#135： Inventing an Authentic Life With Eric Wilson
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Summary
In his new book, "Keep It Fake: Inventing an Authentic Life," Dr. Eric Wilson argues that the obsession with authenticity is actually holding us back from living a truly flourishing life. He argues that instead of trying to uncover a platonic authentic self, we should be trying to create an authentic self.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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So it seems in the past 50 years, there's been this obsession in America and probably
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in other Western countries with authenticity, right?
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Our goal in life should be to uncover or discover our authentic selves.
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And once we do that, you know, the universe will unfold before us.
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We'll make money and our family will be awesome.
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In fact, you can buy books that'll help you uncover your authentic self.
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You can hire a life coach that will help you discover your authentic self.
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You can take courses on living authentic manhood.
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And in marketers, businesses have taken, have gotten hold of this obsession with authenticity
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And now you can buy authentic artisanal pizza from Domino's, or you can buy a candle made
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by an authentic craftsman in a New England Hamlet.
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And because we're drawn to that, we'll buy it because it says authentic.
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But what if this drive, this obsession with authenticity is actually hamstringing us from
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Well, that's the argument my guest today made in his latest book.
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He's one of the leading experts on the connection between psychology and literature.
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And in his book, Keep It Fake, Inventing an Authentic Life, he makes the subtle but powerful
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argument that instead of trying to uncover some platonic authentic self, that what we should
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really be doing is trying to create ourself, an authentic self.
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And then sometimes that's going to feel fake, but that's okay.
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So today on the podcast, Eric and I discuss how you create an authentic life and what
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we can learn from philosophy, from science, from literature, from art, from films, from
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actors, particularly actors like Bill Murray or Cary Grant about creating an authentic life.
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If you love philosophy and art and neuroscience and psychology and literature like I do, and
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like how those interconnect, you're going to love our discussion.
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So without further ado, Eric Wilson, Keep It Fake.
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So your latest book is called Keep It Fake, Inventing an Authentic Life.
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And I think it's kind of funny you called it Inventing an Authentic Life because you
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And I love this book because it hits a topic that I've been thinking a lot about the past
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And this idea of authenticity, because it's become like, yeah, it's an article of faith
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in America that you have to be authentic, right?
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There's psychologists, therapists, gurus who help you find and discover your authentic self.
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Corporations are kind of using authenticity as a way to market their wares.
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So we have artisanal pizza from Domino's that looks rustic, and I guess it's authentic.
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And it's one of those words I think we use so much that we take it for granted, and we
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often don't think about what does authenticity mean.
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Well, I can talk about how I think that mainstream America defines it, and I can talk about how
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So you refer to how authenticity is often used in marketing.
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For instance, Domino's can say, oh, we have an authentic pizza.
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I think that authenticity in the mainstream is a kind of naive belief that there's some
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rock-solid reality that goes beyond societal convention, that goes beyond how we talk about
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the world, a kind of is-ness, a kind of being, a kind of essence.
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And if we can just get in touch with that, we'll be okay.
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And, you know, this idea is expressed often by the idea that you can be yourself or you
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can find yourself, as if there's some sort of, you know, essential eric-ness or essential
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brett-ness sort of, you know, underlying all the developments of your life, all the
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circumstances of your life, the history of your life.
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And I think that idea is carried over to, you know, our desire to have local food or
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organic food, the idea that there's a kind of deep realness to that that escapes artifice.
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I think this is just kind of Platonism in reverse, right?
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If you go back to Replato, you know, he said that there's some sort of ideal realm of forms
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in some eternal realm somewhere, and each of us is a particular manifestation of these
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And the goal in life is just sort of find how we relate to these stable forms, and then
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we'll be in line with truth, beauty, and goodness.
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Well, now we've kind of sunk that down into this idea of organicity, right?
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That, you know, if I can just sort of go down deeply enough and into existence, there it
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What I say is that there's no such thing as a self like this.
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Basically, existence is too ephemeral, too transient for there to be any sort of stable
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And I know for myself, my parents told me, be yourself, find yourself.
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Well, maybe I'm just too wishy-washy, or maybe I just lack fortitude.
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I can't stay the course, but it's always seemed frustrating to me to try to find some stable
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idea of identity when I'm constantly, constantly changing.
