If you accept Rene Girard's mimetic theory, then _all_ human desire is fundamentally mimetic. We all learn to want what others want. If this is true, then is there any authentic you at all?

Sidenote: An interesting less spoken about part is Rene's idea of the scapegoat. Any good mimetic desire needs a scapegoat for when competition and rivalry ultimately occur as a byproduct of many people wanting the same thing. Is the LLM the scapegoat in this new equation? This article certainly blames it.

Authenticity as a notion is a robust Western cultural more that I find confusing. The best parse I can get on it is this: developing an awareness and possibly a narrative around ways you behave with a subconscious expectation of social affirmation. Developing that awareness can certainly feel like a liberation of self-determination.

That can, also, undoubtedly be a powerful tool in overcoming cultural brainwashing of sorts, but I think the knife cuts both ways. The "authentic self" term makes it sound ontologically real and suggests that there is merit in searching for "finding oneself" when no ther motivating need exists. That road leads to pathological definition writing, IMHO.

Sure, learning changes you. Some of that learning is deliberate and some is unconscious, and you are what you learn. I don't think it means you should be afraid to learn new things, but you might want to pay attention to what you spend your time learning.

The answer is to think back to the kid you used to be, but now the kids are formed differently than before. The new kids have computers and YouTube, they already are participating in the misma of technology, they don't have the old memories of the before computer times to fall back into.

We’re constantly becoming a different version of ourselves