The Great Human Performance

In the ethical challenges of the everyday which we discussed in the previous article, we began to illustrate our minor moral quandaries and how we sometimes do small bad things which we think we can get away with when nobody else is looking: the stolen milk in the staff kitchen, the non-ethical consumption, the virtue signalling and the office stationery pilfering.  In this piece we delve a little deeper into the human psychology of our somewhat schizophrenic approach to morality and ask: how in tune are your private and public selves? Is there nothing between them or do you sometimes wonder who you are and what you stand for? Will the real you please raise your hand?

Imagine yourself as a human walking through life with two competing GPS systems: one mapping the terrain of happiness, the other navigating the treacherous landscape of self-image and identity. Spoiler alert: they don’t always agree on the destination, operate on different satellites and, most of the time, they're speaking different languages entirely.

We are all too often walking contradictions, masterful architects of our own psychological labyrinths. Our lives can be less about living and more about performing to the gallery; a continuous, exhausting one-person show where we are simultaneously the playwright, director, lead actor, and most critical audience member.  And let's be honest, we'd like to give ourselves a standing ovation, if only to prove how great and true the performance really is, but we find it hard to suspend disbelief.

The Philosophical Landscape of Self-Deception

Camus (sorry couldn’t help it) would have found delicious irony in our modern predicament and indeed wrote a brilliantly cynical book on the subject, “The Fall”, after spending years writing a heroically worthy but slightly dull novel in “The Plague”. He recognised that in the grand theatre of the absurd, humans don't just seek happiness, they also perform elaborate psychological gymnastics to validate their own existence. We're not simply living; we're constantly constructing and defending a narrative about who we believe and wish ourselves to be.  Think of it as method acting, but the method is our entire life, and the Oscar for Best Self-Delusion goes to... everyone.

This isn't just a quirk of human nature, it's perhaps our fundamental operating system. We are meaning making and seeking machines, weaving coherent stories out of the chaotic threads of our experiences, with ourselves as the heroes of these stories. Happiness becomes secondary to maintaining the intricate tapestry of our self-perception and identity.

The human capacity for self-delusion is not a bug in our psychological software, it's a feature. We'd rather feel right and in tune with our self-image than feel good, which might explain why argument is humanity's most popular spectator sport.

Camus and the Fallen Self

In "The Fall," Camus presents Jean-Baptiste Clamence, a former Parisian lawyer who becomes a profound case study in human deception and self-validation. Imagine a man so committed to his self-image that he's performing an elaborate one-man show of moral superiority, only to realise he's been playing to an empty theatre.  Clamence's conversation with his unknown listener is a masterclass in psychological self-deconstruction; a man desperately trying to maintain his moral facade while simultaneously dismantling it.

Consider Clamence's journey: a successful lawyer who views himself as a paragon of virtue, until a moment of existential crisis reveals the profound hypocrisy underlying his self-image. He witnesses a woman's suicide when she throws herself into a canal and yet he doesn’t act, shattering his own mythology of moral superiority and leading him into a cynical self-examination of his actions and motives. This moment becomes a metaphor for our collective tendency to construct elaborate narratives that shield us from uncomfortable truths.

Let’s Talk About Fight Club

While Camus offers philosophical insights, Chuck Palahniuk and David Fincher's "Fight Club" provides a raw, visceral and quite literal visual anatomy of our internal identity wars. Consider the unnamed narrator, a man so disconnected from his authentic self that he literally (spoiler alert) conjures an alternate personality to express the rage and rebellion suppressed by his corporate, conformist existence. Tyler Durden becomes more than a character; he's a psychological eruption, the id breaking through the carefully constructed facade of social acceptability. This is not just a narrative about masculinity and consumer culture, but also a profound metaphor for the internal conflict between our performance self and our authentic desire. We're all, to some degree, running our own underground fight clubs in our psyches, creating alter egos, shadow selves that challenge the polished narrative we present to the world. The first rule of our internal fight club? We absolutely do not talk about the massive dissonance between who we are and who we pretend to be. 

The Mechanisms of Self-Validation

Like Clamence, our methods of self-validation are as diverse as they are ingenious.  We craft professional identities that often bear little resemblance to our authentic selves, and not just in our CVs and LinkedIn posts. An executive might despise corporate culture but continues the performance, because like it or not the title, salary and status validate their existence. It's method acting, corporate edition: "I'm not selling my soul, I'm... networking.  And look at the Airmiles. Did you know I have a Gold Card?"

Some of us stay in relationships not because they bring joy, but because they confirm our existing self-narrative. The person who remains in an unhappy relationship might be more committed to proving their loyalty or resilience than to experiencing genuine connection or love.  And after a while may not be able to tell the difference.   If you can achieve that coincidence of transparent identity, happiness and love then I salute you, you have reached a position many of us yearn for. Nurture it well.

