Freedom and Authenticity

The past couple weeks, for lack of a better word, have been odd for me. Interspersed with the normal routine of home, work, and other life activities, I did a lot of driving and had extra work duties out of town. Last weekend, we had separate trips to Fort Wayne and Kalamazoo. On Monday, I then drove to Indianapolis in preparation for a work mediation on Tuesday. Following a night at a hotel and a long mediation, was the drive back home from Indianapolis. Friday, was a drive down and back to Indianapolis for a wedding reception.

While all that was going on, I was also working my way through At the Existentialist Cafe by Sarah Bakewell (which I just finished today). The combination of diving back into existentialist thought (which I really enjoyed when in college), and all the time one has to think and reflect on things while taking long drives and staying in hotels, has made me perhaps more reflective over the past week than typical.

I often find that existentialism is oft misunderstood (though it does make for good jokes). Often, it is seen as an embrace of absurdity, as seen in Camus' The Stranger; it can be pigeonholed as an atheistic philosophy that holds life meaningless. And if one only reads The Stranger, or Nietszche, or just parts of Sartre, such can be understood. But when one reads more of what Sartre wrote (and struggled with over years and years and years), understand the role that other thinkers, such as Heidegger and Beauvoir and Merleau-Ponty played in existentialist thought, the school of thought can be seen as more nuanced and complicated, and even contradictory.

In college, my primary attraction to existentialist thought came from two themes I found primary in the work of Camus, Sartre, and others - freedom and authenticity. Existentialism wants individuals to have freedom, and tries to "throw off" the yoke of ideologies - political, social, religious, cultural - that work to enslave individuals. The purpose of this freedom - to be able to choose authenticity. In reading Sartre, one can see how much of a struggle it is to obtain that authenticity, and how it leads to changes in thoughts and beliefs over time (people are dynamic, not static, after all).

I have long thought that this relationship between freedom and authenticity holds a path, a guide to how we approach life, decision making, and our world; in part, because the two concepts can so easily subvert each other. Is it freedom to choose to be something I'm not? If I want to improve myself, and work to change my habits through my freedom of choice, is that inauthentic? If it is, does that mean that ultimate authenticity results in a lack of freedom - you are what you are? I delighted in these questions in college when reading Sartre and other existentialists for the first time; today, I find, perhaps not delight, but a reason for purposeful reflection on them.

Is being authentic being what you, upon sincere and genuine reflection, believe that you are? Or is it, upon sincere and genuine reflection, working towards what you want to be? More and more, I tend towards the latter. Chiefly, this is so because without such, I don't believe the freedom is authentic. In order for the freedom of choice to be authentic, self-improvement (or even just change as the result of self-will power) must be possible.

In reading At the Existentialist Cafe, another frequent thought I had was how those existentialists would respond to our modern world, and in particular the ubiquity of social media and technology, and such impacts our freedom and authenticity. While such has made the spread of ideas and discussion much easier, which is something I believe such thinkers would be thrilled by, I ultimately believe they would conclude that such is dangerous. The technology of social media and smartphones is developed to strip away our freedom; to make us continue to swipe or post or play to receive a dopamine hit (the makers of such apps and technology readily admit as much). Social media, in particular, also seems designed to obfuscate our authentic self. Am I reduced to my Twitter profile; my Facebook feed; my Instagram photos? Does authentic sharing exist in these platforms? Is authentic sharing possible on these platforms? Or do they merely serve as projections of ourselves and others.

Consider Sartre's play, "No Exit." In it, three characters are damned to Hell and are brought to the same room and locked inside. The punishment, is that they are each subject to seeing themselves as an object from the view of someone else. They are no longer free to define themselves; they are judged and defined by the others in the room; thus leading to the oft misunderstood quote, "Hell is other people." But what is social media, if not a physical (digital?) representation of that room? We share information about ourselves via Facebook profiles or posts, Instagram photos, links to stories on Twitter, and through that information, other people - some we see on a regular basis, some we know but rarely see, and some we may not even know - make judgments and define us in some way: John's a liberal; Rex's a reader; Alicia travels; Jack's a good father; Meg's a bad mother; and on and on and on. I think Sartre and other existentialists would detest this aspect of social media, finding it ruinous both of authenticity and freedom. And the more and more I reflect on the subject, I find myself agreeing.

I recently had a discussion with someone who was sharing our conversation they had with their daughter, about finding happiness in life. I shared that I have come to disagree with the concept that people want to be happy (at least as a guiding tenet). Rather, I think, people want purpose; and perhaps happiness often comes from that purpose, but its derivative and contingent; purpose and meaning is necessary. Much our technology and social media is contingent, but it is mistakenly treated as necessary; it is done so because, I think, people look for the dopamine hit (happiness), rather than questioning what purpose social media serves in their life.

Perhaps, theoretically, social media can serve the purpose of increasing freedom and authenticity, those twin aspirational goals. But I'm not sure such is possible. Our social media, our smartphones, our technology, inherently seem to take freedom away from us. We cede control, and thus our freedom, and thus any chance we have at authenticity.

In any event, these random thoughts have bounced around in my head over the past couple weeks as I contemplate various life changes, the desire to pursue authenticity, but also pursue the freedom to change my authentic self. Some of it, obviously, relates to social media and my continue disinterest in using any of the platforms; some of relates to annoyance with the ubiquity of my smartphone in my life, and how it makes distraction so easy by having so much random information so easily available (be it a Google search, email, weather, and so on); and some of it relates to my sense that I am not being who I want to be - both as it relates to social media and technology, but also in decisions relating to time management, reading, writing, work, and health.

But the great thing about existentialism (as odd as that may sound), is it recognizes that its goals of freedom and authenticity are a struggle, but that the struggle is also a purpose that gives meaning.

"There is scarcely any passion without struggle" - Albert Camus

"Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself." - Jean-Paul Sartre

"What an odd thing a diary is: the things you omit are more important than those you put in." - Simone de Beauvoir

"One might be led to suspect that there were all sorts of things going on in the Universe which he or she did not thoroughly understand." - Kurt Vonnegut