Great topic,
The author speaks of nostalgia for the country side and meaning.
If people living in urban areas lose touch, it simply means we could always go on a retreat to the country. Even then some of our nature areas are turned into resort destinations and not a tranquil spot to reconnect to our deepest meaning.
thank you,
Joe

When you really look, isn’t everything authentic, even the cheesy theme restaurants, cable television shows, and plastic suburbs? Aren’t all of these things composed of real people having real joy and real sorrow and every other emotion humans have? Just because we can’t adequately describe something doesn’t mean it isn’t authentic.

Didn’t Phillip K. Dick cover all this already?

What I believe Richard Todd is touching on is the intersection of three things, the essential mental stance of diversion, this stance being taken to an extreme (addictive, even) level and many people’s reaction to the extreme. The longing for authenticity is a reaction to the unhealthy development of escapism in a culture.

The diversionary stance runs the gamut of the little old lady siting on the sofa, knitting and watching a soap opera to the unhealthy extreme of drug abuse. The phenomenon of theme parks and such can lean heavily towards the addictive or excessive part of something that serves an important psychology function for the individual.

Great topic, indeed.

A friend of mine has a blog in LJ, unfortunately it’s in Russian. Just a few days ago she posted a very similar essay. The immediate reason was a sad one - the war between Russia and Georgia, and all the lies that surround it, including reports of horrible atrocities that never occured, staged pictures, etc. You really can believe no one in this propaganda war.

So, she decided to post the pictures of her garden, grown by her own hands, which is undoubtedly real. And people supported it, publishing the pictures of simple reality surrounding them - houses, flowers, lakes and rivers, children and pets. That’s just the way of fighting the total fake.

Topic: Authenticity

I grew up near Disney World and as a child the “created” environments spurred my desire to be an artist, the castle in particular was beautiful and perfect in my eyes. My parents couldn’t afford to travel to Europe so that is where we went.

I am traveling to the Loire Valley in 2 weeks to see and paint the “real” castles.

What is authentic? the inspiration that created the artist that I am (Disney World) or the historical locations in France? …when does the fake become real? Tivoli Gardens was “fake” then, now it is a landmark in Copenhagen.

It is hard to known how to understand this author. First, everything is always changing and has always been changing, at a slower or faster pace. An immutable past is a myth. We may like this myth but need to understand what it is. Second, this seems like speculation in which only people with some comfortable wealth can indulge in. No, I am not knocking philosophical speculation but I think that these kinds of speculations should take into consideration what all people face or at least all Americans, if we are talking only about the U.S. As for “authentic” people, in my experience they can be found everywhere even though they are not the majority. People who are honest with themselves, who care about others, who try to be responsible toward their families, their friends and even sometimes society as a whole. Not perfect people but “authenticity” is not perfection. Come to think of it, perfection is what this author is looking for…

The mythologist Joseph Campbell said that we are in a time were people can no longer recognize the symbols around us.
When we can’t read the images and symbols of society (from mass marketing or whatever) then we lose touch with our selves and the part of us that remains down from our heritage.

McCain is authentic.

Hello:
Just wanted to draw your attention to two vital discussions of authenticity. First, William Morris’s book “The News From Nowhere” which comes out of the first era of worry about your topic in the 19th century. And second, Jacques Tati the french film maker spent much of his later film making working through his own feelings about authenticity. My favorite of his films are Mon Oncle (1958) and Play Time (1967). I find these works to be the most moving exploration of this authenticity in Art.
Thanks.

The caller who claimed there is authenticity in the rural parts of the U.S. landscape is not entirely accurate. Having lived in the rural landscape for sometime, I find the residents in these areas are no less influenced by the Malls and Olive Gardens - maybe even more so. I find there is very little difference in the strivings among rural residents.

