Violent extremists and morality - a vignette. Some years ago I met a researcher who had conducted for some study or other in depth interviews with terrorists in Northern Ireland who'd received life sentences for murder. She talked to 25 Loyalists and 25 Republicans. These weren't planners or facilitators, these were men who had pulled the trigger. She took these in depth transcripts to a personality psychologist to see if anything unusual stood out about them. This all in pursuit I suppose of the 'is there a a terrorist personality' sort of avenue of enquiry. The psychologist concluded that no, based on these interviews all 50 of these men are all totally psychologically normal, EXCEPT for in one dimension - the heavy majority of them were waaaaay above average in...altruism.
I read your post and then immediately came across the following quote in the next email. I couldn’t help but think that your theories explain this contradiction rather well.
“The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.
-John Steinbeck, novelist, Nobel laureate (27 Feb 1902-1968)
I would like to see a deep dive into the "authenticity" status game. Here are a few thoughts:
1. It's a success-virtue game. It actually combines two virtues - honesty and courage. The success part of it depends on a person not just arbitrarily going against the status quo, but doing so in a way that is superior to the masses.
2. It comes with an implied story. The story goes something like this: Humans are deeply wired for social conformity, but this is maladaptive in the modern world. People who rise above the natural impulse to conform have the potential to be more successful than conformists, and the honesty and bravery required to attempt it are commendable.
3. It is a counter-status game. There are always mainstream status games. In the United States things like Christianity, climbing the corporate ladder, sports and physical fitness (and more recently wokeness) are mainstream status games, while beliefs and subcultures that oppose these things are counter-status games. "Authenticity" is the latter.
Unless I missed it in the archive, there has not been an Everything is Bullshit posted titled "authenticity is bullshit". It's long overdue.
Yea it’s a great topic. There’s lots of empirical work showing authenticity is bullshit (I list the studies in my latest bullshit links), but why it’s bullshit, what kind of status game it is, is an interesting question, and I think your ideas are plausible. I’ve got a lot of different posts in the pipeline, but maybe some day I’ll get to this.
Unfortunately I haven’t looked at the studies, and I really should before commenting but I’m about to start my work day so I need to leave one final hit-and-run comment.
I can think of one sense in which authenticity is, well, authentic. Let’s say a teenager secretly enjoys the music of an uncool band. Admitting he likes the band would be more authentic than pretending to like a cool band wouldn’t it? Or let’s say an academic secretly disagrees with the political views of her peers but pretends to agree with them in order to fit in. Wouldn’t it be authentic if she expressed her true opinion?
This isn’t to say authenticity is good or bad, but it seems like it maps to a real concept.
Yea agreed, but the research suggests that when we say we like the uncool band or express the unpopular opinion, we don’t actually *feel* more authentic. We feel more authentic when we like the cool band and express the popular opinion. We feel authentic when we feel high-status, not when we’re actually being true to ourselves. So our concept of authenticity doesn’t seem to match reality.
So we feel authentic when we are high status, not when we are honest? That is absolutely mind blowing to me.
It might make sense if you consider authenticity to be a backdoor to status. If status is what we really want then we will feel better (and more “authentic”) when we achieve it regardless of how we get there.
Thanks. I'm afraid I don't really have a novel take on management consulting. Seems pretty bullshitty from what I gather, but I honestly don't know much about it.
Violent extremists and morality - a vignette. Some years ago I met a researcher who had conducted for some study or other in depth interviews with terrorists in Northern Ireland who'd received life sentences for murder. She talked to 25 Loyalists and 25 Republicans. These weren't planners or facilitators, these were men who had pulled the trigger. She took these in depth transcripts to a personality psychologist to see if anything unusual stood out about them. This all in pursuit I suppose of the 'is there a a terrorist personality' sort of avenue of enquiry. The psychologist concluded that no, based on these interviews all 50 of these men are all totally psychologically normal, EXCEPT for in one dimension - the heavy majority of them were waaaaay above average in...altruism.
Nice. Great vignette. Thank you.
I read your post and then immediately came across the following quote in the next email. I couldn’t help but think that your theories explain this contradiction rather well.
“The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second.
-John Steinbeck, novelist, Nobel laureate (27 Feb 1902-1968)
I quite like your lists of bullshit links.
I would like to see a deep dive into the "authenticity" status game. Here are a few thoughts:
1. It's a success-virtue game. It actually combines two virtues - honesty and courage. The success part of it depends on a person not just arbitrarily going against the status quo, but doing so in a way that is superior to the masses.
2. It comes with an implied story. The story goes something like this: Humans are deeply wired for social conformity, but this is maladaptive in the modern world. People who rise above the natural impulse to conform have the potential to be more successful than conformists, and the honesty and bravery required to attempt it are commendable.
3. It is a counter-status game. There are always mainstream status games. In the United States things like Christianity, climbing the corporate ladder, sports and physical fitness (and more recently wokeness) are mainstream status games, while beliefs and subcultures that oppose these things are counter-status games. "Authenticity" is the latter.
Unless I missed it in the archive, there has not been an Everything is Bullshit posted titled "authenticity is bullshit". It's long overdue.
Yea it’s a great topic. There’s lots of empirical work showing authenticity is bullshit (I list the studies in my latest bullshit links), but why it’s bullshit, what kind of status game it is, is an interesting question, and I think your ideas are plausible. I’ve got a lot of different posts in the pipeline, but maybe some day I’ll get to this.
Unfortunately I haven’t looked at the studies, and I really should before commenting but I’m about to start my work day so I need to leave one final hit-and-run comment.
I can think of one sense in which authenticity is, well, authentic. Let’s say a teenager secretly enjoys the music of an uncool band. Admitting he likes the band would be more authentic than pretending to like a cool band wouldn’t it? Or let’s say an academic secretly disagrees with the political views of her peers but pretends to agree with them in order to fit in. Wouldn’t it be authentic if she expressed her true opinion?
This isn’t to say authenticity is good or bad, but it seems like it maps to a real concept.
Yea agreed, but the research suggests that when we say we like the uncool band or express the unpopular opinion, we don’t actually *feel* more authentic. We feel more authentic when we like the cool band and express the popular opinion. We feel authentic when we feel high-status, not when we’re actually being true to ourselves. So our concept of authenticity doesn’t seem to match reality.
So we feel authentic when we are high status, not when we are honest? That is absolutely mind blowing to me.
It might make sense if you consider authenticity to be a backdoor to status. If status is what we really want then we will feel better (and more “authentic”) when we achieve it regardless of how we get there.
Yea I think something like that is probably going on, but I haven’t thought a lot about it.
Thanks David! I always learn something new from your posts.
This list of bullshit links is bullshit, and I quite like it.
Would you be open to cross-posting your most sober take around the pinnacle of bullshit jobs, ie management consulting?
Thanks. I'm afraid I don't really have a novel take on management consulting. Seems pretty bullshitty from what I gather, but I honestly don't know much about it.
This comment is fair (not bullshit at all)!
You are cool and your lists are cool
Refreshing, list or not. As an aside, I find myself muttering, "everything is bullshit" several times a day now.