The Authenticity Hoax: How We Get Lost Finding Ourselves (review)

Everyone goes through their ups and downs in life. It’s interesting, though, that sometimes the downs have little or nothing to do with questions of material comfort. You can have all your bills paid up and lead a satisfying domestic life and yet still, at some specific juncture of circumstances, slip into a spell of confusion and general unease with yourself. What’s this all about, anyway?

According to one prominent view, this existential problem is linked to one of Western civilization’s most powerful codes—what is known as the ethics of authenticity. In having dedicated his latest book to the subject, Andrew Potter helps provide a space of reflection around the functioning of this code. The book begins by describing the context surrounding its historical emergence, then briefly elaborates on its philosophical basis. But the bulk of author’s energy is dedicated toward linking the ethics of authenticity to a whole range of pernicious social phenomena in contemporary society.

Like any cultural code, authenticity maps a way of seeing and acting in the world. It does so through a vast array of institutionalized symbols and practices that get passed on from one generation to the next. The effect is to shape individuality by prompting each person to create a style of life that is uniquely their own. The method, we might say, requires that men and women take a distance on conventional social standards in order to cultivate what is best in their own personalities. By taking a step back from what is socially expected, a person’s idiosyncratic set of skills, charms, and pleasures can begin to take flight.

What makes Potter’s contribution to the subject worthwhile are the linkages he draws between the ideal of authenticity and a range of seemingly unrelated social phenomena. For the most part, the links he draws show how this apparently virtuous ideal can serve to promote a sordid pattern of antisocial behaviour—whether with regard to generalized anti-Western sentiment, competitive forms of consumer display, the distortion of artistic tastes, or a resentment toward business entrepreneurship. In the end, then, what the book seeks to provide is a wide-ranging critique of this founding cultural ideal.

Whether it is clear to Potter or not, his analysis focuses mainly on a specific component of authenticity—that which states that personal growth requires a kind of rebellion and detachment from mainstream society. From the perspective of richly diverse human development, one can see utility of this type of distancing. But for the overall ethics to work, this component needs to be checked with another, which insists on the value of men and women’s enthusiastic reintegration into society. Potter points us toward the worrying and bizarre trends that arise when this second dimension is lacking.

In one of the more persuasive chapters, Potter argues that the impulse toward rebelliousness more often than not turns into a game of consumerism. The journey toward authenticity is thus reduced to a competition in countercultural lifestyle display using clothing, food, travel, and a spate of other positional goods—goods, that is, which have more to do with status than utility. For Potter, this is collectively self-defeating since no one can ever come out on top. But besides all the wasted energy, we should note that what is also lost are the fruits of a more serious rebelliousness through which discontented individuals push back against the world so as to carve out a place in it that is truly their own.

One of the most striking things about the book is the writing style. Potter engages in abstract debates throughout, yet he does so using highly accessible prose that is as lucid as it is enjoyable. Part of the fun seems to stem from his use of an ironic sort of biographical condescension. Instead of just trading in ideas, he puts these in the context of the imperfect lives of their authors. So, for example...