Real life.

In the movie Seconds, directed by John Frankenheimer, a world-weary businessman gets an offer that seems to be a chance of getting a new life and a new identity: He receives a telephone call from a friend he thought was dead. The friend tells him that instead he has got a new and happy life, and he gives the businessman an address to which the businessman finds his way. From this he is led to The Company, which persuades and not least threatens him to get a new body and life. The business man is an amateur painter, and the idea is that he shall be a professional artist in his new life. The very idea seems unbelievable or “fishy”. Indeed, it also proves to be so, for the artist is led to a place where there are only other new lives (apart from assistants or guards from the company). Can the businessman really have become a professional artist, or shall all of them just tacitly pretend to believe each other?

Certainly only one of the messages of the movie lies hidden here. However, it made me think that we can imagine the possibility of subject areas that in themselves were excellent but in which people would be able to do well, effortless and successful; and unless they instead want to find an interesting and important part of the subject area, this would lead to an unauthentic life. Here people would be able to create an image of themselves and get approval without yielding anything especially demanding. By and large they would be able to have a work that looks impressive, but which did not demand new thinking. As to profundity it would only be an appearance.

The members of such circles could give each other recognition without the recipients having promoted science, even though this ought to be a prerequisite. In former times, influential groups in society could be criticized for keeping their knowledge for themselves... However, in these circles, the members conversely protect themselves against insight, which they of course may not be conscious about, if they are not able to understand it. On the contrary, they can have a number of idiosyncrasies and be engaged in persistently protecting their ideas against what these reactions are directed against. These protecting reactions in form of article and treatises are regarded as meritorious among their associates, also if there in fact should be evident arguments against them because they contain basic argumentation errors.

We can imagine that other persons in this world are satisfied with the first ideas they find and like and that for that reason they find just what they like. Some may even admit that they think that the case can easily be about that. These persons do not exactly meet criticism from their associates either, but accept.

In this society such persons would live an unauthentic life just as the transferred members of the above-mentioned society in Seconds. The same naturally applies to members of religious communities. Their statements have only meaning inside a closed system, just as in role-playing or ludo.

The opposite of this consists in maintaining results even though one does not like them oneself... This is the scientific attitude.

The remarkable thing is that despite of the fact that persons in this imagined world would hardly be satisfied with their life and achievement, apparently persons in the real world are comfortable with a similar unauthentic life.