Authenticity and Meaning

The Work sociologist Domenico de Masi once wrote in a book called "The Creative leisure" describes  three activities necessary for the human being - the work, the fun and the learning. He explains that in the industrial society there was a clear division of places for each one of these. There would be a place to work, other for having fun and another for learning. The industry, the circus and the school are symbolic examples for this division.

Today this separation is transforming itself following a converging tendency. In other words, the culture is molding itself to converge in one place the acts of producing, having fun and learning. The premise would be to get into a point on which these three practice dimensions are implied into the daily life experience.

This theme is often connected to leadership nowadays. This is given due to the world be passing through a "way-of-thought", belief systems, values and ideologies transformation. The image of a leader presents itself as something indispensable on the conduction of a group or society in the direction of it's yearnings. What substantiates a change of this magnitude and depth is a mutual uncomfortable sensation and evident for all the individuals. In this situation, the wish of everyone would be that "the present condition was different from what it is". Than the leader is instituted by the very conditions implied to help the group to find out what is important for themselves.

Speaking about the separation of those De Masi's three slopes of activity, it's possible to behold that, when acting separately in each one of them, the individual will miss the other two. If one goes to school only, he won't have conscience of his own knowledge or real measuring goal. Thus the exercise will become so boring that there won't be any progress. If one only acts for having fun, the practice will become each time more repetitive and empty, until it looses completely it's reason, leading to apathy and unmotivation. If one only acts on producting, without thinking about itand learning during the process, without contemplating it to find it's entertaining curiosities, he will end up perceiving that he's taking the place of a "thing". He will feel deprived of personality and conscience.

It's possible to percieve that the ideal should be the balance, but practically it's not that easy as to make a chess move and wait for the challenger turn. People are generally educated to percieve static balances and, this way, to proceed with logic on problems that are in constant mutation. For this case of looking for the interdependent balance between these three slopes of action, a set of multiple variables is faced upon, which one of these coming in and out randomly from influence condition on the specific situation.  If the individual hesitates to decide and act for an instant, the set is already changed and the logically pondered action becomes totally ineffective. When the process implied conditions find each other in constant chaotic change, the simple and pure logic doesn't determine the capacity of responding effectively.

All of it lets people each time with more fear to decide and act, for our culture preaches the precise success. This pressure isolates the "winners" in "social prisons", which bars are made of pride. Those who get the nickname of "loosers", by their turn, become resentful. They create alternatives that start from psychological escapes, passing through critical attitude until culminating on intending the "winners" to suffer. Thomas Friedman (The World is Flat - 2005) cited a case between two cultures influenced on the conflict situation between two oriental countries. A kid from the first country, when asked about what did he think about a mansion at his sight says: "Very beautiful that house. Once I'm a grown up I'll buy it from it's present owner. The other kid, from the second country, would say: "Very beautiful that house. Once I'm a grown up I'll kill the present owner. " How wouldn't be the suffering of the mansion owner, for living with fear, and of the future adult with no perspective of life outside misery.

Another contemporary thinker, Zygmunt Bauman, writes about the suffering that establishes itself in the human being on this condition at his book (BAUMMAN, 1997, Page 33) when says, for example:

- "It's exactaly with her [the safety] that we cannot count anymore. Instead of it, we live with the constant company of a deep anxiety, that makes itself more present as more atempts for a safe apprehension of the real gets more intense." 

There is no safety because the organized separation does not exist anymore. The individual should adapt naturally to that thae world asks him. The constant improvement shouldn't be seen as a big challenge, but as a way of conducting own life towards a meaning. The effort should be natural and integrating part of the experience. As a football play that amuses the player, it also demands much effort, but nobody that practices it would come to complain. The success will be each time more measured by the competence of each one to build value, and each time less for the job title.

Authenticity, from the Greek "Αυθεντικότητα", suggests something true, genuine, legitimate. The "Meaning" here spoken is a creative goal for which to direct the own efforts. A parson truly conscious on determined situation is the one that saw the true meaning of his yearning. In these post-modern times, the people each time more isolate themselves into individualism and addict themselves into not-hearing each other. However, comprehending the other is often much more simple than comprehending own-self. If there is already great difficulty on even paying attention to the other, how much is it possible to pay attention to own-self? Without this value of being aware of the other, there is not even cogitation on finding the "meaning" on the relations. Without being aware of own-self, there is no way to find it on what is done. And without it, the "authenticity" doesn't find substantiation to flow upon, because it's not a choice to be authentic. Or one is, or one is not, depending on how much to be faithful to what one believes, that what "means" something to own-self or for a group.