Z
azenbozo asks:
Where does authenticity end and roleplaying begin? When are we our true selves, and when are we behaving the way a spy might? [...]
It seems clear that we are what we do, even if, as we do it, we tell ourselves it is somehow separate from us. If we spend our lives doing something, it doesn’t really matter if we told ourselves it was a bit of a joke all along, we’ve still done it. This is intimately connected to the namesake of this blog. A Zazen Bozo is someone who has spent their life as a spy, and decided they’re actually a painter, only to realize that painting is hard, and they’d really like a drink.
The question of identity and authenticity is a complex one, and extensively considered, turned over, pondered, and explicated with varying degrees of success in this modern world. Particularly as modern Westerners, and even more particularly as Americans, questions of this sort are very close to our understanding of what it means to be human, and intimately tied up with our sense of how well our lives are being lived.
As will turn out to be a common refrain on this blog, I think this question is both interesting and somewhat foundational, while simultaneously having its importance blown out of proportion, and its contours distorted in common discussion. Any designer can tell you that when a client says something is wrong, they're almost always right, but when they tell you how to fix it, they're almost always wrong. I think the same thing applies to philosophy and the common man. For the purposes of this post, I want to concentrate on why we think authenticity is important, and return over time to further fleshing out what it means to be authentic.
Despite contemporary discomfort with idea of judgement, a man got to have a code, and he wants to be judged by it. We require some way to tell whether we're holding up our end of the bargain, whether we are leading a good life, which requires a standard to judge it by. Traditionally, this judgement was performed by comparison to the ideal citizen, the exact contours of which were roughly defined by local cultural milieu—a good human acts like Odysseus, or Confucious, or the Buddha, or the Christ. Modern pluralism, however, presents tremendous difficulty in establishing such a standard, since mass agreement of this type becomes virtually impossible. Yet the need for understanding how our lives are progressing, and a standard by which to do it, remains.
Concern with authenticity is one way to resolve this problem, and an increasingly popular one. The line of this resolution is something along the lines of: "no one can agree on what the ideal person looks like, and thus I cannot measure myself against it. However, each individual still exists—therefore, I will measure myself against personal fidelity to my true self, a judgement that I am uniquely positioned to make." This is a strategy of turning inward when the external world becomes too confusing, and seeking internal coherence as the goal of life.
I want to stress that despite the issues that arise with this strategy (the subject of a later post), it is nonetheless a rational response to a difficult problem. Philosophies and intellectual movements that spread do so because they offer solutions to real problems. They are not always the best solutions, but you can be certain that the problems need actual attention. Humans, like all things, love being, and we wish to remain with it. Our powers of understanding are intimately tied up with the project of continuing to exist, and to exist more fully. Knowing whether we are doing well or badly in this project is of grave import to us, and the source of either great contentment or great suffering (remember that suffering is a reaction to loss of being).
The questions we have to ask ourselves are: what is authenticity? does it internally cohere? does it solve the problems it seeks to? and, what are the real alternatives to it in the world we actually inhabit?
This is a large subject. Buckle up.