Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb. Today we have a vault episode for you.
Speaker 1: This is going to be Authenticity Part three, Part three
Speaker 1: of three. This originally published on three twenty eight, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four.
Speaker 2: Enjoy Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production
Speaker 2: of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with part
Speaker 3: 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 two changes in media technology over the centuries.
Speaker 3: And here we are once again to examine a couple
Speaker 3: other facets of authenticity. Now, the thing I wanted to
Speaker 3: talk about today was the interaction between and relationship between
Speaker 3: honesty and authenticity. We talked about this a bit in
Speaker 3: part one of this series because we were alluding to
Speaker 3: the way that there is an apparent relationship between authenticity
Speaker 3: and honesty. You know, there is some overlap between the
Speaker 3: two ideas, but they are not usually understood to be
Speaker 3: the same thing, And an easy illustration of that is
Speaker 3: characters both real and fictional, who are known to tell
Speaker 3: lies but are often thought of as authentic. And yet,
Speaker 3: despite this clear illustration that the two concepts are not
Speaker 3: exactly the same thing, we sometimes behave as if they're
Speaker 3: the same thing. We like forget that we use these
Speaker 3: ideas differently because we feel like if somebody is authentic, well,
Speaker 3: that means we can trust them. So I ended up
Speaker 3: looking at a paper for a trying to find a
Speaker 3: careful analysis of the similarities and differences between honesty and authenticity,
Speaker 3: how these ideas are culturally understood, and in how they
Speaker 3: manifest in behavior. So this paper is by Erica R.
Speaker 3: Bailey and Sena S. A Ingar, published in Current Opinion
Speaker 3: in Psychology called Yours Truly on the Complex Relationship between
Speaker 3: Authenticity and Honesty published in the year twenty twenty two,
Speaker 3: and Erica Bailey was also one of the authors of
Speaker 3: the study we looked at in part one, the one
Speaker 3: about how we're not as good as we think we
Speaker 3: are at determining whether other people are being authentic. Now
Speaker 3: as a starting point, this paper gives essentially the same
Speaker 3: understanding of authenticity that we talked about in part one.
Speaker 3: This will be complicated when we start introducing survey responses
Speaker 3: and how people actually use the idea of authenticity and
Speaker 3: how it relates to honesty and so forth. But we
Speaker 3: start off with the idea that quote, a person is
Speaker 3: authentic when they genuinely express their true inner qualities and feelings.
Speaker 3: In other words, the inside matches the outside. Our outward
Speaker 3: behavior is consistent with our private inner feelings, thoughts, and character.
Speaker 3: So by contrast, a person would usually be considered inauthentic
Speaker 3: if they say things they don't really feel or think,
Speaker 3: or if they act in ways that are inconsistent with
Speaker 3: who they are inside, or if they don't express their
Speaker 3: inner self in the outside world. And the authors begin
Speaker 3: the paper by mentioning an episode in the life of
Speaker 3: the eighteenth century Swiss philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau, where they write, quote,
Speaker 3: in order to be more authentic, he committed to expressing
Speaker 3: himself honestly in every single moment of his day, certain
Speaker 3: that this brutal truth telling, devoid of any cowing to
Speaker 3: the social context, would allow him to manifest his authentic self.
Speaker 3: And I gotta say that sounds absolute insufferable.
Speaker 1: 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 your head, telling friends and family everything
Speaker 3: they do that bothers. You be 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 1: Yeah, I mean this you're talking about a life without decorum,
Speaker 1: without patience, without you know, the limited capacity to be
Speaker 1: supportive of others, because sometimes and being supportive of people,
Speaker 1: you know, friends and family with their maybe sometimes half
Speaker 1: formed ideas in some cases, like you don't want to
Speaker 1: be brutally honest. You want to be supportive. You want
Speaker 1: to you want to maybe push them in the right direction,
Speaker 1: but being you know, completely brutally honest is maybe not
Speaker 1: 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 liable to hurt them,
Speaker 3: and just like avoiding tact altogether.
Speaker 1: Yeah, imagine just deciding all right, from here on now,
Speaker 1: I'm just going to be brutally truthful about everything. But then,
Speaker 1: like then we get into that other question like what
Speaker 1: is truth right?
Speaker 3: Right? You may in fact be mistaken about some of
Speaker 3: the things that you think you think are brutally true
Speaker 3: when you say them, in which case it would turn
Speaker 3: out that it was really unproductive. Yeah, So this like
Speaker 3: raises 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 then what we would say if we thought
Speaker 3: about it some more before we talked m Yeah so?
Speaker 3: Or also is it are those more are like expressions
Speaker 3: of momentary opinions or thoughts truer reflections of our inner
Speaker 3: selves even than the choice not to speak in a
Speaker 3: certain situation, wouldn't that choice also flow from the self yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it reminds me of something I've mentioned before on
Speaker 1: the show, the medieval doodle of a christ like bird
Speaker 1: or a bird like Christ, if you rather, in the
Speaker 1: in the margins of various manuscripts, and the idea it seems,
Speaker 1: based on what I've read, is that thoughts rise from
Speaker 1: the heart, they travel up through a very long neck
Speaker 1: before they reach the lips, and therefore, like it's about
Speaker 1: deciding whether you actually want those feelings to come out.
