The Attempted Murder of Authenticity
The other day, I struggled with whether or not I’d dumbed this Journal down and made the mistake of writing for a mob of people instead of staying focused on those who’ve self-selected their positions here. I felt like I’d maybe regressed a bit and gone back to the beginning after having already progressed to the middle of a conversation. Like maybe I’d stepped back a few paces to wait for those who needed to catch up. I wrote a note to my dearest friend and asked him what he thought. What he sent me in reply was the most honest and helpful review of any work I’ve ever done in my life, period. Here is an excerpt, edited (believe it or not) to clean up the language a bit.
“Write for yourself. Fuck your audience. Never even think about them. Just tell the truth. And that means your style, and fuck for that matter, even your message will shift from time to time. But if it's you - the real you, your absolute real audience will appreciate that you didn't hold back. It's what we really want from you. We, as a people, have become so god-damned disingenuous, it will take concentrated doses of no-bullshit to create anything useful. Without true terror, it's just not possible to create a fire hot enough to forge what's left of the the poor metal out there.”
Ok, I lied. I didn’t clean it up for language – that would have clearly missed the point of the critique – but I did want to present two ideas that, in his original response, were separated by a few other ideas. The important thing in this was his restatement of the original purpose of writing this Journal in the first place. To present the authentic, real, unvarnished and independent thoughts I have regarding the state of things today, and my own ideas about what a lone individual can do to navigate it. I’ve said that I’m not writing this for mass appeal and that if after a year I find I’ve written it all down for nobody but me, that will be enough. In large part, the reason for that is because I want the simple act of saying what needs to be said to be, in and of itself, the reward for the effort. In reading what my friend wrote to me, I thought about that. I remembered all the times I argued with another friend when he’d suggest all of the sincerely intelligent and effective ways I could expand the appeal of this and reach a broader audience. In what he suggested, he was completely right, and anyone seeking to build a bigger audience for anything would be a fool not to listen to him. But I routinely found myself trying to explain that the audience itself, at least as it relates to this Journal, is a hindrance. I found myself trying to find a way to articulate my reasons for writing to nobody, for myself, and feeling a bit like I was trying to explain the importance and effects of the Schrödinger’s Cat experiment from the point of view of the cat.
The simple fact is, I write this because it needs to be written. These thoughts and ideas are 95% unoriginal, repurposed, absorbed-from-someone-else-and-regurgitated-in-new-clothing editorializing by a wholly unqualified philosopher. I espouse no innovations in thought or morality, no new philosophical bent to finding the meaning of life. In short, there is simply no good reason to listen to me at all as so many people who are vastly more qualified and capable have said all the things I have to say before, and have done it with far greater skill. For the love of anything sacred at all, if you’re looking to learn about important thoughts and the people who’ve thought them and changed the world with them, pay attention to anyone but me. Again, that’s not the point. The point is, I think this stuff. I see the things I see. I can look at the world in its condition through a lens of my own beliefs and feelings and thoughts and biases and I can assess with some degree of comfort and confidence that there is a need for me to remind myself that self-reliance and a code of ethics are becoming imminently important tools for survival. I can assess with a high degree of confidence that things will get worse overall, and that the few free-thinkers who’ve found the ability to function freely on both the accountability side and the rewards side of their own liberty will be the only ones who can live life with any sort of personal fulfillment. I can assess with an equally high degree of confidence that it will be those free-thinkers that the world will eventually turns to asking for them to undo all the horrors that have been done in the name of the collective. I know that the collective – any collective that places the many above the individual without regard for the individual’s inherent rights and freedoms – is a death cult. It will expect nothing less than your obedience and submission in all things, up to and including the sacrifice of your own life. It will demand of you everything and expect you to give it cheerfully. It will expect you to join in the mocking disapproval of all who refuse to follow suit. It will unapologetically about-face when it becomes clear that the collective has been wrong all along, and it will expect you to stay in lock-step as its collective amnesia self-righteously enables it to demand submission from those who were right all along. It is insidious, demanding what seem like small, meaningless acts of compliance along the way. Change the way you say this or speak about that. Use this word instead of the one you want to use. Give up that right because it makes others feel better. Stop exercising this right because it will keep anyone’s feelings from being hurt. Can you really look at the progression of such a mindset and not see where it ultimately leads? It leads to the same place that every other ideology leads which demands obedience over critical thought – to submission or demise. It leads to the same inevitability as any other ideology that says “your opinion is a threat to my existence.”
