What does living authentically mean?

@Hiphopfrogger

It means that individuals act in their own self interest….:..sound familiar?

Thats because its just Ann Rand repackaged for the Gen Y generation.

I think it's intended for situations like a woman who is actually a lesbian but feels she has to live a heterosexual life, or for someone who feels they have to do a corporate job to keep their parents happy but would rather do something creative. I think that meaning is fair enough, it's just been stretched rather a long way in recent years

Authenticity is a subject that fascinates me. I love music, and in music authenticity is something that is often seen to be very important, especially in "serious" music like punk or rock.

But what does it mean? Are you being authentic to a tradition (ie authentic blues uses old fashioned techniques and equipment)? Or authentic to your own beliefs and life experiences? Does recording live in one take make something more authentic than something carefully produced? Is any art "authentic" or is it by definition artificial? Is music seen as more authentic the more it looks like it has come naturally in real time (eg a singer songwriter with a guitar) compared to lots of overdubbed synths on a bombastic 80s pop track.

I'm not sure those few words help much, but I think maybe they do. I think that authenticity is borderline impossible to pin down, and it is all about what appears to be authentic. Kurt Cobain came across as "real" but Michael Jackson didn't. Does that mean KC's songs were more from the heart than MJ's? I suspect they might have been, but we can't be sure.

"It means precisely what the speaker wants it to." Yep.

Authenticity seems to be about announcing - whether explicitly or through signals you give off - that you are authentic. A singer songwriter does this by dressing-down in scruffy clothes and singing sad personal songs... but the truth might be that their authentic self is chinos and deck shoes and songs about how amazing it is to have a £5m trust fund care of Hedge Fund daddy or how wonderful it is to be able to eat at £200 a head restaurants.

To my mind in the context of living your life authenticity is about doing what you want to do, not what is expected of you or you are told to do; it is about not pretending to be something you're not.

It seems to me that trans people (and fake tan, dubai holiday influencers) are all about proclaiming authenticity in order to deflect from the fact that pretending to be the sex you're not and posting filtered IG photos are the very definition of inauthenticity.

To me it means living in harmony with my Self - that how I act (my outer self) lines up with my needs and wants (my inner self). My feelings are what tells me whether I’m lined up or not. If I’m feeling annoyed or resentful about something, that’s telling me I’m not acting in line with my needs and wants, or I’m accepting behaviour from others that isn’t honouring what I need and want in life. So I can adjust my actions to do more of the things I need or say no to what I don’t want.

if you’re spending all your time with other people and revolving yourself around other people’s needs and wants, it can be very difficult to stay in tune with what you need and want.

unless perhaps you had a good chunk of time in childhood/young adult life where you had the space to really get to know yourself and what you like/don’t like and learned how to stay true to that. In which case it might come quite intuitively to you, so much so that you don’t understand how anyone could not act in line with themselves. (Hence why some people can’t fathom why domestic abuse victims stay with their partners).

It’s so important because staying true to your inner self will result in a contented life (not always happy, but peaceful). And not staying true to yourself results in being unhappy and resentful.

To take the notion seriously, it means living without feeling like you are pretending.

This article was quite interesting.

secularhumanism.org/2019/04/the-cult-of-authenticity/

''In any case, who is to say the self we know from the inside is more authentic than the one everyone else perceives? It might be if we all occupied our own little universes, with no contact with other humans, but since we don’t … how do we know that our interactions with the world and the people in it are not in fact part of our “self,” even the authentic one? The reality surely is that selves—characters, personalities, autobiographies—are built up from their experiences, including relations with other selves. We help to create each other, and that doesn’t make us less than “authentic.” ''

I take it to mean something like, don't be ashamed of your interests, tastes, characteristics because you feel people won't accept them in someone like you (someone of your social class, race, sex etc). Unless it's something that is based on incorrect information.

As pp said, it's fairly meaningless, and sometimes used as an excuse for crap behaviour ("that's just who I am! ")

I think it's one of those phrases that sounds profound but is essentially meaningless as the interpretation can be so broad.

To be, being your authentic self is being aware of your flaws and being at peace with them and not posting selfies on SM with loads of filters and always having to hide behind the Facebook Facade.

It means precisely what the speaker wants it to.

So, like schlurminlenghen, it is of vital importance and should never be underestimated or ignored.

Mine would be living as the Queen of Sheba dressed up for a night on the town...

Being true to myself is making sure the kids have their shoes on, that I have called my aging parents, that I have remembered to renew the RAC, that the things everyone likes are in the fridge, that the beds have been changed.

Then if I get a sit down, a cuppa, a good book that's also living my authentic life.