Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 2: is Robert.
Speaker 3: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with
Speaker 3: part three of our series looking at the concept of authenticity. Now,
Speaker 3: we had a little break in the middle of our
Speaker 3: series there because on Tuesday of this week we had
Speaker 3: an interview that you recorded, Rob that was already scheduled
Speaker 3: to come out on that date, So there's a little
Speaker 3: bit of discontinuity here, but we are picking up where
Speaker 3: we left off last Thursday, that's right. So in part
Speaker 3: one of this series, we started by trying to pick
Speaker 3: apart the different common usages of authenticity, and I explained
Speaker 3: why I became interested in the subject. It's one of
Speaker 3: those ideas that I think is very very good for
Speaker 3: exploration because it's like a commonly used concept that actually
Speaker 3: is very vague, and there's a lot of equivocation and
Speaker 3: using the idea in different ways. So we tried to
Speaker 3: pick apart some of these different usages of authenticity what
Speaker 3: people mean when they invoke the idea, and we looked
Speaker 3: at a study showing that we are not as good
Speaker 3: as we think we are at perceiving authenticity in others.
Speaker 3: In Part two of the series, we talked about authenticity
Speaker 3: in art and entertainment, what it means to look for
Speaker 3: authenticity and musical artists and other types of art. We
Speaker 3: talked about the Orson Wells movie F for Fake, and
Speaker 3: then we discussed a specialized idea of authenticity that was
Speaker 3: proposed by the art critic Walter Benjamin and how it
Speaker 3: relates to changes in media technology over the centuries. And
Speaker 3: here we are once again to examine a couple other
Speaker 3: facets of authenticity. Now, the thing I wanted to talk
Speaker 3: about today was the interaction between and relationship between honesty
Speaker 3: and authenticity. We talked about this a bit in part
Speaker 3: one of this series because we we're alluding to the
Speaker 3: way that there is an apparent relationship between authenticity and honesty.
Speaker 3: You know, there is some overlap between the two ideas,
Speaker 3: but they are not usually understood to be the same thing.
Speaker 3: And an easy illustration of that is characters both real
Speaker 3: and fictional, who are known to tell lies but are
Speaker 3: often thought of as authentic. And yet, despite this clear
Speaker 3: illustration that the two concepts are not exactly the same thing,
Speaker 3: we sometimes behave as if they're the same thing. We
Speaker 3: like forget that we use these ideas differently because we
Speaker 3: feel like if somebody is authentic, well, that means we
Speaker 3: can trust them. So I ended up looking at a
Speaker 3: paper for a trying to find a careful analysis of
Speaker 3: the similarities and differences between honesty and authenticity, how these
Speaker 3: ideas are culturally understood, and in how they manifest in behavior.
Speaker 3: So this paper is by Erica R. Bailey and Sheena
Speaker 3: Siing are published in current opinion in psychology called Yours
Speaker 3: Truly on the Complex Relationship between Authenticity and Honesty published
Speaker 3: in the year twenty twenty two, and Erica Bailey was
Speaker 3: also one of the authors of the study we looked
Speaker 3: at in Part one, the one about how we're not
Speaker 3: as good as we think we are at determining whether
Speaker 3: other people are being authentic. Now, as a starting point,
Speaker 3: this paper gives essentially the same understanding of authenticity that
Speaker 3: we talked about in part one. This will be complicated
Speaker 3: when we start introducing survey responses and how people actually
Speaker 3: use the idea of authenticity and how it relates to
Speaker 3: honesty and so forth. But we start off with the
Speaker 3: idea that quote a person is authentic when they genuinely
Speaker 3: express their true inner qualities and feelings. In other words,
Speaker 3: the inside matches the outside. Our outward behavior is consistent
Speaker 3: with our private inner feelings, thoughts, and character. So by contrast,
Speaker 3: a person would usually be considered inauthentic if they say
Speaker 3: things they don't really feel or think, or if they
Speaker 3: act in ways that are inconsistent with who they are inside,
Speaker 3: or if they don't express their inner self in the
Speaker 3: outside world. And The authors begin the paper by mentioning
Speaker 3: an episode in the life of the eighteenth century Swiss
Speaker 3: philosopher Jean jacqu Rousseau, where they write, quote, in order
Speaker 3: to be more authentic, he committed to expressing himself honestly
Speaker 3: in every single moment of his day, certain that this
Speaker 3: brutal truth telling, devoid of any cowing to the social context,
Speaker 3: would allow him to manifest his authentic self. And I
Speaker 3: gotta say that sounds absolutely insufferable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, who wants to hang out with this guy?
Speaker 3: I mean? And I'm a big fan of being honest.
Speaker 3: I think honesty is a good virtue that people should have.
Speaker 3: You know, you should not tell lies to people. You
Speaker 3: should try to be honest with people generally. But this
Speaker 3: is actually describing something different than honesty, saying every thought
Speaker 3: that pops into you head, telling friends and family everything
Speaker 3: they do that bothers you. Being being honest, you know,
Speaker 3: quote honest in the most brutal way is always seems
Speaker 3: like a kind of nasty way to live. It's going
Speaker 3: to cause other people grief and just alienate you from
Speaker 3: everyone and everything you care about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean this, you're talking about a life without decorum,
Speaker 2: without patience, without you know, the limited capacity to be
Speaker 2: supportive of others because sometimes and being supportive of of people,
Speaker 2: you know, friends and family with their maybe sometimes half
Speaker 2: formed ideas in some cases, like you don't want to
Speaker 2: be brutally honest. You want to be supportive. You want
Speaker 2: to you want to maybe push them in the right direction,
Speaker 2: But being you know, completely brutally honest is maybe not
Speaker 2: the right approach.
Speaker 3: I think that's right. I mean, I think there is
Speaker 3: a lot of middle ground between lying to people and
Speaker 3: or enabling delusions versus being brutally honest to people in
Speaker 3: a way that you know is like to hurt them
Speaker 3: and just like avoiding tact altogether.
Speaker 2: Yeah, imagine just deciding a right from here on. Now,
Speaker 2: I'm just going to be brutally truthful about everything. But
Speaker 2: then like the then we get into that other quese
Speaker 2: like what is truth right?
Speaker 3: Right? You may in fact be mistaken about some of
Speaker 3: the things that you think are brutally true when you
Speaker 3: say them, in which case it would turn out that
Speaker 3: it was really unproductive. Uh yeah, So this like raises
Speaker 3: the question of whether it would even really be possible,
Speaker 3: Like is this kind of radical authentic truth telling even
Speaker 3: self consistent because there are momentary thoughts we have but
Speaker 3: don't express, And are those actually truer reflections of our
Speaker 3: inner selves than what we would say if we thought
Speaker 3: about it some more before we talked? Mm hmm yeah
Speaker 3: so or also is it are those more are like
Speaker 3: expressions of momentary opinions or thoughts truer reflections of our
Speaker 3: inner selves even than the choice not to speak certain situation.
Speaker 3: Wouldn't that choice also flow from the self?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah. It reminds me of something I've mentioned before
Speaker 2: on the show, the medieval doodle of a Christ like
Speaker 2: bird or a bird like Christ if you rather, in
Speaker 2: the margins of various manuscripts, and the idea it seems
Speaker 2: based on what I've read is that thoughts rise from
Speaker 2: the heart, they travel up through a very long neck
Speaker 2: before they reach the lips, and therefore, like it's about
Speaker 2: deciding whether you actually want those feelings to come out.
Speaker 2: That is why the neck of the christ like individual,
Speaker 2: the christ like bird here is very long, because there's
Speaker 2: plenty of time to reflect on said thoughts and perhaps
Speaker 2: decide not to say them yeah.
Speaker 3: Or even decide whether you genuinely feel them exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I think we've probably all had the experience of feeling
Speaker 3: like we wanted to express something, only to think about
Speaker 3: it for a minute and think, that's not really what
Speaker 3: I feel.
