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The Authenticity Hoax: How We Get Lost Finding Ourselves
“A totally real, genuine, authentic book about why you shouldn’t believe any of those words. And it’s genuinely good.”
— Gregg Easterbrook, author of Sonic Boom
Exploring a number of trends in our popular culture—from Sarah Palin to Antiques Roadshow, organic food to the indignation over James Frey’s memoir—Andrew Potter follows his successful Nation of Rebels with a new book that argues that our pursuit of the authentic is fraught with irony and self-defeat. Readers of The Paradox of Choice or Bowling Alone will find many enlightening insights in The Authenticity Hoax, which is, in the words of Tom de Zengotita (Mediated), “the kind of criticism that changes minds.”
— Gregg Easterbrook, author of Sonic Boom
Exploring a number of trends in our popular culture—from Sarah Palin to Antiques Roadshow, organic food to the indignation over James Frey’s memoir—Andrew Potter follows his successful Nation of Rebels with a new book that argues that our pursuit of the authentic is fraught with irony and self-defeat. Readers of The Paradox of Choice or Bowling Alone will find many enlightening insights in The Authenticity Hoax, which is, in the words of Tom de Zengotita (Mediated), “the kind of criticism that changes minds.”
296 pages, Hardcover
First published March 27, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 71 reviews
September 3, 2010
The new IKEA catalogue just arrived in my mailbox. The cover shows a pair of tykes sunk in matching EKTORP armchairs ($499 each). One kid is reading a storybook; the other appears to be dozing, with her bare feet resting fraternally—or I guess sororally—on the outstretched legs of her sister. Surmounting this tranquil scene is the slogan ‘Hooray for the everyday’. This is a gutsy choice of mottoes, not least because it echoes The Simpsons’ Up with People parody, ‘Hooray for Everything’. Since I can’t believe there’s nobody in IKEA’s brain trust young and alert enough to have caught this near-quotation, I can only assume it’s meant to be taken as a sly allusion, a knowing wink to the company’s target market: ‘Yes, okay, we’re a little bit ridiculous, with our meatballs and loganberry jam and our sober Swedish take on modern design, but we’re also affordable and democratic and basically nice, so come in and plunk down thirty bucks on a shelving unit and finally get a handle on the unsightly clutter in your home office.’
Or maybe I’m giving IKEA too much credit in the intertextuality department and ‘hooray for the everyday’ is a flat, unironic celebration of bourgeois domesticity, a paean to all that’s homey and mundane, and therefore an implicit repudiation of the kind of jokey knowingness my initial reading tried to locate in the slogan. Also, maybe I should shell out for that pendant lamp I've had my eye on and stop with the overanalyzing.
The everyday and I have always had a fraught relationship. As a white, urban, precariously middle-class Westerner, I inhabit an everyday reality that’s largely furnished and accessorized by IKEA and their ilk. Like everyone else with half a brain and a liberal-arts degree, I’m a tad ambivalent about this. Wandering around the shopping mall on a Saturday afternoon, I can’t help feeling baffled by, and alienated from, my culture. I think: this is the result of the Enlightenment? Lame architecture, fake Gucci sunglasses and obese families sucking back Orange Juliuses in the food court? Is this what Kant, Locke and all those guys had in mind when they mapped out the modern world?
Then I realize how grouchy my inner voice sounds, and I force myself to remember Roland Kirk, the Charter of Rights, casual blowjobs and all the other things I love about modern life. Trying to be judicious, I reflect that, just maybe, if I want human rights and the odd blowjob, I have to put up with a certain amount of crappy Chinese merchandise and a certain (hopefully finite) number of Justin Bieber songs. Yin and yang, you know?
This ambivalence, then, is the subject of The Authenticity Hoax, a book that combines pop philosophy with snappy cultural criticism. Andrew Potter’s main contention is that the search for authenticity—via organic food, environmental do-goodism, and touchy-feely stuff generally—is a vain exercise in status-seeking. He argues that the authentic/inauthentic dichotomy is a false distinction that’s bewitched the Western imagination ever since Rousseau started telling everybody to keep it real. To those who look wearily around The Gap and ask themselves if there isn’t perhaps something more to life, Potter basically offers the same answer Kramer once gave to Jerry: ‘Let me clue you in on something: there isn’t.’
For the most part, I’m on Potter’s side, and I enjoyed watching him rip into Al Gore and those super annoying locavore people. As a former philosophy prof at the University of Toronto, he has a professional contempt for muddled thinking and a very Canadian way of expressing it (calmly, reasonably, ever so slightly condescendingly).
But it’s a funny thing: when I hear my own political beliefs coming out of someone else’s mouth, they suddenly don’t seem so attractive to me—sort of like when Jerry found out his new girlfriend used to date Newman (last Seinfeld reference I’ll make today, I swear.) So when Potter advises us to accept the triumph of liberal democracy and just get over the end of history already, I don’t disagree, exactly, but somehow I’m no longer in the mood to make out. His line of argument has an uncomfortably Panglossian ring to it. I mean, if we’re living in the best of all possible systems, then it follows that whatever happens in that system happens for the best, right? I’m pretty happy with the system on the whole, but I hope I never get that complacent about it.
It’s one thing to make fun of the ‘dopey nostalgia’ and reactionary silliness of the anti-modern left. Hell, I’ve done it myself on this very website. But the flip side—which Potter never acknowledges—is that we owe a lot to these Prius-driving loonies. Civil rights, environmental protections, health insurance: these achievements weren’t brought about by cautious centrists, by and large, even if they were the ones who signed the bills. The fact is, we need a bit of spurious authenticity and giddy utopianism in the body politic. We need Naomi Klein. We may even need Noam Chomsky, God help us all. Because a world full of guys like Potter and me, stuffing ourselves with non-organic burgers and being snide, isn’t a world even I would want to live in.
Or maybe I’m giving IKEA too much credit in the intertextuality department and ‘hooray for the everyday’ is a flat, unironic celebration of bourgeois domesticity, a paean to all that’s homey and mundane, and therefore an implicit repudiation of the kind of jokey knowingness my initial reading tried to locate in the slogan. Also, maybe I should shell out for that pendant lamp I've had my eye on and stop with the overanalyzing.
The everyday and I have always had a fraught relationship. As a white, urban, precariously middle-class Westerner, I inhabit an everyday reality that’s largely furnished and accessorized by IKEA and their ilk. Like everyone else with half a brain and a liberal-arts degree, I’m a tad ambivalent about this. Wandering around the shopping mall on a Saturday afternoon, I can’t help feeling baffled by, and alienated from, my culture. I think: this is the result of the Enlightenment? Lame architecture, fake Gucci sunglasses and obese families sucking back Orange Juliuses in the food court? Is this what Kant, Locke and all those guys had in mind when they mapped out the modern world?
Then I realize how grouchy my inner voice sounds, and I force myself to remember Roland Kirk, the Charter of Rights, casual blowjobs and all the other things I love about modern life. Trying to be judicious, I reflect that, just maybe, if I want human rights and the odd blowjob, I have to put up with a certain amount of crappy Chinese merchandise and a certain (hopefully finite) number of Justin Bieber songs. Yin and yang, you know?
This ambivalence, then, is the subject of The Authenticity Hoax, a book that combines pop philosophy with snappy cultural criticism. Andrew Potter’s main contention is that the search for authenticity—via organic food, environmental do-goodism, and touchy-feely stuff generally—is a vain exercise in status-seeking. He argues that the authentic/inauthentic dichotomy is a false distinction that’s bewitched the Western imagination ever since Rousseau started telling everybody to keep it real. To those who look wearily around The Gap and ask themselves if there isn’t perhaps something more to life, Potter basically offers the same answer Kramer once gave to Jerry: ‘Let me clue you in on something: there isn’t.’
For the most part, I’m on Potter’s side, and I enjoyed watching him rip into Al Gore and those super annoying locavore people. As a former philosophy prof at the University of Toronto, he has a professional contempt for muddled thinking and a very Canadian way of expressing it (calmly, reasonably, ever so slightly condescendingly).
But it’s a funny thing: when I hear my own political beliefs coming out of someone else’s mouth, they suddenly don’t seem so attractive to me—sort of like when Jerry found out his new girlfriend used to date Newman (last Seinfeld reference I’ll make today, I swear.) So when Potter advises us to accept the triumph of liberal democracy and just get over the end of history already, I don’t disagree, exactly, but somehow I’m no longer in the mood to make out. His line of argument has an uncomfortably Panglossian ring to it. I mean, if we’re living in the best of all possible systems, then it follows that whatever happens in that system happens for the best, right? I’m pretty happy with the system on the whole, but I hope I never get that complacent about it.
It’s one thing to make fun of the ‘dopey nostalgia’ and reactionary silliness of the anti-modern left. Hell, I’ve done it myself on this very website. But the flip side—which Potter never acknowledges—is that we owe a lot to these Prius-driving loonies. Civil rights, environmental protections, health insurance: these achievements weren’t brought about by cautious centrists, by and large, even if they were the ones who signed the bills. The fact is, we need a bit of spurious authenticity and giddy utopianism in the body politic. We need Naomi Klein. We may even need Noam Chomsky, God help us all. Because a world full of guys like Potter and me, stuffing ourselves with non-organic burgers and being snide, isn’t a world even I would want to live in.
May 13, 2010
While this book contains many useful and easy to read glosses of philosophers, it is essentially just a defense of consumerism and middle brow culture. His basic advice is for us all to stop looking for meaning in our lives and to embrace the ease and comfort modernity has afforded us. That is fine as far as it goes, but it seems to me that in adopting this stance one runs the risk of stigmatizing all difference as merely "authenticity hunting." Whatever potential may be lying dormant in the cosmopolitanism of modernity, the actual result of the globalization of the marketplace has been homogeneity and bad novels. Potter's solution: Don't worry, be unhappy.
June 17, 2010
I read this book because NPR interviewed the author, and I found one of his ideas very compelling: that the pursuit of "authenticity" (whether Slow Foods, yoga rituals, or isolated tourist destinations) had become a contemporary form of conspicuous consumption. This observation is limited, and Potter's book relies on straw man arguments, distraction, and rhetorical gusto. I will give him credit for a few strengths: he writes very well, and he provides clear and cogent introductions to some major modern philosophers, introductions that I thought would be tremendously compelling in an undergrad philosophy course and that did not, for the most part, caricature the thinkers.
