Becoming More Authentic

    Authenticity means creating our own comprehensive life-meanings
—our "Authentic projects-of-being".
When we re-center and re-integrate our lives
around our freely-chosen purposes,
we become more focused, unified, & decisive.
We gain greater autonomy
and increase our capacity to resist and transcend enculturation.
This approach to life was developed by
such existential thinkers as:
Camus, Sartre, Heidegger, Kierkegaard, & Maslow.
But only we individually can decide what content
to put within this structure of Authentic Existence.

OUTLINE:

I. From Conformity to Autonomy

The power of enculturation—providing our basic life-scripts.

Writing our own scripts—deciding what to live for.

From scattered, tangled, superficial living
to organized, simple, purposeful living.

1. Albert Camus: Rebelling Against the Absurd.

2. Jean-Paul Sartre: Inventing Meanings in a Meaningless World.

3. Martin Heidegger: Confronting Existential Guilt and Death.

4. Søren Kierkegaard: Willing One Thing.

5. Abraham Maslow: Becoming Self-Actualizing.

   Cast into the blind, purposeless whirl of existence,
we must either choose our own lives
or have our lives chosen for us
by the social forces already in operation all around us.
There are no given, automatic meanings in human life.
We human beings must create whatever goals we will pursue.

I. From Conformity to Autonomy

    But before we can even consider inventing our own life-purposes,
we must become well-integrated, thoughtful persons.
Becoming adults persons requires years of learning and growing.
Each of us grew up in a fully-developed human culture,
replete with rules, regulations, & assumed life-meanings.

    Even if we are not pleased with the enculturation we received,
there was no way to avoid or skip that phase of human development.
We had to become integrated conformists
before we could consider becoming more autonomous.

    The process of education empowers us to look back
on the social processes that created us.
When we understand our own enculturation,
we can begin to resist and transcend that socialization.

    Autonomy means being self-governing
—from the Greek for self (autos) and law (nomos).
We can become more autonomous
thru a long process of making free choices.

    As we pursue our new freely-chosen goals and purposes,
we gradually replace our first conformist selves
with new selves of our own creation.

II. Centering and Integrating

    The social forces and expectations all around us
(beginning first with our parents, then later our peers)
will shape us into persons pursuing society's goals.
If we make no truly free choices for ourselves,
we will find that we are pursuing the assumed purposes-in-life
that surrounded us where we grew up:
money, achievement, marriage, children, pleasure, & religion.

    However, thru a process of trial and error,
we can decide how best to re-center and re-integrate our lives
—this time around purposes we have freely chosen,
rather than the values and meanings we inherited from the culture.

III. Authentic Projects-of-Being

    We are what we pursue.
If we want to become more Authentic,
we will devise our own reasons for living,
which might go beyond what anyone has ever tried before.

    Our first Authentic project or task
is to explore, imagine, & experiment with various life-meanings
until we devise a set of purposes and goals
that seem worthy of our comprehensive efforts.

    For many years, my Authentic project-of-being was
helping others to become Existentially Free
—which meant living beyond their existential anxiety,
meaninglessness, loneliness, despair, depression, etc.

    And prior to this process of becoming more deeply persons of spirit
is the preliminary purpose of becoming more Authentic.
This essay is one example of pursuing that purpose of my life.
These words of encouragement
are intended to help readers to become more Authentic.

    If you were completely free, how would you use your life?
You might decide to pursue a contemplative life,
in which you give your time to your interior development
and possibly to the spiritual development of other persons.

    At the another extreme, you might devote yourself
to a comprehensive ecological project, intended to save the Earth
—or at least some part of the eco-system.

    Or you might focus your life around reforming or replacing
some social institution that should be changed:

• Ending violence against woman.
• Making schools less conformity-producing and more liberating.
• Correcting the problems of the 'correction' system (prison reform).
• Establishing new institutions to enhance human life
in some practical, intellectual, or spiritual ways.

IV. Five Versions of Authentic Existence

    The concept of Authenticity has deep and strong roots
in existential philosophy and psychology.
Five thinkers will be discussed here,
each with a slightly different approach to the quest for meaning.

   1. Albert Camus: Rebelling Against the Absurd.

    The French philosopher and novelist Albert Camus (1913-1960)
describes our Existential Malaise as absurdity.
The life into which we find ourselves thrown is absurd.
But instead of giving up because life has no meaning,
we can take absurdity as a challenge to create our own meanings.
Because there are no given absolutes,
we must choose life-goals that are limited and relative
---without deceiving ourselves that our values are ultimate and absolute.
Besides rejection of the gods (denial of all given meanings),
Camus recommends in his philosophy and illustrates in his novels
a hatred of death and a passion for life.

    2. Jean-Paul Sartre:
        Inventing Meanings in a Meaningless World.

    Another French philosopher and playwright, Jean-Paul Sartre,
was a contemporary of Camus.  (Sartre lived from 1905-1980.)
Sartre describes our Existential Predicament as meaninglessness.
The people of the world are very busy doing things.
But do they realize the ultimate futility of their efforts?

    3. Martin Heidegger:
        Confronting Existential Guilt and Death.

    Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) is the German existential philosopher
who gives the most systematic account of our Existential Predicament
(focusing especially on existential anxiety, guilt, & being-towards-death).
He also has the most to say about how we become more Authentic.

    We are born into the 'they',
into a fully-scripted, well-organized on-going social structure.
And we will remain absorbed in the 'they' for our whole lives
unless we discover how to become more Authentic.

    If we pay attention to our vague awareness of death,
this discovery of the deepest part of our beings
might empower us to wrench ourselves free of the embrace of the 'they'.

    We can then become whole and resolute
if we harness the power of guilt and death (our Existential Malaise)
as the driving force behind our freely-chosen life-meanings.

    4. Søren Kierkegaard: Willing One Thing.

    Instead of remaining well-adjusted conformists,
we can purify our hearts by willing one thing.
Kierkegaard describes in great detail
the process of living more Authentically.
Perhaps we will never achieve our goals
(as Kierkegaard was not recognized during his life-time).
But we are responsible for making sure
that we live each day clearly focused on one thing.

    5. Abraham Maslow: Becoming Self-Actualizing.

    Abraham Maslow (1908-1970) is an American psychologist
best known for his concept of "self-actualization".

    Instead of spending our lives trying to satisfy our deficiency needs,
we can become more self-actualizing
by creating and pursuing meaningful life-purposes.
We become self-actualizing if we pursue meanings and values
beyond ourselves and our families.
We transcend our earlier concern for what other people think
and focus instead on being the persons we choose to be.
We grow away from conformity toward autonomy.

Conclusion

    Becoming more Authentic is not a sudden, once-for-all change.
Rather we move from conformity toward greater autonomy
by the daily choices we make.
We might remain well-adjusted members of society,
pursuing all the conventional purposes in the approved ways.
Or we can re-create ourselves
by deciding and then consistently pursuing
whatever we regard as worthy of our deepest efforts.
In Maslow's challenge:
Are we making the safe choices or the growth choices?

AUTHOR:

    In 2014, this essay introducing Authentic Existence
also became a chapter in a new book on love:
Heartbreak Prevention: Loving Beyond Romance, Sex, & Marriage.
Authenticity forms the background for criticizing
many aspects of the traditional ways of loving.