Speaker 1: That is why the neck of the christ like individual,
Speaker 1: the christ like bird here is very long, because there's
Speaker 1: plenty of time to reflect on set thoughts and perhaps
Speaker 1: 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 1: Yeah, write out that angry email, but don't send it today,
Speaker 1: set it aside for tomorrow, and then a lot of
Speaker 1: the times you'll realize, you know, that's not exactly what
Speaker 1: 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 quote,
Speaker 3: fearless honesty, or brutal truth telling. And the authors also
Speaker 3: quote another another writer in this paper named Valor, who
Speaker 3: makes a similar equivalence, saying that honesty is defined as
Speaker 3: 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 conditions. 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, you know, I'm telling my
Speaker 3: parents that I'm doing fine at college, but in reality,
Speaker 3: I am failing my classes and I'm going through a
Speaker 3: mental health crisis. And the person who says this might say,
Speaker 3: even though I was lying to my parents about well
Speaker 3: how I was doing, I was being authentic because I
Speaker 3: was also lying to myself. Essentially, I managed to truly
Speaker 3: convince myself of the false things I was telling them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, to borrow the catchphrase from stand up comedian Dusty Sligh,
Speaker 1: we're having a good time Like that can essentially be dishonest,
Speaker 1: but you can believe in it, and other people can
Speaker 1: 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're not you don't feel like you are in any
Speaker 3: way the cause of being deluded about something. But when
Speaker 3: people say I was lying to myself, I think they
Speaker 3: usually mean there is some element, even if just a
Speaker 3: small element of willfulness in believing in the delusion, Like
Speaker 3: some part of them knows better, but they are they
Speaker 3: are purposely disregarding or ignoring that knowledge.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like I mean, one easy example of this is,
Speaker 1: like you that thinking back to like the old days
Speaker 1: of of buying CDs, especially as a young person with
Speaker 1: money's a lot tighter, Like you spend your money, you
Speaker 1: cannot you can buy no other album this week, maybe
Speaker 1: this month, And afterwards you're you're maybe a little less
Speaker 1: one over by the album than you'd hoped, but you're
Speaker 1: kind of like fooling yourself and like, no, this is good.
Speaker 1: I'm getting this, I'm jamming to this. This was worth
Speaker 1: my money, this is worth my time.
Speaker 3: It's even got the bonus tracks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's got the bonus tracks. It's like I thought
Speaker 1: it was ten tracks, No, it's twelve tracks. I'd be
Speaker 1: losing money if I didn't buy it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. 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 1: Yeah, I was authentically delusional about the quality of this record,
Speaker 1: And honestly, if you know me, you should have seen
Speaker 1: that in me. You should have seen that in my
Speaker 1: 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 seem to have to do with employment, which I
Speaker 3: think is kind of revealing, but things like lying at
Speaker 3: work to avoid revealing a mistake that could have cost
Speaker 3: the subject their job. Another one that somebody gives is
Speaker 3: lying about former job experience in order to get a
Speaker 3: new position, and the subject in this example specifically says
Speaker 3: they feel it was a good thing to do because
Speaker 3: they ended up doing exceedingly well at the new job
Speaker 3: that they lied in order to get fake it.
Speaker 1: Do you make it right? I mean, that's basically what
Speaker 1: 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 1: 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
Speaker 3: relationship 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 1: Yeah, yeah, I think both these are very understandable. I mean,
Speaker 1: the haircut is probably the best example because there is
Speaker 1: a line. There is a line at which your close
Speaker 1: friend's haircut has become so bad that you do have
Speaker 1: to say something. You have to say, actually, this doesn't
Speaker 1: look good. Come with me, we're going to go get
Speaker 1: this fixed right now. You have a job interview tomorrow
Speaker 1: or something. You know, I'm a good enough friend to
Speaker 1: let you know that we have to go fix this.
Speaker 1: But there's a lot of room on that spectrum for
Speaker 1: just saying yeah, it looks great, and that's what you're
Speaker 1: expected 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 1: Yeah, because I mean bad, bad haircuts happen, and you'll
Speaker 1: grow out of them. You know, it's going to be
Speaker 1: pretty bad to take it to that next level, say
Speaker 1: we've got to go fix this. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I think the example was like, yeah, this will
Speaker 3: really stand out, you know, putting a positive sounding tone
Speaker 3: on them.
Speaker 1: That'll grow in nicely.
Speaker 3: Yeah. And then fourth final category, this one you can
Speaker 3: very much understand. Again, it's hard to blame people for
Speaker 3: this when honesty would threaten the survival or well being
Speaker 3: of someone else, dishonesty in the protection of other people.
Speaker 3: So examples would include like lying to protect people from
Speaker 3: physical danger, maybe like a counselor lying to potentially abusive
Speaker 3: family members that you don't know about somebody's whereabouts, or
Speaker 3: maybe to protect someone from information that would be devastating
Speaker 3: to them.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: So it's interesting that some of these versions of authenticity
Speaker 3: do sort of go along with the inside matches the
Speaker 3: outside definition, but some do not. Some of these are
Speaker 3: simply cases of people lying or misrepresenting themselves in a
Speaker 3: situation where they believe in some way it was justified.
Speaker 3: So in those cases, authenticity would seem to mean something
Speaker 3: different than than the way we've been using it. It
Speaker 3: would seem to mean morally justified, regardless of whether you
Speaker 3: were expressing your true feelings on the outside or not.
Speaker 3: And these examples just seem to reinforce to me how
Speaker 3: fluid our concept of authenticity is. Once again, despite how
Speaker 3: important it is in these day to day judgments we
Speaker 3: make about people and about ourselves, it seems to have
Speaker 3: ill defined boundaries, and the authors review some other findings
Speaker 3: that further illuminate and complicate the relationship between honesty and authenticity.
