Authenticity And Individualistic Society

Vanning and William have illustrated that authenticity of self is a method of social control through which a set of qualities are brought forth that represents the particular ideals of the time. Therefore, authenticity is not constituted by standard values, but adopts a new ideal according to the social and cultural context (Vannini and Williams 2009, p.3). Accordingly, Authenticity is defined as being consistently “true to oneself” and subsequently, societal institutions and values such as jobs, functions or roles shouldn’t contribute in defining the individual. The notion of being an authentic self or the “free” self includes asserting their wills in choices and being self-determining, autonomous and expressing (Guignon, Pedersen and Altman

Individualism is approved by the capitalist society for manifesting a strong sense of self-efficiency and self-esteem. Furthermore, Individualism claims that the individual is responsible for the self, thus societal institutions should not intervene beyond individual 's rights for self-expression and self-realisation (Ogihara and Uchida, 2014). However, individualism has conveyed negative consequences in the modern society, as reinforced in Bird (1999), who shares his experience of being irritated and self-entitled to scold his African neighbours for reprimanding his children. He believed that only he has the right to do that; his new interpretation of individualism endorsed him to see that modernity and individualism had entrenched in him the notion of self-righteous and feeling of superiority. The Nigerian children, he noted, would share toys whilst his played individually and fretted when others tried to touch theirs (Bird, 1999). Moreover, Bird’s articles underlines that society has accepted a self-reliant and can-do attitude resulting in selfishness, subsequently creating barriers for healthy relationships. Society is self—obsessed with personal success through cosmetic surgery and materialism; all in the quest of accomplishing an authentic self.

Self-consciousness or reflectivity is important in charactering the human awareness as it objectifies the self. Through the social relations and interactions, individuals can enter as an object to themselves, which is important in achieving self-consciousness. Furthermore, self-consciousness entails the procedure of absorbing the attitudes of others towards themselves e.g. the child learns to become aware of their behaviour by using the other as a mirror to understand themselves and achieve self-consciousness (Aboulafia 1991, p.224). Moreover, symbolic interaction is an important paradigm in the Meadian theory of self through which reflective objectification of the self is possible. Language is fundamental to Meads symbolic interactionism as it is through communication and the “significant symbol” that individuals can redirect the attitudes of others towards them. Language evokes aspects of experiences which forms the very ground of “me”” and “self” (McAulay, 1977). Additionally, Mead believes that when specific gestures are made to be reacted to, and when the anticipated response is unexpected, the gesturing subject must alter their subsequent gestures to achieve the anticipated result, it epitomizes that language is a mechanism for shared social meaning. To expand, mind