Speaker 2: Yeah, write out that great email, but don't send it today,
Speaker 2: set it aside for tomorrow, and then a lot of
Speaker 2: the times you'll realize, you know, that's not exactly what
Speaker 2: I meant to say.
Speaker 3: So, anyway, to come back to this relationship between authenticity
Speaker 3: and honesty, from this example of Rousseau, you know, we
Speaker 3: see someone at least partially equating authenticity and honesty, assuming
Speaker 3: that to be authentic is the most honest way to live,
Speaker 3: and that authenticity entails NonStop, moment to moment displays of
Speaker 3: quote fearless honesty or brutal truth telling. And the authors
Speaker 3: also quote another another writer in this paper named Valor,
Speaker 3: who makes a similar equivalent, saying that honesty is defined
Speaker 3: as quote a willingness to put one's authentic self in play.
Speaker 3: But the authors actually propose a counter hypothesis in this paper.
Speaker 3: They write that quote honesty is one of many tools
Speaker 3: in the pursuit of authenticity, and that people will disregard
Speaker 3: or discount honesty as authentic under specific condition. And I
Speaker 3: want to be clear that they're not making a normative
Speaker 3: argument like about how people should use the concepts of
Speaker 3: honesty or authenticity. They're just trying to be descriptive and
Speaker 3: discover how people actually do already use these concepts in
Speaker 3: their day to day lives and in their self image.
Speaker 3: So the authors investigate this idea of the relationship between
Speaker 3: authenticity and honesty in several ways, and one thing they
Speaker 3: do is a simple small survey with an open ended question.
Speaker 3: They asked participants if they could describe a time in
Speaker 3: their life when they quote, lied or did not tell
Speaker 3: the truth in a way that was authentic or true
Speaker 3: to themselves at the time, and the results of this
Speaker 3: were that quote authentic dishonesty really did not generally seem
Speaker 3: to people like an impossible situation or an incoherent concept.
Speaker 3: People generated autobiographical examples of when they were dishonest in
Speaker 3: a way they thought was authentic to themselves. Furthermore, and
Speaker 3: here's the interesting part, the authors say that the examples
Speaker 3: people gave of their own authentic dishonesty fell into basically
Speaker 3: four categories. And I'll list these and describe them as
Speaker 3: I go. So the first example is when the subject
Speaker 3: was dishonest with other people in a way that they
Speaker 3: were also not honest with themselves. So this category might
Speaker 3: not be immediately intuitive, but I think it makes sense
Speaker 3: if you see examples. So, the stories people tell seem
Speaker 3: to be about lying to others about some objective situation,
Speaker 3: for example, about a worrying health prognosis or bad outcomes
Speaker 3: at work or school, or mental health struggles or something
Speaker 3: like that, at the same time that they themselves were
Speaker 3: in some way deluded or quote lying to themselves about
Speaker 3: the situation. So, for example, I'm telling my parents that
Speaker 3: I'm doing fine at college, but in reality, I am
Speaker 3: failing my classes and I'm going through a mental health crisis,
Speaker 3: and the person who says this might say, even though
Speaker 3: I was lying to my parents about how well how
Speaker 3: I was doing, I was being authentic because I was
Speaker 3: also lying to myself. Essentially, I managed to truly convince
Speaker 3: myself of the false things I was telling them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, to borrow the catchphrase from stand up comedian Dusty Sligh,
Speaker 2: we're having a good time like that can essentially be dishonest,
Speaker 2: but you can believe in it, and other people can
Speaker 2: believe in it even if it's not true in the moment.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And actually that raises an interesting facet of this,
Speaker 3: because it raises the question of what exactly it means
Speaker 3: to quote lie to yourself. This is a common enough
Speaker 3: concept that we've all heard of it, and probably you
Speaker 3: have used it ourselves to describe something we've done. And
Speaker 3: it seems to not be the same thing as simply
Speaker 3: being convinced of a delusion. There's some overlap, but being
Speaker 3: delusional can be entirely involuntary. You know like you, don't
Speaker 3: you don't feel like you, or in any way the
Speaker 3: cause of being deluded about something. But when people say
Speaker 3: I was lying to myself, I think they usually mean
Speaker 3: there is some element, even if just a small element
Speaker 3: of willfulness in believing in the delusion, like some part
Speaker 3: of them knows better, but they are they are purposely
Speaker 3: disregarding or ignoring that knowledge.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like I mean, one easy example of this is,
Speaker 2: like you thinking back to like the old days of
Speaker 2: buying CDs, especially as a young person with money's a
Speaker 2: lot tighter, Like you spend your money, you cannot you
Speaker 2: can buy no other album this week, maybe this month,
Speaker 2: And afterwards you're maybe a little less won over by
Speaker 2: the album than you'd hoped, but you're kind of like
Speaker 2: fooling yourself and like, Noah, this is good. I'm getting
Speaker 2: I'm jamming to this. This, this was worth my money,
Speaker 2: This is worth my time.
Speaker 3: It's even got the bonus tracks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's got the bonus tracks. It's like I thought
Speaker 2: it was ten tracks. No, it's twelve tracks. I'd be
Speaker 2: losing money if I didn't buy it.
Speaker 3: Yes. So, However, despite this element of wilfulness, it seems
Speaker 3: to at least in some cases, not rule out seeing
Speaker 3: yourself as authentic when you represent that same misunderstanding of
Speaker 3: reality to other people. So, like you take that CD
Speaker 3: that you're talking yourself into thinking is so great, and
Speaker 3: you show it to your friend and say it's so great.
Speaker 3: You might not think you were being inauthentic there, because
Speaker 3: you really worked yourself up to convince yourself it was great.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was authentically delusional about the quality of this record,
Speaker 2: and honestly, if you know me, you should have seen
Speaker 2: that in me. You should have seen that in my
Speaker 2: eyes and known to approach this recommendation with caution.
Speaker 3: Okay. Other examples of quote authentic dishonesty that people gave.
Speaker 3: There were some examples that were when being honest would
Speaker 3: have threatened the subjects basic needs survival or employment. This
Speaker 3: is the self protection category. A lot of these seem
Speaker 3: to have to do with employment, which I think is
Speaker 3: kind of revealing, but things like lying at work to
Speaker 3: avoid revealing a mistake that could have cost the subject
Speaker 3: their job. Another one that somebody gives is lying about
Speaker 3: former job experience in order to get a new position,
Speaker 3: and the subject in this example specifically says they feel
Speaker 3: it was a good thing to do because they ended
Speaker 3: up doing exceedingly well at the new job that they
Speaker 3: lied in order to get.
Speaker 2: Fake it. Do you make it right? I mean, that's
Speaker 2: basically what we're alluding to.
Speaker 3: That's what they're claiming. I mean, we can't evaluate if
Speaker 3: it's true that they did exceedingly well, but you know,
Speaker 3: for the sake of argument, we'll take it. Another one was,
Speaker 3: and you understand this, somebody lying about psychiatric symptoms in
Speaker 3: order to get admitted to a psych ward to avoid
Speaker 3: being homeless. The subject says that this was authentic because
Speaker 3: they were trying to escape living on the streets during winter,
Speaker 3: which was extremely hard. So that is a lie. It's
Speaker 3: hard to blame somebody for that. But in this case,
Speaker 3: the subject not only saw that as justified, but they
Speaker 3: said for that reason, it was authentic that they did that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, they're talking about survival here right.
Speaker 3: At the same time, it does raise questions about what
Speaker 3: authenticity means in this case. But we can come back
Speaker 3: to that third question. When honesty would harm an important relationship,
Speaker 3: you protecting a relationship, this is probably People can think
Speaker 3: of examples like this. A close friend says, does my
Speaker 3: new haircut look good? And maybe you find nice things
Speaker 3: to say about it, even if you don't actually love it.