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So in my book, I explore the idea that a more powerful and useful form of authenticity, a
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less frustrating form of authenticity, is to think about authenticity as something that's
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And what I mean is, for me, it's been very empowering to think about myself as a kind
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of way of interpreting my life as it is at a given moment.
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So when I'm in college, I'm going to think of myself one way, because I have certain circumstances.
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When I'm a father, I'm going to think of myself another way, because I have different
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So what I try to do is I try to create a kind of narrative that helps me make sense of the
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And I sort of imagine myself as a character in that narrative, sort of a character in
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So for instance, if I said to you, Brett, who are you?
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You'd probably immediately start thinking about moments in your past that were especially
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And that led to this happening to me when I'm 12.
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In other words, you would try to kind of create these causal links among various moments in
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And that would allow you to create a kind of cogent story that will lead up to who you
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Well, five years down the road, 10 years down the road, as your present circumstances change,
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You might emphasize other memories and deemphasize the memories that you earlier valued and come
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So what I'm suggesting is that we're constantly, whether we want to or not, inventing fresh
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narratives to make sense of the kind of flux of experience.
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And there are a lot of neuroscientists recently who have actually talked about how that's how
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What I say in the book is, why don't we just become self-conscious about this?
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Why don't we become aware of the fact that we're making narratives?
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And sort of take charge of our narratives and try to create a narrative that will make
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our life as rich and full and varied as possible, and then sort of take responsibility for that
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To me, that's what authenticity properly should be.
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Um, so I guess is the reason why people are so drawn to a platonic ideal of authenticity is
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that maybe it's just so, it's hard to manage complexity and an ever-changing flux life.
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Is that, is that, is that why there's that drive?
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If I were to account for it psychologically, I would say that it's very seductive to imagine
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there is such a thing as, as, as permanent truth.
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It's, um, unpredictable and that leads to pain and frustration very frequently.
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So it's nice to think that if I, if I could just find, you know, that, that one truth,
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Um, so, so, uh, you know, I, I, I understand the desire for that.
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I mean, I, I would love to be able to say, this is who I am.
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Um, because it's hard work, um, as you're suggesting to sort of honestly face the complexity
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of life and try to come up with a way of thinking about yourself, which is sensitive
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to that complexity, um, that allows you to organize that complexity in a way that doesn't
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Um, but also doesn't, uh, you know, allow the complexity to overwhelm you at the same
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The, the format is a lot different from some of the other books I've read because it's,
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You get into philosophy, literature, you bring in Bill Murray, you bring in your own life.
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What was your organizing principle with the book?
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Well, I would call it, I would call it a hybrid book.
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Um, it is kind of, it is kind of all over the place, but I hope in a good way.
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So, so, so one part of the book is, is, is, is I introduce stories in my own life.
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You know, my life as a, as a, as a phony, as someone who has, you know, been a fake in
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And that's really, I think the backbone of the book, but also there, there are a lot of,
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you know, philosophical sections, scientific sections, psychological sections, um, literary
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sections, and also just a lot of sort of playful riffs on, you know, say Bill Murray or Cary
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I really wanted the book to have a kind of playfulness to it, like a kind of multiplicity,
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uh, because that's the kind of persona I would want to create, one that has that kind of
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So that's really kind of what I tried to capture in the book.
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And I guess my models would, would be sort of playful philosophers, not that I would compare
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myself in any way to these folks, but, but someone like a Montaigne, um, or, or even a,
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a Thoreau, um, would, would be, it would be a model for this.
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Um, so I hope people get into the, to the, to the, to the playfulness of the book.
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I mean, I just, that was the thing I wanted to keep reading because it was just so much
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So in your book, you refer to a lot of, uh, philosophers, writers who grappled with this
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question and they might not have called it authenticity, but it was the same idea of what
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I mean, how did philosophers in the past deal with this question of, of selfhood?
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Well, the whole, the idea that, that there's sort of a single individual, unique self, um,
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you know, unrepeatable, unprecedented, and it will never be again, I think really didn't
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come into being until probably, uh, you know, the, the 15th century, um, when the French
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philosopher Montaigne started writing his essays and his basic question was, who, who am I?
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Um, so he was, he was writing, you know, basically about, you know, the very idiosyncratic,
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weird things that make him who he is and no one else.
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Um, I'm going to, I'm going to generalize kind of wildly here, but, but, but, but roughly,
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you know, before that, um, and again, Montaigne was actually residing in the 16th century.