I lived overseas for a long time and came back to the world Richard Todd describes. Now we have to confront inauthenticity in our political world — dubious democracy, serially untruthful leadership, unreliable elections, curious lack of understanding about who we are in the context of the rest of the world. Maybe these yearnings for the hand-made (with its rough errors), the real apple (with its natural bruising), the house with the “good bones” are all symptoms of trying to break out of the fictions which seem to rule our lives.

Good discussion. I concur that Philip Dick covered this well in The Man in the High Castle. Also, what about the fact that we often disbelieve in the beautiful and the kind? We have such phrases as “pretty as a picture” and “too good to be true.” Most we automatically reject the wonderful as inauthentic?

The “fake news” (The Daily Show with Jon Stewart) now has one of the most trusted figures on television.

This is currently the most read article on the NY times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/17/arts/television/17kaku.html?_r=1&em&oref=slogin

Isnt the Olive Garden authentic Olive Garden ?

Hi,
I did not hear the beginning of this great conversation, but the topic is deeply resonant.
I believe we are only able to know authenticity in relation with our source, the Creator God. That is where we find wholeness, and understand our “form”..i.e., how we are MADE. The notion of being from the “hand that made it” is valid because we need to know that “hand” as our source of personhood and authenticity. If we start within ourselves we will never know what “real” is. I understand the Scriptures/the Bible to give me my value/worth/authenticity and place to start.
All these other attempts, weaving, painting - which is what I do - writing music, being a medical care-giver,etc. are attemts to reach the authentic, but will never wholly satisfy outside of connection to the Creator.
My closest experience, therefore, is when I am worshipping and pursuing the God who is there.
Thank you,
Lois Andersen
Concord, MA

To me, in a real world sense, authenticity relates to a thing that isn’t trying to be something else. Taste in things is a personal choice but I relate to Olive Garden as a modern corporate restaurant chain “Pretending” to be an old world Italian restaurant which it clearly isn’t.

A newly constructed “Colonial” house isn’t really authentic unless it’s drafty and/or has the characteristics (good and bad) of a centuries old “Colonial” home.

tew

On the topic of news, the so called “fake news” from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. The NY Times purports he may be one of the most trusted men in america. See the online article which is the most read article on their website.

Authenticity is a sensation that derives from an interaction of intention and expectation. In commercial contexts, intention belongs to the proprietor, and expectation to those partaking. Authenticity requires us to arrive with a set of notions about what we are about to experience.

Inauthenticity arises from someone plying for our attention by playing into our expectations about specific exchanges and environments. And rather, things we consider authentic play into those expectations inadvertently, almost accidentally, while pursuing their own course.

wow nice conversation. I blogged along with it a bit (arugulayumyum.wordpress.com
but I was also writing a couple of days ago on “the higher eclectica” in reference to David Brooks’s essay on “Pseuds” — the pseudo-intellectuals of our day, who they are (they are us) and what that means. thinking about these things is so very good for me, good for us as population, wish everybody could have heard your program! thanks
Karen

I have not put much thought into his so forgive me if you can point out holes in this argument but I would like to connect the loss of authenticity as paralleling the use of a natural product in the earth that is being used in a way that is killing the earth, and that would be oil. The drive towards homogenization of artifacts including foods and other cultural goods is is made possible due to oil. Oil has developed the market system and its proliferation into our everyday lives away from authenticity. We have fundamentally violated critical elements of the earth we inhabit and this is the most basic and overarching violation of authenticity.

It was a great topic. I agree a lot with Joanna. The author, it seems to me, is homesick for the past, and so am I in many respects. Probably, however, what I miss is different from his list. For instance, I have no desire to move to a farm and live the way my grandparents did - without electricity, plumbing, etc., etc. I happen to be a “city” person, meaning I love the city and have been a city dweller for many years, though I have experienced both city and small town living in recent years. I believe we can find and/or be “authentic” individuals in either setting. Being authentic, I believe, has very little to do with going to the mall to buy our clothes OR making our own clothes at home (even weaving the fabric). I think Joanna was “on target” in the last several lines of her comment. I believe being authentic has more to do with our “internal” (our core) life than with externals. Again, Joanna, I agree that “authentic” does not connote “perfect”. Thanks for making us take time to “think”. PJS

I have a lot of friends who work there and they do often excellent work, but I thought it was goofy that Edelman, one of the largest PR agencies, decided to rebrand under “Authentic” communications - http://www.edelman.com/news/ShowOne.asp?ID=181.

