The authentic human escapes this, for s/he does not care one jot what the "plenty" think, feel or do. Not out of callousness, indifference or individual narcissism/solipsism, or even because authenticity exists despite and outside of that frame - but that it flourishes through and in it.
Sartre put is as; "One always has a choice". It's an existential truth that even if you are on your knees in front of a ditch, with a gun to your head and the choice "comply and live, or die on principle", you can always choose to die. That's the essence of choice, not a mere toss up between two picnics.
And once that threshold of understanding is passed -- that _choice_ is the one thing that cannot be taken from you -- it is possible to see further into Kierkegaard's "Fear and Trembling" and "Sickness Unto Death", in which that choice allows one to become not merely a gadfly but "an error, stubbornly and indelibly written into the text of consensual reality... one that refuses to be erased". The harder the system scratches at it the more the itch spreads.
Obviously there's a lot of Christianity at the base of this, and returning to the GP, P. K. Dick is clearly immersed in that. Maybe that says Christianity is still a relevant religion in the technological age? I also find it bizarre that Nietzsche, who saw Christianity as mere bloody-minded resentment, still arrived at the same basic idea of all-too-human authenticity. So it goes deep.
Every age is a technological age. The technology (per se) of a paleolithic human is no less complex and involved that the technology of today.
Technology is about process and supply chain complexity, not knowledge. The paleolithic human was short on knowledge, but their supply chains were as global, complex and fragile as the ones we have today.
There's a qualitative difference of systematic complexity.
(Much of it has been lost to history and can't be reproduced anymore.)
That's why you can keep a society of millions under control with only a few tens of thousands of dedicated assholes.
Let me spell it out: that's the defining moment of Tank Man's life, you have zero clue about what happened prior to that moment. And that's because really nobody seems to have a clue about who he really was, what his life was like up to that moment and so on. It's a singular act of bravery and one that I very much feel moved by. But I have zero illusion that Tank Man's life was nothing but an endless succession of moments like these where at every opportunity he did the right thing. And that's perfectly normal, doesn't make him any less, in fact it makes him more: because ordinary people making an actually stand when it matters is very powerful, no matter what their lives were like up to that point.
What point are you trying to make, actually? Your argument seems to be that "authentic humans," however that's defined, are not just rare but nonexistent, even if other quietly heroic people who fill the same role do exist. I'm not sure what end you're trying to reach here.
I'm far more interested in the interplay between people and their circumstances than I am in labeling a particular human as authentic or not, it smacks of a value judgment in a vacuum, whereas IRL there is no such thing.
Your problem is that you stated such people don't exist despite the vast historical evidence to the contrary. Hitler's own officers wanted to kill him. Think about Harriet Tubman, or the underground railway. ad nauseum.
Character is important.
As you say we don't know much about Tank Man. It was probably more than the defining moment of his life, it was the last day of it.
Isn't it fair to assume that whatever led up to that moment was a life lived in good character? He may not have lived as an exemplar of "authenticity", and if it was only a moment in an otherwise selfish and wasted life, like those "city businessmen" who spontaneously jump onto a subway track to save a child, we agree it doesn't that subtract from the authenticity of the act?
As we say around here "carefully pick your hill to die on". But there's more to the picking than a rash decision in a single moment. There's everything that built that character too, no?
So let's not resort to theoretical absolutes. I don't know where 'here' is but every culture has similar idioms but at the same time every culture has something about being careful about meeting your heroes.
At least to me the entire sentiment seems to fall into 'no true Scotsman' territory under any individual scrutiny. If we take someone's life apart and look at the individual pieces you'll find authentic and inauthentic moments everywhere.
I wouldn't consider it impolite, but would say it's an unproductive question like all such questions of "identity" that unravel in the slightest breeze.
Perhaps a useful concept is the Hegelian take on "freedom"; that in any epoch freedom is defined by the will to overcome the obstacles one faces. There is no firmer definition of it than "intent".
A better modern word might be "lifestance" [0], a word I learned from hanging around with Rationalist/Humanist thinkers.
And here's what I think is a beautiful lifestance quote;
""" Act as though you are free, you might get lucky. You might be
free, who knows! Act that way it's worth trying! -- Rick
Roderick """
“Is it really true that political self-interest is nobler somehow than economic self-interest? You know, I think you’re taking a lot of things for granted. Just tell me where in the world you find these angels who are going to organize society for us?”
The Christian theological view[0] is that no human is perfect (or good), and it is essentially impossible to be perfectly good, but God still wants us to try to be as perfect as we can humanly can.
The most relevant verses on the idea that we are not good is likely Romans chapter 3, starting from verse 9:
What shall we conclude then? Do we have any advantage? Not at all! For we have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under the power of sin. As it is written:
“There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God.
All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.”
“Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit.” “The poison of vipers is on their lips.” “Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.” “Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and the way of peace they do not know.”
“There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God. 20 Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law; rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin.
-- https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Romans+3&versio... (starting at v. 9)
The call to be perfect:
Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. -- Jesus, in Matthew 5:48
Our inauthentic self is forgiven via Christ's sacrifice, which permits us to partake of the new life/creation promised. On the New Creation, see Revelation 21.
[0] For disclosure: yes, I'm a believer.