Speaker 3: For example, and this came up in Part one, in
Speaker 3: order to evaluate whether your external behavior is consistent with
Speaker 3: your true self, you have to both know what your
Speaker 3: true self is and be able to objectively observe and
Speaker 3: analyze your external behavior, and both of those tasks are
Speaker 3: non trivial. The authors point out that that both of
Speaker 3: them are problematic even given what we know from other
Speaker 3: psychology studies, because studies show systematic biases in how we
Speaker 3: perceive ourselves. People tend to see themselves as morally better
Speaker 3: than the average person, and experiments show that people have
Speaker 3: selective memories of events end of information that help bolster
Speaker 3: a positive self image. So this can make research about
Speaker 3: honesty and authenticity rather difficult because both honesty and authenticity
Speaker 3: people take to have moral implications, so people are motivated
Speaker 3: to exaggerate the extent to which they are both in
Speaker 3: self reports. Though the authors do point to one pretty
Speaker 3: interesting study from twenty twenty that used a bit of
Speaker 3: trickery to look into whether self reported and even test
Speaker 3: evaluated authenticity might be biased or strategic self presentation. So
Speaker 3: this other paper I went and looked at was by
Speaker 3: William hart at All, published in Personality and Individual Differences
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty, called to be or to appear to
Speaker 3: be evidence that authentic people seek to appear authentic rather
Speaker 3: than be authentic. So the authors in their abstract right
Speaker 3: quote participants numbering two hundred and forty completed a bogus
Speaker 3: color gazing task under the presumption that authentic people see
Speaker 3: colors become more or less intense while gazing at them.
Speaker 3: And these are the two conditions, the more intense condition
Speaker 3: and the less intense condition. And they say that quote
Speaker 3: participants reported perceiving color as more intense in the more
Speaker 3: intense condition. But this biased responding consistent with appearing authentic
Speaker 3: was enhanced by trait authenticity indicators. So to paraphrase there,
Speaker 3: participants were told that, you know, other studies have found
Speaker 3: that more authentic people will see the color of this
Speaker 3: block either intensify or d intensify, and in reality the
Speaker 3: colors did not change at all. And then the experiment
Speaker 3: found that on average, people who rated themselves as more
Speaker 3: authentic on a self assessment test were more likely to
Speaker 3: claim they saw the color change in line with whatever
Speaker 3: 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 and 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: being 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.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But though, of course, the conundrum is we do
Speaker 1: this all the time, right, Yeah, And a great deal
Speaker 1: goes into making sure that individuals put forward that vibe
Speaker 1: that we trust, be that individual salesperson, a company spokesman,
Speaker 1: a politician, a newscaster, I mean, you name it. We're
Speaker 1: supposed to to instantly feel like, yeah, I trust this person.
Speaker 1: This person seems to know what they're talking about. They
Speaker 1: seem authentic. I don't need to look at a track record.
Speaker 1: 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 1: Yeah, I mean sometimes it comes down to the fact that, yes,
Speaker 1: more homework would be required to make a really accurate judgment,
Speaker 1: but we also often don't have time to make do
Speaker 1: that homework, you know. Like I'm thinking particularly about local elections,
Speaker 1: looking back now on a local election, maybe like a
Speaker 1: couple of cycles ago, there are a lot of local
Speaker 1: candidates going for this one position, and we were getting
Speaker 1: a lot of information about these candidates. Nice, you know,
Speaker 1: big sheets put in your mailbox, and sometimes they drop
Speaker 1: by the house, and I had one interaction with one
Speaker 1: of the candidates who dropped by the house, and then
Speaker 1: afterwards I was like, oh, yeah, she's the one. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It was just it was totally a vibe thing. It
Speaker 1: was just like, she seems nice, and I've seen that
Speaker 1: literature is coming through the mail about this candidate. They're
Speaker 1: definitely on the ballot. I got a good vibe off
Speaker 1: of them. They're the one. But I did not do
Speaker 1: the homework. I think later on I did do a
Speaker 1: little bit more homework and I realized, Okay, I need
Speaker 1: to be more informed about this. But at least for
Speaker 1: a while there, I was like, oh, yeah, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: 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. So
Speaker 3: it's just like how are you supposed to live?
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I guess the challenge is just sort of
Speaker 1: to have some level of self awareness when we're doing that,
Speaker 1: so that we can we can avoid making the wrong
Speaker 1: 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 1: Yeah, because of course you also don't have to. You
Speaker 1: just don't have time to be like, prove it faker
Speaker 1: 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 look at a study from twenty fourteen that compared
Speaker 3: perceptions of authenticity among both German and Chinese participants, and
Speaker 3: this experiment found that you take a fictional character and
Speaker 3: you have them list either their likes and their dislikes
Speaker 3: or just their likes. And this experiment found that the
Speaker 3: character was judged to be more authentic by German participants
Speaker 3: if they listed both their likes and dislikes, but judged
Speaker 3: as more authentic by the Chinese participants if they listed
Speaker 3: just 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 1: 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: All which found that in the case of a hypothetical
Speaker 3: political demagogue who told flagrant and provable lies, people could
Speaker 3: still believe the lying demagogue to be authentic, and that
Speaker 3: mere partisan affiliation was not sufficient to achieve this view
Speaker 3: of the flagrantly lying demagogue is authentic. The other condition
Speaker 3: that was necessary was that the participant viewed the political
Speaker 3: system as illegitimate, so kind of interesting finding like lies,
Speaker 3: flagrant lies can be perceived as authentic if you think
Speaker 3: the norms of the system under which you live is
Speaker 3: not legitimate. In a way kind of the flagrant lying,
Speaker 3: the violation of those norms comes to be perceived as
Speaker 3: some sort of righteous rebuke. In a similar domain, experiments
Speaker 3: have found a tendency for people to view expressions of
Speaker 3: prejudice and politically offensive language as authentic as long as
Speaker 3: they held the same prejudiced views as the person making
Speaker 3: the expression.