Speaker 3: People thought this was still authentic behavior. And then there
Speaker 3: are much more serious examples such as like within family
Speaker 3: and marital relationships, like protecting loved ones from negative judgments
Speaker 3: that you or others would have made about them.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I think both these are very understandable. I mean,
Speaker 2: the haircut is probably the best example, because there is
Speaker 2: a line, there is a line at which your close
Speaker 2: friend's haircut has become so bad that you do have
Speaker 2: to say something. You have to say, actually, this doesn't
Speaker 2: look good. Come with me, we're gonna go get fixed
Speaker 2: right now. You have a job interview tomorrow or something.
Speaker 2: You know, we I'm a good enough friend to let
Speaker 2: you know that we have to go fix this. But
Speaker 2: there's a lot of room on that spectrum for just
Speaker 2: saying yeah, it looks great, and that's what you're expected
Speaker 2: to do as a friend.
Speaker 3: Or in fact, in the haircut example, in this paper,
Speaker 3: they're like the person describes things they found to say
Speaker 3: about the haircut that were true, even though overall they
Speaker 3: did not actually think it was good.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because I mean, bad, bad haircuts happened, and you'll
Speaker 2: grow out of them. You know, it's gonna be pretty
Speaker 2: bad to take it to that next level and say
Speaker 2: we've got to go fix this.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. I think the example was like, yeah, this
Speaker 3: will really stand out, you know, putting a positive sounding
Speaker 3: tone on that, but that'll grow in nicely. Yeah. And
Speaker 3: then fourth final category, this one you can very much understand. Again,
Speaker 3: it's hard to blame people for this when honesty would
Speaker 3: threaten the survival or well being of someone else in
Speaker 3: the protection of other people, So examples would include like
Speaker 3: lying to protect people from physical danger, maybe like a
Speaker 3: counselor lying to potentially abusive family members that you don't
Speaker 3: know about somebody's whereabouts, or maybe to protect someone from
Speaker 3: information that would be devastating to them. So it's interesting
Speaker 3: that some of these versions of authenticity do sort of
Speaker 3: go along with the inside matches the outside definition, but
Speaker 3: some do not. Some of these are simply cases of
Speaker 3: people lying or misrepresenting themselves in a situation where they believe,
Speaker 3: in some way it was justified. So in those cases,
Speaker 3: authenticity would seem to mean something different than than the
Speaker 3: way we've been using it. It would seem to mean
Speaker 3: morally justified, regardless of whether you were expressing your true
Speaker 3: feelings on the outside or not. And these examples just
Speaker 3: seem to reinforce to me how fluid our concept of
Speaker 3: authenticity is. Once again, despite how important it is in
Speaker 3: these day to day judgments we make about people and
Speaker 3: about ourselves, it seems to have ill defined boundaries, and
Speaker 3: the authors review some other findings that further illuminate and
Speaker 3: complicate the relationship between honesty and authenticity. For example, and
Speaker 3: this came up in Part one, in order to evaluate
Speaker 3: whether your external behavior is consistent with your true self,
Speaker 3: you have to both know what your true self is
Speaker 3: and be able to objectively observe and analyze your external behavior,
Speaker 3: and both of those tasks are non trivial. The authors
Speaker 3: point out that both of them are problematic even given
Speaker 3: what we know from other psychology studies, because studies show
Speaker 3: systematic biases in how we perceive ourselves. People tend to
Speaker 3: see themselves as morally better than the average person, and
Speaker 3: experiments show that people have selective memories of events end
Speaker 3: of information that help bolster a positive self image. So
Speaker 3: this can make research about honesty and authenticity rather difficult
Speaker 3: because both honesty and authenticity people take to have moral implications,
Speaker 3: so people are motivated to exaggerate the extent to which
Speaker 3: they are both in self reports. Though the authors do
Speaker 3: point to one pretty interesting study from twenty twenty that
Speaker 3: used a bit of trickery to look into whether self
Speaker 3: reported and even test evaluated authenticity might be biased or
Speaker 3: strategic self presentation. So this other paper I went and
Speaker 3: looked at was by William hart at All, published in
Speaker 3: Personality and Individual Differences in twenty twenty, called to be
Speaker 3: or to appear to be evidence that authentic people seek
Speaker 3: to appear authentic rather than be authentic. So the authors
Speaker 3: in their abstract right quote participants numbering two hundred and
Speaker 3: forty completed a bogus color gazing task under the presumption
Speaker 3: that authentic people see colors become more or less intense
Speaker 3: while gazing at them. And these were the two conditions,
Speaker 3: the more intense condition and the less intense condition. And
Speaker 3: they say that quote participants reported perceiving color as more
Speaker 3: intense in the more intense condition. But this biased responding
Speaker 3: consistent with appearing authentic, was enhanced by trait authenticity indicators.
Speaker 3: So to paraphrase there, participants were told that other studies
Speaker 3: have found that more authentic people will see the color
Speaker 3: of this block either intensify or de intensify, and in
Speaker 3: reality the colors did not change at all. And then
Speaker 3: the experiment found that on average, people who rated themselves
Speaker 3: as more authentic on a self assessment test were more
Speaker 3: likely to claim they saw the color change in line
Speaker 3: with whatever they thought an authentic person was supposed to see. So,
Speaker 3: in other words, there was some amount of interest in
Speaker 3: either lying or in perceiving reality differently in order to
Speaker 3: protect the idea of an authentic self. So this is
Speaker 3: a piece of evidence that maybe not all the time,
Speaker 3: but probably some of the time, maybe a lot of
Speaker 3: the time, authenticity itself is a strategic performance e g.
Speaker 3: Inauthentic behavior in service of appearing to be authentic. So
Speaker 3: it's interesting to pair this with that study, that finding
Speaker 3: from part one about how people are not good at
Speaker 3: judging who is authentic and who is not, at least
Speaker 3: when compared with self assessments, which of course are themselves
Speaker 3: possibly misleading. So I want to pause briefly here before
Speaker 3: you lose all hope, because remember that studies like this
Speaker 3: are observing trends and tendencies on average in behavior, not
Speaker 3: like totalizing realities about all people all the time. So
Speaker 3: I would not walk away from these kinds of findings thinking,
Speaker 3: oh my god, life is a lie. Nobody is ever
Speaker 3: been genuine. I don't think that's the takeaway. Personally, I
Speaker 3: would think about it more like these types of studies
Speaker 3: offer limited individual pieces of evidence, that often the social
Speaker 3: impressions of authenticity that we form are misleading, that social
Speaker 3: impressions of authenticity are often not what they seem, and
Speaker 3: we should be careful about placing too much weight on
Speaker 3: the authenticity assessments of people that we form, especially after
Speaker 3: superficial interactions. So in other words, you know, I'd say
Speaker 3: it's probably not a good strategy to decide whether you
Speaker 3: trust someone with something important on the basis of whether
Speaker 3: they give off an authentic vibe or not. It might
Speaker 3: be better to look at like an objective track record
Speaker 3: of their behavior in the past or something like that. Yeah.
Speaker 2: But though, of course the conundrum is we do this
Speaker 2: all the time, right, Yeah, And a great deal goes
Speaker 2: into making sure that individuals put forward that vibe that
Speaker 2: we trust, be that individual, sale person, a company spokesman,
Speaker 2: a politician, a newscaster, I mean, you name it. We're
Speaker 2: supposed to to instantly feel like, yeah, I trust this person.
Speaker 2: This person seems to know what they're talking about, they
Speaker 2: seem authentic. I don't need to look at a track
Speaker 2: record I don't need to see any papers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and again, you know, it's not that nobody is
Speaker 3: trustworthy or nobody is authentic. I think it's just more that,
Speaker 3: like you know, more caution and careful analysis is required.
Speaker 3: Maybe sometimes we are a bit naive in trusting how
Speaker 3: good we are at judging the authenticity of others.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean sometimes it comes down to the fact that, yes,
Speaker 2: more homework would be required to make a really accurate judgment,
Speaker 2: but we also often don't have time to make do
Speaker 2: that homework, you know. Like I'm thinking particularly about local elections,
Speaker 2: looking back now on a local election maybe like a
Speaker 2: couple of cycles ago, there are a lot of local
Speaker 2: candidates going through this one position and getting a lot
Speaker 2: of information about these candidates nice you know, big sheets
Speaker 2: put in your mailbox, and sometimes they drop by the house.