The way against "authentic" humans' resistance/reactance is something Moloch figured out long ago: take it slow, manipulate their beliefs about themselves and the world. This even scales better than tyranny. Marketers and advertisers know and use this. Politicians and activists and religious leaders know and use this. "Authentic" humans will follow their intuition off a cliff if you make them believe it'll make them feel safe, or fulfill their lust. Easy when you're also responsible for instilling fear and/or desire in them in the first place.
all the way down....
And Moloch is a personification of a large system of feedback loops.
That's to say - most humans - and therefore, most "authentic" humans - have trouble recognizing Moloch is a thing in the first place.
(FWIW, I don't think it's an issue of capabilities, but rather, of education. Some basics of feedback control should be covered in elementary education, instead of specialized university degrees.)
One reason we teach Meadows as one component of intellectual self-defence.
https://cybershow.uk/episodes.php?id=19
But you're right, the ability to see how a great network of systems and subsystems, all trying to make things better, can add up to a lethal "trap" with its own perverse intelligence (I quite like the Adam Curtis slant) is elusive.
What Dick describes is the opposite of inertia.
It takes internal resolve (and force) to stand against all the forces pressuring them to do the wrong thing. Inertia would instead just go with the flow of power -- the path of least resistance that's more comfortamble.
>The way against "authentic" humans' resistance/reactance is something Moloch figured out long ago: take it slow, manipulate their beliefs about themselves and the world
History has shown that the worst culprits are not the "authentic humans" but the self-assured smart-asses. The masses might go for this or that BS ocassionally, but it's the "supermen" that promote it and set the terms.
A problem is that one could be an authentic mass murderer.
Bare authenticity alone is insufficient for moral good.
Indeed it may not even be necessary by some moral theories.
But, in saying I value authenticity, I am not claiming to be moral or right.
I could very well be horribly wrong in everything I think about technology - a monstrous throwback holding humanity from blessed Utopia. Time will tell. Meanwhile "authenticity" remains a value I aspire to.
There probably are cases where becoming more 'authentic' is worse and should be discouraged by all means.
No, inertia is specifically the characteristic of matter to continue in its current state, not the characteristic of not pushing back against another force.
If a stationary object is suddenly pushed by a force, inertia is the property that resists moving.
In any case, we're not going for physics here, but for parable. After all inertia is not Dick's word for this, it's the [thread's] parent's.
Dick's point is: ordinary people are often the real heroes, not asking to the recognition as heroes nor through doing conventional heroic acts, but through resisting doing a bad thing they're asked to do, when it would be easier to just comply and follow the flow (where the flow is the society/order/army/historical flow towards some bad path).
because inertia is unavoidable. a fact of nature, it's useless to try to judge it as good or bad; however we all do this. and after trying to do this, we all eventually learn that inertia is unrelated to virtue and that everything will be affected by inertia
is this good? or bad? is this a virtue? or a vice? good for subjects? bad for objects?
the answer is no all the way until one realizes that it doesn't matter. it'll still be inertia
It's a fascinating and disturbing phenomenon. FWIW, here's a discussion/interview I had with a psychologist [0] about why, for exmaple, some people will say "Privacy is dead. Give up hope. There's nothing you can do..." yada yada...
And the less they know about the subject technically, the more insistent and outspoken they are on the matter. It's bugged me for ages what's behind this, because there's more than Dunning-Kruger going on.
She names a possible root as "conflict avoidance".
The most vocal denouncers are in fact the most frightened. What they don't want to face is that they might have to do something, because that could be dangerous in their minds.
[0] https://cybershow.uk/media/episodes/ogg/ownership-technology...
the truth remains regardless of what anybody says.
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7444685-the-door-refused-to...
Bear in mind that this was written in 1969. Smart doorknobs were not a thing then, but PKD went right to the "pay per use", a robot programmed to lawfully exploit the common guy, situation.
Humans don't have instincts. That's what separates us from the other, lower animals.
P.S. Urges, drives and desires aren't instincts.
P.P.S. Technically not true, the human being has a couple instincts related to breastfeeding, but they are supposed to disappear after a couple months in a healthy human baby.
Feelings aren't instinct. (Feeling disgusted or sexually aroused or aggressive isn't an instinct.)
Instincts, by definition, are complex behavior. (Think birds building nests; nobody teaches them to do that, they are born with that knowledge.)
Sexual arousal is neither complex nor behavior. It is a simple hormonal state.
You're using a colloqual meaning of "instinctive" that is unscientific and wrong.
But that's far from being the only source that defines 'instinct' in a way that doesn't align with what you're proposing.
Humans do have instincts.
[1] https://www.britannica.com/topic/instinct/Instinct-as-behavi...
Including the possibility that Gandalf and Harry Potter fly in on a Raelian flying saucer and solve climate change for us.
In reality, however, no instinctual behavior has yet been found in humans.
Humans invented the concept of exoskeletons, too; inventing a concept does not imply having the concrete feature referred to by the concept.
Yes, humans have instincts, but inventing the concept of “instinct” is unrelated to that.
But (quietly and not that it matters), I also suspect that such an "authentic" attitude is something the great organising Moloch machine shits its pants in fear of, because the authentic human cannot coexist with it and thus requires its destruction.