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Yesterday I wrote about authenticity. My intention was to say something empowering but instead I ended up saying things that were depressing. The post raised the question of what it means to be authentic in an artificial dystopia. It raised the question, but didn't answer it.
From my perspective, we in the US have been living in firmly in a dystopia manufactured for us by tyrants since 2020. Whether we know it or not, the vast majority of us are instruments of these tyrants. Those that don't cooperate are coerced. Those that get in the way are crushed. The whole thing is very dramatic.
I like to think about it in terms of movies. We're not in any regular drama or comedy. Our world is much weirder. A virus escaped from a lab, a global pandemic resulted, and the official response to this provoked civil unrest and was generally catastrophic. The government disclosed the existence of UFOs. AI is making more and more decisions. These things and more suggest that if society was a movie, it would be one of those sad scifi flicks about humanity's bleak future.
We may be characters in such a movie. But we're not the heroes or the villains. Nor are most of us even the extras, because we're not geographically located near where things happen. Our existence is implied but not articulated by the story. So we're implied extras in a bad scifi movie.
This shared circumstance may not be glamorous, but it gives us plenty of leeway to do whatever we want. And if we do what we want authentically, according to each of our own truths, we can ground authenticity in concrete actions, reclaiming tiny pieces of the world every step of the way. We can seek out the real and push the fake out of our lives. Maybe even out of our social circles.
What sort of movie character would you like to be? Remember, you're a character that's not actually in the movie, so it can be anything you like. For example, I'm an unassuming guy who hangs out at the neighborhood coffee shop. I'm many other things besides, but this description is sufficient for our purposes.
What kinds of stories would you want your character to participate in? What challenges would you want it to encounter? These questions aren't unimportant. What you picture when considering them tells you something about yourself.
Personally, I find being in authenticity empowering in and of itself. It also feels physically easier than being inauthentic, like it uses less energy. We may live in a dystopia, but we can still live authentic lives. And our real stories are sure to surprise us.
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