Speaker 1: That's a weird one to unwrap, because I feel like
Speaker 1: you can judge someone's offensive language and expressions of prejudice
Speaker 1: as being authentic even if you don't share them. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but this is saying that there's a tendency for people
Speaker 1: to view expressions of prejudice and politically offensive language as
Speaker 1: authentic as long as they hold those 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 1: Okay, so this is kind of a someone's finally saying.
Speaker 1: It's sort of a oh thinking with the language, gotcha exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So, given that whole blizzard of different findings in
Speaker 3: the seemingly paradoxical relationship between honesty and authenticity, the authors
Speaker 3: propose a model of how these two concepts actually interact,
Speaker 3: and they call it a coherence model. So, to use
Speaker 3: their own words here, quote, A coherence perspective stresses the
Speaker 3: importance of how much new information makes sense in light
Speaker 3: of what is already known or believed to be true.
Speaker 3: And then later, a little later, they say, quote, we
Speaker 3: propose that the more coherent the mental image of a
Speaker 3: 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 will
Speaker 3: help increase the coherence of that self image, of that
Speaker 3: 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 themselves.
Speaker 3: In any case, they could be framed as making sense
Speaker 3: based on the image of the self or the image
Speaker 3: of the person in operation 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. So, according to this model,
Speaker 3: people perceive authenticity as not the unvarnished expression of people's
Speaker 3: true inner feelings, but rather acting in a way that
Speaker 3: is predictable and consistent based on the image of that
Speaker 3: person that they already have in their head. Okay, and
Speaker 3: this makes a lot of sense to me. I think
Speaker 3: this is a good model of how people most often
Speaker 3: use the idea of authenticity, but there's still so much
Speaker 3: variation in how it's applied, and I think plenty of
Speaker 3: reason that we should be cautious about relying too much
Speaker 3: on our heuristic judgments of authenticity and others.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, because Yeah, like we've been saying on one love,
Speaker 1: you can't go through life accusing everyone of being a
Speaker 1: faker and assuming that no one is being genuine, that
Speaker 1: no one is authentic. But on the other hand, you know,
Speaker 1: the reverse is true as well, Like it pays to
Speaker 1: have some level of self analysis about to what extent
Speaker 1: we're just you know, having these gut impulses and believing
Speaker 1: this person or believing that person. We should be able
Speaker 1: to take it apart to some degree, though as we've
Speaker 1: looked at though, that can be difficult given all that's
Speaker 1: 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 been seriously betrayed
Speaker 3: in some way, to be more generous and awarding of
Speaker 3: trust to people. And if it's ambiguous, I guess the
Speaker 3: situation in which you want to be careful is like
Speaker 3: if there is something like a big material question on
Speaker 3: the line, and you're you're trying to decide whether or
Speaker 3: not to trust somebody, and they just give you an
Speaker 3: authentic vibe, you know, Or are you looking to invest
Speaker 3: a lot of money? Are you looking to like make somebody,
Speaker 3: put somebody an important leadership position or something like that,
Speaker 3: and you're just going on an authenticity vibe. I think
Speaker 3: that's a good time to put the brakes on and say,
Speaker 3: wait a minute, is there another way for me to
Speaker 3: look at this? Can I be more objective?
Speaker 1: Yeah, but like your favorite musical artists, just switch genres
Speaker 1: a little bit, you know, give it the benefit of
Speaker 1: the doubt. Let's tell me 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 1: Yeah, Now, this is this is a big, big topic
Speaker 1: to sort of dip our toes in a little bit here,
Speaker 1: Authenticity of religion, authenticity in religion. I mean, we've already
Speaker 1: discussed how difficult it is to frame all this up
Speaker 1: in terms of the self, you know, and the mysterious
Speaker 1: nature of our own self and other selves, other individuals
Speaker 1: that we just have to form mental models sometimes very
Speaker 1: inform mental models, but still mental models of what their
Speaker 1: internal life is like. Is what is truly authentic for
Speaker 1: that individual, where we have to form a model of
Speaker 1: that in our own minds, But then getting into the
Speaker 1: realm of religion, Yeah, that's obviously a whole different kettle
Speaker 1: of fish totally. So yeah, how broadly are we supposed
Speaker 1: to think about authenticity in religion? You know, there's a
Speaker 1: lot to unpact there, you know, as we've already discussed
Speaker 1: multiple ways to think about the concept of authenticity in
Speaker 1: this series. And on top of that, there are various
Speaker 1: ways to think about religion. You know, especially on this show,
Speaker 1: we tend to dismiss the idea of just like, okay,
Speaker 1: religion is that? Is that fake? Or is that real?
Speaker 1: You know, like there's there's a lot of space between
Speaker 1: those two extremes, you know, you know, you could you
Speaker 1: can think about religion in terms of whether it is
Speaker 1: one hundred percent accurate. Is it a one hundred percent
Speaker 1: accurate understanding of reality? Is it a legitimate cultural tradition?
Speaker 1: Is it are we talking more about the realm of mythology?
Speaker 1: Are we talking more about a particular worldview? In many cases,
Speaker 1: we may get into like religion as literature, Like there's
Speaker 1: just so many different ways to look at a given
Speaker 1: faith as opposed to just you know, saying like is
Speaker 1: this a real story or is this a fake story? Like, no,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of room between there, just in terms
Speaker 1: 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 were there was a lot of like
Speaker 3: evolution versus creationism debates and stuff that really forced people
Speaker 3: to think about religion primarily in terms of whether the
Speaker 3: claims of its founding myths are literally descriptive of facts
Speaker 3: that took place in history. And I mean, obviously that
Speaker 3: is a question you can ask, and it's fine to
Speaker 3: ask that question, but I think that it caused a
Speaker 3: lot of people to see questions of religion only on
Speaker 3: those terms like is the Bible literally true or something
Speaker 3: in the US context, which I think is a sort
Speaker 3: of deranging lens of focus that really causes people to
Speaker 3: miss a lot of what religion means to people and
Speaker 3: the role it plays in their lives.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely, So before we even get into it,
Speaker 1: just know that likes. That's largely I think where we're
Speaker 1: coming from. It's largely where I think a lot of
Speaker 1: the sources that I was looking at are coming from.
