The Dark Side of Fake It Till You Make It
In one of his rambling, semi-coherent lectures—“The Superego and the Act” (August 1999)—Slavoj Žižek draws a fascinating distinction between good old-fashioned authoritarian parenting and modern permissive totalitarian parenting: “Let’s say that you are a small child and one Sunday afternoon you have to do the boring duty of visiting your old senile grandmother. If you have a good old–fashioned authoritarian father, what will he tell you? ‘I don’t care how you feel, just go there and behave properly. Do your duty.’ A modern permissive totalitarian father will tell you something else: ‘You know how much your grandmother would love to see you. But do go and visit her only if you really want to.’ Now every idiot knows the catch. Beneath the appearance of this free choice there is an even more oppressive order. You seem to have a choice, but there is no choice, because the order is not only you must visit your grandmother, you must also enjoy it. If you don’t believe me, just try to say ‘I have a choice, I will not do it.’ I promise your father will say ‘What did your grandmother ever do to you? Don’t you know how she loves you? How could you do this to her?’”
Unlike the good old-fashioned traditional authoritarian order, the modern permissive totalitarian order “does not only tell you ‘Do your duty, I don’t care if you like it or not.’ It tells you not only ‘You must obey my orders and do your duty’ but also ‘You must do it with pleasure. You must enjoy it.’ It is not enough for the subjects to obey their leader, they must actively love him.”
The good old-fashioned traditional authoritarian insists that you obey him, regardless of whether or not you feel like doing so. He’s not interested in changing hearts and minds. Truth be told, he really doesn’t care about what’s going on in your head, nor does he care about your preferences and intentions. He cares only about what you do and what you don’t do. “Be there at your grandmother’s house on Sunday afternoon at 3:00 p.m sharp, young lady, or else!”
This can be quite oppressive. But at least you retain your inner freedom. You don’t have to like it, and more often than not, you don’t even have to pretend to like it. You just have to do what you’re told. By contrast, the modern permissive totalitarian insists, like a good Kantian, that doing the right thing isn’t enough; you have to actually want to do the right thing. Indeed, you have to actually enjoy doing the right thing. This is far more oppressive.
If the good old-fashioned traditional authoritarian wants to control your body, the modern permissive totalitarian wants your soul. You can’t just lay back and do your duty like Lady Hillingdon: “When I hear his steps outside my door I lie down on my bed, close my eyes, open my legs, and think of England.” You have to want it. You have to enjoy it. And if you’re not quite there yet, you’d better be ready to pretend you are. Make the right noises, feign enthusiasm, and act like you’re having a great time—maybe even fake an orgasm.
Welcome to the dark side of “fake it till you make it”. In the mouth of a modern permissive totalitarian, “fake it till you make it” usually means, in practice, “fake it till I believe you”. In other words, become a really good actor. If you can convince me, perhaps you can convince yourself; and if you can’t, well, it’s all the same to me, so long as you put on a good show.
This is “the problem of the actor” that Nietzsche frets about at length in section 361 of The Gay Science (1887). It’s also the question that hovers—like a sword of Damocles—above Kurt Vonnegut’s Mother Night (1962). It’s the problem of the mendacious man who lies about what he wants so often, and with such great conviction, that he no longer knows who he is or what he wants from life. The mendacious man is an easily manipulated man, and these days, that makes him everybody’s problem.
—John Faithful Hamer