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You go back to someone like Plato, and I think there's a sense that, that each, each of us
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is not a sort of discrete individual, but one expression of some sort of universal ground
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of being, um, in Plato's case, it's, it's the forms.
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I mean, there is an idea that each of us has an individual soul, but the individual soul
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is, is, is most fully itself when it expresses the kind of Christ within it that all of us
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And I could talk about medieval theologians, and I could talk about someone like Descartes.
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Um, all of them do kind of suggest that, you know, ultimately who we are is a manifestation
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of some sort of, you know, universal being or, or power or substance.
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But then Montaigne comes along and says, no, there, there is such a thing as an unrepeatable
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I am that, and no one will ever be like me again.
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And, and you, you kind of see that idea played out in someone like Shakespeare, who was a deep
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Um, and in fact, he was reading Montaigne very deeply when he wrote Hamlet.
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And so we'll see Hamlet as the first literary work in the West, anyway, that, that treats
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this idea that there is no one like Hamlet, and there will never be anyone again like Hamlet.
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And the same is true, same is true, same is true of all of us.
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Um, and this kind of idea becomes a ground for, um, I'd say a mid to late 19th century philosophical
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turn, um, embodied by people like Friedrich Nietzsche and Søren Tertiggaard, uh, who were
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really the first to say, you know, in a kind of disciplined philosophical sense.
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And Montaigne was a kind of literary essay, as Shakespeare was obviously a dramatist,
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But, but, but, but Kierkegaard and Nietzsche in a kind of philosophical sense, I wanted to
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say that the place to start with philosophy is, which, which is raw existence, the kind
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of nowness, the kind of messiness of where we are right here, right now.
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And to try to reduce that to some sort of logic or rationality, um, is wrong from the
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And kind of blinding oneself to what reality is.
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And this becomes the basis for what came down in the 20th century as existentialism, right?
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Which is precisely this idea that the group, the, the place to start for philosophy, for
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literature, for art, really for anything is precisely, you know, the sort of single isolated
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individual self and how he or she makes sense of his or her own personal world.
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And again, that's a kind of, those are kind of large, sweeping philosophical claims, but
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I think that kind of gives the shape of, you know, how the idea of, you know, self has kind
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of loosely evolved in the history of philosophy.
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So if we're all just, if there's, if it's not possible to discover your authentic self,
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I mean, yeah, people are uncomfortable, this idea that you are putting on a performance in
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a way, not only for other people, but for yourself in a weird way.
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I mean, if we talk about Tricky Dick and Slick Willie, you know, the best way to sort
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of, you know, throw a politician to disrepute is to say, well, that person's a liar.
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You look at our sort of American cinema icons, you think of someone like John Wayne, Gary
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It's all about, you know, shooting straight, being sincere, telling it like it is.
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And when we think someone is being, you know, dissimulating or play acting, we often think
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Um, and so, so, uh, what I want to, what I try to say in my book is there, there are degrees
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So let's say that identity is something we, we make that we don't find.
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Let's say that the idea of self is a kind of ongoing narrative.
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Well, does that mean that, that I can be anything that I want to?
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And does that mean that I should be able to lie and it's okay?
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Um, paradoxically, what I say is that some fictions are truer than others.
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So if you think of the self as a, as a, as a narrative, as a novel, you can start thinking,
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well, some, some novels are better than others.
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Well, one way to think about a really powerful novel is a narrative that is open to complexity,
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um, that is able to connect with as many different points of view as, as possible.
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Um, in other words, to create a sense of self that is open to the otherness of the world
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and tries to accommodate the otherness of the world, as opposed to an area that closes you
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down, that basically says, okay, I have sort of one way of thinking about the world and
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I'm going to stay connected to that one way of thinking about the world.
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Um, so to create a narrative that is narrow, dogmatic, fanatical, and also to, to, to sort
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of go through life lying, um, to go through life trying to deceive people to gain power
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These are disempowering narratives, I would say, because they lead to isolation.
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Um, they lead to alienation and ultimately I would say they, they lead to unhappiness.
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Um, whereas creating narratives that are kind of close to the reality of your particular
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present tend to be those that are the most satisfying.
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You know, I have a certain genetic makeup that makes me who I am.
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Certain things, um, in my past, my parents, my teachers made me who I am.
