Playing your role is also critical for coordinating work. People have to know and rely on you to do a predictable thing. Family relationships also demand reliability and become some of the most defining roles that we play.
Fun read! I think I'm picking up everything you're putting down, but I want to bat around maps/compasses. As you say, ideas can be either; a map "this is Authenticity" or a compass "how to Be Authentic". The problem with Authentic-Map is its lack of detail: I think of rationalist catchphrases "the map is not the territory", and "Not Even Wrong". A false map would point the wrong way, but the Authentic map/description/persona/top-down doesn't "point" at all. And as naive advice, the prescriptive form "be authentic" is similarly useless, because most people don't have the skill to orient that compass towards any consistent "magnetic field". But what if they could? Maybe this is a stretch of a steelbot, but the prescription "be authentic" might really signify "know Thyself" and the shapes of thy "magnetic field", which is to say - the bottom-up knowledge and Truth about your lived experience, the sensation of Aliveness. Maybe the ur-consultant knew this, and failed to transmit the gnosis through all the capitalist layers of reproduction. Anyway, if you're still here after this pedantic navel gazing -- "your Spotify Wrapped is watching" hit me like a lightning bolt, I adore that bit
"Each attempt to close the gap between you and your “real self” creates another layer of self-observation, generating exactly the self-consciousness that authenticity promised to dissolve."
Thanks so much for writing this. I've been sharing it and discussing it with a lot of people.
I work in the organisational development field where many have been inspired by Frederic Laloux's book Reinventing Organisations in which he espouses the idea of "wholeness". And I find that many misinterpret what this "bring your whole self to work" notion as permission to vomit my feelings everywhere, or that the organisation is therefore responsible for healing all my traumas (if I exaggerate). (This is a great blog on that topic by Amahra Spence: https://amahraspence.substack.com/p/radical-hospitality-part-iii-the)
I'm finding that it's a little difficult to talk about your four-box model with non-native English speakers, though. (I'm based in Spain.) I've been thinking about how to simplify it even further in terms of the axes of "congruence" and "legibility." Would you say "expressing what's inside me" and "reading the room" are accurate stand-ins?
I wonder what your "ELI5" version of this would be?
Wow, this is a great essay — I truly enjoyed reading it and it left me with many thoughts.
The way people try to confine their personality to a single role reminds me of a massive tree whose branches are constantly cut off to preserve just one. Each time the branches grow back, they are trimmed again — leaving one behind, though always a different one.
“I’ve been angry lately — so I must be an angry person.”
“Right now I respond to everyone kindly — so I must be a good person.”
Within this framework, balance simply cannot exist. Everything becomes black or white. People judge their inner reality through external circumstances, and that’s where the fundamental mistake lies.
I don’t think ’being yourself’ is anything to do with how you express yourself towards or in the company of people. It’s about not editing your desires and understanding what they actually are.
You do have to communicate appropriately with each person and in each situation, something you can do whilst still following; what you want, are compelled to pursue, how you think, hold an opinion etc.
In other words, it’s not about showing up ‘as you’ in a ‘one version fits all’ kind of way at all. It’s about becoming aware of who you are and going through life honouring that.
This is some goodly chewable food for thought! I like the matrix of congruence versers legibility; most of my abstract thinking is more or less diagrammatic and I came to the concepts now called 'emotional intelligence' relatively late: in my thirties.
Re: 'authenticity is a trap' I think every concept that gets co-opted into the mangling mills of capitalist managerialism is doomed to corruption, if not outright crusifiction... My concept of freedom, per se, is the ability to be able to _develop into the best person I can become_. A more 'technical' way of putting that is "become more fully human" (which maybe sounds like wank, I dunno...) but the key idea _is_ in fact authenticity, in that we are all unique, much more than most of us realise IMO. Finding out how we can be "best" at becoming ourselves is IMO the real task of philosophy, lay philosophy anyway.
This was such a fascinating read. What do you make of the ego? I’m curious why I haven’t read that word, it has such a buzz in our culture today. And when I read this I can’t help but think that many people’s conception of authenticity, then, is paradoxically ego? Curious what you think.
Playing your role is also critical for coordinating work. People have to know and rely on you to do a predictable thing. Family relationships also demand reliability and become some of the most defining roles that we play.
yes, exactly!
