Sincerity or Authenticity
which one do I actually want?
I built my whole argument on the word Sincerity. Then I found a book that said I picked a side without knowing there was a war - Sincerity and Authenticity by Lionel Trilling.
I wrote -
An original idea, in the end, is just the work of a sincere mind that stayed obsessed — and took one more shot when everyone else had given up.
Notice the word sincere.
Sincerity and Authenticity are different ideas.
Sincerity, in Trilling’s formulation, is congruence between what you avow and what you actually feel. “Avowal”, I had never encountered the word “avowal” before.
Avowal means an open and honest declaration of a belief. Notice how sincerity suddenly needs an audience to exist.
Being true to yourself, for a sincere man, is a means for the end of not being false to others.
Authenticity makes a harsher demand.
Being true to yourself regardless of the audience. The authentic self may be witnessed, but it does not depend upon the witness for its truth.
I realise that, through this Substack, I may be practising sincerity without reaching authenticity. I confess my fear of mediocrity and expose my ambitions, but I do so before an audience—and beneath every confession sits a share button.
In my last piece I warned about the Counterfeit - the costume of genius and not really doing the work. After reading Trilling, I am struggling with a harder question: Are my writings a form of performed honesty?
Can public self-examination become another costume?
All this have forced me to reframe my hypothesis about originality -
An original idea, in the end, is the work of a mind sincere enough to stay obsessed—and authentic enough not to abandon its own questions when no one was watching.