I cannot say he gave his opponents the same respect. There are certain points in this book where Potter more or less compares the "authenticity" drive of Islamic terrorists to the "authenticity" commerce of American elites, finding both to be examples of the same regrettable tendency to critique modernity. In the final chapter of his book, Potter basically embraces the idea of historical progress and condemns all of those who would resist the overall drive towards market values and liberal individualism, since we are so much less likely to die of typhoid than our Apple computer avatars on the Oregon Trail.
The fact that his argument is facetious, oversimplified, and really insulting to the political left that he maligns throughout the book never seems to occur to Potter because he's too taken with his own gifts of eloquence and smarm. Potter alludes to so many pop cultural moments (Lady Gaga, Mad Men, Matrix, Christian Bale rant on YouTube) that you can tell how delighted he is with his own ironic hipster sensibility. He treats any desire for a model of community or social responsibility as false consciousness embedded in the market economy's escalating quest for more valuable (and less attainable) goods.
There are middle grounds here and complicating factors, and while Potter makes a great show of defining his terms, his critique of the politically and culturally lamentable drive for the "authentic" relies on his instinct that his reader will not recognize how many different trends and attitudes he lumps under this term. I wish someone this eloquent and well-read could turn his abilities to more nuanced and compelling social commentary. Basically, he seems to be saying "Modernity is good. Get over it."
I cannot say he gave his opponents the same respect. There are certain points in this book where Potter more or less compares the "authenticity" drive of Islamic terrorists to the "authenticity" commerce of American elites, finding both to be examples of the same regrettable tendency to critique modernity. In the final chapter of his book, Potter basically embraces the idea of historical progress and condemns all of those who would resist the overall drive towards market values and liberal individualism, since we are so much less likely to die of typhoid than our Apple computer avatars on the Oregon Trail.
The fact that his argument is facetious, oversimplified, and really insulting to the political left that he maligns throughout the book never seems to occur to Potter because he's too taken with his own gifts of eloquence and smarm. Potter alludes to so many pop cultural moments (Lady Gaga, Mad Men, Matrix, Christian Bale rant on YouTube) that you can tell how delighted he is with his own ironic hipster sensibility. He treats any desire for a model of community or social responsibility as false consciousness embedded in the market economy's escalating quest for more valuable (and less attainable) goods.
There are middle grounds here and complicating factors, and while Potter makes a great show of defining his terms, his critique of the politically and culturally lamentable drive for the "authentic" relies on his instinct that his reader will not recognize how many different trends and attitudes he lumps under this term. I wish someone this eloquent and well-read could turn his abilities to more nuanced and compelling social commentary. Basically, he seems to be saying "Modernity is good. Get over it."
October 19, 2011
So good news, I am not the only one who thinks she's a fraud. Bad news, we're all lame. Andrew Potter's The Authenticity Hoax: How We Get Lost Finding Ourselves explores what it means to be authentic, and what Potter thinks is that it is basically just Jones' trying to keep up with Jones', driven by a need to feel special and good and right, and fuelled by nostalgia for an ideal past that never was.
I Loved it.
It's a philosophy book, I guess. But one that does not cause rage-induced seizures. Potter calls out the cult/industry of authenticity on their worship/peddling of realness. Those are my words. As Potter puts it, "authenticity is motivated by a visceral reaction to secularism, liberalism, and capitalism, and the sense that a meaningful life is not possible in the modern world, that all it offers is a toxic mix of social climbing and alienation." Philosophically heavy but it never feels heavy. There are references to religion, history, politics, art and philosophy but it is always related back to present-day by using contemporary examples found in our popular culture, making this book not only informative but funny and entertaining as well.
I'm a chapter reader, meaning I like to stop reading at the end of a chapter. It has something to do with efficiency and time allotment and planning out the rest of my hour, morning, day. But once and a while a writer will be really good at opening chapters, and my plans get shot to smithereens because I just can't help taking a peek at the next one. This book was like that. All the chapters start with a story illustrating the main point, and did it very well… and screwed up my day accordingly.
I recommend The Authenticity Hoax because it goes against the tide of "everything is going to hell" which is a nice change, and there are lots of interesting facts like, soap stone was introduced to the Inuit by the white man - upsetting, I know but also cool. But mostly I appreciate the notion that we should relax and enjoy what our modern world has given us, question those things that are touted as 'authentic' and be easier on the things we are asked to dismiss as fake.
Except that I will continue to mock suburbia and rail against SUVs... and Katy Perry - don't get me started on Katy Perry. I will reread periodically.
I Loved it.
It's a philosophy book, I guess. But one that does not cause rage-induced seizures. Potter calls out the cult/industry of authenticity on their worship/peddling of realness. Those are my words. As Potter puts it, "authenticity is motivated by a visceral reaction to secularism, liberalism, and capitalism, and the sense that a meaningful life is not possible in the modern world, that all it offers is a toxic mix of social climbing and alienation." Philosophically heavy but it never feels heavy. There are references to religion, history, politics, art and philosophy but it is always related back to present-day by using contemporary examples found in our popular culture, making this book not only informative but funny and entertaining as well.
I'm a chapter reader, meaning I like to stop reading at the end of a chapter. It has something to do with efficiency and time allotment and planning out the rest of my hour, morning, day. But once and a while a writer will be really good at opening chapters, and my plans get shot to smithereens because I just can't help taking a peek at the next one. This book was like that. All the chapters start with a story illustrating the main point, and did it very well… and screwed up my day accordingly.
I recommend The Authenticity Hoax because it goes against the tide of "everything is going to hell" which is a nice change, and there are lots of interesting facts like, soap stone was introduced to the Inuit by the white man - upsetting, I know but also cool. But mostly I appreciate the notion that we should relax and enjoy what our modern world has given us, question those things that are touted as 'authentic' and be easier on the things we are asked to dismiss as fake.
Except that I will continue to mock suburbia and rail against SUVs... and Katy Perry - don't get me started on Katy Perry. I will reread periodically.
May 27, 2010
This was, in many ways, a wonderful book. The author is writing from a secular standpoint and so his solution to the problem he describes is pretty thin, but he doesn't spend most of his time trying to sketch a solution. Most of the book is a description of the problem, and here he is far more insightful than a host of Christian writers, copy-cats, knock-offs, and wanna-bees. In Christian terminology, our lust for authenticity is one of our central idolatries.
July 12, 2010
If you enjoy books with sentences like "In this view, liberalism is a narcissistic and even nihilistic philosophy, having no conceptual room for values or allegiances that extend beyond the whims or desires of the self" (page 210) THEN THIS BOOK WILL ROCK YOUR WORLD!!! If that bored the living crap out of you or you just plain old said, "Huh?", then I think you are cool and I hope I have saved you some valuable reading time by giving you this heads up.
I'm not even kidding! This book is totally loaded with philosophical mumbo-jumbo. I picked it up because I heard an interview on NPR (where else?!) with the author and he was talking about how we so highly prize things like "authentic" 501 jeans and asked the question, 'what makes them authentic'? That is indeed an awesome question. And since I wear jeans, I thought that I might enjoy the philosophical issues of them. I probably would enjoy a shallow discussion like that, but this book was too smart for me. I have a degree in geology, so essentially I have rocks in my head, which makes the grand philosophies of Nietzsche and Rousseau way past my understanding. There was a few short paragraphs about Avril Lavigne. I did enjoy those. They were shallow enough for me.
I'm not even kidding! This book is totally loaded with philosophical mumbo-jumbo. I picked it up because I heard an interview on NPR (where else?!) with the author and he was talking about how we so highly prize things like "authentic" 501 jeans and asked the question, 'what makes them authentic'? That is indeed an awesome question. And since I wear jeans, I thought that I might enjoy the philosophical issues of them. I probably would enjoy a shallow discussion like that, but this book was too smart for me. I have a degree in geology, so essentially I have rocks in my head, which makes the grand philosophies of Nietzsche and Rousseau way past my understanding. There was a few short paragraphs about Avril Lavigne. I did enjoy those. They were shallow enough for me.
March 28, 2016
There are many revelations about today's adult population's search for authenticity in The Authenticity Hoax. He wishes politicians weren't afraid of going off-message or of telling the style consultants to take a hike. He describes the fake, artificial, inauthentic suburbs offering a mere imitation of real living to people brainwashed by advertising. To quote Potter, "To cement their role as the midwives of the American dream General Motors, Standard Oil, and a few other companies bought the streetcar lines in a number of cities and tore up the tracks, while the federal government instituted a massive road and highway construction plan that connected the increasingly hollow city cores with the booming suburbs. Thus did the American way of life come to be identified with the automotive way of life, and these families found themselves living in cookie-cutter developments that offered neither the convenience and community of the city nor the privacy and charm of the country. Instead, they were stranded in a no man's land, a vacant and sterile world from which the only means of escape was the automobile." To these and many other ideas I was nodding my head and underlining favourite parts of this book up until Professor Potter became critical of David Suzuki. Had he trashed Suzuki in the first chapter I would not have bothered to read the remainder of the book.
September 24, 2012
I'd separate this book into sections, roughly: (1) fairly interesting and relevant to the authenticity discussion, (2) fairly interesting and not relevant to the authenticity discussion, and (3) seething, roiling vitriol.
While frequently enjoyable, this book ultimately frustrates. In an age in which we're very concerned about "originals" and "actuals" and "authentics", we want to know why a reproduction--even if executed perfectly--somehow feels like a sham.
Potter's thesis is that this question is itself irrelevant (or, dare I say, inauthentic). Want of authenticity is inauthentic, or at the very least, will not help us find or experience authenticity. "Wanting to be book is not book."
Okay. I could have guessed that from the title. Potter attempts to back this "deceptively" simple hypothesis with several forays into social and philosophical history of authenticity, pulling back the curtain and showing us that it's an intellectual and social construct. All thing are authentic in the trivial sense and nothing is Authentic in the larger sense.
While these history lessons are generally enjoyable (if you're into history and/or philosophy), it's not clear that they really further the book's thesis, get us any closer to really understanding why our obsession with the authentic is bogus. Perhaps a broader philosophical survey would have been more illuminating--Potter instead turns time and time again to his old pal Rousseau. You get the impression that Potter is a Rousseau scholar and is repurposing academic papers, at times.
When it isn't Rousseau, Potter generally selects from only a small handful of other standbys. While the bibliography tells us that this book is very well researched, it's hard to shake the feeling that this is somehow...personal.