Speaker 2: And I had one interaction with one of the candidates
Speaker 2: who dropped by the house, and then afterwards I was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: she's the one.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It was just it was totally a vibe thing. It
Speaker 2: was just like she seems nice, and and I've seen
Speaker 2: that the literature is coming through the mail about this candidate.
Speaker 2: They're definitely on the ballot. I got a good vibe
Speaker 2: off of them, they're the one, but I did not
Speaker 2: do the homework. I think later on I did do
Speaker 2: a little bit more homework and I realized, Okay, I
Speaker 2: need to be more informed about this. But at least
Speaker 2: for a while there, I was like, oh, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's that's the candidate I'm voting for.
Speaker 3: I know exactly what you're talking about. Yeah, it's in
Speaker 3: that specific example, but in many things in life, you
Speaker 3: just feel like it's it is. It would be a
Speaker 3: prohibitive investment of time to try to get as much
Speaker 3: information as you feel like you would actually need. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so it's just like how are you supposed to live?
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I guess the challenge is just sort of
Speaker 2: to have some level of self awareness when we're doing that,
Speaker 2: so that we can we can avoid making the wrong
Speaker 2: choices in life.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, or at least, I don't know, be conscious
Speaker 3: of ways that we are vulnerable to being swayed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Because of course you also don't have to. You
Speaker 2: just don't have time to be like, prove it faker
Speaker 2: everybody that comes at you, you know.
Speaker 3: But even then, I mean, like another question is is
Speaker 3: imagine somebody is actually being quote authentic. They are truly
Speaker 3: representing their inner thoughts and feelings versus somebody else who
Speaker 3: is not. Is that necessarily actually a better a better leader,
Speaker 3: or a better officeholder? Not necessarily Yeah. This paper looked
Speaker 3: at several other studies in various domains about the relationship
Speaker 3: between honesty and authenticity. One was cultural variation in how
Speaker 3: seemingly honest expressions of internal states relate to perceptions of authenticity.
Speaker 3: They at a study from twenty fourteen that compared perceptions
Speaker 3: of authenticity among both German and Chinese participants, and this
Speaker 3: experiment found that you take a fictional character and you
Speaker 3: have them list either their likes and their dislikes or
Speaker 3: just their likes. And this experiment found that the character
Speaker 3: was judged to be more authentic by German participants if
Speaker 3: they listed both their likes and dislikes, but judged as
Speaker 3: more authentic by the Chinese participants if they listed just
Speaker 3: their likes and not their dislikes. Now, in both cases,
Speaker 3: the likes and dislikes were presented as honest expressions, but
Speaker 3: there were apparently some likely cultural differences in what types
Speaker 3: of honest expression were thought of as displaying authentic behavior.
Speaker 2: That's interesting.
Speaker 3: There were also some studies in the political context, and
Speaker 3: some of these findings can be a little bit unsettling.
Speaker 3: The authors mentioned a twenty eighteen study by hall At
Speaker 3: which found that in the case of a hypothetical political
Speaker 3: demagogue who told flagrant and provable lies, people could still
Speaker 3: believe the lying demagogue to be authentic, and that mere
Speaker 3: partisan affiliation was not sufficient to achieve this view of
Speaker 3: the flagrantly lying demagogue is authentic. The other condition that
Speaker 3: was necessary was that the participant viewed the political system
Speaker 3: as illegitimate, so kind of interesting finding like lies, flagrant
Speaker 3: lies can be perceived as authentic if you think the
Speaker 3: norms of the system under which you live is not legitimate,
Speaker 3: and in a way, kind of the flagrant lying, the
Speaker 3: violation of those norms comes to be perceived as some
Speaker 3: sort of righteous rebuke. In a similar domain, experiments have
Speaker 3: found a tendency for people to view expressions of prejudice
Speaker 3: and politically offensive language as authentic as long as they
Speaker 3: held the same prejudiced views as the person may The expression.
Speaker 2: That's that's a weird one to unwrap, because I feel
Speaker 2: like you can you can judge someone's offensive language and
Speaker 2: expressions of prejudice as being authentic even if you don't
Speaker 2: share them. Yeah, but this is saying that there's a
Speaker 2: tendency for people to view expressions of prejudice and politically
Speaker 2: offensive language as authentic as long as they hold those
Speaker 2: same views, right, Okay.
Speaker 3: Right, or maybe just to judge the trait authenticity in
Speaker 3: the person making the expression, rather than evaluating the expressions themselves.
Speaker 2: Okay, So this is kind of a someone's finally saying,
Speaker 2: it's sort of a thinking with the language.
Speaker 3: Gotcha exactly. Yeah. So, given that whole blizzard of different
Speaker 3: findings in the seemingly paradoxical relationship between honesty and authenticity,
Speaker 3: the authors propose a model of how these two concepts
Speaker 3: actually interact, and they call it a coherent model. So,
Speaker 3: to use their own words here, quote, A coherence perspective
Speaker 3: stresses the importance of how much new information makes sense
Speaker 3: in light of what is already known or believed to
Speaker 3: be true. And then later, a little later, they say, quote,
Speaker 3: we propose that the more coherent the mental image of
Speaker 3: a target person is, the more authentic they will seem. Similarly,
Speaker 3: the more coherent a mental version of oneself is, the
Speaker 3: more authentic they will report being. So does that make sense.
Speaker 3: It's about like the idea of having a consistent mental
Speaker 3: picture of the person, whether that's yourself or of another person,
Speaker 3: that you feel like you fully understand and all the
Speaker 3: information you have checks out with that image. So, under
Speaker 3: this model, in both the self perception and in perception
Speaker 3: by others, if behaving honestly in a given situation cuation
Speaker 3: will help increase the coherence of that self image of
Speaker 3: that image of the person, honesty will be perceived as authentic.
Speaker 3: And if honest behavior would be inconsistent with that self
Speaker 3: image or helps that image of the person make less sense,
Speaker 3: then it will be perceived as authentic to behave dishonestly.
Speaker 3: So the question is what makes sense given the image
Speaker 3: you have of the person in question. And I think
Speaker 3: this goes a long way to explain a lot of
Speaker 3: these so called authentic lies, which are either rationalized as
Speaker 3: authentic to the self because they serve a higher moral
Speaker 3: good and the protection of others, or because they are
Speaker 3: justified in some way in self preservation or in the
Speaker 3: protection of an important relationship, or because at the time
Speaker 3: the person told them they were also quote lying to
Speaker 3: themselves in any case, they could be framed as making
Speaker 3: sense based on the image of the self or the
Speaker 3: image of the person inoperation at the time. So I
Speaker 3: think the lies that people might see as inauthentic to
Speaker 3: themselves would be ones that sort of undermine the self image,
Speaker 3: that seem out of character, or don't make sense within
Speaker 3: the coherent view of the person.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 3: So, according to this model, people perceive authenticity as not
Speaker 3: the unvarnished expression of people's true inner feelings, but rather
Speaker 3: acting in a way that is predictable and consistent based
Speaker 3: on the image of that person that they already have
Speaker 3: in their head. Okay, And this makes a lot of
Speaker 3: sense to me. I think this is a good model
Speaker 3: of how people most often use the idea of authenticity,
Speaker 3: but there's still so much variation in how it's applied,
Speaker 3: and I think plenty of reason that we should be
Speaker 3: cautious about relying too much on our heuristic judgments of
Speaker 3: authenticity in others.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, because Yeah, like we've been saying on one love,
Speaker 2: you can't go through life accusing everyone of being a
Speaker 2: faker and assuming that no one is being genuine, that
Speaker 2: no one is authentic. But on the on the other hand,
Speaker 2: you know, the reverse is true as well, Like it
Speaker 2: pays to have some level of self analysis about uh,
Speaker 2: to what extent we're just you know, having these gut
Speaker 2: impulses and believing this person or believing that person. We
Speaker 2: should be able to take it apart to some degree.
