Can We Be Authentic?
The recent election of Donald Trump has given rise to a plethora of public emotional outcries on social media of various types. Hillary Clinton supporters do not seem to understand how anyone could support Trump. Trump supporters cannot seem to fathom how anyone could support Clinton. This cognitive dissonance between what each individual perceives to be correct and what others perceive creates discord amongst families, coworkers, and other groups.
In the United States, we pay an awful lot of lip service to “democracy” and the “marketplace of ideas.” We preach “tolerance” and “diversity,” then go home and promptly resent others for being different than we are. We even think we know others’ perspectives when we really have no clue. In fact, until fairly recently, most of the population in our country didn’t have the basic rights of owning land, voting, and marriage.
Most people are far more interested in image management than authenticity. The concern for managing a public image is a good one, given how much of our private lives are becoming increasingly public. While only a few decades ago, it was not particularly difficult for a private citizen to go about his or her own peculiar or controversial lifestyle at home while maintaining a vanilla front at work or in school, in today’s tsunami of social media, cell phone recordings, and instant messaging, it’s nearly impossible to maintain an anonymous personal life.
The goal in today’s day and age should be living an authentic life that one can be proud of all of the time rather than compartmentalizing and managing a public image. Surely, we are all due private moments, and not every single bit of our business out to be made public. However, the reality is that our privacy is constantly at risk of unwanted publicity, so our character must remain constant regardless of context.
