Whence comes our authenticity?

A few days back, I got a comment on my post noting that my writing style was similar to someone else’s. While it wasn’t meant in a negative way, it got me mulling over my own authenticity. I can’t seem to let go of the thought, I feel it might not roll back my direction real soon so I decided to pen it down. What does authenticity really mean, anyway? We think we know it in the ordinary sense, but do we truly understand it?

I kinda have a sense of what it is and how it relates to my writing but I lacked the idea on how it should begin. It’s like a novelist who knows how the story will end, yet needs further thinking to craft its beginning.

Perhaps I should start from the ground up. So, I looked up its basic definition in the dictionary. The word means something that is ‘real’ or ‘true.’ For instance, when we describe something as an authentic Hanzo sword, it means the sword was made or crafted by Hanzo himself. Similarly, saying 'this document is authentic' implies it has been verified as real and legitimate, not a copy or counterfeit. Authenticity also relates to being true to one's personality or character. It describes a person who is genuine, transparent, and often expresses themselves openly without pretense.

In relation to being a writer, I believe this means writing freely to reflect what’s in your heart—your own values, principles, and philosophy in life—not anyone else's. However, it got me thinking again, perhaps our values, principles or even our personality might not be entirely our own.

We are probably aware that our environment, people we often interact with, the books we read, movies we prefer to watch, habits, diet etc. make up who we are. Aren’t all these external factors that influenced us make up the person that we call ‘our true self’?

I tried searching the internet about the correlation between self and authenticity and found myself skimming through Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. It’s basically a compilation of philosophical works on the subject of authenticity. I picked up a few passages on what I think relates to ‘authenticity’ and ‘self’ without hurting head by delving deep into philosophy:

One of the factors in the development of the ideal of authenticity is that it emerged along with the modern conception of the self. Rousseau has set the stage for what would later constitutes authenticity. To quote:

the work of Rousseau, who argues that the orientation toward life that should guide the conduct one chooses should come from a source within. This led to questions about inwardness, self-reflection and introspection, many of them addressed in his Confessions (1770).

Moreover, Foucault suggests:

Rather than searching for a hidden true self, one should attempt to shape one’s life as a work of art, proceeding without recourse to any fixed rules or permanent truths in a process of unending becoming (Foucault 1988: 49).

I think it implied that rather than profusely looking for our ever-elusive self, why not just take the necessary steps to become the self we’re looking for instead?

Furthermore, to quote Charles Taylor’s idea of ‘true self’ in his book Sources of the Self. The Making of the Modern Identity:

the “true self” to which we are to be true is not some pre-given set of substantive feelings, opinions and desires to be consulted through inward-turning or introspection. On the contrary, the “true self” alluded to here is an on-going narrative construction: the composition of one’s own autobiography through one’s concrete ways of acting over the course of a life as a whole.

Here, true self is rather a work in progress, and not something innate – it’s the decisions and actions we take in this life that constitute it.

Of the three, I resonated the most with the remaining two. I think it’s highly likely that authenticity is something that builds up or develops within us rather than something innate. It’s quite obvious that many of our traits, if not all were passed down to us from our parents or ancestors; there may be differences, they are not that significantly distinct.

After giving it much thought, what I realized is that authenticity isn’t comprised with one’s own thoughts, beliefs, decisions or actions alone. We do not live in a vacuum. Everything we think and do are, and always will be, influenced by various external factors – the people we live with, books we read, films we watch etc. Sure, there are times that we are able to come up with our own unique ideas or insights but they are never formed independently. When it comes to the authenticity of one’s writing style, I believe it’s the same.

And I now agree that having the same writing style to someone else’s isn’t necessarily a bad thing. As Foucault once noted, that rather than worrying about your authenticity, treat it as work of art, creating and shaping it as an artist would.

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