What Is
Authenticity?
06/07/2016
Ira Israel
Huffpost
In his Sunday New York Times article
“‘Be Yourself’
Is Terrible Advice,” Professor Adam Grant
of my alma mater, The University of Pennsylvania, states that,
“Authenticity means erasing the gap between what you firmly believe
inside and what you reveal to the outside world.”
In fact, what Professor
Grant provides is the exact definition of “congruence,” not
“authenticity.”
Congruence is
when what one reveals to the outer world matches his or her inner
workings; authenticity, on the other hand, is usually denoted in
contradistinction to our false selves, facades or personas - what
we show the
outer world. For instance, if you feel that your vocation is to be
a great novelist or painter but you did not pursue that calling
because your parents pressured you to go into business, then you
would beinauthentic.
More
importantly, these notions currently bandied about - such as
“authenticity” as well as “mindfulness” and “compassion” - derive
from the wave of Buddhist philosophy sweeping over the United
States for the last fifty years. (Yes, of course, Heidegger spoke
of authenticity, and compassion plays a large role in Christianity
and Judaism, but I would argue that our contemporary understandings
of these terms are heavily influenced by the presence of the Dalai
Lama in our culture today. In particular, regarding compassion, I
would bet that more Americans could identify His Holiness stating,
“My religion is compassion,” than find India on a map.)
Detached from
the larger teachings, Westerners often attempt to apply
psychological tests - such as the one Professor Grant mentions in
his article regarding people salting their steaks - to prove
scientific theories. But applying Western science to measure the
efficacy of Buddhist principles is like trying to measure milk with
a ruler. Devoid of a broader understanding of how the Buddha
believed our minds function and why our minds have a negativity
bias, the Buddha’s prescription to alleviate suffering, which
employs such concepts as authenticity, mindfulness,
and compassion,
represents another paradigm that Westerners are just beginning to
appreciate.
The example of
authenticity that Professor Grant cites in his article - namely
author A.J. Jacobs deciding to speak his thoughts with no filter or
“low monitoring” for a few weeks - has very little to do with
authenticity. From the studies I have read, the average person has
50,000 to 90,000 thoughts everyday, the disproportionate number of
them are redundant and negative. What Professor Grant claims to be
authenticity would be better understood as mindful awareness of
thoughts. If authenticity meant verbalizing the streams of
consciousness that run through our heads - as is done in
psychoanalysis - then every prison cell in America would be
double-booked for the next 500 years. Which is why the Buddha
devised the 8 limb path that incorporates such tenets as “Right
speech,” “Right mindfulness,” and “Right actions.”
Finally, in
Buddhism there is no self to be. Hence the title “‘Be Yourself’ Is
Terrible Advice” is correct, but it is correct for the wrong
reason. And maybe it is equally unadvisable to quote a fictional
fool here, but Polonius’ advice to Laertes - “This above all: to
thine own self be true” - could be updated for our epoch as Joseph
Campell’s “Follow your bliss” (cf. Elaine Scarry on beauty) or more
colloquially as “Follow your guts,” “Follow your intuition,”
“Follow your heart,” “Have personal integrity,” or “Be
congruent...” rather than trying to be something
that does not exist.
Maybe authenticity can only be
defined negationally?