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I'm not saying there isn't such a thing as reality, but what I'm saying is that reality
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only becomes meaningful to us when we start talking about it and interpreting, putting
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And at that point, what reality is, is, is not some kind of, you know, stable isness, but
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So imagine that, um, existence is like being thrown off a cliff into an ocean, right?
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So I'm being thrown off the cliff into an ocean.
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Gravity pushes me down to the water in the same way that, you know, my past pushes me
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towards certain actions in the present and the future.
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I'm being forced down into the water by gravity.
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Um, or I can do a nice swan dive or a jackknife or a gainer.
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Um, in other words, we're given a, you know, a certain facts that we can't change, but we
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can choose how to react to them and choose how to interpret them.
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Um, we, we can imagine our falling as it were, our imagine our lives in such a way that
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they have a kind of beauty and grace and generosity.
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Um, and those fictions are truer, I argue, than a kind of interpretation or reaction that
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I've never heard of before, uh, until I read your book.
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And can this help us, um, navigate a world where most people say, well, no, you can't,
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uh, embracing enriching fictitious truths, right?
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Um, can romantic irony help you navigate a world like that?
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So romantic irony has a fairly specialized definition.
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I mean, if you study literature, you know that there, there are many different kinds of
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There's, there's dramatic irony, which occurs when the audience watching a play knows something
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Um, I'm sorry, verbal irony, where an author is saying something that has more than one meaning.
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Like when Jane Austen opens up Pride and Prejudice, and I'm paraphrasing by saying that it's a
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well-known fact that every, um, man of good fortune is in one of a wife.
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That's the kind of grammatical meaning, the rhetorical meaning is that women want to marry
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And so those are, those are just two kinds of many kinds of irony.
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Romantic irony really is developed in the late 18th, early 19th century, um, by two writers
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And it gets developed in England by people like Byron and the United America by people
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And basically, the basic assumption of romantic irony, um, is this, the world is simply too
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complicated, too abundant, too vast for, for, for any one interpretation of it to be accurate,
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So Christianity, say Marxism, say, um, Platonism, say any, any worldview only tells part of the
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Um, so if I'm, if I'm, if I'm, if I'm in a romantic ironist, I acknowledge this and I
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embrace it and I don't see it as something that makes me depressed, this constant gap
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between what I say about the world and what the world really is, but it becomes an invitation
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Um, it becomes a kind of occasion to, to be exuberant.
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So if we go on a, a field trip, say to Greece and we go to a ruined temple and I say, oh,
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you know, look, look at that, that column from that ruined temple.
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Um, can you imagine what the temple actually looked like when it was whole?
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We start imagining what this temple would look like, but because the temple's not there,
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We can endlessly imagine what this temple might've looked like because we can never actually know
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Well, some might say, oh, that's really frustrating.
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But, but if you're a kind of a practitioner of romantic irony, you would say, well, that's
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It's constantly moving, it's constantly in action.
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So, so this, this idea is really exciting to me.
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I mean, and it shows up in works of literature, like when you have a subconscious narrator who,
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while telling the story, will kind of stop to say, oh, I'm telling you a story, um, which
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kind of highlights that this is a fiction, that it's not real.
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We see this in film sometime too, where a character starts talking, um, you know, to
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the camera, um, to, to apply this to life is, is basically, again, to say,
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that, that any understanding of the world is only one narrative among many possible
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narrative, only one interpretation among many possible interpretations.
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There are some interpretations, some narratives, which are better than others.
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And what are those that are better than others?
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Some narratives are more aesthetically powerful than others.
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They approach the quality of art more so than others.
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Again, if you think of art as a kind of, you know, very complicated system that, that
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can bring together, you know, a lot of diverse points of view into some sort of basic harmony,
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um, that is, that is, that is pleasing and graceful.
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And it's also how one can think about romantic irony in relation not only to literature, but
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I mean, look, the way to think of it is no matter what you do, you're an artist.
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If you're a gardener, if you're a banker, if you're a professor, no matter what you do,
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that becomes an art form if you think of life in this way.
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And if you try to see that as a work of art, then I think it makes life more interesting
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and more exciting and ultimately, you know, more beautiful.
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This, uh, we did a series not too long ago about the philosophy of Nietzsche, and this
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It's absolutely, I mean, what I've just said, you could translate into Nietzsche fairly
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I mean, Nietzsche never really used the term romantic irony, um, but he did talk about
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an aesthetic understanding of the world, right?