This is magnified, of course, but the third of the book that is pure, seething anger. Potter hates everything. He hates fashion, he hates health food, he hates design, he hates objects, affectation, decoration, and really probably, any form of constructed beauty. People are all fools, whiling away their time on pointless objects and endeavors, overly concerned with their objects.
Sure. Fine. Most of the bands I liked in high school said as much. I've seen Fight Club.
Is that the most interesting that can be said about it? Isn't there something more than simple social posturing that draws us to the "authentic"? While we may be able to agree that "authenticity" is indeed a construct, it also functions totemically; it imbues our objects with a sort of magic, makes them individual, elevates them, and reflects, in part, our quest to attain them. In a sense then, Potter is right. The "authentic" always represents a want of authenticity.
And framed thusly, it can be perverted by manufacturers and advertisers, used to sell decided "inauthentic" products. It's this side that seems to really get Potter's blood boiling. And he correctly points out that it's the conceptual framework of authenticity that makes this possible. But he seems to lose the deeper notion in which things seem meaningful, more rooted, more three dimensional. We can (and perhaps should) lose the term, but we shouldn't ditch the concept altogether.
Ultimately, Potter must know this. Otherwise he wouldn't know to ask why we're increasingly consumed with notions of authenticity. As choice proliferates to the point of meaninglessness, and objects are manufactured with next to no care, it's not hard to see our interaction with the world happening on an increasingly two dimensional level. We haven't merely been duped, though; we are bothered on some core level. Potter argues on one hand that our quest for the authentic is nothing new, and that we're increasingly preoccupied on the other.
But why are we increasingly preoccupied? This question lies at the heart of The Authenticity Hoax. Potter, for his part, seems to argue that the intellectual and social construct--the hoax--of authenticity is simple gaining traction. It's a memeplex and we live in the age of memes. The want of authenticity, he would argue, is a manufactured one.
On this point, finally, I must disagree. The want of authenticity reflects something much deeper that Potter only scratches the surface of. As an analysis of the social and intellectual history of the concept of authenticity, this is a worthwhile, if rather incomplete read. The larger discussion, however, could have been (and has been, numerous times, more incisively) summed up in an article.
While frequently enjoyable, this book ultimately frustrates. In an age in which we're very concerned about "originals" and "actuals" and "authentics", we want to know why a reproduction--even if executed perfectly--somehow feels like a sham.
Potter's thesis is that this question is itself irrelevant (or, dare I say, inauthentic). Want of authenticity is inauthentic, or at the very least, will not help us find or experience authenticity. "Wanting to be book is not book."
Okay. I could have guessed that from the title. Potter attempts to back this "deceptively" simple hypothesis with several forays into social and philosophical history of authenticity, pulling back the curtain and showing us that it's an intellectual and social construct. All thing are authentic in the trivial sense and nothing is Authentic in the larger sense.
While these history lessons are generally enjoyable (if you're into history and/or philosophy), it's not clear that they really further the book's thesis, get us any closer to really understanding why our obsession with the authentic is bogus. Perhaps a broader philosophical survey would have been more illuminating--Potter instead turns time and time again to his old pal Rousseau. You get the impression that Potter is a Rousseau scholar and is repurposing academic papers, at times.
When it isn't Rousseau, Potter generally selects from only a small handful of other standbys. While the bibliography tells us that this book is very well researched, it's hard to shake the feeling that this is somehow...personal.
This is magnified, of course, but the third of the book that is pure, seething anger. Potter hates everything. He hates fashion, he hates health food, he hates design, he hates objects, affectation, decoration, and really probably, any form of constructed beauty. People are all fools, whiling away their time on pointless objects and endeavors, overly concerned with their objects.
Sure. Fine. Most of the bands I liked in high school said as much. I've seen Fight Club.
Is that the most interesting that can be said about it? Isn't there something more than simple social posturing that draws us to the "authentic"? While we may be able to agree that "authenticity" is indeed a construct, it also functions totemically; it imbues our objects with a sort of magic, makes them individual, elevates them, and reflects, in part, our quest to attain them. In a sense then, Potter is right. The "authentic" always represents a want of authenticity.
And framed thusly, it can be perverted by manufacturers and advertisers, used to sell decided "inauthentic" products. It's this side that seems to really get Potter's blood boiling. And he correctly points out that it's the conceptual framework of authenticity that makes this possible. But he seems to lose the deeper notion in which things seem meaningful, more rooted, more three dimensional. We can (and perhaps should) lose the term, but we shouldn't ditch the concept altogether.
Ultimately, Potter must know this. Otherwise he wouldn't know to ask why we're increasingly consumed with notions of authenticity. As choice proliferates to the point of meaninglessness, and objects are manufactured with next to no care, it's not hard to see our interaction with the world happening on an increasingly two dimensional level. We haven't merely been duped, though; we are bothered on some core level. Potter argues on one hand that our quest for the authentic is nothing new, and that we're increasingly preoccupied on the other.
But why are we increasingly preoccupied? This question lies at the heart of The Authenticity Hoax. Potter, for his part, seems to argue that the intellectual and social construct--the hoax--of authenticity is simple gaining traction. It's a memeplex and we live in the age of memes. The want of authenticity, he would argue, is a manufactured one.
On this point, finally, I must disagree. The want of authenticity reflects something much deeper that Potter only scratches the surface of. As an analysis of the social and intellectual history of the concept of authenticity, this is a worthwhile, if rather incomplete read. The larger discussion, however, could have been (and has been, numerous times, more incisively) summed up in an article.
February 28, 2014
Reasonably interesting look at how it is a quest for a more authentic life often leaves us feeling dissatisfied. I'm still digesting it but ultimately I think I agree with the notion that excessive identification with a specific notion of being, like health veganism, crunch granola mommies, and similar, lead to self-absorption and makes social contact difficult. But I'm still thinking about whether or not I agree wholly with the author's perspective.
January 15, 2021
Potter presents the idea that the search for an "authentic" existence is itself inauthentic. We seek reality in nature, but we have never been able to separate reality or nature from our own interpretations of it, and we never will. We seek authenticity in our deepest feelings and desires, but those feelings have already been shaped by the forces of artificiality which we're trying to escape. Even the idea that we can find authenticity beyond the walls of modern life is an artificial way of thinking that ignores the reality of the civilization in which we live.
What the search for authenticity amounts to is self-satisfaction through status-seeking. Only the wealthy are able to afford the diets, vacations, and time for contemplation that the various authentic lifestyles demand. The search inevitably creates a continuum of lifestyles, and we assign virtue and social status to those closer to the "authentic" side of the spectrum. This further divides an already divided society, and exhausts us with the pursuit of a nostalgic reality that only exists in our imaginations.
In a disappointingly short conclusion, Potter argues that the only way forward is through. We must accept civilization and technology as genuine goods. We must embrace the modernist values which brought us these goods. Modernity and technology have created genuinely unique problems, but we should overcome those problems using the same values that brought us the wealth and free time to complain about them in the first place.
Potter is scarce on details for how to solve the problems of our age. He merely explicates why authenticity is not a solution. The reader is left with a page-and-a-half of vague allusions to neoliberalism and enlightenment values and left to draw their own conclusions. The drawbacks of these values are not addressed, nor is the fact that these same values spawned the authenticity culture which Potter rejects. Potter dismantles authenticity, but leaves capitalism and secularism unscathed.
At around 300 pages, this book is far too long. Potter devotes chapters to examples of inauthentic authenticity that could have been left as exercises to the reader. The cultural histories he provides are certainly interesting, but one gets the sense that each example accomplishes little more than fluffing out the word count.
Potter's prose is clear, concise, and accessible. There are few philosophers who are able to write on this topic without frolicking in esotericism. The Authenticity Hoax doesn't approach the profundity of Baudrillard or Deluze, but Potter's approachability makes up for his simplicity.
Though not worth reading closely, the Authenticity Hoax is worth skimming and pondering. Potter's critiques are challenging, even if not as radical as I would like. His call to accept the reality of the modern world is a needed one, even if he doesn't provide a clear way to solve its problems. I would highly recommend this book as a prelude to Simulacra and Simulation for those who are baffled by Baudrillard's prose.
What the search for authenticity amounts to is self-satisfaction through status-seeking. Only the wealthy are able to afford the diets, vacations, and time for contemplation that the various authentic lifestyles demand. The search inevitably creates a continuum of lifestyles, and we assign virtue and social status to those closer to the "authentic" side of the spectrum. This further divides an already divided society, and exhausts us with the pursuit of a nostalgic reality that only exists in our imaginations.
In a disappointingly short conclusion, Potter argues that the only way forward is through. We must accept civilization and technology as genuine goods. We must embrace the modernist values which brought us these goods. Modernity and technology have created genuinely unique problems, but we should overcome those problems using the same values that brought us the wealth and free time to complain about them in the first place.
Potter is scarce on details for how to solve the problems of our age. He merely explicates why authenticity is not a solution. The reader is left with a page-and-a-half of vague allusions to neoliberalism and enlightenment values and left to draw their own conclusions. The drawbacks of these values are not addressed, nor is the fact that these same values spawned the authenticity culture which Potter rejects. Potter dismantles authenticity, but leaves capitalism and secularism unscathed.
At around 300 pages, this book is far too long. Potter devotes chapters to examples of inauthentic authenticity that could have been left as exercises to the reader. The cultural histories he provides are certainly interesting, but one gets the sense that each example accomplishes little more than fluffing out the word count.
Potter's prose is clear, concise, and accessible. There are few philosophers who are able to write on this topic without frolicking in esotericism. The Authenticity Hoax doesn't approach the profundity of Baudrillard or Deluze, but Potter's approachability makes up for his simplicity.
Though not worth reading closely, the Authenticity Hoax is worth skimming and pondering. Potter's critiques are challenging, even if not as radical as I would like. His call to accept the reality of the modern world is a needed one, even if he doesn't provide a clear way to solve its problems. I would highly recommend this book as a prelude to Simulacra and Simulation for those who are baffled by Baudrillard's prose.
