Loss of Authenticity

How we have lost connection to our true selves. How authenticity has become a rare phenomenon.

In the 19th century, Karl Marx identified four kinds of alienation that human beings had to experience due to the prevalent culture. Nowhere do we see that has changed at all.

Looking at how indifferent we are to the harm that we cause to the environment, it is so clear that we have lost all connection to the depth and beauty of nature. Even calamities like pandemics are not enough to stop us from all the rampage that we take part in. It seems that we have completely disconnected from mother nature.

Another connection that we need but have lost is to experience meaningful relations with other people. In a capitalist society, consumers reign supreme. They can buy whatever they like and how much they need.

What they mainly forget is that intimacy, trust, and real friendship are not commodities to purchase. One can cultivate these values by giving time, energy, and undivided attention to someone they like or love, and that too without having expectations of any compensation.

Two vital things in a person’s life are companionship and work. Our relationships are no more base on the purity of emotions. They depend on the expectations of material kinds.

Moreover, a lot of people no longer do any work that carries any value for them.

Human beings essentially are productive creatures. God created us in His image. We are here to mind, make, fashion, and mold. When we do work which is not creative, we are far from being authentic.

When we do work which is repetitive, mechanical, and drill-based, that imposes depression, anxiety, and a sheer sense of meaninglessness. We are lost, and we then want to substitute that sense of meaninglessness with meaning by pursuing all kinds of other activities and possessions.

We focus on a long list of false compensations like our outward appearances, how people feel and think about us, our material possessions, and our achievements in the traditional sense. Our economy helps by selling lots of products that substitute for that loss of real meaning and authenticity.

Finally, and most importantly, we have become alienated from ourselves. There are so many instances of having a powerful gut feeling about something, ignoring it, and feeling sorry afterward. Maybe innumerable times!

How many times did we pay attention to our hunches and were glad later? Probably a very few times! That means we lost connection to ourselves long ago, as children are born with their gut feelings. They are not without it.

In this culture, there is something that pushes us hard to alienate ourselves. Something that makes us abandon our true selves and start hiding and manipulating our own identities. This world could not face who we were. Even our parents were too stressed to honor and acknowledge who we were as children. Many parents, including myself, have done the same to their kids without meaning to. Our gut feelings are not luxuries. They are necessary to tell us what is right from wrong and safe from unsafe.

The power of intuition also referred to as a gut feeling or sixth sense, is not magical but rather a means by which hunches are generated by the unconscious mind sifting through previous experiences and cumulative knowledge. It arises holistically and quickly, without awareness of the underlying mental processing of information. So disconnecting ourselves from our intuition or gut feeling, we now alienate ourselves from our reality, from only truth.

The good news is that human beings can regain that sense of connection to the self. They can be their authentic selves by knowing and asserting their true intentions and motivations. For now, please remember that empathy is a genuine human trait. It is our nature to empathize with ourselves and with others.

As opposed to the misconception in our culture that we are discrete, aggressively competitive individuals, we are predisposed to connect, empathize, show love and compassion. To get forward, we have to get back to our true nature.

Reference: https://youtu.be/TIjvXtZRerY