The Art of Manliness - #135： Inventing an Authentic Life With Eric Wilson

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:18.340 So it seems in the past 50 years, there's been this obsession in America and probably

00:00:22.500 in other Western countries with authenticity, right?

00:00:25.800 Our goal in life should be to uncover or discover our authentic selves.

00:00:30.440 And once we do that, you know, the universe will unfold before us.

00:00:34.020 Relationships will be awesome.

00:00:35.380 We'll work with passion.

00:00:36.880 We'll make money and our family will be awesome.

00:00:39.520 And it's just, everything will be great.

00:00:41.440 In fact, you can buy books that'll help you uncover your authentic self.

00:00:44.300 You can hire a life coach that will help you discover your authentic self.

00:00:48.020 You can take courses on living authentic manhood.

00:00:51.260 I've seen that around.

00:00:52.100 And in marketers, businesses have taken, have gotten hold of this obsession with authenticity

00:00:57.840 that we have.

00:00:58.640 And now you can buy authentic artisanal pizza from Domino's, or you can buy a candle made

00:01:04.040 by an authentic craftsman in a New England Hamlet.

00:01:06.660 And because we're drawn to that, we'll buy it because it says authentic.

00:01:11.180 But what if this drive, this obsession with authenticity is actually hamstringing us from

00:01:18.080 living a truly flourishing life?

00:01:22.100 Well, that's the argument my guest today made in his latest book.

00:01:25.560 His name is Eric Wilson.

00:01:26.620 He's a professor at Wake Forest University.

00:01:29.400 He's one of the leading experts on the connection between psychology and literature.

00:01:32.960 He's a scholar of romanticism.

00:01:35.020 It's a big R romanticism. 0.86

00:01:36.940 And in his book, Keep It Fake, Inventing an Authentic Life, he makes the subtle but powerful

00:01:42.100 argument that instead of trying to uncover some platonic authentic self, that what we should

00:01:47.360 really be doing is trying to create ourself, an authentic self.

00:01:51.520 And then sometimes that's going to feel fake, but that's okay.

00:01:54.780 So today on the podcast, Eric and I discuss how you create an authentic life and what

00:02:00.420 we can learn from philosophy, from science, from literature, from art, from films, from

00:02:07.380 actors, particularly actors like Bill Murray or Cary Grant about creating an authentic life.

00:02:13.820 A really fascinating discussion.

00:02:15.720 If you love philosophy and art and neuroscience and psychology and literature like I do, and

00:02:21.040 like how those interconnect, you're going to love our discussion.

00:02:24.000 So without further ado, Eric Wilson, Keep It Fake.

00:02:35.920 Eric Wilson, welcome to the show.

00:02:38.040 Thanks for having me.

00:02:38.820 All right.

00:02:39.340 So your latest book is called Keep It Fake, Inventing an Authentic Life.

00:02:45.800 And I think it's kind of funny you called it Inventing an Authentic Life because you

00:02:48.680 usually don't think of authenticity that way.

00:02:50.600 And I love this book because it hits a topic that I've been thinking a lot about the past

00:02:55.540 few years.

00:02:56.020 And this idea of authenticity, because it's become like, yeah, it's an article of faith

00:02:59.620 in America that you have to be authentic, right?

00:03:02.300 Everyone's trying to be authentic.

00:03:03.440 There's psychologists, therapists, gurus who help you find and discover your authentic self.

00:03:10.580 Corporations are kind of using authenticity as a way to market their wares.

00:03:14.980 So we have artisanal pizza from Domino's that looks rustic, and I guess it's authentic.

00:03:20.780 And it's one of those words I think we use so much that we take it for granted, and we

00:03:24.860 often don't think about what does authenticity mean.

00:03:27.480 So how do you define authenticity?

00:03:29.660 Well, I can talk about how I think that mainstream America defines it, and I can talk about how

00:03:36.800 I define it.

00:03:38.280 So you refer to how authenticity is often used in marketing.

00:03:42.860 For instance, Domino's can say, oh, we have an authentic pizza.

00:03:46.200 It's an artisanal pizza.

00:03:47.680 I think that authenticity in the mainstream is a kind of naive belief that there's some

00:03:55.460 rock-solid reality that goes beyond societal convention, that goes beyond how we talk about

00:04:03.260 the world, a kind of is-ness, a kind of being, a kind of essence.

00:04:08.980 And if we can just get in touch with that, we'll be okay.

00:04:12.100 And, you know, this idea is expressed often by the idea that you can be yourself or you

00:04:17.820 can find yourself, as if there's some sort of, you know, essential eric-ness or essential

00:04:23.220 brett-ness sort of, you know, underlying all the developments of your life, all the 0.99

00:04:28.780 circumstances of your life, the history of your life.

00:04:31.940 And I think that idea is carried over to, you know, our desire to have local food or

00:04:39.040 organic food, the idea that there's a kind of deep realness to that that escapes artifice.

00:04:45.120 I think this is just kind of Platonism in reverse, right?

00:04:48.320 If you go back to Replato, you know, he said that there's some sort of ideal realm of forms

00:04:53.220 in some eternal realm somewhere, and each of us is a particular manifestation of these

00:04:59.900 forms.

00:05:00.400 And the goal in life is just sort of find how we relate to these stable forms, and then

00:05:06.400 we'll be in line with truth, beauty, and goodness.

00:05:08.600 Well, now we've kind of sunk that down into this idea of organicity, right?