So what kind of communications were they doing before?!

Authenticity in oneself is easily described by looking in a mirror. The self-awareness we have that allows us to recognize ourselves when we look in a mirror is the same self-awareness we have about how others recognize us, sometimes called being “self-conscious”, and our response to this self-awareness is the issue. It’s been pointed out that dogs, for instance, cannot recognize themselves when they look in a mirror; is there anything more authentic than a dog’s response to the world?

Spend your life looking at your reflection, trying to interpret and change how others see what you see in that reflection, and you lose your authentic self. Turn away, and it returns. I mean this in a metaphorical sense, not literally; the point is that authenticity is found in those places where there is no effort to present something other than for what it is, be it The Olive Garden or your own person.

This discussion reminds me of “Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” in which the the main character ponders the meaning of “Quality” to the point that he ends up in a mental hospital. Cat Stevens’ “Foreigner Suite” contains the line “there are no words that I can use because the meanings are left for you to choose.” What is ‘authentic’ depends entirely on where and how finely we draw the lines of its meaning and each of us has our own definition.

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.

I was thrilled to hear this topic on the radio and can’t wait to read Richard Todd’s book. I have lived in Boston, San Francisco, Oslo, rural Norway, rural Georgia, and now rural New Hampshire.

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!

Perhaps the question to ask is not if something is “authenic” but are we capable of even judging something and that requires that we have taken the time to know what it is we judge. You cannot measure anything unless you have a reference point and that is the crux of the question when one asks if something is “real.”

Non-Authentic Indian Jewelry….in the 70’s I owned a Indian jewelry / supply store in Santa Fe. At that time there was much concern, especially among Native Americans, as to if the jewelry in stores being sold as “Indian” was authentic. This concern resulted in N.M. of the passing of a law stating that the labeling of any jewelry as “Indian” when there was doubt, could result in serious fines. Of course no one can tell who made a piece of jewelry unless you were looking over the shoulder of the craftsperson while they were constructing it. Thus, it was much easier to label everything in our store as “non Indian” and be safe, even if we knew otherwise. I’m sure that’s the explanation as to why the stores in the Grand Canyon are doing the same.
I should also note that we sold numerous pieces of imported jewelry to Native Americans who would take the imports and sell them to tourists as “authentic.” I always laughed and chalked one up to the Native Americans and that 70’s saying “what goes around, comes around.”

Perhaps the recent On Point program about the late Prof. Randy Pausch should be the touchstone for today’s topic. As Prof. Pausch so aptly put it (and here I paraphrase), “reality is what you get when you don’t get what you want.”

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.

Love is real. The only place we as humans can find the inherently authentic, the real, is in the present moment and in relationship with the other. With another person. In that interaction, in that moment, the present is available and accessible. It seems what this discussion is all about is the ‘window dressing’, the trappings of life and scoiety… how we dress, the aprearance of our built environments, our cities and towns, our villages and shopping malls, our appartment complexes and homes. This is all beside the main point. As difficult as it is, living in the moment is the only way to find the real, the authentic.

I think the most tragic thing about our
“phony” infused culture, is that our emotional
life also takes on an artificiality. I see
people around me assuming the personas of
TV
personalities, and taking their cues from
seeing others responding to tragedies–this hurricane
or that bombing–I think in our TV dominated culture,
that as a society many of us no longer recognize
authentic feelings, authentic realtionships.

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.

I encourage Tom Ashbrook to follow up on this program with
Christian Lander, author of “Stuff White People Like.”

