I think about this a lot living in a city (Boston) where formalities seem to be pruned just enough for people to get by — making eye contact or having casual conversation with strangers seem like they're customs reserved for transactional exchanges. If someone makes small talk with me on the train, I subconsciously expect to be asked for something.
The fact that manners are optional in social interactions is part of why they matter — you don't have to put in the effort to speak politely or dress formally and you don't have to develop the self-discipline to restrain your impulses, but the fact that you do suggests that you believe the situation you're in is important enough to go beyond the bare necessity of the social interaction.
Nicely done. It seems to me that the desire for authenticity bespeaks its lack in many contemporary circumstances. Members of the middling and upper classes in mass society are not particularly marked by their circumstances. (Contrast a peasant, or a priest, in traditional societies -- it would be ridiculous to say "I'm an authentic peasant.") But in the contemporary, the individual is free, even encouraged, to be whatever s/he wants to be. That's what college is for! And we may dress, or buy cars, with this or that identity. Maybe there is an authenticity -- I really do want you to see me as an urban warrior, or a hard working farmer -- but it is faint, a kind of thin cosplay. But we have to be something, don't we?
Artists without an art, indeed. We can see how typical it is today for the figure of the artist to outstrip the finished work. Promotion of the personality overwhelms all other efforts, and interpretation centers on the morals, politics and identity of the artist, which then decides the value of what he produces.
The fall of public man is an excellent read, highly instructive. It gets at something that has only become more prevalent, the paralyzing anxiety of authenticity, the reading of everything for signs of bias, the sense of always being under surveillance combined with a sense of desolate abandonment. You could also argue that new formalities and conventions have arisen, new masks, the most obvious and curious example being anonymous online accounts, which oddly blend concealment of real identity and exposure of supposedly genuine or raw sentiments, dissident opinion, etc. But even public life in general, where we're expected to make certain statements, support certain movements, signal membership in groups as a matter of course without deep analysis of authenticity.
Quite interesting! I've been thinking along similar lines recently; I wrote about self-expression in the context of internet-centered aesthetic subcultures (and some older ones, like punk and goth) on my own blog recently. It had not occurred to me that individual self-expression would be helped or hindered by broader societal conventions; your essay is instructive to me in this regard. Thank you!
I think about this a lot living in a city (Boston) where formalities seem to be pruned just enough for people to get by — making eye contact or having casual conversation with strangers seem like they're customs reserved for transactional exchanges. If someone makes small talk with me on the train, I subconsciously expect to be asked for something.
The fact that manners are optional in social interactions is part of why they matter — you don't have to put in the effort to speak politely or dress formally and you don't have to develop the self-discipline to restrain your impulses, but the fact that you do suggests that you believe the situation you're in is important enough to go beyond the bare necessity of the social interaction.
Nicely done. It seems to me that the desire for authenticity bespeaks its lack in many contemporary circumstances. Members of the middling and upper classes in mass society are not particularly marked by their circumstances. (Contrast a peasant, or a priest, in traditional societies -- it would be ridiculous to say "I'm an authentic peasant.") But in the contemporary, the individual is free, even encouraged, to be whatever s/he wants to be. That's what college is for! And we may dress, or buy cars, with this or that identity. Maybe there is an authenticity -- I really do want you to see me as an urban warrior, or a hard working farmer -- but it is faint, a kind of thin cosplay. But we have to be something, don't we?
Artists without an art, indeed. We can see how typical it is today for the figure of the artist to outstrip the finished work. Promotion of the personality overwhelms all other efforts, and interpretation centers on the morals, politics and identity of the artist, which then decides the value of what he produces.
The fall of public man is an excellent read, highly instructive. It gets at something that has only become more prevalent, the paralyzing anxiety of authenticity, the reading of everything for signs of bias, the sense of always being under surveillance combined with a sense of desolate abandonment. You could also argue that new formalities and conventions have arisen, new masks, the most obvious and curious example being anonymous online accounts, which oddly blend concealment of real identity and exposure of supposedly genuine or raw sentiments, dissident opinion, etc. But even public life in general, where we're expected to make certain statements, support certain movements, signal membership in groups as a matter of course without deep analysis of authenticity.
Quite interesting! I've been thinking along similar lines recently; I wrote about self-expression in the context of internet-centered aesthetic subcultures (and some older ones, like punk and goth) on my own blog recently. It had not occurred to me that individual self-expression would be helped or hindered by broader societal conventions; your essay is instructive to me in this regard. Thank you!
https://www.ruins.blog/p/aesthetic-subcultures