Speaker 1: And this is a topic concerning authenticity and religion that
Speaker 1: a lot of people have written on. So I'm not
Speaker 1: going to be able to provide like a huge overview
Speaker 1: of everything has been thought or sad about this. But
Speaker 1: I was looking in one particular paper, this is a
Speaker 1: fake Religion or Deals of Authenticity in the Study of
Speaker 1: Religion by David Chidester. At the top of this paper,
Speaker 1: he points to a quote from Thomas Edison, who apparently said,
Speaker 1: I think this was maybe in some letters, said, so
Speaker 1: far as religion of the day is concerned, it is
Speaker 1: a damned fake. Okay, And so on one level, okay,
Speaker 1: if we just go with this view, all right, if
Speaker 1: Edison is correct here, if all religion is fake, then
Speaker 1: no auth then no religion is authentic. Nothing can be authentic.
Speaker 1: Everything is just a story created by human beings, and
Speaker 1: 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 meaning
Speaker 3: of authenticity and fakeness come into play here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, even in a statement like this that would at
Speaker 1: least i'm a surface appear to be very you know,
Speaker 1: like firm and extreme. So, as Chinaster points out, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's not so simple to really weigh in on
Speaker 1: authenticity and religion because even if this is even even
Speaker 1: if we agree with this and say, all right, to
Speaker 1: some degree, all religions are fake, and yet some religions
Speaker 1: are definitely faker than others. That is to say, we
Speaker 1: have occasionally or even frequently, depending where you're looking, we
Speaker 1: do contend with outright religious frauds. You can, you know,
Speaker 1: likely bust out some sliding scales on this idea as well,
Speaker 1: But there are clear cases of hoaxes, pyramid schemes, and
Speaker 1: cons that use the trappings of religion and are not
Speaker 1: engaging in what you might call good faith at any
Speaker 1: 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 and fakery.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and obviously with various with large larger religious organizations
Speaker 1: and groups, and even like big churches or temples, there's
Speaker 1: room to have multiple things going on at once. You
Speaker 1: could have conceivably easily have a situation where you have
Speaker 1: some individuals in an operation that are very much believers
Speaker 1: and are being what you might call authentic, and then
Speaker 1: you might have say, like, I don't know, maybe the
Speaker 1: building department they're just bad, Like there's there's something very
Speaker 1: suspicious about this botch. You know, you can have multiple
Speaker 1: energies going on within the same movement. Obviously, so anyway,
Speaker 1: there's sort of one way of thinking about it, But
Speaker 1: there have also been numerous inauthentic efforts or attempts to communicate, say,
Speaker 1: indigenous religions to foreign audiences. So the author here, David Chidester,
Speaker 1: points to an extreme example of this again like getting
Speaker 1: into just straight up con artist here, and that would
Speaker 1: be eighteenth century French con artist George saul Manassar, who
Speaker 1: was who for years convinced many in Britain that he
Speaker 1: was a native of Formosa what we now know is
Speaker 1: Taiwan and shared all sorts of just completely fraudulent information
Speaker 1: about his supposed life there, shared an invented alphabet, uninvented
Speaker 1: religion and saying, oh, yeah, this is the real Formosian
Speaker 1: religion right here, this is what I grew up on,
Speaker 1: and also making all sorts of crazy claims that okay,
Speaker 1: some of them protective of his con like saying, well,
Speaker 1: of course I have pale skin because upper class Formosians
Speaker 1: live underground obviously, and uh, and he was, and he
Speaker 1: could he still had. There were plenty of skeptics that
Speaker 1: were like, this guy's not on the level, but they
Speaker 1: also included and they also included Jesuits who had actually
Speaker 1: visited Formosa, but they were largely apparently dismissed within Britain
Speaker 1: due to anti Catholic sentiments of the time, so still,
Speaker 1: and there were people saying, you're you know, you're, you're
Speaker 1: full of it. This doesn't sound right. But he was
Speaker 1: good at at least fighting off these critiques, at least
Speaker 1: in the short term, and his reports of life over
Speaker 1: there contained all sorts of just you know, outrageous and
Speaker 1: offensive concepts, including things like ritual cannibalism. But the thing
Speaker 1: is they felt exotic enough to capture the attention of
Speaker 1: his intended audience, like they they met expectations to some degree,
Speaker 1: like this is the kind of account that many in
Speaker 1: the population were hungry for, even if the experts were saying,
Speaker 1: I don't know if this is actually accurate. This doesn't
Speaker 1: match up with what I've heard from other individuals who
Speaker 1: have traveled either to this particular place or to places
Speaker 1: 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 1: Yeah, and essentially created inauthentic religion, a fake religion and
Speaker 1: presented it as if it were real. Again, this is
Speaker 1: an extreme example, and it's one that's grounded in outright fakery,
Speaker 1: But there are various levels of the problem, even in
Speaker 1: well meaning attempts to study in chronicle religion. Now he
Speaker 1: gets into another obvious reality about all of this. Among
Speaker 1: the faithful, the religion you practice is often talled is
Speaker 1: the authentic one, and of course it's the other religions
Speaker 1: that are the fakes. Like, that's just how this sort
Speaker 1: of thing works, that's how you build your worldview, that's
Speaker 1: how you maintain the US versus of 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 yes, other people may have part of the
Speaker 3: truth or something like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it definitely depends on the context and the exact
Speaker 1: arrangement in time period. You know, there there are cases
Speaker 1: where you have different Like you can look to some
Speaker 1: Protestant versus Catholic divisions. They have been rather extreme and
Speaker 1: heated obviously at different times and in different places, in
Speaker 1: ways that seem like more heated than would be the
Speaker 1: relationship between religions that were more different from each other.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a part of that would be physical proximity
Speaker 3: and thus having to negotiate political spheres. But then on
Speaker 3: top of that you could also attribute some of it
Speaker 3: to what might be called the narcissism of small differences.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And of course it's often the role of an
Speaker 1: orthodox fate faith to point out who the heretics are
Speaker 1: within their own faith or in the peripheries of that faith.
