Category: authenticity

Since my retirement in 2021, I have spent considerable time “theorizing” the concept of authenticity. I would call it a preoccupation. I am “after” authenticity. What does (or could or should) the word even mean?

Per my training in writing communication theory, to say I am theorizing a concept means not merely thinking about or even meditating on the concept – that’s an earlier and sometimes ongoing phase of its own: cogitation.

When I say “theorizing,” I mean stringing together lots of notes (usually handwritten into a notebook) and including any number of diagrams and visual models to help organize the notes toward specific conclusions. Picture lots of section-connecting arrows and short-hand references to other pages, and here and there large hand-drawn stars to indicate extra importance of a near-by chunk of scribbles. That’s my “theory notebook.” Someday it may well fetch “Up-Wordz” of 30 or 40 bucks on e-bay. (Heirs, take note. Don’t just pitch that notebook along with everything else.)

So that’s where I do most of my “theorizing” – and usually to a conclusion or at least to a nifty discovery or two *toward* a hoped-for conclusion.

In the case of “authenticity,” I have definitely made some headway, particularly at the confluence of my obsession with defining/understanding authenticity and my other language-based preoccupation, the one that has led to my system of “activated writing.” Where “authenticity” meets “activated verbs” the light comes on for me.

So, in this blog category, I will explain what I have so far figured out about authenticity and how YOU can both develop and portray it in your writing (and speaking!).