Speaker 2: Uh though as we've looked at though, that can be
Speaker 2: difficult given all that's going on.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just to I would say my own thoughts here.
Speaker 3: This is not necessarily based on anything we've read in
Speaker 3: this research that I think with like interpersonal relationships, friendships
Speaker 3: and stuff like that, it's good to be more generous
Speaker 3: at least at first, like unless you've you know, been
Speaker 3: seriously betrayed in some way to be more generous and
Speaker 3: and awarding of trust to people. And if it's ambiguous,
Speaker 3: I guess the situation in which you want to be
Speaker 3: careful is like if there is something material, like a
Speaker 3: big material question on the line, and you're you're trying
Speaker 3: to decide whether or not to trust somebody and they
Speaker 3: just give you an authentic vibe, you know, or are
Speaker 3: you looking to invest a lot of money, are you
Speaker 3: looking to like make somebody, put somebody an important leadership
Speaker 3: position or something like that, and you're just going on
Speaker 3: an authenticity vibe. I think that's a good time to
Speaker 3: put the brakes on and say, wait a minute, or
Speaker 3: is there another way for me to look at this?
Speaker 3: Can I be more objective?
Speaker 2: Yeah, but like your favorite musical artists, just switch genres
Speaker 2: a little bit, you know, give it the benefit of
Speaker 2: the doubt. Let's tell you the worst thing that could happen.
Speaker 3: Right, Okay, That's what I've got for today. But Rob,
Speaker 3: I think you wanted to talk about authenticity and religion, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Now, this is a big, big topic to sort
Speaker 2: of dip our toes in a little bit here, Authenticity
Speaker 2: of religion, authenticity in religion. I mean, we've already discussed
Speaker 2: how difficult it is to frame all this up in
Speaker 2: terms of the self, you know, and the mysterious nature
Speaker 2: of our own self and other selves, other individuals that
Speaker 2: we just have to form mental models, sometimes very informed
Speaker 2: mental models, but still mental models of what their internal
Speaker 2: life is like, what is what is truly authentic for
Speaker 2: that individual where we have to form a model of
Speaker 2: that in our own minds. But then getting into the
Speaker 2: realm of religion, Uh, yeah, that's obviously a whole different
Speaker 2: kettle of fish totally. So yeah, how broadly are we
Speaker 2: supposed to think about authenticity in religion? You know, there's
Speaker 2: a there's a lot to unpact there, you know, as
Speaker 2: as we've already discussed multiple ways is it to think
Speaker 2: about the concept of authenticity in this series? And on
Speaker 2: top of that, there are various ways to think about religion,
Speaker 2: you know, especially on this show, we tend to dismiss
Speaker 2: the idea of just like okay, religion, is that? Is
Speaker 2: that fake or is that real? You know, like there's
Speaker 2: there's a lot of space between those two extremes, you know,
Speaker 2: you know, you could you can think about religion in
Speaker 2: terms of whether it is one hundred percent accurate. Is
Speaker 2: it a one hundred percent accurate understanding of reality? Is
Speaker 2: it a legitimate cultural tradition? Is it are we talking
Speaker 2: more about the realm of mythology? Are we talking more
Speaker 2: about a particular worldview? In many cases we may get
Speaker 2: into like religion as literature, Like there's just so many
Speaker 2: different ways to look at a given faith as opposed
Speaker 2: to just you know, saying like is this a real
Speaker 2: story or is this a fake story? Like, no, there's
Speaker 2: a lot of room between there just in terms of stories.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I mean, I would say specifically for our audience.
Speaker 3: I think one thing that that did a lot of
Speaker 3: damage was, like in the two thousands in the United
Speaker 3: States context, there was a lot of like evolution versus
Speaker 3: creationism debates and stuff that really forced people to think
Speaker 3: about religion primarily in terms of whether the claims of
Speaker 3: its founding myths are literally descriptive of facts that took
Speaker 3: place in history. And I mean, obviously that is a
Speaker 3: question you can ask, and it's fine to ask that question,
Speaker 3: but I think that it caused a lot of people
Speaker 3: to see questions of religion only on those terms like
Speaker 3: is the bi Bible literally true or something in the
Speaker 3: US context, which I think is a sort of deranging
Speaker 3: lens of focus that really causes people to miss a
Speaker 3: lot of what religion means to people and the role
Speaker 3: it plays in their lives.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely, So before we even get into it,
Speaker 2: just know that, like, that's largely I think where we're
Speaker 2: coming from. It's largely where I think a lot of
Speaker 2: the sources that I was looking at are coming from.
Speaker 2: And this is a topic concerning authenticity and religion that
Speaker 2: a lot of people have written on. So I'm not
Speaker 2: going to be able to provide like a huge overview
Speaker 2: of everything has been thought or said about this. But
Speaker 2: I was looking in one particular paper, this is a
Speaker 2: Fake Religion or Deals of Authenticity in the Study of
Speaker 2: Religion by David Chidester. At the top of this paper,
Speaker 2: he points to a quote from Thomas Edison, who apparently said,
Speaker 2: I think this was maybe in some letters said, so
Speaker 2: far as religion of the day is concerned, it is
Speaker 2: a damned fake, okay, and so on one level, okay,
Speaker 2: if we if we just go with this view, all right,
Speaker 2: if Edison is correct here, if all religion is fake,
Speaker 2: then no auth then no religion is authentic. Nothing can
Speaker 2: be authentic. Everything is just a story created by human beings,
Speaker 2: and we can just simply pack it up right there, right.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean that would raise questions about what he
Speaker 3: meant by a fake, like does that mean that it
Speaker 3: is that like the founding myths are not literally true,
Speaker 3: in which case, you know, I guess I'm more sympathetic
Speaker 3: to that idea. But if he means like it is
Speaker 3: all propagated from a place of inauthenticity, I don't think
Speaker 3: I would agree with that. So obviously the multiple meanings
Speaker 3: of authenticity and fakeness come into play here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, even in a statement like this that would at
Speaker 2: least i'm a surface appear to be very you know,
Speaker 2: like firm and extreme. So, as Chinaster points out, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's not. It's not so simple to really weigh in
Speaker 2: on authenticity and religion because even if this is even
Speaker 2: even if we agree with this and say, all right,
Speaker 2: to some degree, all religions are fake, and yet some
Speaker 2: religions are definitely faker than others. That is to say,
Speaker 2: we have occasionally or even frequently, depending where you're looking,
Speaker 2: we do contend with outright religious frauds. You can you know,
Speaker 2: likely bust out some sliding scales on this idea as well.
Speaker 2: But there are clear cases of hoaxes, pyramid schemes, and
Speaker 2: cons that use the trappings of religion and are not
Speaker 2: engaging in what you might call good faith at any
Speaker 2: level of the operation.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, so I can definitely see the difference there.
Speaker 3: For example, faith healing. I might be skeptical of the
Speaker 3: literal efficacy of faith healing in any case, at least
Speaker 3: you know, by other than placebo mechanisms, but there are
Speaker 3: different types of faith healing. There are the kinds where
Speaker 3: people believe they are engaging in something that is really
Speaker 3: going to help people, and then there are people who
Speaker 3: are pulling hoaxes. There are people who are like you know,
Speaker 3: engaging in conscious fraud fakery.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and obviously with various with largest larger religious organizations
Speaker 2: and groups and even like big churches or temples, there's
Speaker 2: room to have multiple things going on at once. You
Speaker 2: could have conceivably easily have a situation where you have
Speaker 2: some individuals in an operation that are very much believers
Speaker 2: and are being what you might call authentic, and then
Speaker 2: you might have say, like, I don't know, maybe the
Speaker 2: building department they're just bad, like they there's there's there's
Speaker 2: there's something very suspicious about this spotch You know, you
Speaker 2: can have multiple energies going on within the same movement. Obviously,
Speaker 2: so anyway, there's sort of one way of thinking about it.