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.

Robert Venturi wrote on the Los Vegas strip. The acceptance of popular culture as the new high art. The opposite of Christopher Alexander’s search for meaning through recognizable pattern language. We will never be at peace within ourselves without reaching out to master and shape our environment into beautiful and soul satisfiying environments wether through machine or man made in origin.

Maybe our antennae for authenticity in the world are always up because we walk through it with a constant suspicion about our own authenticity. It may be a dilemma of desire, which has run amok in the advertising age. We imagine a time before intrusive advertisement and believe that, one, people simply desired less, and, two, that desire was generated mostly from within and in response to a smaller, more knowable, more essential environment. With the saturation and sophistication of modern advertisement we now have to intervene upon ourselves and wonder if we actually want what we’re made to desire lest our identity lose its location.

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.

The song “Grey Seal” by Elton John from his “Goodbye Yellow Brick” Album immediately comes to mind when thinking about all this authentic stuff.

Nice topic. Surprisingly shallow discussion. I got a lot from reading Thomas de Zengotita’s “Mediated”, which delves into the postmodern aspect that is becoming the basis for our sense of ‘reality’. Reality is a mental construct, but there is more and less direct perception. That latter is mediated. According to de Zengotita, we are all method actors these days.

“When you really look, isn’t everything authentic, even the cheesy theme restaurants, cable television shows, and plastic suburbs?”

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?

Does anyone remember the name of the cabinetmaker who called in and talked about someone named Pye (I think). Believe he is a classic scholar and made various refs I missed since I was driving.

I too was in the car and did not get the name of the cabinetmaker. I had heard about the book that he mentioned. I believe the book is “The Nature & Aesthetics of Design” by David Pye. The caller did refer to an ancient Greek philosopher whose name was unclear. I also would like to know the name of this philosopher.

“Authentic” is a snowshoe word that allows us to travel around an idea without getting too involved in its underlying supportive substance. The “substance” of this word lies, and is defined, in the inner values we hold and which allow us to use this adjective. One’s held inner values are our touchstones when we use such descriptive words. This is why I suggested listeners read Longinus’ On the Sublime from the 1st century AD. He rightly states that if one wants great discourse one must speak from the inner values that humans hold and recognize. I might add this is true if one wishes to find “greatness” in any human endeavor, be it rhetoric, architecture, dance or baseball. “Authentic” we will all judge, probably differently, by the inner value system we have in place and the effort we have taken to hone these values. Understanding our the visual values passed to us by our architectural heritage is thus vital to understanding the “Olive Garden” dilemma this broadcast spoke of.

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.

Disneyland is a great example, as the author mentions - and what’s wrong with Disneyland? I call it “consensual artifice.” Is anyone at Disneyland under the impression that the Matterhorn ride is the same as the Matterhorn mountain in the Alps? When one attends a play and suspends disbelief, we still have an “authentic” experience of the story and actors. Evidence of this is that when the play is over and the actors step out of character and bow, one is suddenly and uncomfortably reminded that we’re back to reality, and one feels almost fooled for believing.

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.

Thank you Mr Byrne and Ms Delkhaste…you both filled in the missing gaps. And I’m only an hour plus from Staunton so might follow up with Mr Byrne.

This author also mentioned the Beatles song *Strawberry Fields* where the line “nothing is real…” is sung. He is talking about looking for *realness.* What is real? It is not as philosophical as it sounds. I walked into a high school auditorium the other evening for a Parent Meeting. I immediately sensed the people at this meeting were aware of themselves being “seen.” A sense of being on stage, or “posing.” These people were not being their real selves or you could say “authentic selves.” To me, it’s simple, either something or someone is real or not. Disneyworld is a cartoon world. Nothing is real there. It is meant to be a place for people to escape reality, like a movie.

When one attends a play and suspends disbelief, we still have an “authentic” experience of the story and actors.

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.