December 19, 2021
sometimes you read a blurb about a book which excites/intrigues you, but when you finally get it - it's nothing like you thought it would be. this was such a book. i pushed my way through - it's MY choice for this month's book club, after all - but found little cohesion between his chapters on history, philosophy, art, and plagerism. i thought the 'hoax' of authenticity was now - not a continual presence in human development. and the author had a broader definition of authenticity... more aligned with stature and wealth than the granola and yoga i was expecting.
the only part i really enjoyed reading was the deconstruction of the organic foods industry - years ago when organic food started being touted and THE ONLY food we should be eating, i was very aware of a class distinction. afterall, even the organic farmers will tell you this is NOT a sustainable product for the whole world. therefore eating organic - to me - was a sign of elitism: there's a limited amount of good health going around, and i get it. usually people are galvanized to spread health as a right for all mankind: sports grants for underprivileged children, vaccinations and clean water for the third world, petitions to drug companies to provide AIDS drugs to africa at cost... but organic food, by it's very nature, is limited. to eat organic to declare yourself as deserving better than the rest of the world. it doesn't get any more elite than that.
the only part i really enjoyed reading was the deconstruction of the organic foods industry - years ago when organic food started being touted and THE ONLY food we should be eating, i was very aware of a class distinction. afterall, even the organic farmers will tell you this is NOT a sustainable product for the whole world. therefore eating organic - to me - was a sign of elitism: there's a limited amount of good health going around, and i get it. usually people are galvanized to spread health as a right for all mankind: sports grants for underprivileged children, vaccinations and clean water for the third world, petitions to drug companies to provide AIDS drugs to africa at cost... but organic food, by it's very nature, is limited. to eat organic to declare yourself as deserving better than the rest of the world. it doesn't get any more elite than that.
May 18, 2013
This was a fun interesting read although I did get bogged down somewhere in the middle due to trying to read it during nightshift instead of when I was properly awake. Andrew Potter's premise is that modern society and its comforts have led us to a place where we fear we have lost "authenticity". We yearn for a time long ago when we played outside, drank pure water, didn't worry about melanoma when we are out in the sun, ate foods not contaminated by chemicals. I suppose what we are really yearning for is the innocence of childhood. Good things were better, bad things were scarier (hell for instance). Now we all at the same foods, drink the same beers, shop in the same stores wear the same clothing and this has made us fear that we are now inauthentic, leading us to feel insecure and causing us to attempt more and more to find authenticity in our lives. The problem is the more we search for authenticity the more pathetic we become. It was a little off-putting to realize that the things that make me feel smug and "better" than other lesser mortals are the same experiences that make other people feel smug and better as well. .
April 10, 2013
Good philosophy books are less about a punchlist of interesting facts that you glean—say, that people who buy organic food are full of shit—from them than they are food for thought. Honing your philosophical knives is the product instead. It's fair to say that The Authenticity Hoax does just that, but it's not clear to me that this book should be a philosophy book. As a history book, or as a book about consumer culture, it is lacking. Potter's general description of the "authenticity hoax" is accurate, but his origin story of it is deeply flawed.
Other reviewers of this book are pretty quick to put author Andrew Potter into a pigeonhole as a right-winger. In reading his blogs and other writings, I certainly don't find this to be the case; what he is different: Canadian. Perhaps the political culture isn't as polarized in Canada and there are more true independents. In the US, if you write a book that engages in, say, attacks on the eaters of organic food, the subtext is what bloggers call "hippy punching"—an art form perfected by liberals who want to be seen as smarter than other liberals and which reached its apotheosis as an art form in the build up to the Iraq war. Such intra-liberal arguments in the US are criticized as shandes for de goyim that only empower the political right. I think that's true, but at the same time it says that the right wing isn't wrong, it's out of the question and the only remaining debate is between, say, those whose heart bleeds more for the environment (organic food eaters) and those whose heart bleeds more for those who starve (the hippy punchers).
Potter also engages in, what in the US at least, is an equal sin: "both sides do it" rhetoric. But I can take this coming from someone outside of all of this context more or less at face value.
I might call Potter a Neo-Cynic, which is fair since he invokes the ancient cynics on a few occasions. Potter checks a few other boxes seemingly required by philosophy books, such as tracing ideas back to Plato (with bonus points for going Presocratic on certain ideas—which, ironically, is a form of philosophy-authenication).
But as soon as Potter starts deconstructing the modern world and modern mind by discussing Rousseau, Nietzsche, Hegel, and Marx we know he's the other kind of philosopher: a "continental" philosopher. What this means to those from the empirical traditions is that he can make a damn good explanation of things, largely based on elite cultural artifacts like literature, art, biographies of famous men, but none of it stands up a damn bit to close scrutiny.
And so it is with Potter, who tries to explain the modern world of industrial capitalism, democracy, and a permanent cycle of social change as a three-headed monster (or at least animal) that has made the world a nice place like Canada.
I agree with Potter (and with Monte Python) that the Empire is underrated. But I think his deterministic version of how history marches forward from a seemingly random set of circumstances in Georgian England and how this has created the myth of the "authentic" is simply incorrect or unverifiable. At best, it's very Eurocentric.
Saudi Arabia. That is a two-word refutation of Potter's theory of history. Saudis aren't authenticity seeking Prius drivers. They're also not democratic, liberal, or much for what we normally think of capitalists. Yet here we are in 2013, and there's Saudi Arabia. And, really, there's much of the rest of the world. Potter uses Bhutan as an argument of an entire country looking to keep itself "authentic" for the purposes of selling itself to tourists. Good example; bad proof.
It also remains to be proved both inside and outside this book that somehow when the medieval "everything in its place" worldview allegedly prevailed that people didn't notice or feel "alienated" by change. I have a hard time picturing medieval peasants pondering the meaning of life and one day deciding they felt "alienated" from their lord and so they should riot for democracy. Odds are, one day, things just went bad and they were pissed off. So, again, as history (or even sociology or anthropology) this work is light weight and not compelling.
The authenticity hoax, I think (and Potter fails to convince me otherwise) did not arise out of some philosophical disease in the mind of modern westerners. Instead, I think it's a sort of in situ reaction to things we don't like using the tools we have. Almost everything we buy makes some sort of value statement or reflects some kind of choice. If we buy organic milk it says one thing, but it says, in part, the same thing as anyone else who buys milk, because there are people that don't buy milk. The search for the "authentic," Potter claims is a kind of ego-maximizing solipsist's reaction to "alienation." It's people reacting to modern change with nostalgia for something they never experienced. Except, I think it's just nostalgia for something people did have, but in a different form: a childhood memory, or, perhaps, a wish to simply express a value: I don't like oil companies, for example.
What's ironic to an American reader is that the kind of people engaged in the "authenticity hoax" the most in Potter's book—your stereotypical Prius driving, organic food eating, quinoa recipe-book reading ecotourist—is exactly the kind of person who, in America, is deemed to be the least authentic. We're the cityslickers—so say a phalanx of people who have "Cowboy Up" stickers on their giant 4x4 trucks (who have never ridden a horse and whose work does not involve dirt roads, cows, or hauling). The Real Americans, who go to small white churches, and drive pickups, listen to "country" music, etc. etc. are the accusers of the Prius set for being fakers. Al Gore uses electricity! What a fraud! Yet for Potter, the Canadian (who apparently has never been to Alberta) this irony is apparently lost.
An interesting question to ask Potter would be who he thinks is more engaged in a hoax: ultra-traditionalists like, say, hareidi Jews who try to do everything just as they thought it was done hundreds of years ago and deliberately refusing to engage with the modern world, or JewBus who try to gain spirituality through the meditation practices of other faiths, like Buddhism. It's clear to me that he would think the JewBus are the ones engaged in a kind of authenticity hoax, because they act like hippies. But that's the problem with this hoax: everyone's doing it some way or another.
But there's no doubt that the wealth and leisure time afforded not by modernity, but by the abundance of life in North America, drives people into selfish and fraudulent (the word I would use instead of hoax, maybe) behavior in a pursuit of something they can't describe. That they can never achieve it is part of the problem. That it's a part of passive status seeking is also correct.
But I don't think it has anything to do with Rousseau and his step mom.
Other reviewers of this book are pretty quick to put author Andrew Potter into a pigeonhole as a right-winger. In reading his blogs and other writings, I certainly don't find this to be the case; what he is different: Canadian. Perhaps the political culture isn't as polarized in Canada and there are more true independents. In the US, if you write a book that engages in, say, attacks on the eaters of organic food, the subtext is what bloggers call "hippy punching"—an art form perfected by liberals who want to be seen as smarter than other liberals and which reached its apotheosis as an art form in the build up to the Iraq war. Such intra-liberal arguments in the US are criticized as shandes for de goyim that only empower the political right. I think that's true, but at the same time it says that the right wing isn't wrong, it's out of the question and the only remaining debate is between, say, those whose heart bleeds more for the environment (organic food eaters) and those whose heart bleeds more for those who starve (the hippy punchers).
Potter also engages in, what in the US at least, is an equal sin: "both sides do it" rhetoric. But I can take this coming from someone outside of all of this context more or less at face value.
I might call Potter a Neo-Cynic, which is fair since he invokes the ancient cynics on a few occasions. Potter checks a few other boxes seemingly required by philosophy books, such as tracing ideas back to Plato (with bonus points for going Presocratic on certain ideas—which, ironically, is a form of philosophy-authenication).
But as soon as Potter starts deconstructing the modern world and modern mind by discussing Rousseau, Nietzsche, Hegel, and Marx we know he's the other kind of philosopher: a "continental" philosopher. What this means to those from the empirical traditions is that he can make a damn good explanation of things, largely based on elite cultural artifacts like literature, art, biographies of famous men, but none of it stands up a damn bit to close scrutiny.
And so it is with Potter, who tries to explain the modern world of industrial capitalism, democracy, and a permanent cycle of social change as a three-headed monster (or at least animal) that has made the world a nice place like Canada.
I agree with Potter (and with Monte Python) that the Empire is underrated. But I think his deterministic version of how history marches forward from a seemingly random set of circumstances in Georgian England and how this has created the myth of the "authentic" is simply incorrect or unverifiable. At best, it's very Eurocentric.
Saudi Arabia. That is a two-word refutation of Potter's theory of history. Saudis aren't authenticity seeking Prius drivers. They're also not democratic, liberal, or much for what we normally think of capitalists. Yet here we are in 2013, and there's Saudi Arabia. And, really, there's much of the rest of the world. Potter uses Bhutan as an argument of an entire country looking to keep itself "authentic" for the purposes of selling itself to tourists. Good example; bad proof.
