How To Be Yourself

i want you to do me a favor close your eyes focus now on how things enter your mind where are you notice the sounds around you as they appear in your consciousness like concentrate on my voice on how it's guiding you to do something now direct your attention to whatever sensations you can feel the feeling of the chair you might be sat on your feet on the floor focus on how your emotions you might be happy sad tired energetic are presented to you now all of these things are like objects to concentrate on they're almost separate from your consciousness as if your conscious focus selects them shines a light over them like a torch okay return to my voice focus on it it's entered your head motivated you prompted you driven you to do certain things now say the first thing that comes into your head was that really you where did that word come from a memory an idea a conversation perhaps but is anything really originally you from within focus again on how you feel don't you feel like your consciousness is separate from your emotions that you're overcome by them involuntarily doesn't it feel like we're all tugged pushed and pulled around are we really free at all okay open your eyes what can we find that's really ours authenticity might be thought of as ownership or self-possession today we're going to take a short historical and philosophical tour of the inner you [Music] today supposedly anyway we're free free to do what makes us happy to be anything we strive to be to choose our own paths we even feel free from parts of ourselves that maybe our emotions are something separate from our real selves that there's a real self beneath them a supra inner rational core that seems to transcend everything outside of it that somehow higher than those fleeting emotions that make us do things that aren't really us don't really feel like us we might think of an onion the outer layer is the outside world then we have emotions beliefs maybe our bodies and then right inside our thoughts our consciousness interacting with all of the other layers and then unconscious desires maybe what's right at the center is there even a center the history of the search for authenticity has sought to understand this onion it's been approached in many ways sometimes as a revolt against the outer layer against standards given to us by society other times there's taking off the mask or the layers or rejecting reading a script that's like the outer layer a script that someone else has written for us whether god from the bible or society and its rules philosopher jacob gollum writes that the concept of authenticity is a protest against the blind mechanical acceptance of externally imposed values the idea of an original self a primordial condition a personal or truthful way of living has been a persistent maybe universal feature of human history christianity is original sin the fool from the garden of eden the idea of utopia or paradise they're all searches for a type of authenticity and today the idea that there's a true self behind the curtain outside of the matrix or to be found on a backpacking trip is a powerful maybe central modern idea but around 200 years ago a monumental paradigm shift occurred for millennia it was believed that the cosmos was ordered knowing oneself meant knowing one's place in the universe you were born to be a butcher a king a slave for the pre-moderns people had a function within a wider plan god's plan usually so there was no sense in making oneself or crafting some kind of personality identity was bound up with the rest of the universe but modernity change this the reformations and revolutions and enlightenments that marked the beginning of the modern age put the individual front and center and science demystified the universe secularizing europe if i'm not born into my place in the world if god doesn't define who i am then who am i we all want to live organically truthfully want our identities to be our own is it any wonder then that hamlet the story of a young man wrestling with the question of to be or not to be is maybe the most famous and most retailed tale of our time its themes individuality inner turmoil right and wrong cowardice are universal ones as polyneus tells his son in the play this above all else to thine own self be true and it must follow as the night the day thy cannot then be false to any man but what or where is this authentic self that we must listen to does it even exist maybe follow your heart be yourself and listen to your gut are as ambiguous and meaningless as they often sound well to find out we'll begin with a question the great french enlightenment thinker jean-jacques rousseau asked himself are we all wearing masks rousseau was interested in the difference between our modern societies and original hunter-gatherers his most important idea was that people in a state of nature lived in face to face direct and mediated communities everyone knew each other and everyone more or less performed similar tasks we were each self-sufficient in modern society however we divide our tasks between ourselves and we each specialize in our skill sets we have a much more distinct division of labor this has one important consequence we need things from each other moreover we're constantly asked to prove that we can deliver that we're up to the job that we have the required skills modern life is a constant job interview not only this but many of us in seeking the status required to prove we have value will we'll attempt to create an image of success by exaggerating the stories we tell by putting filters on our instagram posts by editing what we display of our lives and embellishing the truth so ultimately the competitive nature of modern life forces us to wear masks that aren't really us rousseau's solution is a classic one follow your heart don't edit do what feels right but what