I would like to discuss two dichotomies that are often used as a discriminant in judging behaviour:
1. Authentic/genuine/’real’ vs. pretentious/artificial/’fake’
And
2. Expressive/individual/’free’ vs. prescriptive/conformist/’repressive’
I believe that there is an inherent conflict in how we often view these qualities (on the assumption that most people would prefer to be ‘genuine’ than ‘pretentious’ but also would rather be allowed to express themselves rather than have rules imposed on them).
Let me relate each dichotomy, in turn, to choices one may make.
I have witnessed both of these situations in real life.
a) Bob tells me he really likes the hat I’m wearing. He thinks it looks cool and elegant. But he’s quite sure that HE couldn’t “pull it off”. He’s actually bought a couple of low-profile trilbies on the spur of the moment, but he’s never worn one in public.
b) Jenny feels at once both glamorous and at ease in the cocktail bar of the Grand Hotel X but her friends (with no evident money issues) tend to default meeting for drinks at a sad little place with appalling service. She proposed going to the X once and some of her friends liked the idea but Cara said “Ooh! Aren’t we posh! I just want to relax…” and they all went to the sad little place. Jenny daren’t bring the X up again.
Indeed, many people I know – perfectly decent people, too – think that wearing any apparel that stands out, especially if tainted by desuetude, is a bit pretentious, a bit “look at me”, a bit like trying too hard: costume. A regular guy, a decent bloke, a genuine guy doesn’t wear a hat, nowadays; maybe in the 1950s. But a guy who wears a hat today is trying to be Indiana Jones / the dude from Mad Men, etc. That’s the question viewed form the authenticity/artifice dichotomy.
How different it looks from the expressive/repressive dichotomy standpoint. A traditional hat is a partly useful, partly ornamental object. It’s just a piece of shaped felt. Of itself, it signifies nothing, precludes nothing, ensures nothing. How can it be good that Bob feels someone “like him” would look silly in a hat that looks good on me? Are we members of opposed primitive tribes? Pre-1789 classes or ’estates’? Have sumptuary laws been reinstated?
Such thinking contradicts two centuries of questioning top-down rules and repression of individuality..
Similarly, some might question who Jenny thinks she is, what does she want/mean to project about herself, why – really – is she happier, in the swanky cocktail bar. It’s the company that matters, right? Is it a need for conspicuous consumption? Aspirationalism? Expressions like “city slicker” or “hipster” swim before our eyes.
Again, though, why is it OK for Cara to, for instance, drive a nicer car than what is strictly necessary to effect conveyance, or carry the latest mobile phone, etc.? Do not those choices also denote pretension? And if Cara, who is far from poor, decide to lead a more frugal existence tout court than Jenny can we conclude anything from that other than she’s less spendthrift? Is parsimony more authentic, more real than a preference for finer quality?
A conflict of aspirations: authenticity and expression
Luca
The person who is authentic, genuine and real is normally also expressive, individual and free (“agreif.”) And generally speaking people like this could care less than less about what other people think. They are too busy living to be worried about nonsense. Life is both and in equal measures too fun, too uncertain and too blinking short.
If your friends don’t want you to wear a hat or go to bar “x”or drive car “y”, the solution is to get new friends. Or just let them accumulate, because if you really are agreif, they will be buzzing around you like flies.
As Mr Truman said, “If you want a friend, get a dog.” Living to please other people is death. There I said it. Thinking too much and worrying about such things is an illness. I suppose it is treatable, but generally it is also very much fatal. It is an acid that will liquify the soul.
Live! Because life is all that matters.
Cheers
The person who is authentic, genuine and real is normally also expressive, individual and free (“agreif.”) And generally speaking people like this could care less than less about what other people think. They are too busy living to be worried about nonsense. Life is both and in equal measures too fun, too uncertain and too blinking short.
If your friends don’t want you to wear a hat or go to bar “x”or drive car “y”, the solution is to get new friends. Or just let them accumulate, because if you really are agreif, they will be buzzing around you like flies.
