Authenticity or Fool’s Gold
Continuing to consider what I just finished reading in The Ethics of Authenticity by Charles Taylor.
Taylor recognizes the misshapen forms of the “authenticity ethic” – sometimes expressed as ‘you be you’. Unrestrained egoism, a narcissism, a self relation so self-absorbed that one’s fellows are as much a resource for one’s use (disposal) as is any dimension of nature, or inanimate object. One does not need any reminder of the destruction such human wrecking balls leave in their wake. Perhaps you’ve had a relationship with such an anti-social individual? Likely he or she will be remembered for a long time.
Nevertheless Taylor desires to conserve a bedrock of the unassailable value of the individual, which he recognizes as the heartbeat of the contemporary rising tide of authenticity. If the individual human is not recognized as having supreme value then, what shall we attribute as the prime value in the spectrum of ethical gradation? Will such supreme value be assigned to an imperious leader, or to a political party, or to your country of birth, or to your pastor as “God’s man”?
What or where is “true north” to be recognized by a majority of humanity – as collectively and globally we find our way further into the 21st century?
More of my thoughts on Taylor tomorrow.
We need a song, always… Shall we allow Limelight by Rush to illuminate our way? We are all in the limelight my friend! Let us not forget we are real, we are only mortal, and not gods…