Of course, in the digital age self-validation has found its ultimate playground. We curate online personas that are more carefully designed than our actual lives, highlight reels that speak more to our desired self than our authentic experience. Dating sites show that one and only picture where you look a million dollars and can become a catfishing experience at the extreme.  The world becomes an opportunity for a selfie and influencers construct air brushed experiences and images that are there to sell the dream, or the latest can of spring water from the foothills of Canary Wharf. This is now a whole industry that feeds us a plastic AI generated image that has very limited roots in real life, yet is somehow aspirational, or at least designed that way.

The Psychological Economics of Identity

Think of self-validation as a complex economic system. We invest psychological capital in maintaining certain beliefs about ourselves. The returns aren't measured in monetary value but in the currency of perceived meaning and consistency.   This helps us to sleep at night and maintain our fragile egos. We may not even realise we are doing it, until a Clamence-like experience reveals our true nature and the dissonance.

Every time we make a choice that reinforces our self-image, even if it diminishes our immediate happiness, we're essentially making an identity investment. The ROI? A sense of coherence and control, a belief that we are moral, effective, loving etc. A coming together of the self-perception and the reality, even if we sometimes suffer for it.

A Proposal of Authenticity

Perhaps the solution isn't to eliminate self-validation but to transform it. What if we treated our self-image like an experimental art project, something to be explored, questioned, and occasionally laughed at?  Sure, we sometimes surprise ourselves with a reaction that seems out of character or clashes with our self-identity, but so what. Laugh along rather than suffer an existential crisis and humour can be a necessary and authentic response to most things.  Imagine approaching our identity with the playful curiosity of a child, the critical thinking of a philosopher, and the humour of a comedian. We might discover that authenticity is far more interesting than performance and might lead to greater happiness.  And far cheaper than therapy.

The joke, as Camus might agree, is that if we are not careful we're simultaneously the performer and the audience in this tragicomic play of self-validation. We create elaborate narratives, then spend energy believing and defending them.  Happiness becomes a side effect, a curious by-product of our primary mission: proving to ourselves and others that we are who we think we are and who we say we are.  That we are authentic. 

The others should be the easier part, but in fact, the self-deception becomes the easiest, because we sometimes want and need the delusion of the consistency of self-image, identity and action. It reinforces who we think we are and helps us to sleep at night. It’s not “I am happy” or even “I am good” but rather “I am consistent with who I think I am”. Perhaps even love and friendship are part of this, creating reciprocal comfort for both sides through a mutual validation of each other’s projected identity. And you thought it was just hormones….

The Ongoing Performance

In the end, perhaps we're all a little like Clamence, performing our carefully constructed selves, caught between the desire for genuine connection and the fear of being seen for who we truly are and being caught out as frauds. Our lives are a constant negotiation between the self we imagine and the self that moves through the world.  Camus would recognize his character made flesh, and Tyler Durden would demand a fist fight.

But must we remain trapped in this endless performance? Do we resign ourselves to navigating life with two competing SatNavs, one directing us toward happiness, the other toward self-validation, forever recalibrating but never arriving? Or is there another way?

Perhaps the key is not in eliminating self-deception but in acknowledging it, treating our self-image not as a rigid doctrine but as an evolving story. Instead of fighting to maintain a flawless narrative, we might embrace the comedy of our contradictions, finding authenticity not in perfection but in self-awareness.

Ultimately, does it matter that we cast ourselves as the heroes of our own stories? Maybe not, so long as the fiction inspires us to be better, rather than trapping us in the exhausting pursuit of consistency. Better the hero than the villain and maybe the fiction can make us better as we try to live up to it and rise to the challenge of the self-image. Perhaps to self-deceive is to be human, but that is better than to embrace cynicism and nihilism. And love and friendship are surely to be celebrated for the mutual support and validation that they bring. This intimacy and solidarity should ultimately enable us to be who we really are and enjoy the coincidence of projected identity and self; to be comfortable in our own skin. Well, at least once we have got past the blind dates and dodgy dating app photo.

Perhaps self-delusion is human, but so too is the search for meaning, love, and connection. And in the end, if we’re lucky, we might just find that rare moment when our projected identity and our true self align, not as an act, but as something real.

So, here’s to bringing our satellites together, finding a route that isn’t just coherent, but also fulfilling. Perhaps this reflection will help you find your way to join up the competing GPS systems in your head to find a singular and harmonious route to authenticity and happiness. And hopefully, avoiding that low bridge along the way.

In this part of the Moral Universe at least, all maps are welcome.