As Mr Truman said, “If you want a friend, get a dog.” Living to please other people is death. There I said it. Thinking too much and worrying about such things is an illness. I suppose it is treatable, but generally it is also very much fatal. It is an acid that will liquify the soul.
Live! Because life is all that matters.
Cheers
I wear a hat just about every day, partly out of necessity and partly because I like hats. This example has happened to me more than once. But it really is Bob's problem, not mine. If you think you can't, then you can't. And it doesn't matter if the subject is a hat, or a tuxedo, or even just a suit and tie.Luca wrote: a) Bob tells me he really likes the hat I’m wearing. He thinks it looks cool and elegant. But he’s quite sure that HE couldn’t “pull it off”. He’s actually bought a couple of low-profile trilbies on the spur of the moment, but he’s never worn one in public.
I agree with Alden. Jenny needs new friends.Luca wrote:b) Jenny feels at once both glamorous and at ease in the cocktail bar of the Grand Hotel X but her friends (with no evident money issues) tend to default meeting for drinks at a sad little place with appalling service. She proposed going to the X once and some of her friends liked the idea but Cara said “Ooh! Aren’t we posh! I just want to relax…” and they all went to the sad little place. Jenny daren’t bring the X up again.
Oh, I had no doubt that you, gentlemen, would opt for expression. 
I guess what we are implying is that top-down definitions of authenticity have no place in the mind of the free, the expressive.
I guess what we are implying is that top-down definitions of authenticity have no place in the mind of the free, the expressive.
Michael puts it straightLuca wrote:Oh, I had no doubt that you, gentlemen, would opt for expression.
I guess what we are implying is that top-down definitions of authenticity have no place in the mind of the free, the expressive.
- and as a matter of fact, I never thought about "authenticity" etc. What I'm wearing has to please me, and occasionally others Cheers, David
Luca, of course I agree with Michael about the behavior most of us would/should choose, but I appreciate the nice dilemma you pose. It seems to me the dilemma resides in the fact that most of us in the West would claim to espouse both the ideals of "authenticity" and the freedom of the individual. Whereas in fact, if defined as in the examples you cite, they are contradictory.
Both, though, are really about the relationship between the individual and the social group. As we discussed in another thread, it seems to me the authentic/pretentious dichotomy turns on the level of anxiety about membership in a particular group--often, especially but certainly not exclusively in the UK, a class. The anxious Cara is reading the semiotics of clothing and venue/decor etc. primarily as signals about group membership and eligibility for same. She may have political motives or simply an internalized fatalistic attitude that one is born to a certain place in the great chain of being and should know one's place--not get above oneself. That place, that group, is part of her self-definition and gives comfort and intelligibility to her life, so she doesn't like to see it threatened, or for her friends to appear to desert it (and her). This value system trumps others for her, and defines the limits of the social relationships she will accept.
Jenny, on the other hand is reading the same signs primarily according to an aesthetic and hedonic scale. She appreciates them and the way they make her feel, and her sense of group membership does not make her feel excluded from or ineligible to enjoy them if she can afford them. She see no reason that her friendly gatherings can't be equally relaxed in more elegant surroundings. She is no less authentic; her anxiety about tokens of group membership is simply less.
As social animals, all of us have evolved to need some degree of interaction. But the process of individual maturity, or psychological individuation and integration, pushes us as adults to a greater degree of independence from the group. Few or none of us ever completely forswear human company, but some cling more tightly to group identities than others. Freud coined the phrase "narcissism of small differences" originally in the context of his observation that most violent conflict occurred between neighboring groups (or nations) whose similarities were much greater than their differences, but who cultivated small differences to distinguish them from the neighboring group and raised them to the level of casus belli. Today it's the aspirant investment banker whose suit excludes him from entree who is the victim of the narcissism of small differences.
And for Bob the would-be hat wearer, his telling "I couldn't pull it off" shows that he has internalized (if not imagined) a set of sumptuary laws defined by what others (in the group he believes relevant to him) would presumably think of it. He is self-enforcing a posited group prohibition, perhaps without even realizing it.