00:05:14.120 That, you know, if I can just sort of go down deeply enough and into existence, there it

00:05:20.800 will be, realness.

00:05:23.100 What I say is that there's no such thing as a self like this.

00:05:28.020 Basically, existence is too ephemeral, too transient for there to be any sort of stable

00:05:35.780 being.

00:05:37.220 And I know for myself, my parents told me, be yourself, find yourself.

00:05:41.540 Well, maybe I'm just too wishy-washy, or maybe I just lack fortitude.

00:05:46.580 I can't stay the course, but it's always seemed frustrating to me to try to find some stable

00:05:52.640 idea of identity when I'm constantly, constantly changing.

00:05:56.840 So in my book, I explore the idea that a more powerful and useful form of authenticity, a

00:06:04.660 less frustrating form of authenticity, is to think about authenticity as something that's

00:06:09.240 not found, but something that is made.

00:06:12.820 And what I mean is, for me, it's been very empowering to think about myself as a kind

00:06:20.660 of way of interpreting my life as it is at a given moment.

00:06:24.720 So when I'm in college, I'm going to think of myself one way, because I have certain circumstances.

00:06:29.440 When I'm a father, I'm going to think of myself another way, because I have different

00:06:32.780 circumstances.

00:06:33.300 So what I try to do is I try to create a kind of narrative that helps me make sense of the

00:06:39.940 chaos of my life.

00:06:41.560 And I sort of imagine myself as a character in that narrative, sort of a character in

00:06:47.100 a novel.

00:06:48.400 So for instance, if I said to you, Brett, who are you?

00:06:52.620 You'd probably immediately start thinking about moments in your past that were especially

00:06:57.120 meaningful to you.

00:06:58.400 Oh, when I was six, this happened to me.

00:07:00.220 And when I was eight, that happened to me.

00:07:01.680 And that led to this happening to me when I'm 12.

00:07:04.000 In other words, you would try to kind of create these causal links among various moments in

00:07:08.400 your life.

00:07:09.160 And that would allow you to create a kind of cogent story that will lead up to who you

00:07:13.680 are at that moment in the present.

00:07:15.500 Well, five years down the road, 10 years down the road, as your present circumstances change,

00:07:20.540 you might focus on different memories, right?

00:07:22.720 You might emphasize other memories and deemphasize the memories that you earlier valued and come

00:07:28.640 up with a kind of fresh narrative.

00:07:29.940 So what I'm suggesting is that we're constantly, whether we want to or not, inventing fresh

00:07:36.560 narratives to make sense of the kind of flux of experience.

00:07:40.960 And there are a lot of neuroscientists recently who have actually talked about how that's how

00:07:45.220 cognition itself works.

00:07:47.220 What I say in the book is, why don't we just become self-conscious about this?

00:07:50.280 Why don't we become aware of the fact that we're making narratives?

00:07:52.420 And sort of take charge of our narratives and try to create a narrative that will make

00:07:58.200 our life as rich and full and varied as possible, and then sort of take responsibility for that

00:08:04.460 narrative.

00:08:05.060 To me, that's what authenticity properly should be.

00:08:08.880 Okay.

00:08:09.480 There's a lot to unpack there.

00:08:10.580 Um, so I guess is the reason why people are so drawn to a platonic ideal of authenticity is

00:08:18.300 that maybe it's just so, it's hard to manage complexity and an ever-changing flux life.

00:08:26.140 Is that what's going on?

00:08:26.980 Is that, is that, is that why there's that drive?

00:08:28.780 Well, I would say so.

00:08:30.780 If I were to account for it psychologically, I would say that it's very seductive to imagine

00:08:36.000 there is such a thing as, as, as permanent truth.

00:08:38.720 I mean, life is insecure.

00:08:40.680 It's, um, unpredictable and that leads to pain and frustration very frequently.

00:08:45.740 So it's nice to think that if I, if I could just find, you know, that, that one truth,

00:08:50.760 that, that one identity, then I could rest.

00:08:53.800 I could find calm.

00:08:54.940 I could find peace.

00:08:55.960 I could find tranquility.

00:08:57.340 Um, so, so, uh, you know, I, I, I understand the desire for that.

00:09:02.160 I mean, I still have that desire.

00:09:03.680 I mean, I, I would love to be able to say, this is who I am.

00:09:06.640 My work is done.

00:09:07.900 Um, because it's hard work, um, as you're suggesting to sort of honestly face the complexity

00:09:13.660 of life and try to come up with a way of thinking about yourself, which is sensitive

00:09:19.080 to that complexity, um, that allows you to organize that complexity in a way that doesn't

00:09:23.600 sort of kill it and reduce it.

00:09:25.340 Um, but also doesn't, uh, you know, allow the complexity to overwhelm you at the same

00:09:29.960 time.

00:09:30.580 All right.

00:09:31.100 So, so your book, keep it fake.

00:09:33.320 The, the format is a lot different from some of the other books I've read because it's,

00:09:39.340 it's a mixture of whole things.

00:09:40.240 You get into philosophy, literature, you bring in Bill Murray, you bring in your own life.

00:09:44.420 What was your organizing principle with the book?

00:09:48.440 Well, I would call it, I would call it a hybrid book.

00:09:52.380 Um, it is kind of, it is kind of all over the place, but I hope in a good way.

00:09:57.520 Right.

00:09:57.840 So, so, so one part of the book is, is, is, is I introduce stories in my own life.

00:10:02.200 You know, my life as a, as a, as a phony, as someone who has, you know, been a fake in

00:10:06.500 good ways and bad ways.