Speaker 1: And these efforts, I guess in some cases, you know,
Speaker 1: they may deal with identifying actual harmful splinter groups or extremists,
Speaker 1: but it can also simply involve the other ring and
Speaker 1: criticism of competition or you know, the endangerment of other
Speaker 1: practices of a mainstream and entrenched religion, if you will.
Speaker 1: And of course this also includes the demonization of local
Speaker 1: religious traditions. We saw this, especially by European Christians, create
Speaker 1: an inauthentic interpretation of a traditional faith in order to
Speaker 1: prop up the authority and authenticity of one's own your gods.
Speaker 1: These old gods you believe in, well, those are actually demons.
Speaker 1: That's how we understand them. When are the truth?
Speaker 3: Thing, So not just saying whatever you believe is wrong,
Speaker 3: but also saying, like, here is an alternate interpretation of
Speaker 3: whatever you believe, a very unflattering one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And the interesting double nature of this, this Chidester
Speaker 1: points out, is that on one hand you're saying a
Speaker 1: local shaman is a fraud who made all of this up,
Speaker 1: But on the other you're saying that he's totally not
Speaker 1: a fraud and is actually in league with demonic powers.
Speaker 1: So which is it? Sometimes both even at the same time.
Speaker 1: Chidaster points to examples of this involving say, early nineteenth
Speaker 1: century missionaries in Africa, who at once would have been saying, oh, well,
Speaker 1: that guy, the shaman, he's a fraud, he's just making
Speaker 1: all this up. But also beware of him. He's in
Speaker 1: leak with the devil, which is we also see he
Speaker 1: points out the double standard regarding authentication via material objects.
Speaker 1: So relics were of course of great importance, especially to
Speaker 1: the early Roman Catholic Church and into the Middle Ages
Speaker 1: and so forth. And you know, the tradition still holds
Speaker 1: to this day. You know, here is physical evidence that
Speaker 1: this saint existed, that this saint suffered. You know, here
Speaker 1: this is our evidence, is this is authentic. In Chita's
Speaker 1: are points to accounts that stolen relics were sometimes thought
Speaker 1: to be even more valued because the saint it was
Speaker 1: associated with could have been viewed as implicit in the theft,
Speaker 1: you know, like they the saint willed that this item
Speaker 1: be taken so that it could be kept somewhere better,
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. But on the other hand, magical
Speaker 1: items from outside of the faith, well, these were deemed
Speaker 1: as fetishes and idols. These were harmful things. These were
Speaker 1: not proof of anything, these were these were just these
Speaker 1: were 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 1: Yeah. Now, eventually you get into the Enlightenment and the
Speaker 1: out there points out here that you have two sort
Speaker 1: of contrasting ideals that emerge to determine authenticity, particularly with
Speaker 1: Christians in Christianity and Christian thought. One is transparency, which
Speaker 1: seems to kind of center on kind of a gut
Speaker 1: feeling a Christian will have. He describes it as an
Speaker 1: illuminated capacity that would supposedly help you distinguish between genuine
Speaker 1: and the genuine and the fake, which is something that
Speaker 1: we've been saying. This could surely never steer one wrong, you.
Speaker 3: Know, right, No, this is you sometimes like you just
Speaker 3: you have a feeling in your heart that you know
Speaker 3: it's true.
Speaker 1: And then the other idea is control. And this is
Speaker 1: interesting getting this idea that's it kind of gets back
Speaker 1: to what we were talking about in terms of like
Speaker 1: not not being the first to speak your mind and
Speaker 1: letting thoughts percolate, but it ends up ends up going
Speaker 1: beyond that. So much of this is apparently based on
Speaker 1: the New Testament and then the Letters of James, and
Speaker 1: I think the two main bits from the scripture here
Speaker 1: are those who consider themselves religious and yet do not
Speaker 1: keep a tight rain on their tongues deceive themselves and
Speaker 1: their religion is worthless. And then I think there's a
Speaker 1: later bit where it is but no human being contained
Speaker 1: the tongue. It is a restless evil, full of deadly poison.
Speaker 1: And so it gets into like controlling the human voice,
Speaker 1: controlling what you say, and more importantly, what you don't say.
Speaker 1: But they didn't stop at the human voice. They also
Speaker 1: put a great deal of thought into how belching and
Speaker 1: farting impacted authenticity and religion. Apparently I'm not making this up.
Speaker 1: Like laughter, sneezing, these are also things that attracted the
Speaker 1: attention of the theologians of the day, though it really feels
Speaker 1: like they're in the 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 I love
Speaker 3: talking about like farting and pooping.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And it seems like he would be kind of
Speaker 1: in sharp contrast to what this line of thought is saying.