True authenticity (derived from Greek through Latin/French for original, authoritative, not false), in the context of personal presentation and actions, must surely mean something like being true to self. So a self-concept that is largely built on group characteristics will yield people like Cara and Bob, for whom authenticity is bounded by internalized group membership rules, and policed by anxiety about belonging. A self-concept that is more individuated and draws on feelings, habits, and views that are relatively more freely chosen than inherited, will yield a Jenny or a hat-wearing Luca. If this is true, then the second understanding of authenticity becomes congruent with personal freedom and the original dilemma is resolved.
As usual, Michael saves many words in his aphorism "Living to please other people is death." Or, as my pediatrician admonished me at age five, "Be an engine and not a caboose." For most of us, finding the courage to do this is part of growing up.
But lest we feel too superior, it's worth remembering that all of us, I think, have our limits in defying the norms of our groups. It's just a question of degree. Jobs or other constraints may require us to toe the line, but like Wemmick in Great Expectations, on our own time we may live in a castle. That's what's sad about Cara and Bob--they toe the line on their own time. Big Brother has gotten inside their heads.
So to the extent possible, it seems desirable for the continually-growing-up person to so arrange their lives that they depend as little as possible on the opinions of others for anything necessary or important. The good opinion of friends is something else, but then friendship is, or should be, freely chosen in the first place.
A friend once told me about an experiment (I can't vouch for the truth of the details) in which scientists made small changes (shaving one half of the head, etc.) to a few monkeys in a colony, and they were completely ostracized. But when they made more dramatic changes, like painting some monkeys bright pink from head to toe, they were treated as if nothing unusual had occurred. I suppose the lesson would be--don't be afraid to be bold in asserting your individuality. My friend, who was 6'4", strong and wiry, with fiery red hair, used the pink monkey theory to explain why he could be a successful military intelligence operative in Japan in the 1970s. He appeared so outlandish in that context people didn't even notice him.
Both, though, are really about the relationship between the individual and the social group. As we discussed in another thread, it seems to me the authentic/pretentious dichotomy turns on the level of anxiety about membership in a particular group--often, especially but certainly not exclusively in the UK, a class. The anxious Cara is reading the semiotics of clothing and venue/decor etc. primarily as signals about group membership and eligibility for same. She may have political motives or simply an internalized fatalistic attitude that one is born to a certain place in the great chain of being and should know one's place--not get above oneself. That place, that group, is part of her self-definition and gives comfort and intelligibility to her life, so she doesn't like to see it threatened, or for her friends to appear to desert it (and her). This value system trumps others for her, and defines the limits of the social relationships she will accept.
Jenny, on the other hand is reading the same signs primarily according to an aesthetic and hedonic scale. She appreciates them and the way they make her feel, and her sense of group membership does not make her feel excluded from or ineligible to enjoy them if she can afford them. She see no reason that her friendly gatherings can't be equally relaxed in more elegant surroundings. She is no less authentic; her anxiety about tokens of group membership is simply less.
As social animals, all of us have evolved to need some degree of interaction. But the process of individual maturity, or psychological individuation and integration, pushes us as adults to a greater degree of independence from the group. Few or none of us ever completely forswear human company, but some cling more tightly to group identities than others. Freud coined the phrase "narcissism of small differences" originally in the context of his observation that most violent conflict occurred between neighboring groups (or nations) whose similarities were much greater than their differences, but who cultivated small differences to distinguish them from the neighboring group and raised them to the level of casus belli. Today it's the aspirant investment banker whose suit excludes him from entree who is the victim of the narcissism of small differences.
And for Bob the would-be hat wearer, his telling "I couldn't pull it off" shows that he has internalized (if not imagined) a set of sumptuary laws defined by what others (in the group he believes relevant to him) would presumably think of it. He is self-enforcing a posited group prohibition, perhaps without even realizing it.