It also remains to be proved both inside and outside this book that somehow when the medieval "everything in its place" worldview allegedly prevailed that people didn't notice or feel "alienated" by change. I have a hard time picturing medieval peasants pondering the meaning of life and one day deciding they felt "alienated" from their lord and so they should riot for democracy. Odds are, one day, things just went bad and they were pissed off. So, again, as history (or even sociology or anthropology) this work is light weight and not compelling.
The authenticity hoax, I think (and Potter fails to convince me otherwise) did not arise out of some philosophical disease in the mind of modern westerners. Instead, I think it's a sort of in situ reaction to things we don't like using the tools we have. Almost everything we buy makes some sort of value statement or reflects some kind of choice. If we buy organic milk it says one thing, but it says, in part, the same thing as anyone else who buys milk, because there are people that don't buy milk. The search for the "authentic," Potter claims is a kind of ego-maximizing solipsist's reaction to "alienation." It's people reacting to modern change with nostalgia for something they never experienced. Except, I think it's just nostalgia for something people did have, but in a different form: a childhood memory, or, perhaps, a wish to simply express a value: I don't like oil companies, for example.
What's ironic to an American reader is that the kind of people engaged in the "authenticity hoax" the most in Potter's book—your stereotypical Prius driving, organic food eating, quinoa recipe-book reading ecotourist—is exactly the kind of person who, in America, is deemed to be the least authentic. We're the cityslickers—so say a phalanx of people who have "Cowboy Up" stickers on their giant 4x4 trucks (who have never ridden a horse and whose work does not involve dirt roads, cows, or hauling). The Real Americans, who go to small white churches, and drive pickups, listen to "country" music, etc. etc. are the accusers of the Prius set for being fakers. Al Gore uses electricity! What a fraud! Yet for Potter, the Canadian (who apparently has never been to Alberta) this irony is apparently lost.
An interesting question to ask Potter would be who he thinks is more engaged in a hoax: ultra-traditionalists like, say, hareidi Jews who try to do everything just as they thought it was done hundreds of years ago and deliberately refusing to engage with the modern world, or JewBus who try to gain spirituality through the meditation practices of other faiths, like Buddhism. It's clear to me that he would think the JewBus are the ones engaged in a kind of authenticity hoax, because they act like hippies. But that's the problem with this hoax: everyone's doing it some way or another.
But there's no doubt that the wealth and leisure time afforded not by modernity, but by the abundance of life in North America, drives people into selfish and fraudulent (the word I would use instead of hoax, maybe) behavior in a pursuit of something they can't describe. That they can never achieve it is part of the problem. That it's a part of passive status seeking is also correct.
But I don't think it has anything to do with Rousseau and his step mom.
April 3, 2020
Potter’s main argument is that searching authenticity is inherent to modern times. According to him, people look for authenticity to rid themselves of the problems of modernity but as authenticity searching is a direct result of modernity, and thus ironically part of the problems of modernity, this search will lead nowhere. Therefore: authenticity is a hoax. Throughout his book he forces the causal relationship between modernism and authenticity and provides interesting information on both, mostly from historical and philosophical perspectives.
Sure enough I agree with many of Potter’s critique on authenticity and I find his historical treatise on the subject interesting, however I also find it to be overly abstract and selective. For instance, his reasoning borders that of causal fallacy in pinpointing the historic rise of modernism to the search of authenticity. Sure enough, there is ample evidence leading to rightfully suggest there are strong connections, but at times his book feels like he forces the connecting of two concepts (modernism & authenticity) for the sake of overly addressing a causality that can be questioned as a whole.
For instance, what was the search for authenticity like before modern times? Countless cultures show frictions between the collective and the individual, and from a logical sociological point of view it could very well be argued that a human drive for traits such as spiritual development, creativity and spontaneity (traits Potter vaguely addresses to authenticity) is typically human. Such behavior can for instance be seen in the rock paintings of Homo sapiens prehistoric ancestors. The entire focus on modernism that Potter takes just feels part of a selection bias, something typical of academic research which is prone of exaggerated relevance.
And speaking of the focus on modernism.. Any academic or other person who worked with such terms knows that they represent a broad era of abstractly defined ideology, school of thought, art or some kind of other movement. As such, modern literature does not represent an exact overlap with the onset of modern architecture. Generally such terms represent a certain style or set of ideas that surged in popularity in a certain era. Most important of all: these are human constructs and theoretical concepts that aim to categorize. As a result academics is marred with fancy juggling of concepts and theories, but these remain abstractions of reality, with a relevance that sometimes ends at the contours of the target population of fellow researchers interested in the same theoretical relations. Why I feel the need to point this out? Well, what about postmodernism for instance? I mean, it clearly comes after modernism and despite the fact that such a concept borders the pretentious and overly theoretical, it remains an important movement in areas such as architecture. And what about other sets of ideas/movements/schools of thought such as functionalism, positivism or structuralism? A researcher concentrating on a certain school of thought is pretty common and it leads to interesting outcomes, but the results of such research are also biased. In The Authenticity Hoax a selection bias clearly favors a causal relationship between modernism and authenticity. It is typical of popscience books to provide a limited message through carefully selected facts and research that fits the argument, but discards that which is not favored in this respect.
What this book lacked were clear-cut definitions, or at least Potter’s search for defining characteristics. Throughout his book he gives different vague definitions of authenticity. It is up to the reader to work towards some kind of workable definition. Seeing as this book has the word authenticity in its title, I find this problematic. He describes the concept as an ideal, a personal attitude and a societal trend. Potter describes authenticity as “the essential core of life, […] and finding the authentic has become the foremost spiritual quest of our time”. Other examples are: “[O]ne who disengages from the deforming forces of society and looks inward, drawing inspiration from the murky depths of the creative self. The turn inward is a quasi-religious quest”, and “[O]ne who, almost by definition, rejects popular tastes, thoughts, opinions, styles, and morals.” The ideal of authenticity Potter describes as “a celebration of spontaneity, emotional transparency, and a fixation on the creative powers of the individual to provide meaning in a world that otherwise offers none.”
This listing of descriptions is not exhaustive but illustrates the vague and varied meaning which Potter instills on the concept. It is exactly because of this that I found myself struggling with his book. On a somewhat abstract level I can very well accept the idea that authenticity is a social reactionary force to modern alienation and I recognize from firsthand experiences the commercialization of the concept, from brands using it to sell more stuff or spiritual gurus selling it through questionable practices. It is here that the book makes the strongest arguments and makes you think (or at least me) about the societal trend of the quest for authenticity. On the other - less abstract - hand however, authenticity means different things to different (groups of) people and this diversity is not taken into account by Potter. Before modern times people already had different views on authenticity, quite likely sinces humankind has been spiritual in their endeavors and lived in groups. Clearly, the search for authenticity becomes more important in large groups of people, as the search is that of the individual for him/herself, a search in the Maslowian sense for self-realization and thus an inherently human characteristic, which is fueled by an increase in general welfare. It is a striving which may not lead to an outcome, but a striving nonetheless which is generally a driving force for innovation and creation. Also there remains the topic of semantics. The meaning attributed to authenticity varies among individuals and while the current search might be fueled by societal trends and shaped by Western culture, the differences in the meaning individuals attribute to the concept of authenticity, as well as their own way of searching for it, can widely vary. Of course, since all humans are shaped by their surroundings, upbringing and social relations – being social animals – authenticity in the purest sense of the word (being truly unique) is impossible. However, when people mention they value authenticity they mean something different than wanting to be unique or their desire to return to premodern times.
My issue with some chapters of Potter’s book is how he follows up on a rather pessimistic causal relation between modernism and authenticity seeking. Besides a rather annoying and repetitive chapter on the US presidency race of 2009 (the year before his book was published) he continues to exaggerate the view that authenticity searching is inherently nonconformist. Taking steps of associating and connecting concepts he links authenticity to nonconformist reactionaries such as the Unabomber, fundamentalist groups such as Al Qaida or the temporary status seeking behavior of an urban elite snobbishly eating organic food. Quite likely there are plenty examples of people searching for authenticity who are quite boring conformist types as well! An example is the increasing popularity of authenticity searching through spiritual means and the countless of movements, organizations and self-proclaimed yogi’s, guru’s and other teachers that provide ways to do so. They can be quasi-religious (a sort of neopaganism) and reshape society by providing reinvented traditions or adaptations of them, and as such are very much part of current society. To conform to them is to conform to at least a part of society and its changing popular developments.
Probably because his theoretical focus on ‘all that is modern’, his book also comes over as suffering from the rhetoric of linear development theory and a limited focus on Western society (specifically US and UK, of course). To Potter modernism seems to be the end-stadium of societal development, a final stage in which the last surviving alternative to capitalism (liberalism he mentions, but… not neoliberalism) has fallen away as the Berlin wall was torn down, and as such there is no way back to the ways things were before that. He uses concepts such as globalism and gentrification (but not that lovely fancy word) to describe the presumed endpoint of development and conflates it once again.. with modernism! Then he goes on bashing on the search for authenticity as a reactionary force to modernism and the impossibility of it because modernism (like globalization, liberalism, individualism and other developments in primarily Western society) is here to stay. He does not address the neoliberal class-type struggles as a result of extreme wealth differences (he mentions the jetset, but not today’s haves versus the have nots) or authenticity seeking enabling requirements such as having the luxury to even think about what authenticity entails for you, a luxury many people cannot afford because they worry about not meeting their basic needs such as food and shelter.
Finally, he does describe a few things about religion but in an instrumentalist way (whatever suits his argumentation) and does for instance not address the very probable connection between secularism and the search for authenticity. The idea that authenticity searching is something more prevalent today then say, in the 20th century, could be partly the result of people looking for meaning, truth, spiritual development and a way of dealing with societal pressures, things that are typically provided by religion. I’m not saying this is the case, however likely there exists some relation between secularism and authenticity searching, but this provides an illustration of taking societal developments and attributing them to the concept of authenticity , something which Potter does throughout the book.
In the end this is a lovely book to read on the subject. Just bear in mind that Potter takes on a limited and abstract perspective on what authenticity entails and why people look for it. Oh, and the book cover with the ducks is absolutely lovely of course. And cute, just not very authentic ;)
Sure enough I agree with many of Potter’s critique on authenticity and I find his historical treatise on the subject interesting, however I also find it to be overly abstract and selective. For instance, his reasoning borders that of causal fallacy in pinpointing the historic rise of modernism to the search of authenticity. Sure enough, there is ample evidence leading to rightfully suggest there are strong connections, but at times his book feels like he forces the connecting of two concepts (modernism & authenticity) for the sake of overly addressing a causality that can be questioned as a whole.
