@Daojoan we live in a society created by humans, yes. I see no evidence that it's the only possible society that can emerge from having a bunch of humans. The ones who gained the power needed to force others to be inauthentic are not typical. A small random change at the beginning to ideas of what makes a person high status could have led to a very different result.

Of course once you do have a society like what exists most loudly now, it will colonize all the others. And then the empire eventually collapses from being too big to manage for the last rulers, a too strong enemy, or climate change.

Whether history is a series of empires interrupted by chaos, or a series of societies in which people could live more authentically until interrupted by empires, depends on which way you prefer to look at it.

@Daojoan Okay AND/But being more consciously aware this would be a huge, huge help.

Humans are all deeply enculturated in a million ways, and to the point that learned things (like reading this) feel entirely "natural". A LOT of how we act is learned.

AND how humans act around unfortunate aspects of being human -can be- dealt with in healthy enough ways when enough people demand it. I don't know anyone who will just defecate on sidewalks, for example.

@Daojoan It would be sad if living in a world worth living necessitates continually repressing deeply ingrained human impulses.

@Daojoan The best description I ever heard was, "Wherever you feel a loss of freedom, power, or freedom of expression, there's something inauthentic." Anything else is, as you say games, vanity. But what matters, really, when we talk authenticity is what's in our hearts. So ha, yes, many talk inauthentically about authenticity and however we are *is* us and so strictly speaking authentic, even the poutiest Insta pout, but for me authenticity/inauthenticity is about showing/hiding who we are.

@Daojoan Nicely put!

@Daojoan Apparently it was generally rather egalitarian and consensus-based prior to the Holocene. The advent of lootable resources, monopoly of violence and the inability for the plebs to get out set the scene for power differences, wealth inequality and the ability to transfer that through generations.

So the small percent of sociopaths who would have been cast out of the group for the vast majority of our species' existence now have a vice like grip on all our lives.

This is not "human nature" but the result of increased hierarchisation over time. Still, the good news is that when it all collapses the plebs have historically done better*

* Except this time it's global and we're not all peasant farmers so it might be a bit of a giant cluster fuck.

@Daojoan This. And the original US constitution was build for slave-owners and racists, yet people yearn to think ”what they meant was” something different (it wasn’t). The story we tell ourselves is actually more important than reality, because we self-narrate our own internal world into existence at all times with everything we do.

@Daojoan

Roaring an authentic "HAIL ODIN!!" at public occasions gets very, very mixed reactions.

fsociety.

Truely done with this anonymous beast that swallows people whole without a blink, wants credit for it yet never accepts *any* responsibility.

People die:

"It's a shame"

"Thought and prayers"

fck_that

Witnessed a father whose son had committed suicide by train cremate his son in the colors of the national railroad.

And *all* went and shook his hand.

Not_me.