Uglification and the Cult of Authenticity

I think authenticity is the modern day version of the Puritan doctrine of election.

Remember that Puritan Calvinists believed that only the elect could be saved and that election was a pure act of will by God.   This meant you could not achieve election by your own efforts.  But it also meant that you could not really know when you were elected.  The resulting anxiety drove a lot of Puritan behavior.

Now, our modern Puritans want to be authentic.  But how to be authentic?  If you are trying to be authentic, you aren’t authentic.

The resulting anxiety drives a lot of their behavior.

The insight that authenticity is supposed to be not understandable is a good one.  If you can explain why you are doing it in terms that make sense to other people, then you are not doing it because of the ineffable upwelling of your soul.

Being attractive is suspect, because there are obvious benefits to being attractive.  But there are no good reasons for being ugly.  So uglification suggests authenticity.  The cult of authenticity is behind the epidemic of uglification vice.

Immodesty and even slutty behavior by themselves suggest a desire to attract men and a taste for sexual pleasure.  These are both understandable, therefore inauthentic.  But sleeping around while piercing and tattoing and hairwhacking and generally uglifying oneself suggests that one is really doing it for self-contempt, which is a more authentic motive, since it obviously arises from one’s own feelings.

Being pleasant to other people also is suspect, because there are obvious benefits.  Being pleasant is How to Win Friends and Influence People.  Being angry and contemptuous is better. There usually aren’t obvious personal benefits, especially if you are angry as part of a cause.  Anger also has the authenticity-enhancing effect of being uglifying.

Same with self-contempt and depression.  Since there is no obvious benefit to self-loathing, it seems more authentic.

So uglification, rage, and self-loathing are characteristic vices of the anxious quest for authenticity.