Reality is what pushes back against your agency: the easier it is, the more you belong to someone else.
Tag: authenticity
- Theme: Self
parody vs pastiche
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1–2 minutesJameson says parody relies on idiosyncratic style. The style is an inimitable way of moving through the world defined by a period of history, and parody can emerge only from such historical authenticity.
Modernism has dispensed with the characteristics of history via universalist flattening, thus robbing a parody of a barbed, driven imitation, leaving it as a blind, toothless mask.
Parody today is merely pastiche—dumb style with no content: “a statue with blind eyeballs”
- Theme: Self
aesthetic mode: the needed lie
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1–2 minutesTo pursue the ideal, you must formulate a middle ground (a substance or medium) from which to lie in order to create the future.
This can be called the "aesthetic mode," which takes reality and then projects forward an image (fantasy) of how it could be reshaped to serve human ends.
Interestingly, the first past appears as a lie but can eventually become functional as an addendum to reality.
(from Shulamith Firestone)
- Theme: Self
doubt and knowledge
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1–2 minutesAccruing knowledge means at some point, you will encounter doubt (contradictory evidence). Doubt underlies all forms of curiosity and seeking, which is the admirable pursuit of a better understanding.
Don’t mistake this journey as seeking "truth": it is more accurate to consider it a better means to piece together a survivable system in our current times.–
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– - Theme: Self
Fallacy: Reality as essentially rhetorical
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1–2 minutesIn moments of idleness, we invent ways of being, transforming language into our reality—like a wizard casting spells.
Yet, the infrastructure supporting and stabilizing these dreams isn’t merely a backdrop for self-discovery and immediate desires, as noted by Benjamin Bratton.
Our era blurs sincerity and parody; assuming our rhetoric can reshape reality risks undermining the very structures that sustain us. Believing in the power of rhetoric over tangible reality will lead to the neglect and degradation (the condemnation) of the critical supports that uphold our luxuriously indulgent lives.
- Theme: Self
masks: difference and identity
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1–2 minutesIn societal contexts, the mask symbolizes identity and ideology without revealing the wearer’s face: it serves as the face.
This duality highlights a circular logic (tautology) —identity is represented not through distinction but through self-referential constancy (looping repetition) or the image of constancy. By obscuring genuine diversity behind uniformity (signaling ideological alignment), the self is never seen, and the question of whether the mask IS the person persists (i.e., there is no inner core, only the mask).
Paradoxically, by masking and not revealing the ‘authentic distinct individual’ means alignment with others is easier. Masks perform the predictable.
However, without distinction or difference, when the tautology is too complete and there is no occasional slip of the unique underlying pathos, the mask that once allied now breeds paranoia. It is too flat, too singular, too predictable; a mirror reflecting without a being; finally being fully what it is.
Consequently, the mask only truly works when shoddily maintained… or when masking a mask.
- Theme: Self
Authenticity: Individual Truths and Collective Validation
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1–2 minutesProliferating individualism fragments society into a kaleidoscope of perspectives, each seeking recognition and power—high seats at the communal table.
This quest for validation raises a poignant question: Why isn’t the mere existence of one’s truth sufficient? The drive to propagate personal truths reflects a deeper yearning for validation through communal resonance, a gathering of kindred spirits (or coercive group persuasion.) The problem forms from inversion, where communal truth feeds validation without personal truth.
The fundamental human desire is not just "to be" but "to be affirmed" and influential within a collective: individual authenticity need not be bound to communal legitimacy, but the absence of genuine self-expression often leads to seeking validation through societal echo.
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– - Theme: Growth
Stuckness
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1–2 minutesYou learn more from stripping the screw than from a straightforward extraction.
When we can apply our theory or plan and things just work, we don’t really consider what we are doing. Yet when something breaks, reality intrudes, and your plans vanish, you have become stuck.
The impulse is to get back on track, often with force or money.
Only after pausing, dropping your plans, and re-encountering reality at its most fundamental aspect do you become open: you become unstuck, which allows us to solve the problem.
from Robert M. Pirsig’s “Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance“
- Theme: Self
recreating aura in the age of replication
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1–2 minutesJean Baudrillard argues that replication and cloning represent the final stage of modeling the human body. From here on we begin to model “the model.”
This is where we lose access to Walter Benjamin’s concept of the unique “aura” that gives something a nominal spirit and a sense of authenticity in the here and now.
Once we reach this stage, similar to the mass-produced items discussed by Benjamin, the only way back to “authenticity” is through the creation of a manufactured historical nostalgia: we must artificially recreate aura.
~ From Mark Fisher
- Theme: Self
Playing over Ideology to achieve Authenticity
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1–2 minutesAs an authentic individual, there’s a lot of pressure to have a clear ideology or well-thought-out position for every action or participation you engage in.
However, this pressure is oddly mediated by like-minded associates who pre-generate stipulations of what is or isn’t proper to give attention or action to. And so, we reason backward into limited positions,
Instead, we should learn to play and discover our degrees of positionality without feeling completely "bought in."
We are beautifully human, figuring things out by trying, not by adhering.
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