“Taking the easy way out or telling the truth—those are not merely two different choices. They are different pathways through life. They are utterly different ways of existing. “inauthentic.†An inauthentic person continues to perceive and act in ways his own experience has demonstrated false. He does not speak with his own voice. “Did what I want happen? No. Then my aim or my methods were wrong. I still have something to learn.†That is the voice of authenticity. “Did what I want happen? No. Then the world is unfair. People are jealous, and too stupid to understand. It is the fault of something or someone else.†That is the voice of inauthenticity. He was one of the most refreshing people I’d ever met because he was so real and genuine. There was no pretense, no bullshit. You knew you were talking to the real Alex.†Viktor Frankl, the psychiatrist and Nazi concentration camp survivor who wrote the classic Man’s Search for Meaning, drew a similar social-psychological conclusion: deceitful, inauthentic individual existence is the precursor to social totalitarianism. Sigmund Freud, for his part, analogously believed that “repression†contributed in a non-trivial manner to the development of mental illness (and the difference between repression of truth and a lie is a matter of degree, not kind). Alfred Adler knew it was lies that bred sickness. C.G. Jung knew that moral problems plagued his patients, and that such problems were caused by untruth. All these thinkers, all centrally concerned with pathology both individual and cultural, came to the same conclusion: lies Peterson, Jordan B.. 12 Rules for Life (p. 212). Random House of Canada. Kindle Edition. Synnott, Mark. The Impossible Climb (p. 79). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. Peterson, Jordan B.. 12 Rules for Life (p. 211). Random House of Canada. Kindle Edition. Peterson, Jordan B.. 12 Rules for Life (p. 211). Random House of Canada. Kindle Edition. Peterson, Jordan B.. 12 Rules for Life (p. 206). Random House of Canada. Kindle Edition. ”
