living Authentically

A common definition of "authenticity" in psychology refers to the attempt to live one's life according to the needs of one's inner being, rather than the demands of society or one's early conditioning.

One of the things I really enjoy about animals in the wild is just how authentic they are. They have no religion or ideology. No superficial trends they need to follow to be socially accepted. They are free to live their lives according to their inner instincts. They live the way life bred them to live and not some superficial role society told them to fill.

This desire to be authentic was also described by philosopher/naturalist Henry Thoreau when he said “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

Being authentic in this sense requires one to study what our inner being is with as little ideological/religious preconceptions as possible. The sciences of evolutionary psychology, positive psychology and human ethology can be tools of self discovery. It doesn't necessarily require one to abandon the benefits of society as Thoreau did. 

But why live authentically? I think we should strive to live authentically, because it leads to a more purposeful meaningful existence. The science of positive psychology has identified three modes of living that provide happiness which are as follows.

The pleasurable life, the pleasure seeking, sensation seeking  orientated life which is the most common and requires the least self knowledge. This mode also is the most fleeting and superficial and is the most vulnerable to external changes to your situation. It is also the most unsustainable and often comes at the expense of the well being of the next generation and the environment. This is the life consumerism and popular politics promises us.

The good life, the life of engagement refers to involvement in activities that draws and builds upon one's interests. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi explains true engagement as flow, a feeling of intensity that leads to a sense of ecstasy and clarity.The task being done needs to call upon higher skill and be a bit difficult and challenging yet still possible. Engagement involves passion for and concentration on the task at hand and is assessed subjectively as to whether the person engaged was completely absorbed, losing self-consciousness. This is a more fulfilling life than the pleasurable life. It is not as vulnerable to external changes and depending on the tasks one chooses to be engaged in can be unsustainable or sustainable.

The meaningful life, is also known as purpose, and prompts the question of "Why?" Discovering and figuring out a clear "why" puts everything into context from work to relationships to other parts of life. Finding meaning is learning that there is something greater than you. Despite potential challenges, working with meaning drives people to continue striving for a desirable goal. It questions how individuals derive a positive sense of well-being, belonging, meaning, and purpose from being part of and contributing back to something larger and more permanent than themselves. This can be the most fulfilling, sustainable and least vulnerable to external changes than the other two modes especially when the more sustainable aspects of the other two modes are incorporated.

Essential to the accurate discovery of your inner being will require knowledge of some of the essential facts of life the natural world has to teach us thus far. Such as:

• We owe our existence to the fact that every single one of our ancestors had at least one child before they died.
• We share a common ancestry with all living life forms.
• We are just one of many manifestations of life that has occurred over a trillion generations.
• We enjoy no special diplomatic immunity from the implacable laws of nature, that we are constructed entirely of of natural materials.
• Life is the drawing of energy from your surrounding to make copies of your particular pattern of natural materials.
• You are not a singular thing you are a multitude a vast cellular community of trillions of cells working together and your experience of the "self" is a product of 100 billion neurons working together.
•  We are animals which means we feed on other forms of life and transform their stored energy into our own form and behavior. 
• We are mammals and mammals specialize in two characteristics: adaptability and caring for dependent young. Mammals are the most adaptable vertebrates and human beings are the most adaptable mammals.
• We are primates and primates carry this mammalian specialty to a greater extreme by reproducing one very dependent child at a time and educating it to a greater degree than other mammals.
• Homo Sapiens specialize in sapience. Which is the acquisition and application of knowledge to produce innovations that increase our contributions to the next generation.
• We like all life forms must obey the law of life, or face biological non existence.

The meaningful life is likely the most fulling mode of life because human emotions find their cause in evolution and offers ways by which we can use this for our advantage.

More specifically, mammals are equipped with a nerve system that enables them to distinguish not only between pleasant and unpleasant sensations, but positive and negative experiences in general. While the biological term fitness refers to the capacity to create offspring, happiness (or sensation that follows increases to our survivability) is, at least in a biological perspective, a question of the qualities of the experiences our nervous system offers us.

The meaning of meaning the purpose of purpose the evolution of the psychological strength of the drive towards a meaningful mode of life exists because those of our ancestors who pursued with a spiritual zeal meaningful contributions were the most in sync with the law of life and passed this trait onto us. It is the legacy of our ancestors, to be passed to our descendants.

Your inner being was bred by nature to perpetuate itself into the future generations to live for any other purpose would be out of sync with your origins and ancestry and constitutes a distraction which can only result in a less than optimal life and the eventual end to the legacy of your ancestors.

Being authentic in part means internalizing your inner being to live a generative and meaningful life which in Erik Erikson’s Stages of Psychosocial Development, described generativity as a struggle against stagnation that ascends during adulthood. Generativity in the psychosocial sense refers to the concern for establishing and guiding the next generation and is said to stem from living one's life according to the needs of one's inner being which produces a sense of optimism about humanity.

The alternative is stagnation which refers to the failure to live authentically and find a way to contribute to the next generation. These individuals may feel disconnected or uninvolved with their community and with society as a whole. They may become uncomfortable with the way their life is progressing, and they're usually regretful about the decisions that they have made in the past and feel a sense of uselessness. They experience an all-encompassing form of existential anxiety, due to their failure to live a meaningful life and live authentically which as meant it means in sync with their inner being.