Haphazard
Don't Judge Me!
- Joined
- Apr 14, 2008
- Messages
- 6,704
- MBTI Type
- ENFJ
That is all I am saying. The notions of good vs. bad, right vs. wrong, etc., though important in their own right, are orthogonal to the matter of authenticity.
But the idea that the word "authentic" conotes nothing at all is far fetched to me. It is a clumsy word to be sure. But that is where there is room for discussion.
The point is that 'authenticity' is a charged word. It might be better if we use a lesser-charged word than something like 'authenticity' when referring to something like this. Maybe we should call it 'cupcakes' instead?
Authenticity... there are a lot of ways one could define it. It could be the understanding of the entire form of a person, or it could be being in touch with one's distilled feelings. They're nearly opposites, but authenticity could mean both -- authenticity as in purity of everything that comes along with everything, or authenticity as in staying true to motives. You can't connect the two as being the same, though (as the article seems to try). Also, it could actually mean 'cupcakes,' but that's a more absurd suggestion.
These are points for discussion as well. Would it make things worse, if you knew what you wanted to be doing and couldn't do it? What is your belief in the matter.
I know what I want to be doing but don't allow myself to do it all the time. To see the 'outside,' as it seems to be described here, and not be able to go to it, would be terrible. It would naturally create a drive to go to the ideal that you now know, but you just plain wouldn't be able to do it. It's awfully cruel, isn't it? Like stringing a carrot in front of a donkey to get him to move.
I am also intrigued by the notion of someone who cannot be authentic. Do you know such people? I do not. I would guess all such people to be sociopaths.
Then I am a sociopath.
The article is describing two different things -- accepting everything, the internal 'mess' of a person, and also figuring out true desires and sticking with them. It doesn't sound like the two can coexist, because once one accepts the 'mess,' one cannot distill what one really wants. It's just too goddamned messy! If one accepts the whole 'mess' as the real you, you can't possibly sort through it and remain authentic in that sense by pulling out something useful, because the useful thing pulled out will have some fake things to make it cohesive, and by leaving out the other 'less important' things is fakery through omission.
Also, one can go out on a limb and say that it's not that anybody is ever not authentic, or alternatively they're always authentic, in that always their actions are congruent with whatever their motives are at the present time, whether they be congruent with simple motives or with more complex ones. Is that not a form of authenticity? Even if someone is obviously faking being nice to set you up for failure, they're still doing it because they want to on some level, whether it be superficial or a deep-seeded hatred. It's only when one steps back that one perceives anything as being inauthentic, which may just be a form of memory bias -- as in, if you didn't like the emotional outcome in any way, it must have been a problem with 'being authentic to yourself.'
Also, as another point of clarification. Self-awareness is only one component of authenticity. Though it feeds the others. There are other components as well.
Explain these other components in detail.
I still don't understand your problem here. It seems like it is not a medical issue, that is good. Why you "have to" lie in that situation is not clear to me, though.
I don't think it's a medical issue. I think it's a cognition issue on my part.
It's a situation that happens to me all the time. I'm talking to somebody about something, and there becomes an argument. This argument goes to a conclusion in which neither of the arguers were right or wrong -- rather, both sides were the same side, only with opposite spins on the issue, as in perhaps, one negative and one positive. Both 'sides' were really the same thing, but accentuated different parts of the argument and primed them with an emotional charge. Rarely is this a good thing to point out, I've discovered -- at this point, it's best off to agree to disagree.
With memories, it's more or less the same thing. Someone may recall something episodic and ask me if I remember. Because of what they mention, I'm likely to say 'no,' because what they found important about the event is not the same as what I found important about the event. Usually what they think happened has a charge, and mine has another, and this isn't even with events that I would have had reason to cover up initially. I may remember with further prompting, but because what they're saying has the wrong charge, I have to say that I wasn't paying attention, because I didn't find their point particularly interesting, funny, important, or meaningful. It was just something that I skimmed over. The charge is the important part, not the memory itself.
I don't see this as a problem. It is not a black-and-white situation. You do not need to take all your own interpretation, nor all of that of others. Some churning, discussion and reinterpretation is often very helpful.
I'm just going to say that I'm just plain uncomfortable with the idea that memory must be used in the search for 'authenticity.' Have you ever heard of sharpening and leveling?