Purchase
How We Get Lost Finding Ourselves
Harper
April 2010
On Sale: April 1, 2010
256 pages
ISBN: 006125133X
EAN: 9780061251337
Hardcover
Add to Wish List
Non-Fiction
What does it mean to be authentic? For many, the search for the authentic provides a powerful source of meaning in a secular age, allowing a person a unique personal identity in a world that seems alienating and conformist. This demand for authenticityβthe honest or the realβis one of the most powerful movements in contemporary life, influencing our moral outlook, political views, and consumer behavior. Yet according to Andrew Potter, when examined closely, our fetish for βauthenticβ lifestyles or experiencesβorganic produce and ecotourism, bikram yoga and performance art, the cult of Oprah and the obsession with Obamaβis actually a form of exclusionary status seeking. The result, he argues, is modernityβs malaise: a competitive, self-absorbed individualism that creates a shallow consumerist society built on stratification and one-upmanship that ultimately erodes genuine relationships and true community. Weaving together threads of pop culture, history, and philosophy, The Authenticity Hoax reveals how our misguided pursuit of the authentic exacerbates the artificiality of contemporary life that we decry. Potter traces the origins of the authenticity ideal from its roots in the eighteenth century through its adoption by the 1960s counterculture to its centrality in twentyβfirstβcentury moral life. He shows how this ideal is manifested through our culture, from the political fates of Sarah Palin and John Edwards to Damien Hirst and his role in contemporary art, from the phenomenon of retirement as a second adolescence to the indignation over James Freyβs memoir. From this defiant, brilliant critique, Potter offers a way forward to a meaningful individualism that makes peace with the modern world.
 Media BuzzMarketplace - PRI - September 4, 2010
Marketplace - PRI - April 29, 2010
| 
© 2003-2026