00:10:07.620 And that's really, I think the backbone of the book, but also there, there are a lot of,

00:10:11.920 you know, philosophical sections, scientific sections, psychological sections, um, literary

00:10:17.560 sections, and also just a lot of sort of playful riffs on, you know, say Bill Murray or Cary

00:10:23.240 Grant.

00:10:23.700 I really wanted the book to have a kind of playfulness to it, like a kind of multiplicity,

00:10:29.220 uh, because that's the kind of persona I would want to create, one that has that kind of

00:10:33.880 heterogeneity and playfulness to it.

00:10:35.820 So that's really kind of what I tried to capture in the book.

00:10:39.160 And I guess my models would, would be sort of playful philosophers, not that I would compare

00:10:43.920 myself in any way to these folks, but, but someone like a Montaigne, um, or, or even a,

00:10:49.500 a Thoreau, um, would, would be, it would be a model for this.

00:10:54.240 Um, so I hope people get into the, to the, to the, to the playfulness of the book.

00:10:59.860 Yeah, for sure.

00:11:00.180 It was a lot of fun to read.

00:11:01.480 I mean, I just, that was the thing I wanted to keep reading because it was just so much

00:11:05.040 fun.

00:11:05.700 So in your book, you refer to a lot of, uh, philosophers, writers who grappled with this

00:11:11.280 question and they might not have called it authenticity, but it was the same idea of what

00:11:16.240 is the self?

00:11:17.660 Is it possible to be yourself?

00:11:19.100 I mean, how did philosophers in the past deal with this question of, of selfhood?

00:11:26.460 Well, the whole, the idea that, that there's sort of a single individual, unique self, um,

00:11:33.840 you know, unrepeatable, unprecedented, and it will never be again, I think really didn't

00:11:38.880 come into being until probably, uh, you know, the, the 15th century, um, when the French

00:11:44.140 philosopher Montaigne started writing his essays and his basic question was, who, who am I?

00:11:51.520 Um, so he was, he was writing, you know, basically about, you know, the very idiosyncratic,

00:11:58.180 weird things that make him who he is and no one else.

00:12:02.080 Um, I'm going to, I'm going to generalize kind of wildly here, but, but, but, but roughly,

00:12:07.820 you know, before that, um, and again, Montaigne was actually residing in the 16th century.

00:12:12.420 I think I said 15th before 16th century.

00:12:14.620 You go back to someone like Plato, and I think there's a sense that, that each, each of us

00:12:18.960 is not a sort of discrete individual, but one expression of some sort of universal ground

00:12:25.100 of being, um, in Plato's case, it's, it's the forms.

00:12:28.500 You can go to Christianity. 1.00

00:12:30.340 I mean, there is an idea that each of us has an individual soul, but the individual soul

00:12:34.440 is, is, is most fully itself when it expresses the kind of Christ within it that all of us

00:12:39.160 share.

00:12:39.880 And I could talk about medieval theologians, and I could talk about someone like Descartes.

00:12:44.280 Um, all of them do kind of suggest that, you know, ultimately who we are is a manifestation

00:12:50.480 of some sort of, you know, universal being or, or power or substance.

00:12:55.140 But then Montaigne comes along and says, no, there, there is such a thing as an unrepeatable

00:13:00.280 being.

00:13:01.600 I am that, and no one will ever be like me again.

00:13:04.380 And, and you, you kind of see that idea played out in someone like Shakespeare, who was a deep

00:13:08.720 reader of Montaigne.

00:13:10.100 Um, and in fact, he was reading Montaigne very deeply when he wrote Hamlet.

00:13:14.040 And so we'll see Hamlet as the first literary work in the West, anyway, that, that treats

00:13:19.200 this idea that there is no one like Hamlet, and there will never be anyone again like Hamlet.

00:13:23.160 And the same is true, same is true, same is true of all of us.

00:13:26.100 Um, and this kind of idea becomes a ground for, um, I'd say a mid to late 19th century philosophical

00:13:35.220 turn, um, embodied by people like Friedrich Nietzsche and Søren Tertiggaard, uh, who were

00:13:42.920 really the first to say, you know, in a kind of disciplined philosophical sense.

00:13:48.660 And Montaigne was a kind of literary essay, as Shakespeare was obviously a dramatist,

00:13:52.280 these weren't philosophers.

00:13:53.800 But, but, but, but Kierkegaard and Nietzsche in a kind of philosophical sense, I wanted to

00:13:57.840 say that the place to start with philosophy is, which, which is raw existence, the kind

00:14:03.100 of nowness, the kind of messiness of where we are right here, right now.

00:14:07.500 And life is messy.

00:14:08.660 It's unpredictable.

00:14:09.440 It is weird.

00:14:10.980 It's strange.

00:14:12.240 And to try to reduce that to some sort of logic or rationality, um, is wrong from the

00:14:18.140 start.

00:14:18.760 And kind of blinding oneself to what reality is.

00:14:22.320 And this becomes the basis for what came down in the 20th century as existentialism, right?

00:14:26.480 Which is precisely this idea that the group, the, the place to start for philosophy, for

00:14:32.040 literature, for art, really for anything is precisely, you know, the sort of single isolated

00:14:38.080 individual self and how he or she makes sense of his or her own personal world.

00:14:43.080 And again, that's a kind of, those are kind of large, sweeping philosophical claims, but

00:14:46.540 I think that kind of gives the shape of, you know, how the idea of, you know, self has kind

00:14:52.820 of loosely evolved in the history of philosophy.

