The first duty in life is to be as artificial as possible. What the second duty is no one has as yet discovered. ~Oscar Wilde
Most of the time, the advice that we shouldn't lie is good, but few of us can get through life without telling or saying the occasional lie. But some people, especially those with a romantic personality, try to follow their own advice. They say that authenticity is one of the most important things about people and that betraying it is both immoral and tragic. It is immoral because it requires a person to lie about who they are at their core, and it is tragic because it suffocates the unique self under a dull blanket of conformity.
I don't share this excitement about being real because it's based on a basic misunderstanding of how people are. At best, authenticity can be a bad thing, and at worst, it makes no sense from a philosophical point of view. People sometimes use the word "authenticity" in everyday speech. For example, we might say that someone is "authentically" a fan of the arts, "authentically" happy, or "authentically" kind, and it's clear what we mean by these statements. I also won't say that lying about your own traits and habits is usually a bad idea and sometimes even wrong. But authenticity, as many of its modern supporters see it, is neither a good nor even a reachable goal.
The first problem with authenticity is that everything about a person is made up and shaped by the culture around them. Most teenagers are familiar with the romantic idea that the true self comes before society, that it develops on its own like an embryo, and that it only needs food and water from others to stay alive. People often see cultural influences as sources of alienation, coercion, and manipulation when they are important. The true self is exactly what doesn't come from society, what doesn't want to be told what to do or fit in, and what makes each person unique. So, the romantic is always looking for something new, both in art and in life. They often praise something new just because it is new.
This romantic idea of the self, though, is wrong. We are not like flowers or butterflies, whose growth is mostly the result of unfolding potential that was already known. We are very social animals with brains that are made to learn and adopt the culture around us, starting with language in the most obvious way. A person without culture is like a shape without any meaning, and the few known cases of "feral children," or kids who grew up with little human contact, are sad reminders of how important it is to learn from other people.
Even a person's most sacred beliefs, like what they think about God and how humans fit into the universe, are inextricably tied to their culture. The person who worshiped Isis and Osiris in the ancient Mediterranean may have been a devout Protestant in 17th-century Germany and a combative skeptic in 21st-century America. In a similar way, a proponent of free verse in the 20th century might have been a stickler for meter and rhyme in the 14th. Dante wrote the way he did because of what he saw around him. If he had written it 500 years later, it would be different. The same is true for almost every belief and action you can think of, from the most common to the most important.
Of course, the romantic would probably say that tastes in poetry and metaphysics are influenced by culture, but that deeper and more important preferences are not. If Dante had been born in England in the 1570s or 1930s, he might have written in blank verse or free verse, but he still would have had many of the same traits and tendencies, such as a respect for hierarchy and order, a sensitive and poetic mind, and a dislike of moral betrayal.
Also, we know what it's like to follow social rules and keep our feelings and thoughts to ourselves. More importantly, we all know how painful it is to lie about important parts of our identity, like our political beliefs, sexuality, etc. Doesn't this mean that behind our social selves, there is a true self that is unaffected by cultural accidents and influences, even though it can stay hidden forever? And don't we owe our loyalty to this self?
Even though traits and tendencies are different from what most of us would call a "self," arguments like these can feel convincing because they make sense in everyday life. People are complicated and have many different sides to them. They can lie and control their urges. Society often rewards those who politely answer "How are you today?" with "Great, how about you?" and punishes those who say, "Metaphysical despair is eating a hole in my heart, my dog is dying, I'm lonely, and life gives me no joy."
This can be frustrating, suffocating, and even tyrannical in some societies. But it also lets people live together. Because we can work together and also be very competitive, our thoughts and actions can be either helpful or harmful to others. Some of these antisocial thoughts and urges are not too bad, but they could be hurtful. Most of us have negative thoughts about people we know, but we keep them to ourselves. This is one reason why kids can be so annoying and funny at the same time: they don't hold back what they think. People will tell you if they think your eyes are too big, your nose is too big, or your hair is too thin.
More importantly, some of our thoughts and urges are violent, destructive, or coercive. Few people are so good that they have never made fun of, pushed, punched, or even killed someone else. Some people are angry and hateful, and if they could, they would be happy to be in charge of other people. One of the most important roles of civilization is to help us control these tendencies so that we can work together (and compete) without always fighting. This can be annoying sometimes, but it leads to wealth, comfort, and cultural achievements that wouldn't be possible otherwise.
Romantics might say that it's not fake to fight off a momentary urge to insult, hurt, or kill someone else. It's not real to try to hide or change one's core beliefs and desires. But is it not real for a violent sociopath or a racist who hates people to hold back from what he wants? If not, why? Did Joseph Stalin live more or less like himself than he would have otherwise because he had almost complete power and could do what he wanted without worrying about being punished?
To get to the heart of the matter: Let's say we want to compare how Thomas and John act, two people who are both full of hatred and envy for different reasons. But while Thomas has a hard time keeping his anger, competition, and jealousy in check, John doesn't. After years of hard work, Thomas has built a successful company and become a respected businessman who gives hundreds of jobs to a once-poor community. Even though he is angry, he goes to church and is nice to everyone. John, on the other hand, isn't working and always fights with other people. He goes to bars and fights to get rid of his anger. But he doesn't lie; he tells everyone the truth about how he feels about them. The supporter of authenticity seems set on saying that John should be praised and Thomas should be criticized.
When I ask people who value authenticity questions like these, they usually say that wanting to be a dictator who kills people or a bar fighter who is always angry are fake and strange desires. And since racism is something you have to learn, it is also artificial and foreign. After a few of these answers, they usually decide that the true self is the one they morally agree with. Since, by this definition, the true self can only think and act in ways that are morally good, this means that the praiseworthiness of authenticity is a tautology.
For the value of authenticity to have weight, it needs to mean more than "One should live in a way that I find admirable." The most obvious meaning of the claim is that a person should follow his or her natural beliefs and tendencies. But, as has already been said, this idea has problems once we accept that (1) some natural tendencies and beliefs are offensive or harmful and (2) some people are full of antisocial tendencies and offensive beliefs.
I would, however, go even further. To get something worth praising out of people, you have to work hard, be disciplined, and keep putting limits on them. The celebration of authenticity is based on a quasi-Rousseauist belief that people are good by nature and only become bad because of society. But it's clear that this idea is wrong. People are neither good nor bad by nature. Instead, they are flawed, limited, and contradictory beings who can imagine a peaceful, cooperative society with plenty of resources but can't make it happen because they are too selfish and too competitive. Even though they can't fully reach their moral goals, they can make a lively and thriving civilization with the help of wise rules and institutions. And the purpose of these wise rules and institutions is to stop, train, and change our natural tendencies. In other words, it is to make a cultured and civilized human, which is to say an artificial one.
But being human means being made up. And to say that it is not authentic to conform to one's culture and try to control and overcome one's natural tendencies is like saying that it is not authentic for a mockingbird to sing the song of another species. In a strange way, the most real thing we can do is try to go beyond who we are and become something we are not.
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