Fun read! I think I'm picking up everything you're putting down, but I want to bat around maps/compasses. As you say, ideas can be either; a map "this is Authenticity" or a compass "how to Be Authentic". The problem with Authentic-Map is its lack of detail: I think of rationalist catchphrases "the map is not the territory", and "Not Even Wrong". A false map would point the wrong way, but the Authentic map/description/persona/top-down doesn't "point" at all. And as naive advice, the prescriptive form "be authentic" is similarly useless, because most people don't have the skill to orient that compass towards any consistent "magnetic field". But what if they could? Maybe this is a stretch of a steelbot, but the prescription "be authentic" might really signify "know Thyself" and the shapes of thy "magnetic field", which is to say - the bottom-up knowledge and Truth about your lived experience, the sensation of Aliveness. Maybe the ur-consultant knew this, and failed to transmit the gnosis through all the capitalist layers of reproduction. Anyway, if you're still here after this pedantic navel gazing -- "your Spotify Wrapped is watching" hit me like a lightning bolt, I adore that bit
"Each attempt to close the gap between you and your “real self” creates another layer of self-observation, generating exactly the self-consciousness that authenticity promised to dissolve."
agreed!!
Great post! I feel like we worked at the same company, but maybe many of them use this cookie cutter phrase “bring your authentic self to work”
we probably worked at the same company ;)
'bring your full self to work' is code for 'make work your full self.' it is some ghoul trying to capture and extract.
Thanks so much for writing this. I've been sharing it and discussing it with a lot of people.
I work in the organisational development field where many have been inspired by Frederic Laloux's book Reinventing Organisations in which he espouses the idea of "wholeness". And I find that many misinterpret what this "bring your whole self to work" notion as permission to vomit my feelings everywhere, or that the organisation is therefore responsible for healing all my traumas (if I exaggerate). (This is a great blog on that topic by Amahra Spence: https://amahraspence.substack.com/p/radical-hospitality-part-iii-the)
I'm finding that it's a little difficult to talk about your four-box model with non-native English speakers, though. (I'm based in Spain.) I've been thinking about how to simplify it even further in terms of the axes of "congruence" and "legibility." Would you say "expressing what's inside me" and "reading the room" are accurate stand-ins?
I wonder what your "ELI5" version of this would be?
Wow, this is a great essay — I truly enjoyed reading it and it left me with many thoughts.
The way people try to confine their personality to a single role reminds me of a massive tree whose branches are constantly cut off to preserve just one. Each time the branches grow back, they are trimmed again — leaving one behind, though always a different one.
“I’ve been angry lately — so I must be an angry person.”
“Right now I respond to everyone kindly — so I must be a good person.”
Within this framework, balance simply cannot exist. Everything becomes black or white. People judge their inner reality through external circumstances, and that’s where the fundamental mistake lies.
I don’t think ’being yourself’ is anything to do with how you express yourself towards or in the company of people. It’s about not editing your desires and understanding what they actually are.
You do have to communicate appropriately with each person and in each situation, something you can do whilst still following; what you want, are compelled to pursue, how you think, hold an opinion etc.
In other words, it’s not about showing up ‘as you’ in a ‘one version fits all’ kind of way at all. It’s about becoming aware of who you are and going through life honouring that.
This is some goodly chewable food for thought! I like the matrix of congruence versers legibility; most of my abstract thinking is more or less diagrammatic and I came to the concepts now called 'emotional intelligence' relatively late: in my thirties.
Re: 'authenticity is a trap' I think every concept that gets co-opted into the mangling mills of capitalist managerialism is doomed to corruption, if not outright crusifiction... My concept of freedom, per se, is the ability to be able to _develop into the best person I can become_. A more 'technical' way of putting that is "become more fully human" (which maybe sounds like wank, I dunno...) but the key idea _is_ in fact authenticity, in that we are all unique, much more than most of us realise IMO. Finding out how we can be "best" at becoming ourselves is IMO the real task of philosophy, lay philosophy anyway.
This was such a fascinating read. What do you make of the ego? I’m curious why I haven’t read that word, it has such a buzz in our culture today. And when I read this I can’t help but think that many people’s conception of authenticity, then, is paradoxically ego? Curious what you think.
I’m gonna object to Heidi’s calling me dead. I am a supernumerary on the stage of the Life’s Rich Pageant. It’s the best seat in the house.