To C.M. – a reminder.
We live in an age of specialization in which the counsel of professionals is sought for everything from parenting and relationship advice to matters of health and well-being to questions of public policy, finances, education, and even personal development. And while the proliferation of apparent experts raises interesting questions about our desire for authority figures to whom we can defer when challenges arise, it has been accompanied by an equally fascinating increase in skepticism regarding the reliability of the very persons and institutions upon whom we have come to rely.
On the one hand, it would seem, we are desperate to believe that there are people out there who know what they are doing. On the other, we refuse to believe it. What accounts for the dissonance?
I was reflecting upon this very question while rereading the Confessions of St. Augustine last fall. For readers unacquainted with the great works of Late Antiquity, the Confessions is a sort of intellectual autobiography written 1500 years ago by a man who, as a Catholic bishop, was an eminent authority in his day and has exerted an enormous influence over Western thought ever since. In it, Augustine examines his life from his earliest infancy to the point of his long-delayed conversion at the age of 31.
One of the things that struck me upon this reading was the way in which Augustine likens the aspirations of adulthood to the games of youth. Quoting Seneca—“the amusement of adults is called business”—Augustine draws our attention to how closely the “serious work” of grownups resembles the frivolity of children.
Kids, of course, take their games very seriously and become profoundly upset whenever someone dares to dismiss them. Interrupt a boyish skirmish over accusations of cheating at your own peril. And God forbid you offer the insight—not merely unhelpful but downright offensive—that “it’s only a game.” It would be better if a millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the ocean. (Not that I’m writing from experience with my children!)
For Augustine—who likely had Plotinus in mind as well: “All human concerns are children’s games”—the preposterous pretense with which we carry ourselves, the demand that we be taken seriously, that we be listened to and respected, is itself an indication that we are only playacting. Deep down, we know that we don’t know—that we’re not the authorities we present ourselves to be. Rather, we put on a show for one another and in so doing hope to convince ourselves of the merit of our preoccupations.
The problem, of course, is that the pretense doesn’t work. Not really. For, so long as we refuse to admit that we are only acting, only playing a game, we deny ourselves the possibility of playing it well. Instead, we harbor a secret presentiment that we can’t really be trusted and that, soon enough, everyone is going to find out. We fixate on our shortcomings, our inability to align ourselves with the parts we are attempting to inhabit. We convince ourselves that we will never live up to the ideal, forgetting that the ideal is a fiction meant to be played at. We succumb, that is, to our imposter syndrome and undermine our ability to believably play our parts.
This is the cause of the crisis of authority gestured at above: Knowing that we can’t trust ourselves, we seek out authority figures to whom we can turn in times of need. But knowing that we can’t trust ourselves makes us wary of trusting others. If I don’t really know what I’m doing and am only pretending, we seem to think, how can I be sure that you are not doing the same? How can I know that you are not also an imposter, hellbent on deceiving me? Thus skepticism creeps in and undermines our confidence in one another.
How are we to untangle this Gordian knot?
For existential thinkers like Sartre and Camus, the only way to become a thing is to pretend your way into it. You will never be what you aspire to be if you don’t act like you already are. I could quote extensively from Sartre’s Being and Nothingness at this point, but perhaps it would be better to simply give an example: Say I wanted to become a world-class author. Say my one goal in life was to write great books. How ought I to set about doing it when I know, deep down, that I am not a great author and have produced no such books?
I must start, Sartre would say, by playing the part. I must treat myself as if I am an author if I ever want to become one. I must set aside time each day to work on my novel. I must comport myself as authors comport themselves, read the things authors read, write in ways that authors write, talk about what authors talk about, find interest in what authors find interesting.
Imposter Syndrome Essential Reads
All the while, I will likely be aware that I am only an imposter, pretending to be that which I am not. No matter. If I can admit this without allowing it to prevent me from playing my part, I will play it all the better and will soon discover that every author—all those I aspire to be like—is also playing a part. None of us is the thing itself. There is no Platonic ideal of what an author is supposed to be. Rather, each of us—and now I can include myself in their company—is only trying to perfect the art of being an author by playing the game of authorship and playing it well.
The same can be said of all human endeavors. Each of us is only ever an imposter. The trick, however, is to impersonate well, to play your part with such intensity and such mastery that you become the very thing you are pretending to be.