00:14:55.440 Okay.

00:14:56.660 So if we're all just, if there's, if it's not possible to discover your authentic self,

00:15:02.740 right.

00:15:03.720 And we're all just acting in a way.

00:15:06.920 And I'm saying that in a positive way.

00:15:08.480 I think a lot of people are uncomfortable.

00:15:10.880 Yeah.

00:15:11.040 Why is that?

00:15:11.460 I mean, yeah, people are uncomfortable, this idea that you are putting on a performance in

00:15:16.640 a way, not only for other people, but for yourself in a weird way.

00:15:21.020 Isn't that not right?

00:15:23.020 Well, yeah.

00:15:23.580 I mean, it shows up in our politics, right?

00:15:25.720 I mean, if we talk about Tricky Dick and Slick Willie, you know, the best way to sort 0.96

00:15:32.340 of, you know, throw a politician to disrepute is to say, well, that person's a liar.

00:15:36.940 You look at our sort of American cinema icons, you think of someone like John Wayne, Gary

00:15:42.420 Cooper, Gregory Peck.

00:15:44.100 It's all about, you know, shooting straight, being sincere, telling it like it is.

00:15:49.900 Uh, so we value that idea.

00:15:52.360 And when we think someone is being, you know, dissimulating or play acting, we often think

00:15:57.600 that's, you know, hypocrisy.

00:15:58.960 Um, and so, so, uh, what I want to, what I try to say in my book is there, there are degrees

00:16:05.920 of play acting, right?

00:16:07.280 So let's say that identity is something we, we make that we don't find.

00:16:12.860 Let's say that the idea of self is a kind of ongoing narrative.

00:16:16.040 Well, does that mean that, that I can be anything that I want to?

00:16:19.420 And does that mean that I should be able to lie and it's okay?

00:16:21.920 I say absolutely not in my book.

00:16:24.480 Um, all fictions are not created equally.

00:16:27.660 Um, paradoxically, what I say is that some fictions are truer than others.

00:16:31.640 What do I mean by that?

00:16:33.280 So if you think of the self as a, as a, as a narrative, as a novel, you can start thinking,

00:16:38.600 well, some, some novels are better than others.

00:16:41.500 What makes a novel good?

00:16:42.820 What makes a novel not so good?

00:16:44.700 Well, one way to think about a really powerful novel is a narrative that is open to complexity,

00:16:50.700 um, that is able to connect with as many different points of view as, as possible.

00:16:57.080 Um, in other words, to create a sense of self that is open to the otherness of the world

00:17:01.880 and tries to accommodate the otherness of the world, as opposed to an area that closes you

00:17:08.080 down, that basically says, okay, I have sort of one way of thinking about the world and

00:17:13.400 I'm going to stay connected to that one way of thinking about the world.

00:17:16.480 Well, that can lead to isolation.

00:17:18.120 Um, so to create a narrative that is narrow, dogmatic, fanatical, and also to, to, to sort

00:17:25.660 of go through life lying, um, to go through life trying to deceive people to gain power

00:17:30.480 over them.

00:17:31.560 These are disempowering narratives, I would say, because they lead to isolation.

00:17:36.120 Um, they lead to alienation and ultimately I would say they, they lead to unhappiness.

00:17:40.440 Um, whereas creating narratives that are kind of close to the reality of your particular

00:17:48.860 present tend to be those that are the most satisfying.

00:17:53.120 I mean, look, things happen.

00:17:54.640 You know, I have a certain genetic makeup that makes me who I am.

00:17:58.180 Certain things, um, in my past, my parents, my teachers made me who I am.

00:18:03.500 I, I can't change those things.

00:18:05.840 So there is such a thing as reality.

00:18:07.480 I'm not saying there isn't such a thing as reality, but what I'm saying is that reality

00:18:11.480 only becomes meaningful to us when we start talking about it and interpreting, putting

00:18:17.920 it into language.

00:18:18.900 And at that point, what reality is, is, is not some kind of, you know, stable isness, but

00:18:24.800 it's our understanding of it.

00:18:27.160 Let me give you a kind of metaphor for that.

00:18:29.460 So imagine that, um, existence is like being thrown off a cliff into an ocean, right?

00:18:36.040 So I'm being thrown off the cliff into an ocean.

00:18:38.700 Gravity pushes me down to the water in the same way that, you know, my past pushes me

00:18:44.220 towards certain actions in the present and the future.

00:18:46.680 I'm being forced down into the water by gravity.

00:18:49.320 Well, what, what, what can I do?

00:18:51.460 Well, I have choices, right?

00:18:52.740 I can flail wildly into a belly flop.

00:18:55.500 Um, or I can do a nice swan dive or a jackknife or a gainer.

00:19:00.580 Um, in other words, we're given a, you know, a certain facts that we can't change, but we

00:19:06.720 can choose how to react to them and choose how to interpret them.

00:19:10.780 Um, and that's where imagination comes in.

00:19:13.660 Um, we, we can imagine our falling as it were, our imagine our lives in such a way that

00:19:18.820 they have a kind of beauty and grace and generosity.

00:19:21.280 Um, and those fictions are truer, I argue, than a kind of interpretation or reaction that

00:19:27.420 is, that is closed and narrow and strained.

00:19:31.080 You, you mentioned, uh, type of irony.

00:19:34.440 I've never heard of before, uh, until I read your book.

00:19:36.880 It was called romantic irony.