Speaker 2: But uh, there have also been numerous inauthentic efforts or
Speaker 2: attempts to communicate say, indigenous religions to foreign audiences. So
Speaker 2: the author here, David Chidester, points to an extreme example
Speaker 2: of this again like getting into just straight up con
Speaker 2: artist here and that would be eighteen tenth century French
Speaker 2: con artist George Saul Maanassar, who was who for years
Speaker 2: convinced many in Britain that he was a native of
Speaker 2: Formosa what we now know is Taiwan uh, and shared
Speaker 2: all sorts of discompletely fraudulent information about his supposed life there,
Speaker 2: shared an invented alphabet, uninvented religion and saying, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: this is the this is the real Formosian religion right here,
Speaker 2: this is what I grew up on, and also making
Speaker 2: all sorts of crazy claims that okay, some of them
Speaker 2: protective of his con like saying, well, of course I
Speaker 2: have pale skin because upper class Formosians live underground obviously,
Speaker 2: and uh, and he was, and he could he still had.
Speaker 2: There were plenty of skeptics that were like, this guy's
Speaker 2: not on the level. But they also included and they
Speaker 2: also included Jesuits who had actually visited Formosa, but they
Speaker 2: were largely apparently dismissed within Britain due to anti Catholic
Speaker 2: sentiments of the time. So still, and there were people saying,
Speaker 2: you're full of it, this doesn't sound right. But he
Speaker 2: was good at at least fighting off these critiques, at
Speaker 2: least in the short term, and his reports of life
Speaker 2: over there contained all sorts of just you know, outrageous
Speaker 2: and offensive concepts, including things like ritual cannibalism. But the
Speaker 2: thing is they felt exotic enough to capture the attention
Speaker 2: of his intended audience, like they met expectations to some degree,
Speaker 2: like this is the kind of account that many in
Speaker 2: the population were hungry for, even if the experts were saying,
Speaker 2: I don't know if this is actually accurate. This doesn't
Speaker 2: match up with what I've heard from other individuals who
Speaker 2: have traveled either to this particular place or to places
Speaker 2: in the region.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's interesting. It sounds almost like from his audience's perspective,
Speaker 3: he was presenting a coherent view of a person that
Speaker 3: made sense given their expectations of what someone from this
Speaker 3: place would be like. And thus like there, you know, yeah,
Speaker 3: he's being authentic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and essentially created inauthentic religion, a fake religion, and
Speaker 2: presented it as if it were real. Again, this is
Speaker 2: an extreme example, and it's one that's grounded in outright fakery,
Speaker 2: but there are various levels of the problem, even in
Speaker 2: well meaning attempts to study and chronicle religion. Now he
Speaker 2: gets into another obvious reality about all of this. Among
Speaker 2: the faithful, the religion you practice is often talled is
Speaker 2: the authentic one, and of course it's the other religions
Speaker 2: that are the fakes. Like, that's just how this sort
Speaker 2: of thing works. That's how you build your worldview, that's
Speaker 2: how you maintain the US versus the them.
Speaker 3: Well, to be fair, I would say that there is
Speaker 3: actually variance among the religions in how they regard the
Speaker 3: other religions. So there are some religions that are outright like, yes,
Speaker 3: every other religion on earth except mine is a lie.
Speaker 3: It's a complete fraud. There are others that have kind
Speaker 3: of like, uh, yes, other people may have part of
Speaker 3: the truth or something like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it definitely depends on the context and the exact
Speaker 2: arrangement in time period. You know, there are there are
Speaker 2: cases where you have different Like you can look to
Speaker 2: some Protestant versus Catholic divisions. They have been rather extreme
Speaker 2: and heated obviously at different times and in different places
Speaker 2: in ways that seem like, you know, more heated than
Speaker 2: would be the relationship between religions that were more different
Speaker 2: from each other.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a part of that would be physical proximity
Speaker 3: and thus having to negotiate sharing political spheres. But then
Speaker 3: on top of that you could also attribute some of
Speaker 3: it to what might be called the narcissism of small differences.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and of course it's often the role of an
Speaker 2: orthodox fate faith to point out who the heretics are
Speaker 2: within their own faith or in the peripheries of that faith.
Speaker 2: And these efforts, I guess in some cases, you know,
Speaker 2: they may deal with identifying actual harmful splinter groups or extremists,
Speaker 2: but it can also simply involve the other ing and
Speaker 2: criticism of competition or you know, the endangerment of other
Speaker 2: practices of a of a mainstream and entrenched religion, if
Speaker 2: you will. And of course this also includes the demonization
Speaker 2: of local religious traditions. We saw this especially by European Christians.
Speaker 2: You create an inauthentic interpretation of a traditional faith in
Speaker 2: order to prop up the authority and authenticity of one's
Speaker 2: own your gods, these old gods you believe in, well,
Speaker 2: those are actually demons. That's how we understand them. Women
Speaker 2: are the truth thing.
Speaker 3: So not just saying whatever you believe is wrong, but
Speaker 3: also saying, like here, is an alternate interpretation of whatever
Speaker 3: you believe, a very unflattering one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And the interesting double nature of this, as Shyduester
Speaker 2: points out, is that on one hand, you're saying a
Speaker 2: local shaman is a fraud who made all of this up,
Speaker 2: But on the you're saying that he's totally not a
Speaker 2: fraud and is actually in league with demonic powers. So
Speaker 2: which is it? Sometimes both even at the same time.
Speaker 2: Chiitaser points to examples of this involving say, early nineteenth
Speaker 2: century missionaries in Africa, who at once would have been saying, oh,
Speaker 2: well that that guy, the shaman, he's a fraud, he's
Speaker 2: just making all this up. But also beware of him,
Speaker 2: he's in leak with the devil, which is we also
Speaker 2: see he points out the double standard regarding authentication via
Speaker 2: material objects. So relics were of course of great importance,
Speaker 2: especially the early Roman Catholic Church and into the Middle
Speaker 2: Ages and so forth. And know, the tradition still holds
Speaker 2: to this day. You know, here is physical evidence that
Speaker 2: this saint existed, that this saint suffered. You know, here
Speaker 2: this is our evidence. This is this is authentic. And
Speaker 2: chidas are points to accounts that stolen relics were sometimes
Speaker 2: thought to be even more valued because the saint it
Speaker 2: was associated with could have been viewed as implicit in
Speaker 2: the theft, you know, like they the saint willed that
Speaker 2: this item be taken so that it could be kept
Speaker 2: somewhere better, that sort of thing. But on the other hand,
Speaker 2: magical items from outside of the faith, well, these were
Speaker 2: deemed as fetishes and idols. These were harmful things. These
Speaker 2: were not proof of anything, These were just these are
Speaker 2: harmful fixations.
Speaker 3: It's interesting in that it frames like the artifacts used
Speaker 3: within one's own religion as like pieces of rational evidence,
Speaker 3: and the artifacts used within someone else's religion as objects
Speaker 3: of people's irrational emotional attachment.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, eventually you get into the Enlightenment and the
Speaker 2: out there points out here that you have two sort
Speaker 2: of contrasting ideals that emerge to determine authenticity, particularly with
Speaker 2: Christians in Christianity and Christian thought. One is transparency, which
Speaker 2: seems to kind of center on kind of a gut
Speaker 2: feeling a Christian will have. He describes it as an
Speaker 2: illuminated capacity, uh, that would supposedly help you distinguish between
Speaker 2: genuine and the genuine and the fake, which is something
Speaker 2: that we've been saying. This could surely never steer one wrong, you.
Speaker 3: Know, right, No, this is you sometimes like you you
Speaker 3: just you have a feeling in the in your heart
Speaker 3: that you know it's true.
