Authenticity has become a must-have quality in the business world, up there with diversity and sustainability. Advertisers feature “real people” rather than models. Gourmands forsake Taco Bell for taco trucks. Ambitious corporate types attend courses on how to be an authentic leader. As for us worker bees, we are constantly being urged to bring our authentic selves to work, as if work is a primal-scream therapy session rather than an exchange of cash for labor.
In her thought-provoking and beautifully written new book “Authenticity: Reclaiming Reality in a Counterfeit Culture” Alice Sherwood, a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Policy Institute at King’s College London, argues that authenticity is so fashionable precisely because its opposite, inauthenticity, is so ubiquitous. We live in a world of fakes and frauds, knock-offs and con tricks. About 10% of us have handled counterfeit goods — there are more counterfeits on the market than the genuine article — and about the same proportion of us fall victim to a fraud, scam or con every year.
The problem with authenticity starts with the word’s multiple meanings. The most obvious meaning of “authentic” is “genuine”: An authentic Michelangelo is one that was painted by the master rather than a forger or even a pupil. A second meaning is “natural”: An authentic fruit juice is made with the juice of fruits rather than sugar and water. “Genuine” and “natural” also feed into something fuzzier: Discerning holiday makers want to experience the authentic Mexico rather than the one that is packaged for the mass tourist market. Here authentic can mean anything from hidden to old and unspoiled.
