If the misanthropic Stralfs have learned anything about us, it’s that we can overdue everything. “Balance” is boring, sort of, and vague, at least compared to What’s New, new silver bullets, new magic pills, new tech, new revelations, new philosophy, especially when young adults are in charge, economically speaking.
And a lot of you are too young to remember when being some kind of special star was a sort of shameful aspiration. That’s even hard for me to imagine now. Humility and membership was the preferred posture not long ago. That shift is starting to be talked about again in using the terms “Sincerity Culture” vs. “Authenticity Culture,” with sincerity meaning sincerely embracing a recognized role in society (i.e., husband, father, wife, mother, farmer, teacher, etc.) and the assumptions that go with it, usually having to do with a combination of restraint and aspiration. It’s an odd use of sincerity, I know.
Authenticity there is meant to indicate a more true-self orientation, or conducting ourselves in a way that’s said to be truer to what we conceive of as our selves. Even in this usage, it’s morphed from what the original (if I remember right) Marxist writers had in mind. In that usage, the idea was that Capitalism was forcing a sincerity culture, and that Communism would eventually (eventually) free us to be our authentic selves.
The 1800’s were full of scientific ideas about how we should be or could be, and Marxism was one of those. But like all times before us, the contextual social environment changes, so the psychological environment changes, so the assumptions about authenticity in one decade are going to be different in a later one, thanks partly to Marketing’s plays for our allegiances, whether it’s in literature, art, academia or at the mall. This is the living nature of free societies.
Never minding the susceptibility to dumb ideas and overdoing the good ones, authenticity culture is surely the most oxymoronic concept, at least now, considering that we are literally fed (meant in all ways) what to feel is authentic to us. There are rack and reams of instruments and instruction, subtle and otherwise, purportedly to help us achieve or find our true selves. I smell a Stralf.
But could it be that we’re finally ready to move beyond the 1950’s Rebel Without a Cause in its many forms? Oh wait, that question leaves itself open to some form of reply like, “Actually, I believe I DO have a cause, which is the freeing of…”
With that little imaginary seedling of a conversation, I’m remembering how so many of our societal discussions go, which is to rhetoric and reliance on difference, even though the vast majority of us want the same kind of things, packaged in different words. And this rhetoric is so we can all be authentic as we’re told to be, and our attention will remain fixed as the Market contrives away.
I’ve been listening to a lot of encouraging, authentic, meant in the older way, conversations where the participants are honest and even vulnerable. Conversations without rhetorical games. It’s refreshing and much more interesting. It made me think of how straw man arguments are used to confuse things rather than clear things up. Then I thought of The Scare Crow in The Wizard of Oz, then the rest of this—it’s short.
If Straw Men Went on Strike
Imagine if they all had brains
and chose how they were used,
and rhetoric with required refrains
they struck against, refused.
Rehearsals for a premier play,
a mock-up for a plan,
helping in their humble way, yes,
but tricksters they can’t stand.
If only they could run away.
If we could read their minds.
If they could choose their speech and say
how faking reasons blinds.
Make fake reasons, draw a crowd,
give them the words to shout out loud,
but let straw men go on their way,
they’ve quit and won’t say what you say.
Damn Stralfs. Have a good week anyway.
Thanks for reading : )
Tim