The only thing truly unbothered by opinion, by dissent, by contradictions or alternatives is the truth. Not “my truth” or “your truth,” but the Truth – the objective reality of being. It doesn’t care if you shine a light on it. It doesn’t care if you choose not to accept it. It doesn’t even care if you misrepresent it. It is still what it is. While I don’t think any human being can ever be 100% truthful (in fact, I can think of a lot of damned good arguments why they shouldn’t be), I think the closer one gets to having a 100% authentic relationship with truth, the better their life becomes. In my opinion, when a person can function, think, speak, and act in accordance with what he or she knows to be true, that person experiences a level of freedom that no collective will ever allow – that no collective is capable of allowing by its very nature. I would offer up to you that the definition of “being authentic” is the degree to which a person can live a genuine relationship with truth in all areas of his or her life. This allows for all kinds of things a collective cannot. One important idea it allows for is individual choice. The objective truth is, people’s lives and circumstances differ from one another. Therefore, it is a given that their choices, the things that benefit them, the things that harm them, the things they need and want, the things they should avoid will also differ from one another. To the collective, this thought is discordant. How can this person be allowed to do something I am not? How can this individual be allowed to make a choice that I wouldn’t? How can this individual do a thing that, if I did it, would be harmful to me? Because they are not you. Their life and their mind belong to them and to no one else. They are not yours to control, to restrain, to limit in any way. Their mind, their time, their happiness, their energy, their efforts, their passions, their likes and dislikes – all of who they are in total belongs solely to them, without your input or permission. To the collective, this thought is terrifying. The idea of individuals who are not subjects to controls instituted by the many is an existential threat. It means that in order to have any value to a society, they have to actually have value in that society. Their status cannot simply be regulated into existence; the contribution they make determines their worth. That means they are no longer free to simply claim virtue without having to put in the work to live that virtue. They cannot claim a morality they do not live, nor value they do not possess. Their ideas must suddenly be able to survive contestation, debate, disagreement, offense. They must allow others the same liberties and extend the same acceptance they demand for themselves. To understand how mortally horrifying that concept is to someone who is not a free-thinker, try to wrap your head around the notion that any power, any influence, any identity you have comes from others. Your standing, your reputation, your worth comes from how well you can exist as an avatar for the collective’s identity. Any deviation from that identity is a black mark on your own worth, your own value. Imagine your security within society can only be guaranteed if you live according to the collective’s beliefs, opinions, and ideology. Your acceptance by society is only assured if you resist the same enemies, shout down the same offensive thoughts, and punish the same dissenters. Does that make it easier to see the dangers of free thought? Imagine coming up with a conclusion that isn’t approved by the collective. Imagine that conclusion is based on your own observations, on facts and evidence, and no matter how plain it is to see, acceptance of it means you are shunned. You don’t have to look hard to see the evidence of it happening. College professors being fired and disciplined – even sued! – because they taught that it is wrong to compel thought and speech, or because they valued empirical evidence over doctrine. Media personalities being “canceled” because they dared suggest a treatment for some pandemic illness that wouldn’t make the big pharmaceutical companies any money. If you can see any of that as different from the Medieval Church keeping Galileo on house arrest for the last decade of his life for the crime of accurately suggesting that the Earth orbits the sun, then you’ve gravely misunderstood both history and the present.
I don’t believe I am misunderstanding history in this regard. As such, I don’t believe I am misunderstanding the present, either. I believe I am seeing clearly that one pathway – the pathway of the collective – is the choice to belong to a death cult not only in the ideological sense, but also in practice. I believe it is a choice to participate in one’s own mental, spiritual, and emotional imprisonment while awaiting a death without meaning. On the contrary, I believe the choice of free and independent thought, the choice to live as a free individual, is the choice to bear both hardship and reward according to my own priorities, wants, and needs. It is the choice to make my own way and to define my own life by my own standards. It is the embrace of life’s diversity and wonder, a cheerful salute to all that exists, whether poignant or absurd. It is life without the need for controlling or compelling others – of intrinsic value as opposed to value determined by the esteem of others. To me, that sounds better. For me, it is simply a better choice.