does this even mean well he thought that when we embellish the truth we selectively draw upon certain facts we omit certain details or do something because we think it will please someone else but if we focus on our feelings rather than the facts we might find that we were selective of certain facts because we felt a certain way in a particular moment ashamed insecure jealous rousseau wrote the first modern autobiography the confessions which encapsulated this idea right confessedly unedited warts and all about the things that you've done and the feelings that motivated them in doing this he says you'll get to the truth he writes i have only one faithful guide on which i can count the succession of feelings that have marked the development of my being i may omit or transpose certain facts or make mistakes and dates but i cannot go wrong about what i have felt or about what my feelings have led me to do and these are the chief subjects of my story so we see two key concepts in russo that we might find parallels with in later thinkers first the importance of emoting and second the need to express that emotion in writing or an art what we see in rousseau is a type of expressivism that we should take our inner experience and express it outwards into the world turn it into art and literature into creativity life should be turned into a great novel now rousseau had a thunderous impact on european culture on the enlightenment on romanticism painters novelists philosophers they all quoted rousseau and the idea of emoting in fact there was a cult of rousseau he was the first to psychologize the idea of alienation that we live in chains distanced from our true selves dissatisfied by our work routines and social and political lives we don't really feel like us alienation is a common theme in the history of authenticity marx argued for example that we were alienated because amongst other things we lived to produce products for others to sell commodities that we only contribute to in pieces on the factory line we have creative essences that need to be exercised life is meant to require fullness a range of activity and a social and political life that we all can contribute to but while both marx and rousseau were interested in how we were meant to live neither of them used the term authenticity at around the same time though the danish christian sauron kierkegaard began to try to think clearly about what it would really entail in his diary the 22 year old kierkegaard wrote that the thing is to find a truth which is true for me to find the idea for which i can live and die he argued that life's real calling was to take leaps of faith towards what we feel is the truth then turn that truth inward and live it through passion and action kierkegaard agreed with rousseau that authentic life required emotion but he was also concerned that too much reflection and excess of naval gazing and a wandering mind would kill action to live was to do things passionately in his book the present age he wrote that our age is essentially one of understanding and reflection without passion he knew that the truths that really mattered were the ones we decide to hold for ourselves and that thinking logic and reason were all good enough tools to aid us in getting there but could not take us all the way there are no real exterior logical reasons that can be given to convince you to make a particular choice to decide whether a reason given to do something has force for you within deciding how to live whether to be a parent or a school teacher or a liberal or a painter required a careful study of the facts followed by a resolute and passionate leap of faith we must dive head first into what feels right and he calls this subjective truth for kierkegaard intention plus commitment plus passion equals authenticity moreover a rigid dedication to science facts or ethics won't produce progress for that something must be created creatively from within again passion plus action he wrote that with every turning point in history there are two movements to be observed on the one hand the new shall come forth on the other the old must be displaced kierkegaard confronts us with a powerful question why is it that we try to be rational why learn and read it's usually and ultimately if we follow the course as russo argued because of our passions our feelings and our gut as hume said reason is and ought only to be the slave of the passions passion isn't about certainty it's about faith about diving into those passions for good or bad and seeing where they might lead you kierkegaard and rousseau both lived through a period of unparalleled scientific and industrial advance many of these advances challenge the christian framework of european life to many nowhere did this seem more dangerous than with ethical questions standards about right and wrong the scientific view is built around causation that i work because i want to eat i eat because i'm hungry i'm hungry because i need energy but ethical values to be good to one's neighbor give to charity show courage be modest and frugal were traditionally said to come from god he commands them encourages them they're written down in the bible what would happen if we decided that they weren't god's will but instead was something more terrifying human all too human how do we define our values we're often presented with values as if they're dogmas standards we're expected to live up to i value being kind for example now it's easy to assume that we value being kind because it's good for us good for our communities for human flourishing but that's not always the case sometimes people need tough love sometimes kindness literally kills sometimes we just don't feel like it in these circumstances when we irritably ask why should i be kind the 19th century reply might have been because god tells us to in the bible but