00:19:39.140 Can that help?

00:19:40.800 Well, first explain what that is.

00:19:41.980 And can this help us, um, navigate a world where most people say, well, no, you can't,

00:19:47.360 uh, embracing enriching fictitious truths, right?

00:19:51.460 That that's kind of weird.

00:19:52.680 Uh, you got to stick to the facts.

00:19:55.100 Um, can romantic irony help you navigate a world like that?

00:19:59.500 Well, I, I think so.

00:20:01.160 So romantic irony has a fairly specialized definition.

00:20:04.000 I mean, if you study literature, you know that there, there are many different kinds of

00:20:08.500 irony, right?

00:20:09.120 There's, there's dramatic irony, which occurs when the audience watching a play knows something

00:20:14.760 that characters don't know.

00:20:16.320 Or there's dramatic irony.

00:20:18.380 Um, I'm sorry, verbal irony, where an author is saying something that has more than one meaning.

00:20:25.000 Like when Jane Austen opens up Pride and Prejudice, and I'm paraphrasing by saying that it's a

00:20:29.480 well-known fact that every, um, man of good fortune is in one of a wife.

00:20:34.740 That's the kind of grammatical meaning, the rhetorical meaning is that women want to marry 1.00

00:20:39.280 wealthy men, right?

00:20:40.900 And so those are, those are just two kinds of many kinds of irony.

00:20:43.540 Romantic irony really is developed in the late 18th, early 19th century, um, by two writers

00:20:50.960 in Germany, the Schlegel brothers.

00:20:52.820 And it gets developed in England by people like Byron and the United America by people

00:20:57.420 like Melville.

00:20:58.040 And basically, the basic assumption of romantic irony, um, is this, the world is simply too

00:21:04.260 complicated, too abundant, too vast for, for, for any one interpretation of it to be accurate,

00:21:13.380 right?

00:21:13.920 So Christianity, say Marxism, say, um, Platonism, say any, any worldview only tells part of the

00:21:23.340 truth because the world's just too big.

00:21:25.220 It's too complicated.

00:21:25.880 It's too vast.

00:21:27.140 Um, so if I'm, if I'm, if I'm, if I'm in a romantic ironist, I acknowledge this and I

00:21:33.060 embrace it and I don't see it as something that makes me depressed, this constant gap

00:21:37.980 between what I say about the world and what the world really is, but it becomes an invitation

00:21:42.440 to be creative.

00:21:44.000 Um, it becomes a kind of occasion to, to be exuberant.

00:21:48.840 Think of it this way.

00:21:49.860 So if we go on a, a field trip, say to Greece and we go to a ruined temple and I say, oh,

00:21:59.040 you know, look, look at that, that column from that ruined temple.

00:22:02.280 Um, can you imagine what the temple actually looked like when it was whole?

00:22:06.720 Well, what, what do we start doing?

00:22:08.360 We start imagining what this temple would look like, but because the temple's not there,

00:22:12.880 our, our imagining never stops, right?

00:22:15.560 We can endlessly imagine what this temple might've looked like because we can never actually know

00:22:19.360 what it looked like.

00:22:20.520 Well, some might say, oh, that's really frustrating.

00:22:22.660 But, but if you're a kind of a practitioner of romantic irony, you would say, well, that's

00:22:27.180 really exciting.

00:22:28.300 Um, because my mind is constantly activated.

00:22:30.640 It's constantly moving, it's constantly in action.

00:22:33.700 And that leads to a, to a kind of vitality.

00:22:36.640 So, so this, this idea is really exciting to me.

00:22:39.340 I mean, and it shows up in works of literature, like when you have a subconscious narrator who,

00:22:44.160 while telling the story, will kind of stop to say, oh, I'm telling you a story, um, which

00:22:48.160 kind of highlights that this is a fiction, that it's not real.

00:22:51.120 We see this in film sometime too, where a character starts talking, um, you know, to

00:22:54.920 the camera, um, to, to apply this to life is, is basically, again, to say,

00:23:00.640 that, that any understanding of the world is only one narrative among many possible

00:23:05.500 narrative, only one interpretation among many possible interpretations.

00:23:09.520 Now, again, this doesn't lead to relativism.

00:23:11.740 There are some interpretations, some narratives, which are better than others.

00:23:16.540 And what are those that are better than others?

00:23:18.260 Those that are more aesthetically powerful.

00:23:20.500 Some narratives are more aesthetically powerful than others.

00:23:23.820 They approach the quality of art more so than others.

00:23:27.440 Again, if you think of art as a kind of, you know, very complicated system that, that

00:23:32.440 can bring together, you know, a lot of diverse points of view into some sort of basic harmony,

00:23:37.380 um, that is, that is, that is pleasing and graceful.

00:23:40.580 So that's the basic idea of romantic irony.

00:23:42.940 And it's also how one can think about romantic irony in relation not only to literature, but

00:23:47.480 also in relation to one's own life.

00:23:49.500 I mean, look, the way to think of it is no matter what you do, you're an artist.

00:23:51.920 If you're a gardener, if you're a banker, if you're a professor, no matter what you do,

00:23:56.620 that becomes an art form if you think of life in this way.

00:24:00.620 And if you try to see that as a work of art, then I think it makes life more interesting

00:24:06.360 and more exciting and ultimately, you know, more beautiful.

00:24:09.640 This, uh, we did a series not too long ago about the philosophy of Nietzsche, and this

00:24:13.420 sounds very Nietzschean.