Speaker 2: And then the other idea is control. And this, uh,
Speaker 2: this is interesting getting this idea that it's it kind
Speaker 2: of gets back to what we were talking about in
Speaker 2: terms of like not not being the first to speak
Speaker 2: your mind and letting thoughts percolate, but it ends up
Speaker 2: ends up going beyond that. So much of this is
Speaker 2: apparently based on the New Testament and then the letter
Speaker 2: Letters of James, and I think the two main bits
Speaker 2: from the scripture here are those who consider themselves religious
Speaker 2: and yet do not keep a tight rain on their
Speaker 2: tongues deceive themselves and their religion is worthless. And then
Speaker 2: I think there's a later bit where it is but
Speaker 2: no human being contained the tongue. It is a restless evil,
Speaker 2: full of deadly poison. And so it gets into like
Speaker 2: controlling the human voice, controlling what you say and more importantly,
Speaker 2: what you don't say. But they didn't stop at the
Speaker 2: human voice. They also put a great deal of thought
Speaker 2: into how belching and farting impacted authenticity and religion. Apparently
Speaker 2: I'm not making this up. Like laughter, sneezing, these are
Speaker 2: also things that attracted the attention of the theologians of
Speaker 2: the day, though it really feels like they're in the
Speaker 2: weeds at this point.
Speaker 3: I don't think this is what you're talking about at
Speaker 3: this point. But Martin Luther, that you know, who was
Speaker 3: responsible for the Protestant Reformation, was famously skatological love talking
Speaker 3: about like farting and pooping.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it seems like he would be kind of
Speaker 2: in sharp contrast to what this line of thought is saying.
Speaker 2: You know that you know absolutely shouldn't be belching in
Speaker 2: f ard, you shouldn't be sneezing, you should be controlling laughter,
Speaker 2: or any kind of physical outburst that is not tightly
Speaker 2: control is somehow a danger to authenticity. So I don't know.
Speaker 2: I won't pretend to fully understand how this applies to
Speaker 2: being able to judge one's religion as being authentic and
Speaker 2: to rightfully judge other versions of the faith or other
Speaker 2: faiths as inauthentic. But I guess it shows like the
Speaker 2: level of sort of mental gymnastics and theological gymnastics you
Speaker 2: end up turning to when grasping, grappling with a question
Speaker 2: like this, like what how do you know what religion
Speaker 2: is true? Like, because you know, outside of miracles occurring,
Speaker 2: what do you have? You know, just subjective experience, personal charisma,
Speaker 2: and other people weighted arguments for interpretations of natural phenomena
Speaker 2: that are better understood through science. That's what I see
Speaker 2: all the time. You know, where someone's like, you don't
Speaker 2: believe in God? Well have you looked at this cat?
Speaker 3: Right? Yeah?
Speaker 2: You know, on an emotional level, it's like cat is cute.
Speaker 2: I don't know, you kind of got me there, But
Speaker 2: we have all these other ways of understanding why the
Speaker 2: cat looks like it looks and why we feel this
Speaker 2: way about said cat.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, yeah, I'm very much on that frequency. I
Speaker 3: don't begrudge anybody their religious beliefs, but you can't prove
Speaker 3: your religious beliefs by saying, look, observe the cat, look
Speaker 3: at the cat?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, in my own opinion, I mean it
Speaker 2: comes down to faith, right, And a lot of faith
Speaker 2: is believing in that which cannot be proven without without
Speaker 2: a shadow of a doubt, you know. Yeah, that's what
Speaker 2: it's about again. Without an outright miracle occurring. And even
Speaker 2: then you get into you know, we've discussed hallucinations and
Speaker 2: so forth on the show before, So even then you're
Speaker 2: still dealing with something that has tremendous subjective weight and
Speaker 2: tremendously in motion weight, in personal weight, and is therefore
Speaker 2: not something that can be presented as like here we
Speaker 2: go a prove of God.
Speaker 3: Confirmed right now.
Speaker 2: The author here also gets into what he calls virtual
Speaker 2: religions on the internet, but something that is elsewhere discussed
Speaker 2: in terms of hyper real religions. And I believe we've
Speaker 2: talked about the hyper real religions on the show before.
Speaker 3: Right, so religions that we've actually been able to see
Speaker 3: within human history. The arc from something that began as
Speaker 3: consciously inauthentic in some at least in one sense, like
Speaker 3: began maybe as a joke, or began as a sort
Speaker 3: of an art project or something like that, something that
Speaker 3: was not originally believed as a genuine religious movement, that
Speaker 3: came to be believed as a genuine religious movement.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like it's the roots may be in fiction, they
Speaker 2: may be in activism, you know, or like you said,
Speaker 2: parody and so forth. But over time, they may grow
Speaker 2: into something else. They may not, they may not grow
Speaker 2: at all. It may just be, you know, a quick
Speaker 2: laugh and then we're done with it. But you know,
Speaker 2: we we have been able to observe some of these
Speaker 2: things growing, taking on some of the the the aspects,
Speaker 2: the trappings, and sometimes even the legal protections of religion
Speaker 2: of quote unquote authentic religion.
Speaker 3: And as with most things in authenticity, it's it's hard
Speaker 3: to look at somebody else and judge whether, wait, do
Speaker 3: you really believe in the Jedi religion? I mean, there's
Speaker 3: a there's a tendency to doubt people like that. But
Speaker 3: if someone professes that they do. I'm I am a
Speaker 3: true believing Jediist, what are you going to say to them?
Speaker 3: You're not?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Jediism is a good example of this. There's dudism.
Speaker 2: There are other examples like Church of the SubGenius and
Speaker 2: so forth, where yeah, it's like it may start as
Speaker 2: a joke, it clearly has roots in fiction. But if
Speaker 2: it takes if it truly takes on this this light,
Speaker 2: if it becomes an important part of someone's life and
Speaker 2: their worldview, and and above all of it, it improves
Speaker 2: their life, life and doesn't hurt anybody else, then you
Speaker 2: know what's the beef right. And I think you can
Speaker 2: also throw in discussions of the likes of say Leveyan
Speaker 2: Satanism and also more recently the Satanic Temple, with the
Speaker 2: acknowledgment that there's often this kind of ambiguous space for
Speaker 2: any new religious movement, a kind of discussion of authenticity
Speaker 2: and even a change in mission for a given movement,
Speaker 2: because as with any religion, things change over time and
Speaker 2: a central body or central individual cannot always control it. Actually,
Speaker 2: this is something that Frank Herbert gets into a bit
Speaker 2: in the Doom novels. You know, it's like once a faith,
Speaker 2: once a following has built up, that doesn't mean the
Speaker 2: person at the center of it has full control over
Speaker 2: it anymore, you know. And just because you have the
Speaker 2: copyright for the name of the religion doesn't mean that
Speaker 2: you are its master.
Speaker 3: And this doesn't apply only to religions, but I think
Speaker 3: there is a general tendency among people to, over time
Speaker 3: try to find meaning in whatever they have spent their
Speaker 3: time and effort doing, even if that thing started off
Speaker 3: as just fun. Whatever you have spent your time and
Speaker 3: effort on, even if it started just as a game
Speaker 3: or a joke or whatever. I think there's just this
Speaker 3: inexorable pull over time to look back and want to
Speaker 3: feel like your time has been well spent, and thus
Speaker 3: think that maybe there was more to what I was
Speaker 3: doing than I originally thought. And I can definitely see
Speaker 3: how this tendency like on one hand, this is the
Speaker 3: kind of thing that turns like jokes and memes over
Speaker 3: time into sincere political beliefs. You've probably seen this kind
Speaker 3: of arc of people who are like meming all the
Speaker 3: time on the Internet. I think the same thing could
Speaker 3: happen with a joke religion. You spend enough time on
Speaker 3: the joke and you eventually decide like, actually there's something
Speaker 3: going on here.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, And I was thinking about that a lot
Speaker 2: as I was looking at this other source two thousand
Speaker 2: and eight worked by Thomas Alberts titled Virtually Real Fake
Speaker 2: Religions and Problems of Authenticity and Religion, and he invokes
Speaker 2: three different principles, including Walter Benjamin's theory of the dialectical
Speaker 2: image and Peter Berger's theory of redeeming laughter. But I
Speaker 2: want to just briefly focus on the third, and that's
Speaker 2: Australian anthropologist Michael Tausig's theory of defacement. So Tasig wrote,
Speaker 2: quote defacement asks what happens when something precious is despoiled.
