The Authentic Self
Dr Phil talks about what he calls ‘The Authentic Self’. Most people act according to what is required of them. In fact, most people are so cut off from their own true selves that they are unable to decide for themselves what their preferences are in such things as food or movies. The modern trend of following fashion exacerbates this tendency for people to get cut off from their own feelings and to replace these by the opinions of the group.
For example, in schools there is considerable peer pressure for people to conform to a group. The group may be one of the many tribes that seem to populate schools: the ‘nerds’, the ‘Goths’, the cheerleaders etc. Entry to these groups is at a price: you have to sell your soul. But people are not aware of the value of their soul, so they sell it for the price of a compliment or even less. If you are in such a group and they rave about a new movie it is difficult to stand back from this and admit to yourself that you found it rather boring or pretentious. You are more inclined to believe the fault is in yourself rather than your group of ‘friends’.
People get trapped by their own expectations. A few years ago a friend of mine bought his very working-class mother a gift from Harrods, in London. She returned it as she said that Harrods were not for the likes of people like her. The class system in England trapped many people into low expectations. If your family didn’t go to university than probably you wouldn’t either. It wasn’t necessarily because of your intelligence or of money: it simply wasn’t done. This is why socialist parties in the UK and Australia push for university for everyone. They see it as breaking down the class barrier. In fact, often they are just lowering the standard of education.
These expectations, the ides of what we should or shouldn’t like, our ideas of politics and religion or of money are moulded at an early age. Even if we think we have broken out of them, we often reflect them in a different form. For example, the person who supposedly escapes his class preconceptions and goes to university to study sociology may be going to university not to study something that really interests him, but simply in order to show that he has escaped his class. He hasn’t - he is simply reflecting the same class hang-ups in a different way. We see this all the time. People who set fashions and declare they are not followers are still dictated to by fashion.
When people follow the pattern set by someone else they have cut themselves off from their authentic self. One area where this is very noticeable is in food choices. One reason why diets don’t work is that when people eat food determined by what someone else has told them they should eat, rather than what they feel they should eat, they have cut themselves off from their body’s natural instincts. And the more they cut themselves off from it, the more they eat the wrong things at the wrong times in the wrong quantities. The real solution to diet is to listen to your body. Instead people turn their diet into their religion.
One of my criticisms of what I call the new science, the idea that what is correct scientifically is what the scientific community tells you is correct, is that it cuts people off from their real ideas and feelings. This is why it is important to ask yourself when you are presented with a new idea: does this seem right? Does it have a good smell, so to speak?
The trend in society is to force people conform and to ridicule them when they don’t. It takes real courage to stand up to this.
This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
William Shakespeare
