How To Be Authentic (feat. Martin Heidegger)

I am whatever you say I am

What is authenticity? This question is buried deep into our culture. We praise “real” people and despise imitators. “Be yourself” seems to be the mantra of our generation. However, our twenty-first century schizoid man is trapped in a system that seeks to iron out all differences: if you think you’re original, there’s a marketing campaign targeting all the people like you, who distinguish themselves from the pack by dressing/listening to music/watching movies of a “different” kind.

Certain historical and social elements explain the need for uniformization. Nations quickly established themselves as military powers capable of invading other countries, hence the need to produce the biggest, baddest army possible. Once this conflict moved into the economic front (thanks to the industrial revolution), all efforts were put towards “production” and “growth”. While countries used to recruit faceless soldiers for cannon fodder in armed conflicts, capitalism recruits faceless workers and employees to be inserted into the production lines and management roles. As per Foucault, schools became the motor of uniformization after the industrial revolution: the goal was to create “productive” people, jam them into the economy and extract as much wealth as possible from them. School is just an elaborate simulation of work life. Everyone becomes interchangeable: we are all cogs in the machine.

One of the causes for our “loss of meaning” as individuals in this post-capitalistic culture is this flattening of difference. Whereas before, people could appeal to religion as a meaning-making structure, the “Death of God” diagnosed by Nietzsche eliminated the last, grand narrative that managed to hold it all together.

How then, can we be authentic in a society that wants us to be just like everyone else? Enter Martin Heidegger.

(Image by Mike Newton)

Existentialist philosophers in the twentieth century found great success, and created a global movement, thanks to their ability to create space between the individual and the pressure to conform exerted by society. Works like La condition humaine by André Malraux were applauded thanks to their capability of “freeing” Man: even in death, even when you’re about to be tortured by Tchang Kaï-chek’s troops, you can still choose. But what are the characteristics of this choice?

Heidegger’s philosophy is a lot more complex and thoughtful than, say, Jean-Paul Sartre’s existential meanderings. For Heidegger, the problem is that Man is a being-in-the-world, and this presents certain existential conditions.

“Dasein”, the concept he invented for beings (Da=there in German; Sein=to be or being. So, “Being-there”) is a peculiar animal. He mucks about the world doing and choosing things. The highest existential freedom is the capability to choose for oneself: embracing who you are and running with it.

Being-in-the-world

Dasein is not an abstract entity, outside the world. Beings are embedded in the world, and we can’t escape this condition. What this means is that you can’t just choose whatever you want, regardless of time and social conditions. I can’t choose to be a medieval knight’s page, and women in Afghanistan can’t choose to read the Marquise de Sade, for example. I can’t “choose” to dunk a basketball if I’m only five feet tall. All this is what Heidegger calls Facticity: the conditions in which Dasein appears or “falls” into the world.

Making choices

However, even in the most narrow situations, a choice is still possible. This is the credo of all existentialists: no matter how dire things get, there are still choices we can make. André Malraux’s character still chooses how to die, even though he’s jailed and broken. Yes, facticity can put you in terrible situations (being a woman in Afghanistan is far from the ideal existence), but if you look closely, you’ll see you can still choose. No wonder everyone was an existentialist in the twentieth century!

On the other hand, Heidegger poses the conditions for an authentic choice. How do I choose what to wear or how to act? How do I know I’m being myself?

Authenticity

Suppose I’m bald. There’s nothing I can do about the facticity of the event: it is what it is. But I can choose how to react to my predicament: I could get hair implants, wear a wig or embrace my baldness; I could even decide to shave everyone else’s hair off or move to a Buddhist temple where everyone is hairless. For Heidegger, all these are valid options: none of the above, even the “shaving everyone else’s hair” option, is possible.

I become inauthentic when I eliminate options based on what “they”, the others, think. If I say, “one does not do such things”, I surrender my decision to “others” or to an anonymous “they”. If I assume “they”, “one” or “we” mustn’t act in this way, I’m inauthentically excluding the option.

Social conventions I did not initiate are not part of my authenticity. I can choose to adhere to them if I wish, but if I don’t even consider other options, I am deeply inauthentic.

When should you be authentic?

Heidegger understands we can’t go about life evaluating all the options to everything. Dasein can choose to be inauthentic: paradoxically, I can be inauthentic in an authentic way. When I choose to take a bus like everyone else, I participate in mass behavior. However, if I’ve deeply considered other options (running to work, skating, dancing to work…) the action of taking the bus will be done authentically. I will live the moment of riding the bus, instead of diluting the experience in the uniform “this is how we get to work”.

On the other hand, I can look authentic and still be inauthentic. Being “authentic” doesn’t mean having exotic tastes or being eccentric. Calling attention upon yourself by tattooing your face or dying your hair green is inauthentic if you’re doing it to copy some idea or some model in your head. Inversely, dressing in plain jeans might be the most authentic thing in the world if you’ve chosen carefully. So posing as someone “original” does not qualify as being authentic, and wearing a normal suit to work at a normal job might be profoundly authentic if chosen freely.

Being “authentic” is the expression of ultimate freedom for Heidegger, even though he understands no one can be “authentic” all the time. However, the search for authenticity has been eclipsed by our hyperdeveloped society, which seems to have a box to put us into at every turn.

For now, we can put Heidegger’s philosophy into use if we ignore the little voice in our heads that says “people like us don’t do that”. Don’t reject options based on some made-up principle that only exists in your head: give it a serious thought and embrace the existential freedom Heidegger drew out for us.