The Call for Authenticity
EDIFYING ELUCIDATIONS BY OKEY IKECHUKWU
In the words of Parmenides: “What is, is; and what is not is not”. And he is right. If an umbrella exists, then it exists. If it does not exist, then it does not exist. But, wait a minute! How about something that exists “becoming” something else? An egg can become a chicken, `for instance. A student may one day become a teacher, an engineer, an armed robber or a priest. A seed may one day become a tree, or a shrub. So, where does that leave us with Parmenides? Perhaps we should just tell the gentleman philosopher that he is wrong in his further statement that “for something to come into being, it must have been in existence before then”. He forgot, or denied, the concept of development.
Unlike Parmenides, Aristotle said: “Everything is what it is” at any particular point in time. A chair is a chair. A table is a table, and not a chicken. But the table was made from pieces of wood, nails, gum and some vanish. None of the components is a table. Putting all of them together in a room will also not give you a table. There must be a process that transforms the possibilities of these disparate objects into a new actuality. We must, therefore conclude that everything is what it is at a particular time, in a particular place, and under particular circumstances, provided the conditions for activating all or some of its other possibilities are not fulfilled.
That is why a basic fact of logic and critical thinking is that a thing cannot be one thing and also not be that thing “at the same time, in the same place and, particularly, in the same respect”. That is the basic pillar of the Laws of Thought in traditional logic. It is the element of Sub oedum respectum that ends the debate, making it possible for the concepts of development, transformation, act and potency to be part of all logical and metaphysical thinking. So, let us go really philosophical today and talk about authenticity and inauthenticity; with an eye on the ongoing switching of identities between thieves, leaders, bishops and mechanics.
A political party that is, to all intents and purposes, the Patron Saint of Mediocrity and national decay cannot also ‘at the same time’ successfully pass itself off as an agent of national development” Also, political party that says it is in opposition, but which has nothing that really distinguishes it from the ‘bad guys’ it is trying to replace has a very bad case. A presidential aspirant with controversial antecedents and credentials cannot, ‘at the same time’, be a presidential aspirant with credible antecedents and credentials. A person who calls himself a bishop when he is not one is simply not a bishop. He cannot, ‘at the same time’ that he is not a bishop transmute into one by self-proclamation. The simple issue here is about reality and illusion, truth and falsehood. criminality and good behaviour. So, let us talk go deeper int authenticity and inauthenticity.
To be authentic is to be real. An authentic wooden chair is different from a fake plastic chair that is given a coat of paint in order to pass it off as a wooden chair. A person is said to be authentic when he is what he claims to be at any particular time, and completely so. To be inauthentic, on the other hand, is to have your identity, values, statements and avowed beliefs contrived to present “what is not” as “what is”. It boils down to the absence of any true identity. A chimerical being. The “Not this” that claims to be a “this”.
The inauthentic person will rather strive to create an illusion and present same as truth, than take steps to remedy a perceived lack and become real and authentic. This is where falsehood, no matter how thinly cloaked, will prance forward through the manipulation of public opinion. It is all a question of doing everything possible to ensure that popular opinion and made-up reality create a shroud for the non-being to hide inside and masquerade an identity. Utter bunkum! What is not is not, at any particular time.
When an inauthentic person makes statements, or claims, about right, wrong, development, etc., it is all likely to be grounded on assumptions, expectations, views and ideas whose prevalence is mistaken for indubitability. Personal conviction is rarely ever part of the equation. Such a person will say ‘I know’, but will not bother to ask what it means ‘to know’. While one person will say ‘I know’ and mean ‘Mr. X told me…’, another will say he knows while he means ‘It is generally said and believed that…’, or even ‘I have the impression that’. See? There is also profound inauthenticity in the domain of knowledge!
