be next month); whether you’re into sushi, Big Macs, arugula, Timbits, power colon cleansing, carbo loading, raw food, slow food, soul food, barbeque, Stouffer’s Lean Cuisine, or home cookin’… you’re probably justifying your choices with a ceremonial story you tell yourself as part of the experience, and that story is essentially dictating your choices and tastes to you.
Ultimately, the fact that we’re “just” telling ourselves stories isn’t the problem. It’s actually a necessary and often very positive part of the process. The problems only develop when we give these stories titles with capital letters and control over our lives. Then it becomes story-vs-story, we start mistaking theories as iron-clad dictates — one month eggs are the enemy, the next month they’re miracle food – and we get into these arms races by which, as Potter pointed out, someone devises a 50 Mile Diet to compete with the 100 Mile Diet, and then someone tries to better that, and so on.
These ideas are all useful in pointing us towards better ways of living — and better ways of living together — but in that regard they are only tools for helping us in the ongoing process of learning and building something better. This is what I ultimately came up with while putting my book together. Like our physical tools, it takes time and practice to learn how to use these ideas effectively. The fact that we tend to be clumsy in how we handle them is not simply an indication they’re absolutely “wrong,” it means we need to keep working on our ability to manage them.
The notion of authenticity is a heuristic for making quick judgements, or a broad brush for painting some experiences that tend to generate a more vivid sense of fulfillment than others. It helps us work out the general shape of things, but we still need to think critically, work out the details, and keep our minds open to better opportunities.
Much of what we label “authentic” really is worthwhile. But it isn’t a quality that permanently adheres within things. Authenticity isn’t a promised land. There are no easily understood schemes for living authentically (no, not urban agriculture either).
If anything, authenticity means freeing ourselves from these fads and simple answers, thinking critically and making the best of what we have — and the best we can make together.
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