True authenticity (derived from Greek through Latin/French for original, authoritative, not false), in the context of personal presentation and actions, must surely mean something like being true to self. So a self-concept that is largely built on group characteristics will yield people like Cara and Bob, for whom authenticity is bounded by internalized group membership rules, and policed by anxiety about belonging. A self-concept that is more individuated and draws on feelings, habits, and views that are relatively more freely chosen than inherited, will yield a Jenny or a hat-wearing Luca. If this is true, then the second understanding of authenticity becomes congruent with personal freedom and the original dilemma is resolved.
As usual, Michael saves many words in his aphorism "Living to please other people is death." Or, as my pediatrician admonished me at age five, "Be an engine and not a caboose." For most of us, finding the courage to do this is part of growing up.
But lest we feel too superior, it's worth remembering that all of us, I think, have our limits in defying the norms of our groups. It's just a question of degree. Jobs or other constraints may require us to toe the line, but like Wemmick in Great Expectations, on our own time we may live in a castle. That's what's sad about Cara and Bob--they toe the line on their own time. Big Brother has gotten inside their heads.
So to the extent possible, it seems desirable for the continually-growing-up person to so arrange their lives that they depend as little as possible on the opinions of others for anything necessary or important. The good opinion of friends is something else, but then friendship is, or should be, freely chosen in the first place.
A friend once told me about an experiment (I can't vouch for the truth of the details) in which scientists made small changes (shaving one half of the head, etc.) to a few monkeys in a colony, and they were completely ostracized. But when they made more dramatic changes, like painting some monkeys bright pink from head to toe, they were treated as if nothing unusual had occurred. I suppose the lesson would be--don't be afraid to be bold in asserting your individuality. My friend, who was 6'4", strong and wiry, with fiery red hair, used the pink monkey theory to explain why he could be a successful military intelligence operative in Japan in the 1970s. He appeared so outlandish in that context people didn't even notice him.
Last edited by couch on Thu Sep 29, 2016 1:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.
What an great post, Couch; thanks.
If I understand your analysis correctly I will try to re-state it, if I may (excuse this manipulation, it is not born of self regard but rather it is the way my poor brain works).
One can define one's identity predominantly in terms of membership of a group or predominantly in self-referential (solipstistic?) terms.
In the first case, behaviour (like hat-wearing) that is outside group norms is contrary to identity and therefore false. In the second case all (considered) personal choices are by definition real since they stem from the self.
If I understand your analysis correctly I will try to re-state it, if I may (excuse this manipulation, it is not born of self regard but rather it is the way my poor brain works).
One can define one's identity predominantly in terms of membership of a group or predominantly in self-referential (solipstistic?) terms.
In the first case, behaviour (like hat-wearing) that is outside group norms is contrary to identity and therefore false. In the second case all (considered) personal choices are by definition real since they stem from the self.
Thanks for the kind words, Luca.
I think your restatement is accurate, though "solipsistic" might go a little far.
But the use of that word prompts a short addendum. I know you weren't using the term in a strict technical sense as a philosophical term of art. But even as a figure of speech, I usually think of solipsism as indicating an incapacity or unwillingness to recognize or grant validity to other points of view than one's own. My contention is rather that one should be fully aware of various group norms and their implications and then make informed, conscious decisions that do not automatically cede authority to such norms without examination. Indeed, part of Cara and Bob's tragedy is that they do not recognize the source of their views about posh hotel bars or hat wearing. They can't distinguish between what they have absorbed from the group and what they have developed on their own. Therefore they feel "inauthentic" if they violate a norm, because it feels like they are betraying a part of themselves.
A truism preached to young artists (and readers of clothing forums) is that you have to learn the rules in order to break them successfully. I wouldn't push that to a literal extreme, but I think the general thrust has merit. One should know where there are norms, and have a sense of what they are and what's at stake, in order to make good decisions. Much of the humor in the world's stock of "country mouse in the city" stories comes from the country mouse's ignorance of city customs (so he wears or does something wildly inappropriate without realizing it).