people were increasingly questioning this view and an unknown german philosopher frederick nietzsche realized something powerful if god wasn't the source of our values then we were where would they come from what would they become in a secular world kierkegaard had already pointed to the difficulties of these kinds of questions shall i pursue happiness duty a project a family which political principles one solution is that we find the answers to these questions out there in the world somewhere but the other is that we create them ourselves nietzsche wrote that all evaluations are either original or adopted the latter being by far the most common most people he thought adopted their values their beliefs and their world views from other people we were sheep and christianity had encouraged this priesthoods literally adopted the metaphor of the shepherd and the flock however the flock had forgotten their creative power that not only could values be adopted from the shepherd or from other sheep or commanded by god but could be created by all of us to do this for nietzsche was an artistic act it meant taking our pathos our sentiments emotional states temperaments and dispositions and organizing the chaos of a godless world into a harmonious whole for ourselves furniture we must give style to our characters progressively integrating our traits and our habits and our patterns into a creative force that's for us in this sense our lives are like a novel we embark on projects with beginnings and middles and ends we think of chapters we give ourselves and the people we encounter characteristics and ultimately the meaning of our life story is down to us creativity is power and we must have the will to power we must know how to use it furniture the values lessons skills and histories we all draw from are like ladders we use them to climb and it's part of our fate to have to draw upon them we must love our fate acknowledge what we're best at know our environments but ultimately at the top of all the ladders there's only us he wrote and if you now lack all ladders then you must know how to climb on your own head [Music] to accomplish means to unfold something into the fullness of its essence to lead it forth into this fullness unlike rousseau kierkegaard and nietzsche who were concerned with the way society forces us to be something we're not for heidegger it's more our own anxiety and the prospect of our own death that elicits the desire for an authentic life why is this for heidegger death is an ontological fact of life and becoming aware of it is an awareness of our own limited finitude an acknowledgement that our lives are temporary most people inauthentically avoid reflecting on this but if we do we become acutely aware of something powerful in facing our own deaths we are forced to choose how to live we often put off plans like learning a new language or doing charity work or traveling or painting with that classic excuse i'll get to that later when i have time and if our lives were infinite this would be honest we could do anything go anywhere be everything we wanted to be it's only because our lives are finite that we're forced to choose that we have to fit a finite amount of things into our lives death forces us to confront our choices now certain things do continue on after our deaths children our work we might have written a book taken some great family photos created a unique cake recipe so authenticity involves acknowledging that we have limited time to do something lasting it's a relationship between the finite and the infinite heidegger asks us to think of the average person the statistical anyone socially they cannot die because they simply can be replaced the average baker in town is replaced by another baker fathers are replaced by sons one employee replaced with another but think about the way the world mourns when great figures die or even when that incredible little irreplaceable bakery and time closes down there's a sense that we've lost something unique that their life was finite that they're gone and cannot be replaced living authentically means making choices with this in mind not delaying them or acting them out averagely this doesn't mean you have to be some great world-changing figure or die for some noble cause the baker can also be irreplaceable so friendly talented original creative in such a novel combination that the town would mourn their loss what's unique to heidegger is he says this psychology is within all of us and that if we ignore it it will result in an existential anxiety we'll float through life haunted by guilt so there's a sense in which authenticity is an owning of one's choices but as we can see from the baker and the great figures examples there's something social about heidegger's conception of authenticity too we're not isolated authenticity is not just something within us individually because we are beings in the world and this is unavoidably being with others in a social context heidegger's account of authenticity is a journey the world is presented to us first in its averageness its everydayness the statistical average baker the average street the average tree we make idle chat to discuss the weather we fool into what others are saying we're dominated by the they we're seduced by people into becoming average we're tempted to go along with the world to fit in we compare ourselves with everything and drift along towards an alienation in which our own most potentiality for being is hidden from us but this is always accompanied by guilt and anxiety i should be doing something i should be being someone we're always offering excuses isn't it too late for example confronting this acknowledging our finite time forces us to acknowledge we have a unique contribution to make to the world we can see some parallels with heidegger in joseph conrad's heart of darkness conrad