00:24:15.580 Yes.

00:24:16.120 What you're telling me, and existential.

00:24:17.700 It is.

00:24:18.620 It's absolutely, I mean, what I've just said, you could translate into Nietzsche fairly

00:24:22.200 easily.

00:24:22.560 I mean, Nietzsche never really used the term romantic irony, um, but he did talk about

00:24:29.280 an aesthetic understanding of the world, right?

00:24:31.960 The idea being that we are always interpreting, and what we formerly thought of as truth is

00:24:39.500 really just an army of metaphors.

00:24:41.400 And for Nietzsche, we should see this as an invitation to create, um, for him, the philosopher

00:24:47.580 practices the joyous wisdom, right?

00:24:50.380 The gay science, which is just constantly creating sort of new narratives and new interpretations, 1.00

00:24:55.620 um, which hopefully open up the eyes of other people and encourage them to create their own

00:25:01.540 sort of interpretation, that we all become artists, that the greatest philosophers are the

00:25:05.800 greatest artists.

00:25:06.500 That all shows up in Nietzsche.

00:25:08.720 So I love this idea that we are actors, also screenwriters in our own movie.

00:25:15.460 I think there's a podcast, I think Joe Rogan says that he's a podcaster, says that you are

00:25:19.540 the star of your own movie.

00:25:20.900 What would it be?

00:25:22.100 And I thought this was, I like that analogy because I've read several, I've read this biography

00:25:27.200 about John Wayne, never really learned, knew much about him.

00:25:29.840 I mean, I watched his movies, but I, when I read the biography, I was actually, I kind of

00:25:33.560 like, got to like the guy a lot more.

00:25:35.640 He was, he, I was endeared to him.

00:25:37.140 And what endeared to me about him was this idea that through the act, through the character

00:25:41.880 of John Wayne, um, he became a better man.

00:25:46.500 Like he, he, like he created this character that he himself tried to become like a fictitious

00:25:51.760 character.

00:25:52.560 Uh, more recently, Tom Hardy, the guy who played Bane in the Batman movie, he always plays

00:25:56.900 these like really tough manly dudes.

00:25:59.380 He even said that like his characters in the process of embodying this fictitious character,

00:26:04.360 like he himself feels like he is becoming like that person in a way.

00:26:09.740 Can, can actors like movie actors teach us something about being the, the, the, the writers

00:26:18.000 of our own narrative?

00:26:19.940 I mean, were they aware of that?

00:26:22.140 I mean, were they aware of like what you're talking about in a way?

00:26:24.620 I learned a lot from Cary Grant and I, and I write about this at length in the book.

00:26:31.020 Uh, yeah, Cary, Cary Grant was very much aware of this.

00:26:33.920 Now, of course he created Cary Grant as a persona in his own life.

00:26:38.380 He was born Archie Leach, um, you know, very impoverished youth in, in England and somehow

00:26:45.540 by hook or by crook, he eventually made his way to the United States.

00:26:47.960 And he created this persona, Cary Grant, and he sort of, he lived into it.

00:26:52.900 And he had some really interesting quotes.

00:26:54.460 He says, you know, um, I, even, I want to, everybody wants to be Cary Grant.

00:26:58.540 Even I want to be Cary Grant.

00:27:00.060 Um, and he also said, you're learning to play yourself is the most difficult thing in life

00:27:04.380 that you'll do.

00:27:05.360 But there's a real sense in, in, in Grant in these quotes, but also in his, in his acting

00:27:10.420 that, you know, sort of, sort of creating a very, a very widely interesting persona and

00:27:17.800 living into that can, can give your life a kind of value and vitality wouldn't have if

00:27:23.280 you had not done that.

00:27:24.780 Now I'm especially enamored of Grant because to me, his acting is always unexpected and

00:27:30.260 unpredictable.

00:27:31.180 He never kind of becomes a cliche of himself.

00:27:34.380 I don't think, you know, you go see a Cary Grant movie.

00:27:37.440 You don't care about the plot.

00:27:38.560 It's a Cary Grant movie.

00:27:39.680 Same with John Wayne, right?

00:27:40.820 It's a John Wayne movie.

00:27:41.760 You guys, you guys see these, these guys to be those guys, just as you might see, you

00:27:46.400 know, go see Audrey Hepburn or Catherine Hepburn to be those women. 1.00

00:27:49.720 This is kind of a classic Hollywood model.

00:27:52.020 You know, whereas now we often think that good acting is the ability to transform into something

00:27:55.740 totally other than yourself.

00:27:57.500 Like I'm going to lose a lot of weight.

00:27:59.000 I'm going to get an accent.

00:27:59.820 In fact, with classic Hollywood, it was, let's create a persona and make it endlessly

00:28:04.640 interesting.

00:28:05.840 And, you know, to me, Grant is endlessly interesting because he's always doing double takes and

00:28:10.440 always, you know, gazing here or there.

00:28:12.480 And in other words, he, he, his characters show that he's very much aware of the fact that

00:28:16.700 he is acting.

00:28:18.020 So to me, that's kind of an example for how one might live one's life, just knowing that

00:28:22.560 one is making a step and being aware of that.

00:28:25.180 And I think, I think that Bill Murray does the same thing in a lot of his films.

00:28:29.800 And he, I write about him in the, in the, in the book as well.

00:28:33.820 That, that kind of knowingness that he brings to a lot of his characters.

00:28:37.700 So I value them more than say John Wayne, even though I've kind of grown to like John Wayne

00:28:42.140 too.