Speaker 1: You know that you know, absolutely shouldn't be belching and farting,
Speaker 1: You shouldn't be sneezing, you should be controlling. Laughter or
Speaker 1: any kind of physical outburst that is not tightly control
Speaker 1: is somehow a danger to authenticity. So I don't know,
Speaker 1: I won't pretend to fully understand how this applies to
Speaker 1: being able to judge one's religion as being authentic and
Speaker 1: to rightfully judge other versions of the faith or other
Speaker 1: faiths as inauthentic. But I guess it shows like the
Speaker 1: level of sort of mental gymnastics and theological gymnastics you
Speaker 1: end up turning to when grasping, grappling with a question
Speaker 1: like this, like what how do you know what religion
Speaker 1: is true? Like, because you know, outside of miracles occurring,
Speaker 1: what do you have? You know, just subjective experience, personal charisma,
Speaker 1: and other people weighted arguments for interpretations of natural phenomena
Speaker 1: that are better understood through science. That's what I see
Speaker 1: all the time. You know, where someone's like, you don't
Speaker 1: believe in God, Well have you looked at this cat? Right? Yeah?
Speaker 1: You know, on an emotional level, it's like cat is cute.
Speaker 1: I don't know, you kind of got me there. But
Speaker 1: we have all these other ways of understanding why the
Speaker 1: cat looks like it looks and why we feel this
Speaker 1: 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 1: Yeah, I mean, in my own opinion, I mean it
Speaker 1: comes down to faith, right, And a lot of faith
Speaker 1: is believing in that which cannot be proven without without
Speaker 1: a shadow of a doubt, you know, that's what it's
Speaker 1: about again without an outright miracle occurring. And even then
Speaker 1: you get into you know, we've discussed hallucinations and so
Speaker 1: forth on the show before, So even then you're still
Speaker 1: dealing with something that has tremendous subjective weight and tremendous
Speaker 1: emotional weight and personal weight, and is therefore not something
Speaker 1: that can be presented as like here we go, approove
Speaker 1: of God confirmed right now. The author here also gets
Speaker 1: into what he calls virtual religions on the internet, but
Speaker 1: something that is elsewhere discussed in terms of hyper real religions.
Speaker 1: And I believe we've talked about the hyper real religions
Speaker 1: on the show.
Speaker 3: Before, right, So religions that we've actually been able to
Speaker 3: see within human history. The arc from something that began
Speaker 3: as consciously inauthentic in some at least in one sense,
Speaker 3: like began maybe as a joke, or began as a
Speaker 3: sort of an art project or something like that, something
Speaker 3: that was not originally believed as a genuine religious movement
Speaker 3: that came to be believed as a genuine religious movement.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like it's the roots may be in fiction, they
Speaker 1: may be in activism, you know, or like you said,
Speaker 1: parody and so forth. But over time they may grow
Speaker 1: into something else. They may not they may not grow
Speaker 1: at all. They may just be you know, a quick
Speaker 1: laugh and then we're done with it. But you know,
Speaker 1: we have been able to observe some of these things
Speaker 1: growing taking on some of the the the aspects, the trappings,
Speaker 1: and sometimes even the legal protections of religion of quote
Speaker 1: 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
Speaker 3: them You're not?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Jediism is a good example. Well, there's Dudism.
Speaker 1: There are other examples like Church of the SubGenius and
Speaker 1: so forth, where Yeah, it's like it may start as
Speaker 1: a joke, it clearly has roots in fiction. But if
Speaker 1: it takes, if it truly takes on this light. If
Speaker 1: it becomes an important part of someone's life and their worldview,
Speaker 1: and and above all of it, if it improves their
Speaker 1: life and doesn't hurt anybody else, then you know what's
Speaker 1: the beef right. And I think you can also throw
Speaker 1: in discussions of the likes of say Leveyan Satanism and
Speaker 1: also more recently the Satanic Temple, with the acknowledgment that
Speaker 1: there's often this kind of ambiguous space for any new
Speaker 1: religious movement, a kind of discussion of authenticity and even
Speaker 1: a change in mission for a given movement, because, as
Speaker 1: with any religion, things change over time and a central
Speaker 1: body or central individual cannot always control it. Actually, this
Speaker 1: is something that Frank Herbert gets into a bit in
Speaker 1: the Doom novels. You know. Oh, it's like once a faith,
Speaker 1: once a following has built up, that doesn't mean the
Speaker 1: person at the center off it has full control over
Speaker 1: it anymore, you know. And just because you have the
Speaker 1: copyright for the name of the religion doesn't mean that
Speaker 1: 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 1: Yeah. Yeah, And I was thinking about that a lot
Speaker 1: as I was looking at this other source two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight worked by Thomas Alberts titled Virtually Real Fake
Speaker 1: Religions and Problems of Authenticity and Religion, and he invokes
Speaker 1: three different principles, including Walter Benjamin's theory of the dialectical
Speaker 1: image and Peter Berger's theory of redeeming laughter. But I
Speaker 1: want to just briefly focus on the third, and that's
Speaker 1: Australian anthropologist Michael Tausig's theory of defacement. So Tasig wrote, quote,
Speaker 1: defacement asks what happens when something precious is despoiled. It
Speaker 1: begins with the notion that such activity is attractive in
Speaker 1: its very repulsion, and that it creates something sacred, even
Speaker 1: in the most secular of societies and circumstances. So Tasa
Speaker 1: gets into the importance of like secrecy and both religion
Speaker 1: and taboo and the interplay between the two. And I
Speaker 1: may not be grasping the full depth of this topic,
Speaker 1: but if I'm understanding it even halfway correctly, I think
Speaker 1: one possible use of defacement here is that anytime you
Speaker 1: despoil something that is held up as sacred, you can't
Speaker 1: help but potentially create something that is also sacred. So
Speaker 1: Alberts argues that quote, fake religions produce secruelty in there,
Speaker 1: connecting the body of the perceiver with the movements of
Speaker 1: concealment and revelation.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm not sure I fully understand the concealment and
Speaker 3: revelation aspect of this. But I mean, I can certainly
Speaker 3: 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 you assume a
Speaker 3: mantle of cultural power. And people may well look to
Speaker 3: you then and say, well, are you the new Are
Speaker 3: you the new boss? You know, is what you're doing
Speaker 3: somehow supposed to replace what you destroyed?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I was thinking too about you know,
Speaker 1: like what you're just talking about with various memes and whatnot.