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The idea being that we are always interpreting, and what we formerly thought of as truth is
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And for Nietzsche, we should see this as an invitation to create, um, for him, the philosopher
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The gay science, which is just constantly creating sort of new narratives and new interpretations,
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um, which hopefully open up the eyes of other people and encourage them to create their own
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sort of interpretation, that we all become artists, that the greatest philosophers are the
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So I love this idea that we are actors, also screenwriters in our own movie.
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I think there's a podcast, I think Joe Rogan says that he's a podcaster, says that you are
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And I thought this was, I like that analogy because I've read several, I've read this biography
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about John Wayne, never really learned, knew much about him.
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I mean, I watched his movies, but I, when I read the biography, I was actually, I kind of
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And what endeared to me about him was this idea that through the act, through the character
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Like he, he, like he created this character that he himself tried to become like a fictitious
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Uh, more recently, Tom Hardy, the guy who played Bane in the Batman movie, he always plays
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He even said that like his characters in the process of embodying this fictitious character,
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like he himself feels like he is becoming like that person in a way.
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Can, can actors like movie actors teach us something about being the, the, the, the writers
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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.
00:26:54.460
He says, you know, um, I, even, I want to, everybody wants 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
00:27:05.360
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
00:27:24.780
Now I'm especially enamored of Grant because to me, his acting is always unexpected and
00:27:34.380
I don't think, you know, you go see a Cary Grant 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.
00:27:52.020
You know, whereas now we often think that good acting is the ability to transform into something
00:27:59.820
In fact, with classic Hollywood, it was, let's create a persona and make it endlessly
00:28:05.840
And, you know, to me, Grant is endlessly interesting because he's always doing double takes and
00:28:12.480
And in other words, he, he, his characters show that he's very much aware of the fact that
00:28:18.020
So to me, that's kind of an example for how one might live one's life, just knowing 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
00:28:42.740
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.
00:28:54.040
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
00:29:08.440
Now I had a, I had a really big sort of psychotherapeutic breakthrough and I'll write about this in the
00:29:14.780
When a psychotherapist of mine said, Hey man, are there any movie actors you really like?
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
00:29:35.980
Um, and I could talk a little more about the kind of psychotherapeutic, um, value of some
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.
00:30:10.340
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.
00:30:28.160
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
00:30:36.320
And it's like all those props were kind of stripped away and I was just there.
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
00:30:52.240
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.
00:31:06.620
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
00:31:18.400
And he said to me, he said, look, you've made this bipolar disorder the kind of controller
00:31:27.960
So you can say things like, well, I can't be a good father because I'm bipolar, or I
00:31:34.200
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.
00:32:04.300
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
00:32:16.920
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.
00:32:29.740
I was just kind of good at being silly and stupid and idiotic.
00:32:34.200
And I was really good at making my daughter laugh.
00:32:36.780
So what I did is I self-consciously created a persona.
00:32:44.640
So I just really tried to be as ridiculous as possible.
00:32:47.540
And my main goal in life was to make her laugh.
00:32:51.340
And that created a new way of us relating to each other.
00:32:57.860
And again, that led to, you know, sort of deeper, more valuable ways of connecting beyond
00:33:03.060
But the point is, is that this fiction making had really powerful psychotherapeutic value
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
00:33:20.700
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
00:33:33.560
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.
00:33:49.400
Because when you tell it, like, for example, when you tell a depressed person, like, be
00:33:52.920
yourself, like depressed person, well, myself sucks.
00:34:00.120
So yeah, the idea is like, well, create a new self.
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
00:34:19.020
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.
00:34:36.180
I'm not healed by any stretch of the imagination.
00:34:41.020
But I feel like I have a kind of toolkit now, which is more helpful than some of those earlier
00:34:49.560
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.
00:35:15.260
And so just go out there and create the best, like, whatever you want to be.
00:35:20.800
You can't do anything too out of the ordinary, but you can create something better for yourself
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
00:35:44.800
Or I can say, oh, I have cancer, but I'm also this and this and this and this and this,
00:35:48.500
I mean, it's how you respond to what is given to you.
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
00:36:28.920
He's the author of the book, Keep It Fake, Inventing an Authentic Life.
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
00:36:44.980
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
00:36:56.760
And the best compliment you could give me is to recommend the podcast to your friends.
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.