Know Oneself vs Be Oneself
Friday, July 7th, 2023
I just read an essay on authenticity called "Escape Competition Through Authenticity" by Sherry Ning. How I came upon her Twitter, I don't know. But her writing is damn good.
The other day, I listened to an interview by Tom Bilyeu with Yuval Harari. Yuval said that it is actually very difficult to know oneself, and gave an illustration where an algorithm likely can know who one is better than oneself.
So there's some tension here.
I understand Sherry's point to "just be." There is no trying to be yourself because, well, you are yourself.
However, I think this understanding of oneself, and having the vocabulary and perspective to do this, is far more elusive than it should be. In fact, it might be a critical requirement to survive for the very reason Sherry outlines.
While it would be great to just "be" -- without that knowledge, one may not actually know how to be oneself because there are so many counter-forces against that, especially social programming and self-doubt.
Perhaps for some people there have a "I don't give a f***" what anybody else thinks and so just being is sufficient. They bypass a need for understanding themselves to translate into action.
But the choice of a career, for example, which unfortunately has alot of issues and challenges with it because of the marketplace. Some purists may say, "Just do what you love" and there is some truth to that when compared to doing something you hate.
Or how to pick someone to marry: I'm not sure not being aware of your deeper needs and natural tendencies in a clear, articulated way, is good when making such a major choice. And the "just be yourself" -- that probably does work in the end -- but I think people have different signal-to-noise ratios.
I suppose, now that I am a parent, the most important skill is to let their self-knowledge get as close to bare metal as possible so that they are just who they were in their fullness. And that the early years is enough self-discovery and personal awareness that being is effortless.
But isn't part of being yourself also very context dependent? If, say, I am someone who just has an affinity for all things space and rocketships, but I never ever see a photograph or a video about outspace, isn't it unlikely that I could fully be myself without that context?
Even without that context, isn't it possible that some form of "personality assessment" would provide the hints, that I love being at the edge of technology and exploration? Even if it doesn't spell out space and rockets, it gives me signal that could lead me, either to that very thing OR to something unrelated but is still a full expression of who I am?
I would say that it is not uncommon that most people actually don't know who they are.
And the challenge is, because we often need context, we can be easily led astray or socially programmed by looking around at other people and falling into unhealthy Mimetic Traps.
It really isn't that easy to discover oneself. After all, Conformity-As-A-Service is available to most people, all the time, and we all have a natural instinct to subscribe.
It's hard to argue against "just being." Natural, "don't give a f***" authenticity will always be freeing. This is why those protagonists who have this self-certainty and bravado appeal to us.
But the vast majority do not. When it is the outcome of Immigrant Trauma or one's disposition to be liked by fitting in, it's difficult and intangible. In some ways, sadly, the economy doesn't often appear to reward this.
I suppose the Creator Economy is demonstrating otherwise. That as individuals become "personal brands" who are able to build tribes around themselves, this could become mainstream and normalized. Or it could follow typical Power Laws, and only those who really seize it naturally will benefit and everybody else will be relegated to NPC-mode.
At first I felt that writing specifically around Finding Personal Category of One would rub against the simpler, more organic, mantra of just being authentic. But it's harder than it should be or needs to be.
Maybe helping people discover this is a worthy endeavor.