No one is questioning that it is an authentic play. So that’s a red herring. This is exactly the same as the fake plastic lobster I mentioned above – sure, it’s a real fake plastic lobster, and the audience is attending a real play. That they are drawn into the world created by the actors and the playwright doesn’t have much to do with authenticity; it has to do with the quality of the acting and writing.

Where authenticity enters the question is whether the world created by the playwright is an authentic representation of what it purports to be. If the play is set in the Belle Époque then are the language, costumes, social manners, etc, authentic depictions of that period? When you are drawn into the playwright’s world is the experience you have similar to what you would actually have had in France at that time?

I just think that the emphasis on “authentic” – or that there even is one or that it matters – is a red herring. The authentic coffee in that charming old roadside diner was crap before Starbuck’s opened up down the street.

Both coffees are authentic. Starbucks doesn’t sell fake, simulated coffee. So again, your example doesn’t address the topic of authenticity.

I just think that the emphasis on “authentic” – or that there even is one or that it matters – is a red herring. The authentic coffee in that charming old roadside diner was crap before Starbuck’s opened up down the street. I like the new inauthentic version – it tastes better because it’s been adapted to my tastes and needs.

I also suggested reading David Pye’s The Nature and Art of Workmanship as it gives one the framework and vocabulary one needs to comprehend the built world and to shape one’s own thoughts about authenticity and a host of related adjective concepts.

You may sense something not authentic about the “Olive Garden” but you will not be able to articulate what you feel without coming to understand and be able to use the vocabulary of the visual world…i.e., to coin a word to become “visuate”….able to see in a critical way. This is one of many reasons I suggest Longinus and Pye. Ours is a visually dense nation that now daily ponders what is wrong during its 2 hour each way commute to the new origami world it has embraced.
Take off the snowshoes – you won’t get cold feet.

Obviously, but that’s not the point.

Obviously, the fake plastic lobster hanging in a chain seafood restaurant in Pennsylvania is a real fake plastic lobster. But if its purpose is to conjure up nautical feelings of little fishing boats bobbing at anchor in the rocky harbor of some Maine seaside village, it would be interesting to see if those feelings bear any resemblance to what you might feel if you were actually in a Maine seaside village.

The question is whether someone who has a brief or indirect exposure to something – a nature video of Yosemite, for instance, or when a city dweller drives out to the country for a day, does that bear any resemblance to the real thing?

I’m an avid gardener and I’ve had my hands in the dirt since childhood (I’m in my 50’s) I grow pears, apples, blueberries, raspberries, and many vegetables and herbs. So I have a direct experience of the textures, the colors, the smells, the sounds, the tastes, and the worries, the anticipation and the elation and dejection of gardening. Other people who have never gardened read the words I just wrote above, and it conjures up SOMETHING, but how closely does it compare with the actual experience of gardening?

I think desire comprises much, if not most, of our social identity. The world knows me by what I want–true love, jump shot, corner office, cheese fries. So if the light of my desire is fueled in part by Madison Ave, then I can’t help but wonder what the world sees when it sees me.

Though there are likely mostly white people that are interested in this authenticity, the author of this work on authenticity will disavow any culpability as a yuppie for the lack of authenticity which he craves.

In other words, Christian Lander bebunks very humorously
the foibles of upper middle class white people both online in a blog and as a newly published book.

The solution is to have enough self awareness to
KNOW when your are succumbing to the fakeness–
it is a constant challenge! I applaud the author
for his writing.

Maybe it was Prof. Pausch’s walk with his own mortality that brought such down-to-earth authenticity. Not that we should ever become advocates of nihilism, but perhaps the paradox of being able to experience “the authentic,” comes only when we too embrace our own mortality.

Authenticity and realism are a topic on my mind Every day. So much so, that I began blogging about it recently. I have pleasantly discovered that you can find authenticty in gardens, in the woods, in rural landscapes, as well as in the city, in the mall, in McDonald’s…anywhere that you are actually opening your eyes to look with a pure mind. My little kids keep me going on the “real” track, because it comes so naturally for little tykes!

Once while visiting a local Chinese restaurant one acquaintance informed me that it wasn’t authentic. According to his standards one had to go to a small village in China to get ‘authentic’ Chinese food. Even that served in the larger cities in China wasn’t ‘authentic’, it was contaminated by catering to the tastes of tourists. Whether Olive Garden or Joe’s Eats, a thing is what it is. You choose whether you enjoy it or not. Those who make that choice without pretense are (to me) authentic persons.