For instance, what was the search for authenticity like before modern times? Countless cultures show frictions between the collective and the individual, and from a logical sociological point of view it could very well be argued that a human drive for traits such as spiritual development, creativity and spontaneity (traits Potter vaguely addresses to authenticity) is typically human. Such behavior can for instance be seen in the rock paintings of Homo sapiens prehistoric ancestors. The entire focus on modernism that Potter takes just feels part of a selection bias, something typical of academic research which is prone of exaggerated relevance.
And speaking of the focus on modernism.. Any academic or other person who worked with such terms knows that they represent a broad era of abstractly defined ideology, school of thought, art or some kind of other movement. As such, modern literature does not represent an exact overlap with the onset of modern architecture. Generally such terms represent a certain style or set of ideas that surged in popularity in a certain era. Most important of all: these are human constructs and theoretical concepts that aim to categorize. As a result academics is marred with fancy juggling of concepts and theories, but these remain abstractions of reality, with a relevance that sometimes ends at the contours of the target population of fellow researchers interested in the same theoretical relations. Why I feel the need to point this out? Well, what about postmodernism for instance? I mean, it clearly comes after modernism and despite the fact that such a concept borders the pretentious and overly theoretical, it remains an important movement in areas such as architecture. And what about other sets of ideas/movements/schools of thought such as functionalism, positivism or structuralism? A researcher concentrating on a certain school of thought is pretty common and it leads to interesting outcomes, but the results of such research are also biased. In The Authenticity Hoax a selection bias clearly favors a causal relationship between modernism and authenticity. It is typical of popscience books to provide a limited message through carefully selected facts and research that fits the argument, but discards that which is not favored in this respect.
What this book lacked were clear-cut definitions, or at least Potter’s search for defining characteristics. Throughout his book he gives different vague definitions of authenticity. It is up to the reader to work towards some kind of workable definition. Seeing as this book has the word authenticity in its title, I find this problematic. He describes the concept as an ideal, a personal attitude and a societal trend. Potter describes authenticity as “the essential core of life, […] and finding the authentic has become the foremost spiritual quest of our time”. Other examples are: “[O]ne who disengages from the deforming forces of society and looks inward, drawing inspiration from the murky depths of the creative self. The turn inward is a quasi-religious quest”, and “[O]ne who, almost by definition, rejects popular tastes, thoughts, opinions, styles, and morals.” The ideal of authenticity Potter describes as “a celebration of spontaneity, emotional transparency, and a fixation on the creative powers of the individual to provide meaning in a world that otherwise offers none.”
This listing of descriptions is not exhaustive but illustrates the vague and varied meaning which Potter instills on the concept. It is exactly because of this that I found myself struggling with his book. On a somewhat abstract level I can very well accept the idea that authenticity is a social reactionary force to modern alienation and I recognize from firsthand experiences the commercialization of the concept, from brands using it to sell more stuff or spiritual gurus selling it through questionable practices. It is here that the book makes the strongest arguments and makes you think (or at least me) about the societal trend of the quest for authenticity. On the other - less abstract - hand however, authenticity means different things to different (groups of) people and this diversity is not taken into account by Potter. Before modern times people already had different views on authenticity, quite likely sinces humankind has been spiritual in their endeavors and lived in groups. Clearly, the search for authenticity becomes more important in large groups of people, as the search is that of the individual for him/herself, a search in the Maslowian sense for self-realization and thus an inherently human characteristic, which is fueled by an increase in general welfare. It is a striving which may not lead to an outcome, but a striving nonetheless which is generally a driving force for innovation and creation. Also there remains the topic of semantics. The meaning attributed to authenticity varies among individuals and while the current search might be fueled by societal trends and shaped by Western culture, the differences in the meaning individuals attribute to the concept of authenticity, as well as their own way of searching for it, can widely vary. Of course, since all humans are shaped by their surroundings, upbringing and social relations – being social animals – authenticity in the purest sense of the word (being truly unique) is impossible. However, when people mention they value authenticity they mean something different than wanting to be unique or their desire to return to premodern times.
My issue with some chapters of Potter’s book is how he follows up on a rather pessimistic causal relation between modernism and authenticity seeking. Besides a rather annoying and repetitive chapter on the US presidency race of 2009 (the year before his book was published) he continues to exaggerate the view that authenticity searching is inherently nonconformist. Taking steps of associating and connecting concepts he links authenticity to nonconformist reactionaries such as the Unabomber, fundamentalist groups such as Al Qaida or the temporary status seeking behavior of an urban elite snobbishly eating organic food. Quite likely there are plenty examples of people searching for authenticity who are quite boring conformist types as well! An example is the increasing popularity of authenticity searching through spiritual means and the countless of movements, organizations and self-proclaimed yogi’s, guru’s and other teachers that provide ways to do so. They can be quasi-religious (a sort of neopaganism) and reshape society by providing reinvented traditions or adaptations of them, and as such are very much part of current society. To conform to them is to conform to at least a part of society and its changing popular developments.
Probably because his theoretical focus on ‘all that is modern’, his book also comes over as suffering from the rhetoric of linear development theory and a limited focus on Western society (specifically US and UK, of course). To Potter modernism seems to be the end-stadium of societal development, a final stage in which the last surviving alternative to capitalism (liberalism he mentions, but… not neoliberalism) has fallen away as the Berlin wall was torn down, and as such there is no way back to the ways things were before that. He uses concepts such as globalism and gentrification (but not that lovely fancy word) to describe the presumed endpoint of development and conflates it once again.. with modernism! Then he goes on bashing on the search for authenticity as a reactionary force to modernism and the impossibility of it because modernism (like globalization, liberalism, individualism and other developments in primarily Western society) is here to stay. He does not address the neoliberal class-type struggles as a result of extreme wealth differences (he mentions the jetset, but not today’s haves versus the have nots) or authenticity seeking enabling requirements such as having the luxury to even think about what authenticity entails for you, a luxury many people cannot afford because they worry about not meeting their basic needs such as food and shelter.
Finally, he does describe a few things about religion but in an instrumentalist way (whatever suits his argumentation) and does for instance not address the very probable connection between secularism and the search for authenticity. The idea that authenticity searching is something more prevalent today then say, in the 20th century, could be partly the result of people looking for meaning, truth, spiritual development and a way of dealing with societal pressures, things that are typically provided by religion. I’m not saying this is the case, however likely there exists some relation between secularism and authenticity searching, but this provides an illustration of taking societal developments and attributing them to the concept of authenticity , something which Potter does throughout the book.
In the end this is a lovely book to read on the subject. Just bear in mind that Potter takes on a limited and abstract perspective on what authenticity entails and why people look for it. Oh, and the book cover with the ducks is absolutely lovely of course. And cute, just not very authentic ;)
August 5, 2010
Finally finished what is more a modernist commentary on postmodern philosophy and culture studies text. That said I enjoyed it because it wasn't superficial, not that you'd expect anything less from a former PhD student in philosophy at the University of Toronto. I think this quote summarizes well his presentation and thesis.
I may not agree entirely with his finishing point but his analysis has really got me thinking at a deeper level. For example Baudrillard's concept of the simulacrum which is a copy of something real or true that itself becomes something authentic or true. This helps us understand an important distinction between the fake and the fake which has it's own authenticity.We could say that is the difference between lying and spin doctoring. One takes truth as a reference point and the other simply has no reference point. I remember the expression "economic with the truth" used during the Falk;ands War which is yet another expression.
The search for the authentic has failed millions of well-intentioned people over the years, leading them into both sin and betrayal. It is a sin because it displays an utter lack of faith in humanity, believing that we will inevitably abuse the gifts of freedom, knowledge, and power, and become the agents of our own destruction. It is a betrayal of modernity and the liberal ideals that have breathed life and hope into human progress for the past quarter millenium.
I may not agree entirely with his finishing point but his analysis has really got me thinking at a deeper level. For example Baudrillard's concept of the simulacrum which is a copy of something real or true that itself becomes something authentic or true. This helps us understand an important distinction between the fake and the fake which has it's own authenticity.We could say that is the difference between lying and spin doctoring. One takes truth as a reference point and the other simply has no reference point. I remember the expression "economic with the truth" used during the Falk;ands War which is yet another expression.
June 5, 2019
He does a good job with the basic premise of the book (the search for authenticity is an unproductive one) but he gets side tracked with modernity and consumerism. Ultimately a strong beginning doesn't vindicate this book which has some great insights, but his conclusions are disappointingly shallow and nihilistic.
He advocates a sort of complacent consumerism as an (ultimate?) good and the meaning of life as some willingness to adapt to "progress" or the future. I found his line of thinking, especially in his conclusion nihilistic and rather self-contradictory to the rest of the book. For example, part of his attack on 'authenticity' is that it is consumer culture run amuck, but that losses all credibility when consumer culture is what's left standing when the smoke clears anyway.
Borrow it from a friend or take it out from the library, the first 3 or 4 chapters are worth the time.
He advocates a sort of complacent consumerism as an (ultimate?) good and the meaning of life as some willingness to adapt to "progress" or the future. I found his line of thinking, especially in his conclusion nihilistic and rather self-contradictory to the rest of the book. For example, part of his attack on 'authenticity' is that it is consumer culture run amuck, but that losses all credibility when consumer culture is what's left standing when the smoke clears anyway.
Borrow it from a friend or take it out from the library, the first 3 or 4 chapters are worth the time.
February 8, 2019
I think it's clear that the author often wrestles with the search for authenticity himself. He doesn't necessarily offer solutions but I think this book tells us to be more critical about why we may "like" things. I don't think he tells us to be complacent in consumerism and modernity. I think he is trying to drive home the fact that the pursuit for authenticity is a privileged pursuit. And our vision of the past may well be through rose coloured glasses. I didn't get the sense that he is giving modern society a pass, but he's also telling us that what we may think is good for us as individuals may not be good for society as a whole. He warns us that the "anti-consumerist" pursuit of existence can be in fact, be quite a consumerist pursuit. There's no good in feeling superior over someone because you abstain from something or do something. It definitely challenged a lot of my views but I'm really glad I gave it a read.