So, as Michael has said, basic education about pattern, proportion, combining elements, etc. (as in his Dress with Style videos) and education about craft, and about dressing within norms (as from reading Manton's old CBD thread on StyleForum) are helpful precisely because they build confidence about one's own judgment in deciding how to navigate within and outside those norms.
If one hasn't developed a strong sense of self to start with, learning the rules merely leads to becoming an empty mimic, like the talented Mr. Ripley. Not a happy outcome. But the movie (and the novel) is a superb study of just this subject.
Cheers!
I think your restatement is accurate, though "solipsistic" might go a little far.
But the use of that word prompts a short addendum. I know you weren't using the term in a strict technical sense as a philosophical term of art. But even as a figure of speech, I usually think of solipsism as indicating an incapacity or unwillingness to recognize or grant validity to other points of view than one's own. My contention is rather that one should be fully aware of various group norms and their implications and then make informed, conscious decisions that do not automatically cede authority to such norms without examination. Indeed, part of Cara and Bob's tragedy is that they do not recognize the source of their views about posh hotel bars or hat wearing. They can't distinguish between what they have absorbed from the group and what they have developed on their own. Therefore they feel "inauthentic" if they violate a norm, because it feels like they are betraying a part of themselves.
A truism preached to young artists (and readers of clothing forums) is that you have to learn the rules in order to break them successfully. I wouldn't push that to a literal extreme, but I think the general thrust has merit. One should know where there are norms, and have a sense of what they are and what's at stake, in order to make good decisions. Much of the humor in the world's stock of "country mouse in the city" stories comes from the country mouse's ignorance of city customs (so he wears or does something wildly inappropriate without realizing it).
So, as Michael has said, basic education about pattern, proportion, combining elements, etc. (as in his Dress with Style videos) and education about craft, and about dressing within norms (as from reading Manton's old CBD thread on StyleForum) are helpful precisely because they build confidence about one's own judgment in deciding how to navigate within and outside those norms.
If one hasn't developed a strong sense of self to start with, learning the rules merely leads to becoming an empty mimic, like the talented Mr. Ripley. Not a happy outcome. But the movie (and the novel) is a superb study of just this subject.
Cheers!
At the risk of veering off tangentially, I am interested in your take on the 'rules' aspect (them that must be known before they can be broken).
I mean, within LL we more or less all agree about what the rules are (were) and quite often on how, when and why we might break them.
Within the general population and arguably even many less experienced fellows who have a burgeoning interest in the aesthetic aspect, however, there is great confusion.
In the 'golden era' the rules were changing but only slowly and had very limited variation between places and people. Obviously Park Avenue socialites cared more about clothes etiquette than working-class people in the Bronx but everyone was at least dimly aware of rules of decorum and good taste at some level and would then choose to follow them or not. Looking at the 1930s Eskys, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that nearly half the advertising copy makes reference to correctness.
No such orthodoxy exists today, I believe and that does add to the confusion for people who are already conflicted about whether to be true to their aspirations and the expectations of a rather narrow group. In other words, the absence of ‘universal’ (even if loose) rules makes the apparent confusion between authenticity and expression even more open to debate.
I mean, within LL we more or less all agree about what the rules are (were) and quite often on how, when and why we might break them.
Within the general population and arguably even many less experienced fellows who have a burgeoning interest in the aesthetic aspect, however, there is great confusion.
In the 'golden era' the rules were changing but only slowly and had very limited variation between places and people. Obviously Park Avenue socialites cared more about clothes etiquette than working-class people in the Bronx but everyone was at least dimly aware of rules of decorum and good taste at some level and would then choose to follow them or not. Looking at the 1930s Eskys, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that nearly half the advertising copy makes reference to correctness.
No such orthodoxy exists today, I believe and that does add to the confusion for people who are already conflicted about whether to be true to their aspirations and the expectations of a rather narrow group. In other words, the absence of ‘universal’ (even if loose) rules makes the apparent confusion between authenticity and expression even more open to debate.
Excellent posts, couch.
Thank you, Luca, for encouraging this dialogue.
Thank you, Luca, for encouraging this dialogue.
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