We can’t be authentic on purpose – that is a profound impossibility. The harder we try to be real the more fake we become! We could also put this the other way around too and say that we can’t stop being inauthentic on purpose. The second formulation of this principle might be said to be more relevant to us given the fact that we almost always are being inauthentic -whether we know it or not. This is the default mode.
We have to be inauthentic in order to function in society – we simply wouldn’t get by otherwise. We wouldn’t stand a chance. We start off authentically (naturally enough) but then as we progressively adapt ourselves to the social environment we end up not so authentic. We end up – as a result of the process of socialisation – not really being who we are at all. That’s the whole point of socialisation, after all – it’s our induction into the game. It’s the process in which we are engineered to fit the system.
The problem here of course (as Jung points out) is that the mask or persona ‘grows onto us’ with the effect that we then think that it is who we are; because of our great keenness to receive the approval of the External Authority, we fall into the trap of thinking that ‘we are who we are pretending to be’, in other words. From this point on therefore the system of thought runs us as one of its many subprograms, as one of its many constructs, as one of its many instruments.
When the system runs us as an instrument (or construct) it runs us ‘as our absence,’ so to speak; we think we are the absence of who we really are and so we act on this basis (even though it’s only a construct and not a basis at all). Thought works by obstructing reality, not by connecting it us to it, and what this means is that when we believe ourselves to be who thought tells us we are we are perfectly insulated from anything that’s actually real. We’re disconnected (we’re in Disconnected Mode) and it’s not just the case that we’ve gone off track and are now completely disconnected from the Primary ‘Source Reality’, we’re disconnected from our own true nature (since our original or true nature and ‘reality as it is in itself’ are not two different things).
To be disconnected from the non-simulated version of reality (i.e., to be in the simulation) is to ‘not be who we are’ and this is why we can talk in terms of being run (or operated) as ‘the negative of who we really are’. ‘When you judge me you negate me,’ says Kierkegaard, and the machine which is the System of Thought judges us completely. It has to judge us completely – that’s how it works. The system ‘says who we are’ (which is the Principle of Simulation) and being defined in this way is the quintessential form of judging, although we don’t tend to see it as such. The system of thought will only ever approve of us when we conform exactly to its standards (and this is ‘positive judging’); if we deviate in any way from this abstract ideal we are disapproved of (or ‘blamed’) and this is negative judging. We’re a creature of the machine either way, therefore…
To be simulated is the ultimate form of being judged: if you (as a kind of ‘Malign Creator God’ or ‘Demiurge’) really wanted to judge and control human beings (and as the Demiurge you most definitely do want that) then this is precisely what you would do – you would devise a Grand Simulation and trick people into thinking that they are who you say they are. We could see this as the archetypal form of abuse (or demonic possession) – the ultimate degradation and exploitation of the mystery of spontaneously arising consciousness. This corresponds of course to the alchemical theme of the spirit Mercurius being imprisoned in matter – what used to be infinitely mobile (or unconditionally free) is now completely immobile, completely unfree. All the natural Virtues have been inverted; the Dao is working in reverse…
As Kierkegaard could equally well have said, ‘When you simulate me, you negate me’. When we simulate reality we necessarily negate that reality. This is a nuanced kind of an idea and as much as we’re not talking in terms of being negotiated or nullified as in gotten rid of but in terms of this happening and asked not knowing it. It’s not the event itself that is so significant but the fact that the event has happened without a seeing it. It’s not the fact that you have simulated me that is the crucial thing but the fact that you have simulated me without me knowing it.
If we wanted to talk in terms of the ‘Abuser Mind’, we could say that is not the names that this Abuser Mind causes that makes the abuse be abuse but the fact that we ourselves buy into it. His ‘Great Trick’ isn’t to come up with the derogatory or abusive terms which he uses against us, it’s to pull the wool over our eyes so that these absurd terms actually seem to mean something in the first place. The machine is ‘giving us its mind’ (to borrow Carlos Castaneda’s phrase) so that we see things its way, and once this happens then we’re completely lost. The Great Amoeba first engulfs us and then it remakes us in its own image (which is an infinitely degraded image) but this isn’t the really clever part – the really clever part is where it gets us to go along with this of our own accord.
Once we have gone along with the big ‘switch-over’ then we instantly become unable of seeing that we are being mocked – instead, we are constantly trying our very best to protect and promote the narrow sense of self that we have been tricked into identifying with. We’re looking at things in the wrong way. We’re not authentic in other words, but instead we’re going down the road of aggressively asserting that we know what’s going on, aggressively stating that we are authentic, aggressively making out that we genuinely believe whatever it is that we claim to believe but don’t. But even if we did gain insight into our inauthenticity, it’s not as if we can do anything about it. We’ve done the deal and there’s no ‘get out of gaol free’ that we can wave – there’s just no way to ‘stop being inauthentic’ on purpose, as we started off by saying. It can’t be done – the more we struggle to be ‘true to ourselves’ the more twisted up we get.
When we wander too far from our instinctual or natural basis then what awaits us is neurotic mental illness, according to Jung. We can’t just reinvent ourselves in any way we want and yet expect to thrive (which is the assumption we’re making, even if we never pause to consider that we are). Another way of saying that we’re wandering away from our instinctual roots (and ending up in trouble because of that) we could say that we have been subsumed wholesale by the Great Amoeba and remade in its own image, so that no connection remains between who we think and perceive ourselves to be, and who we really are (underneath the superficial show that’s being put on). We could say that because we are 100% identified with the ‘simulation of who we are’ we have zero connection with what is being simulated. and that the resultant ‘alienated state of being’ manifests itself in terms of irresolvable neurotic mental suffering. We don’t like to see this, of course. We don’t like to be brought face to face with this fact and so what we do instead is to keep on trying to work out ways to ‘become more authentic’ via control, via methods and procedures, via rational / purposeful means…
Image credit – Street Art at Teufelsberg, Berlin by Shutterstock ©