argued that a confrontation with extreme situations like the prospect of death or the danger of the jungle was a way to test your authentic self when the support of society is ripped away of the main character kurtz in heart of darkness he wrote mr kurtz lacked restraint in the gratification of his various lusts but the wilderness had found him out early and had whispered to him things about himself which he did not know things of which he had no conception until he took council with this great solitude and the whisper had proved irresistibly fascinating it echoed loudly within him because he was hollow at the core okay let's pause for one moment what do we have so far know thyself for to thine own self be true we have taking off masks and searching through our own emotions something that since russo has turned into modern psychology we have passion action creativity defining our own values confronting our own deaths challenging ourselves but all of these things are still given to us i've read them in books and i'm relating them to you our emotions and passions even push and pull us around they sometimes as we've mentioned feel like they overcome us so are we ever really free from these things free to really choose to become something just for ourselves [Music] remember at the beginning of this video when i suggested that your consciousness shining a light on objects ideas sounds or words is like a torch well for jean-paul sarch the 20th century existentialist our true selves is that torch and that light that conscious experience focusing darting moving around is completely free transcendent spontaneous unencumbered by everything outside of it masks scripts written by others even our own emotions for such we're always free and that's at the heart of authenticity now search is difficult to summarize but i'll try and give a brief summary close your eyes again think of all the things we've covered think of your hobbies your passions think about you for such consciousness like the torch highlights these things but it's always separate from them focus on the idea you have of yourself you're not consciousness focusing on yourself but it's an idea of yourself made up of biases observations reflections and your consciousness focusing on it is something different there's two different things going on he writes the ego is not the owner of consciousness it's the object of consciousness consciousness has no content of its own no character traits no personality it flits and darts about spontaneously focusing on this and that it's ruled only by itself he says to be is to fly out into the world in order suddenly to burst out as consciousness in the world this means that no matter who you are what your beliefs are what society tells you to do or what emotional state you're in what your passions are you're always free to do otherwise and this freedom is authenticity let's take an example i'm six foot two and thirty four years old i'm never going to be a professional basketball player and it makes no sense for me to try i'm not good at it there are no basketball courts near me i'm never going to be accepted onto a team i might even hate basketball these might all be absolute certain facts but none of them can stop me from trying to become a professional basketball player in this sense it's not my identity that determines what i do but what i do what i try and do what my projects are that determines my identity we're not born to do anything there's no such thing as fate we're not controlled by our emotions or passions or told what to do by anyone we always have an option to say no i'm always free to do otherwise from what's expected from me or even what i expect of myself this means that the transcendent consciousness the torch cannot be defined by anything it's just movement just light just focus it's not determined by beliefs iq sexuality it can always escape from these things for such the past history of the world is no use we're always on our own philosopher jacob gollum puts it like this sartra's characterization of consciousness as free spontaneity reflectively positing its own transcendent objects as active rather than reactive as neither caused by nor causing external objects and as transparent to itself calls to mind the attributes of authenticity spontaneity lucidity activity reflectiveness self-sufficiency and originality for such the result of not using this spontaneous lucid freedom properly results in what he calls bad faith our consciousness in spontaneously darting and flitting about sees the world in lots of different ways and we conceptualize it in a way that's relative to our own lives our own projects take this orange when i look at it i create an idea of it in my head now i might do that because i'm hungry but i might look at it because i'm a chemist researching vitamin c say i might be an artist painting fruit in an 18th century scene or i might be making a youtube video about its relation to authenticity the ways we look at and think about objects are unlimited they're not contained within the object themselves but that means we can ignore certain things that we shouldn't it means i might avoid looking properly or look ambiguously emphasizing certain parts or ignoring others take the way i look at and think about this cigar like the orange there are many ways i could look at it but i see it as a source of relief a way to relax with a drink a crutch maybe i ignore its effects on my health its costs how other people dislike it and this is bad faith i'm not considering all sides we might think of comfortable half truths or ignoring the elephant in the room and of course we look at our own characters in bad faith too telling ourselves convenient stories about why we can't do this or why we shouldn't do that bad faith is finding comforting excuses authenticity on the other hand means looking