Speaker 2: It begins with the notion that such activity is attractive
Speaker 2: in its very repulsion, and that it creates something sacred,
Speaker 2: even in the most secular of societies and circumstances. So
Speaker 2: Tausig gets into the importance of like secrecy and both
Speaker 2: religion and taboo and the interplay between the two. And
Speaker 2: I may not be grasping the full depth of this topic,
Speaker 2: but if I'm understanding it even halfway correctly, I think
Speaker 2: one possible use of defacement here is that anytime you
Speaker 2: despoil something that is held up as sacred, you can't
Speaker 2: help but potentially create something that is also sacred. So
Speaker 2: Alberts argues that quote, fake religions produce secruelty in there
Speaker 2: connecting the body of the perceiver with the movements of
Speaker 2: concealment and revelation.
Speaker 3: Hmm, well, I'm not sure I fully understand the concealment
Speaker 3: and revelation aspect of this, but I mean I can
Speaker 3: certainly see how by simply engaging with the sacred at all,
Speaker 3: even to negate it, you implicitly assume some of the
Speaker 3: power and authority of the sacred dimension of life, because
Speaker 3: you're sort of showing that you yourself are on the
Speaker 3: level like the plane of authority with which you can
Speaker 3: interact with the sacred, and so by defacing the sacred
Speaker 3: or negating it in some way, you assume a mantle
Speaker 3: of cultural power. And people may well look to you
Speaker 3: then and say, well, are you the new Are you
Speaker 3: the new boss? You know, is what you're doing somehow
Speaker 3: supposed to replace what you destroyed?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I was thinking too about you know,
Speaker 2: like what you're just talking about with various memes and whatnot.
Speaker 2: And I'll see occasionally memes that are about propping up
Speaker 2: villains from popular franchises, you know, siding with the villain,
Speaker 2: be it the Empire in Star Wars or with Thanos
Speaker 2: in the Marvel Cinematic universe, you know. And on one level,
Speaker 2: it's like, yeah, it's fun. They're just movies, right, It's funny. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and Fanos is a great villain the Empire. They're cool villains.
Speaker 2: But I don't know, but what's at what point do
Speaker 2: you end up drawing the line and think like, wow,
Speaker 2: you know, are we how much thought are we putting
Speaker 2: into this? Are we propping up, like, you know, some
Speaker 2: sort of like awful authoritarian figure, even in fiction that's
Speaker 2: gonna end up casting a shadow on our reality and
Speaker 2: the way we interact with risks in the real world.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, I would say, like, it's a it's funny
Speaker 3: to say, Okay, yes I'm with the Empire in Star
Speaker 3: Wars because it's not a real it's not a real thing.
Speaker 3: That's like funny Initially, I would truly be careful about
Speaker 3: keeping up that joke for a long time. If you
Speaker 3: just keep doing that over time for years, I strongly
Speaker 3: suspect some people who do that would end up thinking
Speaker 3: that it's not just a joke and the Empire had
Speaker 3: some good points.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I agree.
Speaker 3: I think that's just how we are. It's like you
Speaker 3: want to think that what you've spent your time on
Speaker 3: is time well spent, even if it's something you originally
Speaker 3: meant ironically. I think there's there's a pull to start
Speaker 3: saying actually that is right.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So this whole like defacement theory thing, I
Speaker 2: think it can. It seems to definitely get a bit heady,
Speaker 2: but I think we can easily take it and apply
Speaker 2: it to discussions of conspiracy thinking, fake news, misinformation, and
Speaker 2: more items that often twist authenticity and or reality into
Speaker 2: a form that is on some level more appealing to
Speaker 2: the individual, that is more infectious, it's more bombastic, and
Speaker 2: in some cases not without the trappings of religion in
Speaker 2: the end.
Speaker 3: Oh, now that you get into like conspiracy theories and stuff.
Speaker 3: I've said this on the podcast before, but I will
Speaker 3: reiterate my personal belief that I think a whole lot
Speaker 3: of conspiracy theory ideation begins as entertainment. It's people not
Speaker 3: engaging with this subject as a serious true believer. At first.
Speaker 3: It starts with people engaging with it because it's entertaining.
Speaker 3: It's just kind of like funny and interesting. Okay, it's
Speaker 3: a meme whatever. But you spend some time with it
Speaker 3: and it works its magic on you. You get adapted to it,
Speaker 3: and it starts to seem more and more legitimately authentically compelling.
Speaker 3: So I think it's it's a dangerous road. Things that
Speaker 3: start off as just just for a laugh end up
Speaker 3: being quite serious and meaning a lot to you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So think about that the next time you load
Speaker 2: up a particularly dank meme to to share on social media, I.
Speaker 3: Want to be I don't want to overstate that. I mean,
Speaker 3: I think it probably takes time and repeated engagement and
Speaker 3: stuff like that, but but I do think that tendency
Speaker 3: is there.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So again, there's much there's much more that that
Speaker 2: can and could be said about the interplay of authenticity
Speaker 2: and religion because it's you, You're you're dealing with very
Speaker 2: very complex topics when you're just asking what is religion,
Speaker 2: what is authenticity? What is truth? And religion? Uh, it's
Speaker 2: it's very gets, very subjective, open to a lot of
Speaker 2: different interpretations.
Speaker 3: All right, does that do it? For Part three on authenticity?
Speaker 2: I believe that is authentically the end of the third
Speaker 2: episode on authenticity.
Speaker 3: This is one of those subjects where I feel like
Speaker 3: we we went kind of deep for three episodes and
Speaker 3: still there's like so much we didn't get into. So
Speaker 3: maybe we could come back in the future, who knows.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think, And I think there's some sort of
Speaker 2: like splinter topics. Like I was looking at some others
Speaker 2: regarding the topic of heresy, and I think there's a
Speaker 2: lot to discuss there that might be more deserving of
Speaker 2: its own episode or series of episodes on just the
Speaker 2: topic of heresy, you know, not just within like Christian traditions,
Speaker 2: but also like globally, you know, with accusations of heresy
Speaker 2: being thrown between different factions, different religions and so forth.
Speaker 2: And what does it mean.
Speaker 3: Getting into the idea that a religion which is in
Speaker 3: fact just like a set of related practices and beliefs
Speaker 3: held throughout a culture, that there is some correct, original
Speaker 3: version of that, there's the authentic version of it, and
Speaker 3: that at some point some practice that a person has
Speaker 3: is different enough that it's actually not the same thing anymore. Yeah, Like, yeah,
Speaker 3: where do you draw those boundaries and how does that emerge?
Speaker 3: That is an interesting question.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what is the real Highlander too? Is it the
Speaker 2: theatrical cut? Is it the director's renegade cut? Is it
Speaker 2: a fan at it comes later on? That is combining
Speaker 2: portions for multiple versions of the film into a new model,
Speaker 2: which is heresy, which is orthodoxy, which is authentic.
Speaker 3: Fortunately, I am a geist cut fundamentalist, so I can
Speaker 3: speak for the authentic version of The Highlander two religion.
Speaker 3: Anybody who's trying to get me to watch the renegade
Speaker 3: cut or whatever you blaspheme.
Speaker 2: Well, fortunately we're aligned on that. All right, We're going
Speaker 2: to go and close it out. But we'd love to
Speaker 2: hear from everyone out there, because, again, everything we've been
Speaker 2: discussing in this series, there are so many applications for
Speaker 2: our daily life, for history, and just the entire human experience.
Speaker 2: So write in. We would love to hear from you.
Speaker 2: Just a reminder of that. Stuff to Blow Your Mind
Speaker 2: is primarily a science and culture podcast, re core episodes
Speaker 2: on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Mondays we do listener mail,
Speaker 2: On Wednesdays we do a short form episode, and on
Speaker 2: Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to just talk
Speaker 2: about a weird movie on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact Stuff to Blow your
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