Read
July 30, 2011One of the more disappointing books I have ready in a while. I enjoyed Rebel Sell, and this sounded like an interesting thesis. Unfortunately, I found it poorly executed. The book was more like a series of loosely connected essays on the vaguely defined (but apparently very dangerous) concept of "authenticity", which apparently includes a wide range of evils including local food, facebook and cultural tourism. It ended up reading like a slightly more intellectually sophisticated version of an old man rant about "what the kids are into these days". Ultimately, his ideas weren't particularly well supported either. It was long on pop culture references and philosophy, short on actual facts. Too bad, because the idea had promise.
January 3, 2015
I picked this up on a whim, and thought it might be a fun pop sociology read for when I'm drying my hair. Turns out there's some real and substantive philosophy here. It's an easy read, though, making it great for beginners. The author makes some of the same logical errors he accuses his philosophical foes of making, but other than this, the book is neatly and carefully argued.
September 14, 2013
If I could give it 3.5 or maybe even 3.75 stars (if I were in a particularly good mood and slightly caffeinated) I would, because it definitely contains some thought-provoking ideas that have lingered in my mind.
August 10, 2016
Very much a left/right split in reviews. Not surprised.
July 4, 2023
This took a while to finish. I as ready to give up halfway through but then a few chapters got better and I tried to finish it after all for a sense of accomplishment. The end is the worst however.
The only main argument worth referring to is his point that many ideologies criticizing „the west“ and what he calls modernity look towards a romantic past with rose colored glasses, a past that never existed as it doe sun these nostalgic (and in the end harmful) ideas. Fair, and totally true. Where he goes from there is a frustrating mess. He accuses these critics of modernity as lacking nuance and generalizing to the point of blind nativity and ends up doing the same with spiteful writing and shallow understanding of the topics he talks about (if he really believes feminism and anti-capitalism is purely the claim nature is good then he missed a few important resources). He then argues that all these ideas in the end feed into the exact same structures they claim to want to break. However he then ends on embracing market economy and democracy just the way they are, discounting social justice efforts or climate change activism as over zealous. So why should anything matter then?
Most frustrating thing is that he even ends one of his chapters after endless doomsaying with a call to have faith in humanity and our ability to improve things only to go on to mock any efforts made in that direction, and they plea to leave things as they are since market capitalism and current political structures also did a lot of good. WTF?
The only main argument worth referring to is his point that many ideologies criticizing „the west“ and what he calls modernity look towards a romantic past with rose colored glasses, a past that never existed as it doe sun these nostalgic (and in the end harmful) ideas. Fair, and totally true. Where he goes from there is a frustrating mess. He accuses these critics of modernity as lacking nuance and generalizing to the point of blind nativity and ends up doing the same with spiteful writing and shallow understanding of the topics he talks about (if he really believes feminism and anti-capitalism is purely the claim nature is good then he missed a few important resources). He then argues that all these ideas in the end feed into the exact same structures they claim to want to break. However he then ends on embracing market economy and democracy just the way they are, discounting social justice efforts or climate change activism as over zealous. So why should anything matter then?
Most frustrating thing is that he even ends one of his chapters after endless doomsaying with a call to have faith in humanity and our ability to improve things only to go on to mock any efforts made in that direction, and they plea to leave things as they are since market capitalism and current political structures also did a lot of good. WTF?
September 22, 2015
Organic food. Samuel Adams. Mud-floors. Vintage Levi’s. What do they all have in common? According to philosopher Andrew Potter: authenticity. People eat, imbibe, walk on, and wear these things in an effort to be “real.” Potter views this so-called authenticity as a reaction to modernity, describing it as a “rejection of the various tributaries of mass society’s current, including the media, marketing, fast food, party politics, the Internet, and—above all—the program of free markets and economic integration usually derided as ‘globalization’” (8).
In the space of 273 fascinating and often hilarious pages, Potter analyzes the history, meaning, and manifestations of authenticity, ranging from Jean Jacques Rousseau in the 18th century to Oprah Winfrey in the 21st. Through it all, Potter concludes that authenticity is a hoax; a “dopey nostalgia for a non-existent past, a one-sided suspicion of the modern world, and stagnant and reactionary politics masquerading as something personally meaningful and socially progressive” (270).
For me, Potter’s most helpful (and entertaining) insight is that authenticity is a form of one-upmanship and status-seeking; an effort not to be real, but to be different. If everyone starts listening to the Avett Brothers, the truly authentic will drop them like last month’s YouTube sensation (they must be sell-outs anyway). If Wal-Mart starts placing organic food within the financial reach of the hoi polloi, this is cause—not for rejoicing—but for anti-capitalist consternation (129). Once indie bands and organic food lose their ability to distinguish the authentic from the rabble, the truly authentic move on in search of substitutes, like locally grown food. All this and more in a chapter entitled “Conspicuous Authenticity,” a term Potter adapts from economist Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class.
From what has been said thus far, Hoax may sound like nothing more than a philosophically sophisticated version of Stuff White People Like. That’s what I was expecting when I first picked it up after seeing it on Doug Wilson’s Top 10 list. While I, for one, would have been happy to read just such a book, I soon found that Potter’s scope was much larger than that. Among the diverse questions discussed are: Why is plagiarism on the rise in colleges? How much can a piece of artwork be altered (even by the artist himself) and still be considered authentic? Are suburbs an example of an artificial life sold to brainwashed people? Is the decline of the mainstream media and the rise of online news something to be lamented or celebrated? Why do politicians tend to stick to their talking points, rather than speaking from their hearts? Does globalization destroy authentic culture? Throw in some penetrating discussions of The Matrix, burkas, and communist tourism (along with, yes, a six pack of Samuel Adams), and you’ve got yourself some enjoyable evening reading.
A couple of closing reflections. As a disciple of Thomas Sowell, I appreciated Potter’s repeated emphasis on the necessity of trade-offs. As Sowell has pointed out in many of his works, people on the political left tend to approach social problems with the goal of implementing cost-free “solutions,” rather than recognizing that there is no free lunch and that even socially beneficial policies will have downsides. Those with this “unconstrained vision” of human potential will invariably point with dissatisfaction to the unmet needs, urban sprawl, and McWorld cultural kitsch left in the wake of modernity. To this, Potter rightly responds:
“In order to see ourselves clear of the authenticity hoax, we need to come to terms with the modern world and accept that the last 250 years or so has not been a tragic mistake. At the very least we have to concede that while there has been a trade-off, losses to balance against the benefits, on the whole it would be a mistake to want to pull the plug, put the wagon train in reverse, and head back into the comforts of nostalgia.” (270)
Nevertheless, while modernists like Potter (and Sowell) feel like a welcome gust of wind in the stagnant sea of postmodern relativism, there were times when his secularism grated against my biblical worldview.
For instance, he noted that one of the key features in the shift from premodernity to modernity was the “disenchantment of the world,” in which the world came to be seen no longer as a cosmos, but as a universe—a universe in which “appeals to ultimate ends or purposes or roles being built into the very fabric of the universe come to be seen as illegitimate or nonsensical” (24; see 21-29). As a disciple of C.S. Lewis, however, I don’t find nature quite so “disenchanted” as Potter does. According to Scripture, nature teaches, the solar system preaches, and God’s design instructs. Despite having to broadcast amidst the static of truth-suppressing sin, the created “is” still teaches a few moral “oughts” clearly enough to leave men without excuse.
But the clearest example of missing the mark comes on the book’s final page. In his concluding chapter entitled “Progress: The Very Idea,” Potter charges the search for authenticity with leading people into “sin,” which he then describes as “an utter lack of faith in humanity, believing that we will inevitably abuse the gifts of freedom, knowledge, and power, and become the agents of our own destruction” (271). If this is the case, then the Apostle Paul was wrong: I am the chief of sinners! How then does one repent of such “sin,” according to Potter? Answer: “faith in progress”—“the simple faith that even when humans encounter obstacles, we’ll figure things out, through the exercise of reason, ingenuity, and good will…” (271). Needless to say, we’re going to need some serious common grace here. The problem is that he doesn’t seem to see the need for it. For Potter to tackle with the real version of sin, he’s gonna need a bigger boat.
While the orthodox Christian believer in original sin will have a difficult (i.e. impossible) time agreeing with some of Potter’s prescriptions, this shouldn’t discourage him from profiting from Potter’s diagnoses. He has given us some quality thinking and writing. In the end, though he may not see the need for common grace, he still serves as an example of it.
https://kuyperiancommentary.wordpress...
In the space of 273 fascinating and often hilarious pages, Potter analyzes the history, meaning, and manifestations of authenticity, ranging from Jean Jacques Rousseau in the 18th century to Oprah Winfrey in the 21st. Through it all, Potter concludes that authenticity is a hoax; a “dopey nostalgia for a non-existent past, a one-sided suspicion of the modern world, and stagnant and reactionary politics masquerading as something personally meaningful and socially progressive” (270).
For me, Potter’s most helpful (and entertaining) insight is that authenticity is a form of one-upmanship and status-seeking; an effort not to be real, but to be different. If everyone starts listening to the Avett Brothers, the truly authentic will drop them like last month’s YouTube sensation (they must be sell-outs anyway). If Wal-Mart starts placing organic food within the financial reach of the hoi polloi, this is cause—not for rejoicing—but for anti-capitalist consternation (129). Once indie bands and organic food lose their ability to distinguish the authentic from the rabble, the truly authentic move on in search of substitutes, like locally grown food. All this and more in a chapter entitled “Conspicuous Authenticity,” a term Potter adapts from economist Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class.
From what has been said thus far, Hoax may sound like nothing more than a philosophically sophisticated version of Stuff White People Like. That’s what I was expecting when I first picked it up after seeing it on Doug Wilson’s Top 10 list. While I, for one, would have been happy to read just such a book, I soon found that Potter’s scope was much larger than that. Among the diverse questions discussed are: Why is plagiarism on the rise in colleges? How much can a piece of artwork be altered (even by the artist himself) and still be considered authentic? Are suburbs an example of an artificial life sold to brainwashed people? Is the decline of the mainstream media and the rise of online news something to be lamented or celebrated? Why do politicians tend to stick to their talking points, rather than speaking from their hearts? Does globalization destroy authentic culture? Throw in some penetrating discussions of The Matrix, burkas, and communist tourism (along with, yes, a six pack of Samuel Adams), and you’ve got yourself some enjoyable evening reading.