lucidly freely piercingly with that torch at every nook and cranny of myself and my life we can see there's a disagreement with kierkegaard here where kierkegaard argues that too much reflection prevents us from acting sarch thinks that reflection is key as long as it's honest it's often said that authenticity might be equated with childhood that in childhood we're like rousseau's hunter-gatherers unmolded by society free to express ourselves naturally in tolstoy's story the death of ivan ilich ilitch realizes he's been gradually becoming unhappier as he's grown older he writes it's as if i had been going downhill while i imagined i was going up and that is really what it was i was going up in public opinion but to the same extent life was ebbing away from me and more recently the psychoanalyst alice miller has argued that many unhappy people didn't receive the parental support they needed growing up she says that every child has a legitimate need to be noticed understood taken seriously and respected by his mother when they don't the child develops a false self to please their parents burying the feelings that were discouraged and developing traits encouraged this results in an inauthentic and unhappy self according to miller the key to overcoming this is learning to express emotions and ideas without shame and guilt in this sense russo was right we feel shame or guilt or other negative emotions because we've been taught that something is shameful or guilty if we tear off the mask we might ask why we care who are we trying to please us or someone else some are critical of this approach though that there's a true inner creative authentic pure child waiting to come out it supposes that there's a real me a concrete eye buried beneath the surface waiting to come out take this 1890 description of the self from the psychologist william james a man has as many social selves as there are groups of individuals who recognize him and carry an image of him in their mind he generally shows a different side of himself to each of these different groups we do not show ourselves to our children as to our club companions to our customers as to the laborers we employ to our own masters and employers as our intimate friends from this their results what practically is a division of the man into several selves like james many are critical of the idea that authenticity comes from within it's a social phenomenon as much as a psychological one the anthropologist clifford gitz for example argued that humans are cultural animals he wrote that man is in physical terms an incomplete and unfinished animal what sets him off most graphically from non-men less is his sheer ability to learn great as that is then how much and what particular sorts of things he has to learn in order to function at all in the book the authenticity hoax andrew potter has said that we don't find our authentic self by peeling away the shell of civilization until we reach the hard nut of the natural self at the core the self is more like an onion there is no natural self to be found at the center because there is no center it's an odd choice of metaphor because an onion does have a center but we can understand roughly what he means how is it possible to think about an authentic self when the idea has been so ambiguous moreover the critics have argued that the pursuit of authenticity is a self-centered ambition egotistical individualistic self-absorbed ultimately having a theory of authenticity is impossible because that would contradict the idea itself authenticity cannot have a meaning a definition otherwise it falls into its own trap of being a script written by others something coming from the outer layer of the onion something that's not really yours as nietzsche said i mistrust all systematizers and i avoid them the will to a system is a lack of integrity so where does that leave us well first while nietzsche did distrust systematizers he did as we saw encourage giving style to our characters integrating patterns knowing our traits there's a similarity here with such you use the metaphor of the melody to describe how consciousness constructs a self over time and also with rousseau who advocated for expressive confessional writing most of these thinkers wrote in many different styles and mediums philosophy fiction film poetry autobiography so maybe first there's a stage of exploration of experimentation a tugging at our seams a lucid investigation of one's own character rather than being prodded pushed and pulled around we can at least prod push and pull at our own selves our intentions our beliefs our reasons for doing things and then maybe there's a second stage that they all seem to have in common and it's an emphasis on doing on taking action decisively and passionately creating our own stories values art literature our own world views whatever it might be to return to our opening statement we might say that know thyself is one part of being authentic but create thyself and the world is just as important to a huge huge thank you as always to all of these people for making this video possible they're the only way this video has been possible so if you'd like to join them in supporting more videos like this like the next video on authenticity and politics and community then you can go to patreon.com forward slash then i where you can support me for as little as a dollar and if you can't do that just hit subscribe like share hit that bell and maybe leave a comment for the algorithm if not for anything else or maybe just for your authentic self either way hopefully i'll see you next time

Channel: Then & Now

Views: 104,014

Keywords: authenticity, authentic, nietzsche, heidegger, rousseau, sartre, kierkegaard, philosophy, history, existentialism

Id: 0FrdGMjUD1U

Length: 42min 45sec (2565 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 14 2021