00:28:42.740 I feel like the character he created to me isn't as, as, as a lively and interesting.

00:28:47.640 It's a little more static and predictable, um, than the Grant character or the Murray character.

00:28:52.340 But I do agree with what he says.

00:28:54.040 And I kind of agree with what Tom Hardy says that, yeah, I mean, you, you, you create something

00:29:00.200 that's totally artificial, but it can generate a kind of reality, um, that can enhance your

00:29:07.620 life.

00:29:08.440 Now I had a, I had a really big sort of psychotherapeutic breakthrough and I'll write about this in the

00:29:13.540 book as well.

00:29:14.780 When a psychotherapist of mine said, Hey man, are there any movie actors you really like?

00:29:20.260 I said, well, yeah.

00:29:21.460 I listed some and he goes, well, why don't you try to be like that guy, um, you know,

00:29:25.720 in, in, in the next stressful situation and just see what it's like.

00:29:29.200 You know, he used the cliche, fake it till you make it, but he tried to give it a more kind

00:29:33.460 of profound meaning.

00:29:35.980 Um, and I could talk a little more about the kind of psychotherapeutic, um, value of some

00:29:40.580 of these ideas.

00:29:41.560 Yeah, I would love to.

00:29:42.380 I mean, I'd love to get into that because I think, uh, I mean, something I've struggled

00:29:45.660 with, uh, depression that I've written about on the site and I, when I was, when I was reading

00:29:51.100 it, I was like, this could be really powerful in helping people deal with, uh, things like

00:29:55.620 depression, anxiety, or just hardship in general in life.

00:29:59.820 Well, I, this is one of the main reasons I wrote the book, um, is because these ideas have

00:30:04.340 been so important for me and dealing with my, my clinical depression.

00:30:08.060 And I was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

00:30:10.340 Um, and soon after my daughter was born, she's now 13, I guess, uh, I fell into a really,

00:30:16.780 really, really deep suicidal depression and I've been depressed before, but I kind of

00:30:22.380 propped myself up by doing what I was, I was very success oriented.

00:30:25.580 I was kind of a workaholic.

00:30:26.840 I was working all the time.

00:30:28.160 And I was also drinking a lot of alcohol and suddenly my child's here.

00:30:31.840 And if I'm going to be a decent father, I can't work as much, you know, nor, nor can

00:30:35.280 I drink as much.

00:30:36.320 And it's like all those props were kind of stripped away and I was just there.

00:30:39.540 Oh my gosh.

00:30:40.260 You know, my life is, is nothing.

00:30:41.780 It's meaningless.

00:30:42.640 So I started seeking psychotherapy and I saw several psychotherapists, didn't have

00:30:46.440 much success, saw some psychiatrists, took several of my antidepressants, didn't have

00:30:50.540 much success.

00:30:52.120 Yeah.

00:30:52.240 But finally, when my daughter was about three, four years old, thereabouts, I did find a good

00:30:57.380 psychiatrist who gave me a good kind of melange and medications.

00:31:01.080 And I also said, you know, go see this psychotherapist.

00:31:03.460 He's really good.

00:31:04.760 So I go see him.

00:31:06.620 And really from the very beginning, he's very much about that.

00:31:11.200 If you're depressed, it's because you've trapped yourself in a narrative that doesn't

00:31:15.760 empower you, that takes away your freedom.

00:31:18.400 And he said to me, he said, look, you've made this bipolar disorder the kind of controller

00:31:24.940 of your life.

00:31:25.700 You've made yourself a victim of it.

00:31:27.960 So you can say things like, well, I can't be a good father because I'm bipolar, or I

00:31:31.800 can't be a good husband because I'm bipolar.

00:31:34.200 And he said, in doing that, you're making your bipolar disorder a kind of tyrant, controlling

00:31:38.780 your life and taking away your power to change.

00:31:43.340 And you're kind of enjoying that victimhood because it takes away responsibility.

00:31:50.020 You don't have to take responsibility for being a bad father, bad husband.

00:31:52.980 And he said, you've got to change your narrative.

00:31:56.200 Reinterpret this bipolar disorder.

00:31:58.840 Think about it in a fresh way.

00:32:00.400 Put it in a different kind of narrative.

00:32:04.300 And he said, your assignment is to go home and write a new narrative of your life, a new

00:32:09.040 novel, as it were, with yourself as a main character, thinking about your bipolar disorder

00:32:13.600 in a new way.

00:32:14.040 So we sort of started working in that way.

00:32:16.920 And finally, what I decided was, as a father, that I probably wasn't going to be a good

00:32:23.380 traditional father, a father with a big F who could be all authoritative and wise. 1.00

00:32:29.740 I was just kind of good at being silly and stupid and idiotic. 1.00

00:32:34.200 And I was really good at making my daughter laugh. 1.00

00:32:36.780 So what I did is I self-consciously created a persona. 0.79

00:32:40.720 I will be crazy dad.

00:32:42.340 I won't be a good parent. 0.91

00:32:43.480 I'll be crazy dad. 0.99

00:32:44.640 So I just really tried to be as ridiculous as possible. 0.98

00:32:47.540 And my main goal in life was to make her laugh. 0.96

00:32:49.600 She's four years old.

00:32:51.340 And that created a new way of us relating to each other.

00:32:54.500 We started having fun together.

00:32:55.900 And I connected with her in new ways.

00:32:57.860 And again, that led to, you know, sort of deeper, more valuable ways of connecting beyond

00:33:02.040 crazy dad.