The victim of an inauthentic life may not be aware of his predicament at all. He will be absorbed in his everyday concerns, feeling quite important and indispensable amidst it all. Yet he is dispensable in every sense of the word, without the world being the worse for it. What the inauthentic person takes himself to be is very often the agglomeration of claims, conjectures, flatteries and opinions put out by himself and his ‘factory workers’; as he sits in the conventional boat of his environment, his financial status and what is generally called public opinion. But can what is said by a misguided public ever become the truth?
An inauthentic person is actually no longer in a position to table new ideas, or question anything. “What will my people think of such a thing”, he would probably say in a shudder. His nakedness is there beneath the perfectly imaginary clothing of artifice. But it is precisely this artifice that is being marketed as reality, in the firm belief that all will be well in the end.
Now, let us carefully note that an inauthentic person is usually not under any visible physical coercion, no matter how subtle. Yet he seems to be the victim of some kind of ethereal tyranny, as he falters and stabilizes involuntarily. He is always afraid of what people would say if he did this, or failed to do that. He is worried that they may consider him foolish, unserious, etc. Yes! But who is this “they”? Terrible, is it not? That the “they” cannot be individualized. It does not really refer to this person, or to that person. It does not even refer to all the people put together; or to everyone except me. It is not something like a universal subject from which the individual can be abstracted, no!
But there it is! They want this and not that!
Unlike the authentic self which has taken hold of itself, and which consciously determines its own possibilities, a “they” self is not localized. That is why it is true to say that to have your day-to-day life defined by the ‘they’ is to have all your genuine possibilities annulled; because your life is dispersed into undefined channels, as you wallow in the anonymity of collectivism. When an inauthentic person says “I”, he actually means “the others, whose ways prescribe mine”. Pitiful, is it not? That the amorphous group, the self-enclosed homogenous group, with its unthinking rhetoric, buries personal volition.
If you doubt that the inauthentic person unconsciously, and often totally, depends on the “they”, watch out for the constant care he takes to see how he differs from others; and whether that difference is one that should be maintained or evened out; whether he is lagging and needs to catch up, and whether he has some advantages he must strive to maintain. It is a desperate struggle for a life defined by average everydayness. A life lived with very little self-possession.
This is how the tyranny of the “they” unobtrusively robs people of their individuality. The choices about pleasure and displeasure are dictated by the prevailing preferences. It just happens to be “the done thing”. Thus, does true knowledge get undermined and undervalued. Nobody then needs to justify anything he says or believes, other than by saying that everyone is in the same boat. Thus, you find people strutting about as leaders, statesmen, chieftains influencers, on air personalities, etc., either after they have held public office, or because they have read a few books and talked a lot.
It is sometimes in this way that the impetus to free thinking and independent enquiry is either dampened, or extinguished completely for many people. That is because ‘they’ articulate he referential context of the significance of everything. Thus, it gets spread around that there is no need to be different. Evasion of self and ignorant presumption become the norm. “Just drift along”. Do not make a nuisance of yourself, by raking up issues that will make people think, reflect, or ask questions. As Martin Buber said: “Having become uneager and inept for such living intercourse that opens up a world, the have imprisoned the person in history and his speech in a library”.
But it is all coming to a head in Nigeria today. Inauthenticity has been our welcome companion around here for too long. Many of those attacking Tinubu today either attended his recent 70th birthday celebrations, sent him congratulatory messages, or were part of newspaper adverts to mark the occasion. And how many of them do not know the man’s actual age and the age of his eldest and youngest children? What makes the fraud called PDP any better than the disaster called APC?
Inauthenticity walks the land! In Aso Rock, in the National Assembly, in the judiciary, in state government houses, in state Houses of Assembly, in local government headquarters, in churches and mosques, in institutions of higher and lower learning. We walk through a maze and claim to be walking under bright lights. Debauchery has been given a new name, in the hope that the discerning will no longer keep watch over disappearing values. No, the relevant eyes are still wide open, even if fewer in number than hitherto. The call for authenticity is real. It is the fire behind the upsurge in youth registration for the 2023 elections.