Speaker 1: And I'll see occasionally memes that are about propping up
Speaker 1: villains from popular franchises, you know, siding with the villain,
Speaker 1: be it the Empire in Star Wars or with Thanos
Speaker 1: in the Marvel Cinematic universe, you know. And on one level,
Speaker 1: it's like, yeah, it's fun. They're just movies, right, It's funny. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And Thanos is a great villain that the Empire. They're
Speaker 1: they're cool villains. But I don't know, But what point
Speaker 1: you end up drawing the line and think like, wow,
Speaker 1: I'm you know, are we how much thought are we
Speaker 1: putting into this? Are we propping up, like, you know,
Speaker 1: some sort of like awful authoritarian figure, even in fiction
Speaker 1: that's gonna end up casting a shadow on our reality
Speaker 1: and 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 Wars,
Speaker 3: 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 1: 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 saying,
Speaker 3: actually that is right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, So this whole like defacement theory thing, I
Speaker 1: think it can. It seems to definitely get a bit heady,
Speaker 1: but I think we can easily take it and apply
Speaker 1: it to discussions of conspiracy thinking, fake news, misinformation, and
Speaker 1: more items that often twist authenticity and or reality into
Speaker 1: a form that is on some level more appealing to
Speaker 1: the individual, that is more infectious, it's more bombastic, and
Speaker 1: in some cases not without the trappings of religion in
Speaker 1: 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 like as a serious true believer.
Speaker 3: At first. It starts with people engaging with it because
Speaker 3: it's entertaining. It's just kind of like funny and interesting. Okay,
Speaker 3: it's a meme whatever. But do you spend some time
Speaker 3: with it and it works its magic on you, You
Speaker 3: get adapted to it, and it starts to seem more
Speaker 3: and more legitimately authentically compelling. So I think it's it's
Speaker 3: a dangerous road. Things that start off as just just
Speaker 3: for a laugh end up being quite serious and meaning
Speaker 3: a lot to you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so think about that the next time you load
Speaker 1: up a particularly dank meme to share on social media.
Speaker 3: I want to be I don't want to overstate that.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think it probably takes time and repeated
Speaker 3: engagement and stuff like that, but but I do think
Speaker 3: that tendency is there.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So again, there's much there's much more that that
Speaker 1: can and could be said about the interplay of authenticity
Speaker 1: and religion because it's you, You're you're dealing with very,
Speaker 1: very complex topics when you're just asking what is religion?
Speaker 1: What is authenticity? What is truth? And religion? Uh, it's
Speaker 1: it's very gets, very subjective, open to a lot of
Speaker 1: different interpretations.
Speaker 3: All right, does that do it for Part three on authenticity?
Speaker 1: I believe that is authentically the end of the third
Speaker 1: episode on authenticity.
Speaker 3: This is one of those subjects where I feel like
Speaker 3: we went kind of deep for three episodes and still
Speaker 3: there's like so much we didn't get into. So maybe
Speaker 3: we could come back in the future, who knows.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think and I think there's some sort of
Speaker 1: like splinter topics. Like, I was looking at some other
Speaker 1: sources regarding the topic of heresy, and I think there's
Speaker 1: a lot to discuss there that might be more deserving
Speaker 1: of its own episode or series of episodes on just
Speaker 1: the topic of heresy, you know, not just within like
Speaker 1: Christian traditions, but also like globally, you know, with accusations
Speaker 1: of heresy being thrown between different factions, different religions and
Speaker 1: so forth.
Speaker 3: And what does it mean getting into the idea that
Speaker 3: a religion, which is in fact just like a set
Speaker 3: of related practices and beliefs held throughout a culture, that
Speaker 3: there is some correct, original version of that, there's the
Speaker 3: authentic version of it, and that at some point point,
Speaker 3: some practice that a person has is different enough that
Speaker 3: 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 1: Yeah, what is the real Highlander too? Is it the
Speaker 1: theatrical cut, is it the director's renegade cut? Is it
Speaker 1: a fan edit that comes later on that is combining
Speaker 1: a portions for multiple versions of the film into a
Speaker 1: new model 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 1: Well, fortunately we're aligned on that. All Right, We're gonna
Speaker 1: go and close it out, but we'd love to hear
Speaker 1: from everyone out there, because, again, everything we've been discussing
Speaker 1: in this series, there are so many applications for our
Speaker 1: daily life, for history, and just the entire human experience,
Speaker 1: So writ in, we would love to hear from you,
Speaker 1: just a reminder of that. Stuff to Blow Your Mind
Speaker 1: is primarily a science and culture podcast, with core episodes
Speaker 1: on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Mondays we do listener mail,
Speaker 1: on Wednesdays we do a short form episode, and on
Speaker 1: Fridays we set as I had most serious concerns to
Speaker 1: just talk 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: topic for the future, or just to say hello, you
Speaker 3: can email us at contact Stuff. To Blow Your Mind dot.
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