00:33:03.060 But the point is, is that this fiction making had really powerful psychotherapeutic value

00:33:09.340 for me.

00:33:10.280 I mean, in some ways, it's very much akin to cognitive behavior therapy.

00:33:13.680 You know, the idea that psychotherapy should not so much be going deeply within as Jung and

00:33:19.260 Freud might have you do.

00:33:20.700 But rather just create new habits and try to follow through on those new habits.

00:33:25.920 You know, do something five times a week and eventually it will stick.

00:33:28.900 In other words, you're trying out new stories and you want to kind of live into those new

00:33:32.660 stories.

00:33:33.560 So for me, these ideas aren't just philosophical.

00:33:36.700 They aren't just, I guess, you know, psychologically interesting.

00:33:41.760 I mean, they're really kind of existentially powerful for me.

00:33:44.800 And without them, I don't know where I would be.

00:33:47.160 Yeah, I love that idea.

00:33:49.400 Because when you tell it, like, for example, when you tell a depressed person, like, be 0.96

00:33:52.920 yourself, like depressed person, well, myself sucks. 0.96

00:33:56.460 Like, I don't want to be myself. 0.99

00:33:58.460 Like, terrible advice.

00:34:00.120 So yeah, the idea is like, well, create a new self.

00:34:02.760 That's so much empowering.

00:34:04.260 So much more empowering.

00:34:04.960 It was so liberating for me because I've been through a lot of more traditional psychotherapy,

00:34:09.280 which is, I'm not discounting that, but, you know, just sort of, you know, recalling

00:34:13.600 the past, thinking about how the past has affected the present, you know, perhaps thinking

00:34:17.680 about past traumas.

00:34:19.020 That can be useful, but it wasn't working for me, I guess, because I'm kind of overly

00:34:23.060 introspective anyway, and I'm kind of narcissistic.

00:34:25.460 So I kind of got off on this endless navel gazing, but it never let any change.

00:34:30.760 But this more kind of outwardly directed psychotherapy did.

00:34:35.160 I mean, I still struggle.

00:34:36.180 I'm not healed by any stretch of the imagination.

00:34:38.880 I still struggle mildly with depression.

00:34:41.020 But I feel like I have a kind of toolkit now, which is more helpful than some of those earlier

00:34:47.380 tools were.

00:34:49.260 I love this.

00:34:49.560 So basically sum up here, because I think we've gone into some big picture things, but

00:34:54.960 I love how you said, like, this is really an actual, it's an existential tool that you

00:34:58.700 can use to have a more flourishing life, as Aristotle would say.

00:35:04.220 Basically, the idea is, there is no authentic self to be found.

00:35:08.960 You are the creator of that self, right?

00:35:12.340 Yes, that's what I'm saying in the book.

00:35:14.520 Absolutely.

00:35:15.260 And so just go out there and create the best, like, whatever you want to be.

00:35:19.560 Create it within limits.

00:35:20.800 You can't do anything too out of the ordinary, but you can create something better for yourself

00:35:28.240 if you want to.

00:35:30.360 Well, yes, that's exactly it.

00:35:32.940 You know, and I've had people talk to me who have had, you know, very serious stillnesses,

00:35:38.600 and they've said things like, you know, I realized when I had cancer, I could say, I'm

00:35:42.960 the guy who has cancer who might die.

00:35:44.800 Or I can say, oh, I have cancer, but I'm also this and this and this and this and this,

00:35:48.300 right?

00:35:48.500 I mean, it's how you respond to what is given to you.

00:35:52.420 And that's where the fiction making comes in.

00:35:54.400 That's where the interpretation comes in.

00:35:56.100 That's where the creation comes in.

00:35:57.860 So absolutely.

00:35:59.040 And I would say, you know, create a self that, you know, opens you to the world, that makes

00:36:05.040 the world more heterogeneous to you, that gives you more opportunity to connect with as many

00:36:10.300 other people, which means as many other narratives as possible.

00:36:13.080 You know, if you create a kind of narrow narrative, you're going to be isolated and lonely and

00:36:18.560 sad.

00:36:18.880 Great.

00:36:19.900 Well, keep it fake.

00:36:21.020 I love this.

00:36:21.560 Eric Wilson, thank you so much for your time.

00:36:23.260 It's been a pleasure.

00:36:24.980 Oh, you're welcome.

00:36:25.640 I really enjoyed this conversation, bro.

00:36:27.800 Our guest today was Eric Wilson.

00:36:28.920 He's the author of the book, Keep It Fake, Inventing an Authentic Life.

00:36:32.300 And you can find that on Amazon.com.

00:36:34.180 Well, that wraps up another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:36:40.700 For more manly tips and advice, make sure to check out the Art of Manliness website at

00:36:43.920 artofmanliness.com.

00:36:44.980 And if you enjoy this podcast and you feel like you're getting something out of it, I'd

00:36:47.740 really appreciate it if you'd give us a review on iTunes or Stitcher that help us get some

00:36:51.940 constructive feedback on how we can improve the show as well as get the word out about

00:36:55.600 the podcast.

00:36:56.760 And the best compliment you could give me is to recommend the podcast to your friends.

00:37:01.080 I'd really appreciate that.

00:37:02.420 Thank you for your continued support of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:37:04.180 And until next time, this is Brett McKay telling you to stay manly.

The Art of Manliness - September 03, 2015

#135： Inventing an Authentic Life With Eric Wilson

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