A couple of closing reflections. As a disciple of Thomas Sowell, I appreciated Potter’s repeated emphasis on the necessity of trade-offs. As Sowell has pointed out in many of his works, people on the political left tend to approach social problems with the goal of implementing cost-free “solutions,” rather than recognizing that there is no free lunch and that even socially beneficial policies will have downsides. Those with this “unconstrained vision” of human potential will invariably point with dissatisfaction to the unmet needs, urban sprawl, and McWorld cultural kitsch left in the wake of modernity. To this, Potter rightly responds:
“In order to see ourselves clear of the authenticity hoax, we need to come to terms with the modern world and accept that the last 250 years or so has not been a tragic mistake. At the very least we have to concede that while there has been a trade-off, losses to balance against the benefits, on the whole it would be a mistake to want to pull the plug, put the wagon train in reverse, and head back into the comforts of nostalgia.” (270)
Nevertheless, while modernists like Potter (and Sowell) feel like a welcome gust of wind in the stagnant sea of postmodern relativism, there were times when his secularism grated against my biblical worldview.
For instance, he noted that one of the key features in the shift from premodernity to modernity was the “disenchantment of the world,” in which the world came to be seen no longer as a cosmos, but as a universe—a universe in which “appeals to ultimate ends or purposes or roles being built into the very fabric of the universe come to be seen as illegitimate or nonsensical” (24; see 21-29). As a disciple of C.S. Lewis, however, I don’t find nature quite so “disenchanted” as Potter does. According to Scripture, nature teaches, the solar system preaches, and God’s design instructs. Despite having to broadcast amidst the static of truth-suppressing sin, the created “is” still teaches a few moral “oughts” clearly enough to leave men without excuse.
But the clearest example of missing the mark comes on the book’s final page. In his concluding chapter entitled “Progress: The Very Idea,” Potter charges the search for authenticity with leading people into “sin,” which he then describes as “an utter lack of faith in humanity, believing that we will inevitably abuse the gifts of freedom, knowledge, and power, and become the agents of our own destruction” (271). If this is the case, then the Apostle Paul was wrong: I am the chief of sinners! How then does one repent of such “sin,” according to Potter? Answer: “faith in progress”—“the simple faith that even when humans encounter obstacles, we’ll figure things out, through the exercise of reason, ingenuity, and good will…” (271). Needless to say, we’re going to need some serious common grace here. The problem is that he doesn’t seem to see the need for it. For Potter to tackle with the real version of sin, he’s gonna need a bigger boat.
While the orthodox Christian believer in original sin will have a difficult (i.e. impossible) time agreeing with some of Potter’s prescriptions, this shouldn’t discourage him from profiting from Potter’s diagnoses. He has given us some quality thinking and writing. In the end, though he may not see the need for common grace, he still serves as an example of it.
https://kuyperiancommentary.wordpress...
July 29, 2019
3/5
I really wanted to love this one considering that the author's last book, The Rebel Sell, completely changed the way I interpret politics, sociology, and cultural criticism.
As someone who had (and sometimes still does) subscribe to the idea that modernity sucks and alienates us and is the root of most mental illness, addiction, etc, I really wanted my perspective changed so that I could embrace "normal" life more instead of being so cynical and suspicious.
To be clear, Potter did a FANTASTIC job of describing all the various arguments against modernity. He lists many thinkers and books from the 17th century-present which I had never heard that complained about this same thing against modernity.... I once thought anyone who wrote about this pre-iPhone and pre-hyper globalization didn't "get how bad it is now". LOL.
The problem with the book, however, is that Potter almost always skirted out of proving his charges that the modernity critics were wrong in virtually every chapter of this book.
It read like this.
Chapter (X)
-(amazing) description of "wrong-headed" arguments
-history of those arguments
-ancetodes, stats, or tidbits about such argument
-THAT ARUGMENT IS SO WRONG
-(200 words) here's why...
Next chapter.
Left me with my original beliefs, but with a more rooted understanding of said beliefs.
Expected more from Potter in argumentative criticism.
I really wanted to love this one considering that the author's last book, The Rebel Sell, completely changed the way I interpret politics, sociology, and cultural criticism.
As someone who had (and sometimes still does) subscribe to the idea that modernity sucks and alienates us and is the root of most mental illness, addiction, etc, I really wanted my perspective changed so that I could embrace "normal" life more instead of being so cynical and suspicious.
To be clear, Potter did a FANTASTIC job of describing all the various arguments against modernity. He lists many thinkers and books from the 17th century-present which I had never heard that complained about this same thing against modernity.... I once thought anyone who wrote about this pre-iPhone and pre-hyper globalization didn't "get how bad it is now". LOL.
The problem with the book, however, is that Potter almost always skirted out of proving his charges that the modernity critics were wrong in virtually every chapter of this book.
It read like this.
Chapter (X)
-(amazing) description of "wrong-headed" arguments
-history of those arguments
-ancetodes, stats, or tidbits about such argument
-THAT ARUGMENT IS SO WRONG
-(200 words) here's why...
Next chapter.
Left me with my original beliefs, but with a more rooted understanding of said beliefs.
Expected more from Potter in argumentative criticism.
December 5, 2023
I picked this up based on the title to satisfy my own contempt for the word “authenticity.” I work in branding and this word is thrown around constantly and it notoriously means nothing. Meanwhile finding your “authentic self” and living your “authentic live” has permeated the zeitgeist of wellness with new age spirituality becoming mainstream. I just hate this word, and obviously potter does too.
While the summaries of historical contexts and philosophical movements leading to our quest for “authenticity” were well done, the arguments and critiques of modern society that came after were unsubstantiated and filled with baseless claims. For example, he shits on organic farming and how our hunt for “real” “untainted” food is a sign of status and corporations like Whole Foods and Walmart are capitalizing on it by turning organic produce into an industry that is pretty much just regular industrial farming. Yup, ok not wrong. But then he’ll follow that with an argument about local farming that basically says “loading a shipping container with tons of bananas is way less wasteful than delivering small batches of produce by truck/car.” Ok, but like what about when the bananas get to their destination? Aren’t those batches delivered by truck / car ?
His tone throughout didn’t help. It sounded like he was the family member at the dinner table that makes somewhat sound arguments when talking politics until he starts talking over everyone and making baseless claims and loses all credibility.
While the summaries of historical contexts and philosophical movements leading to our quest for “authenticity” were well done, the arguments and critiques of modern society that came after were unsubstantiated and filled with baseless claims. For example, he shits on organic farming and how our hunt for “real” “untainted” food is a sign of status and corporations like Whole Foods and Walmart are capitalizing on it by turning organic produce into an industry that is pretty much just regular industrial farming. Yup, ok not wrong. But then he’ll follow that with an argument about local farming that basically says “loading a shipping container with tons of bananas is way less wasteful than delivering small batches of produce by truck/car.” Ok, but like what about when the bananas get to their destination? Aren’t those batches delivered by truck / car ?
His tone throughout didn’t help. It sounded like he was the family member at the dinner table that makes somewhat sound arguments when talking politics until he starts talking over everyone and making baseless claims and loses all credibility.
May 23, 2018
Potter makes some good points about the con of contemporary ‘authenticity’ and its variations over the last 200-odd years, but his apparent view that our consumerist and market economy-based society is overwhelmingly good seems to gloss over the point that ‘authenticity’ is not only a naive reaction to it (things really weren’t so much better in the ‘good old days’) but a product of it.
The most annoying chapter, however, was the last in which he claimed that “the left” post-9/11 were guilty of sympathising with fundamentalist Islam’s anti-modernity diatribes. Um, no. I don’t doubt it that some fools may have entertained such ideas (not so different to fundamentalist Christian views on the modern world), he completely overlooks the valid criticism of the West’s long history of interference and war in the Middle East, which has been a significant catalyst for terrorism.
Those issues aside, this is still an interesting book and worth a read if you find bemused or enraged by the endless parade of fads and the people who enthusiastically embrace them.
The most annoying chapter, however, was the last in which he claimed that “the left” post-9/11 were guilty of sympathising with fundamentalist Islam’s anti-modernity diatribes. Um, no. I don’t doubt it that some fools may have entertained such ideas (not so different to fundamentalist Christian views on the modern world), he completely overlooks the valid criticism of the West’s long history of interference and war in the Middle East, which has been a significant catalyst for terrorism.
Those issues aside, this is still an interesting book and worth a read if you find bemused or enraged by the endless parade of fads and the people who enthusiastically embrace them.
November 14, 2021
I read this book about 10 years after it was published and the main themes are still relevant today. References to politicians like Sarah Palin are just as relevant now with Donald Trump as more current reference point. I had thought the advertising industry focus on authenticity was a newer trend in the last 10 years, but this really showed it has been ongoing for some time.
The big theme of the book is, of course, that authenticity is false and that pursuing it is futile. I already generally believed this. So, I was ready for that. However, the book makes a solid argument that the search for authenticity is really rebellion against the modern world. In part, it's a search for meaning in a world where everything is pleasurable, but has no purpose.
I found the early part of the book quite heavy on philosophy. I found the first 100 pages or so a bit of a heavy slog. However, I'm glad I stuck it out to reach the conclusion.
The big theme of the book is, of course, that authenticity is false and that pursuing it is futile. I already generally believed this. So, I was ready for that. However, the book makes a solid argument that the search for authenticity is really rebellion against the modern world. In part, it's a search for meaning in a world where everything is pleasurable, but has no purpose.
I found the early part of the book quite heavy on philosophy. I found the first 100 pages or so a bit of a heavy slog. However, I'm glad I stuck it out to reach the conclusion.
October 22, 2020
An unfocused and deeply subjective essay on modernity and liberalism.
After the book on CounterCulture written with Joseph Heath, that I really liked and found inspiring, I had expectations for this one.
Unfortunately, apart for some interested ideas present in the first part of the book, I was heavily frustrated by this book, its lack of direction, and the clear agenda that Andrew Potter is after.
I don’t recommend it at all.
After the book on CounterCulture written with Joseph Heath, that I really liked and found inspiring, I had expectations for this one.
Unfortunately, apart for some interested ideas present in the first part of the book, I was heavily frustrated by this book, its lack of direction, and the clear agenda that Andrew Potter is after.
I don’t recommend it at all.
June 12, 2019
I expected more pop psychology/sociology from a book with this title and cover, but was pleasantly surprised by much of the content. The two main takeaways for me are (greatly simplified) that most of what we consider authentic is not once you take a closer look, and that expecting authenticity in our lifestyle, politicians, culture, etc. is a mistake with unexpected results.
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