The mantra in our society is, fake it until you make it. Popular culture tells us a lot of lies. It says I am happy if I own the right stuff or because of my appearance. It tells me what is important is my socioeconomic status. But none of this is true.
“Don’t fake it till you make it. Be real, be transparent, be authentic, and be yourself.” — Darren Hardy
“If you fake it till you make it, then what you make will be fake.” — Robin Wheeler
What kind of person are you creating? What kind of happiness are you cultivating? When you hear the statement, don’t be a fake person. What does it really mean?
The Downside Of Fake Happiness
Our culture wants us to be counterfeit copies. The idea is to present the impression that we are happy achieving the goals the culture sets for us. It’s a consumer-driven philosophy that creates a need or problem and then offers the solution for an attractive price.
Advertising is the latest version of an ancient marketing tool copied from organized religion. It is a strategy that motivates people to buy everything from soap to ideologies. So it leads to the conclusion that modern culture is a counterfeit crafted to sell us things we don’t need.
Be mindful of where you focus your energy. Your intent needs to be authentic. You won’t find fulfillment if you pretend you are something you are not. You will create empty and counterfeit returns if your intent is not authentic and truthful. So don’t follow the crowd. So, don’t be a fake person.
Being authentic in a plastic world gives you an advantage. That way, the things you do and create will be original and novel when you are genuine and authentic in your thinking and intent. I
There is a disadvantage to being authentic. You will stick with the crowd. The crowd doesn’t like people who don’t want to fit in. It doesn’t like individuality.
Despite the pushback from the culture, more and more people are finding their way back to a more authentic form of spirituality. That’s because religion and authentic faith are two different things.
Some belief systems provide a pathway to genuine faith. For example, most systems regarded as paganism have the least barriers to freethinking, providing a way to create an authentic spiritual path. They often provide tools to help you develop your unique path. With these, you create your authentic faith.
Western religion doesn’t help. It is all about pretending and make-believe in mythology. It has no real processes for self-development. All it does is make people customers by having them believe in fairy tales. Don’t be a fake person and pretend your way through life.
By Pretending, You Will Create Unhappiness
When you build anything on a false foundation, it becomes part of the falsehood. It is hard to avoid false information sources in our culture. We have everything from false news to fake personalities. We are immersed in a wave of falseness, so we cannot see the origins of the contamination. The basis of popular culture is pretending.
“All my friends thought I was a very happy human being. Because that’s how I acted like a really happy human being. But all that pretending made me tired. If I acted the way I felt, then I doubt my friends would have really hung out with me. So the pretending wasn’t all bad. The pretending made me less lonely. But in another was, it made me more lonely because I felt like a fraud. I’ve always felt like a fake human being.” ― Benjamin Alire Saenz,
Religion Teaches Us To Pretend
Western Organized Religion of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (1) perfected brainwashing processes eons ago. These systems are the result of a major rebranding effort. They are a modern form of the Assyrian, Egyptian, Persian, and Babylonian mystery religions. These are the wealthiest religions on the planet that use systems of group and self-hypnosis to gain and maintain customers.
These religions teach us to pretend about several things. They teach us to pretend there’s a heaven. They teach us we need to belong to their institutions to get to heaven. We need to pretend that an imaginary being chooses us. Most of all, we need to subsidize them. Although God created the Universe, he still needs our money. We’ll say it again, don’t be a fake person to be a part of the mass hallucination.
They use this to justify acts of violence and discrimination and have a clear conscience about it. They forgive themselves regardless of the greed and evil they inflict on others and the planet. Their imaginary friends may even reward them if we are especially cruel to those who disagree with their brand of beliefs. Ask yourself, would someone who uses common sense believe this? Would an authentic person need to pretend about this to be secure in their life?
“Your religion assumes that people are children and need a boogeyman, so they’ll behave. You want people to believe in God so they’ll obey the law. That’s the only means that occurs to you: a strict secular police force, and the threat of punishment by an all-seeing God for whatever the police overlook. You sell human beings short.” ― Carl Sagan
Don’t be a fake person just to fit in. Following dogma and doctrine cannot satisfy your innate desire to seek spiritual things. If you follow a religion, you will create an addiction. It’s a substitute for a genuine spiritual quest.
Corporate Culture Teaches Us to Pretend
Today everyone learns to pretend they are happy. People learn to project the illusion that they are successful, but by what definition?
Pretending enables us to fit into the crowd. If you ascribe to corporate slavery, you receive the rewards to the extent you provide a greater return on “their” investment. You must fit the mold and become what the corporate culture wants.
If you awaken, you may not want to work 60 to 80 hours weekly to prove your allegiance to a corporation. But be careful not to be too outspoken. You’ll find yourself out of a job and no way to provide for yourself. You’ll find a bad reputation will make you unemployable.
“I’m for the individual as opposed to the corporation. The way it is the individual is the underdog, and with all the things a corporation has going for them, the individual comes out banged on her head. The artist is nothing. It’s really tragic.” ― Marilyn Monroe
Popular Culture Teaches Us to Pretend
Overall, the modern cultural narrative programs us to live inauthentic lives. We fake happiness from an early age. We learn to look, dress and live the illusion of success. The mantra is “fake it, even if we don’t feel like it, and if you don’t make it, keep faking it!” You can buy your way into a happy life. Wrong.
This type of mindset isn’t just optimism. It’s denial. Some resort to drugs to keep up the fake appearances of success and happiness; then, we crash at some point. We have breakdowns. We need rehab. Okay, then it all starts over again. Living in this type of constant denial is harmful to our health and well-being. Don’t fake it. Learn to resist commercialism.
Life expectancy from birth is most often used to measure overall health. The USA ranks 43 out of the top 50 for longevity (2). Let that sink in — the world’s most modern healthcare system with the most food available and only number 43 in longevity? What gets in the way of these resources?
“Only fake happiness comes with the compulsion to flaunt it.” ― Mokokoma Mokhonoana
Flaunting the phony attitude and illusion of success is necessary to distract ourselves from the truth. If we were to face the facts, we would see through commercialism. Shattering this illusion would be terrible for big business because commercialism depends upon our predictable and unsustainable buying habits. It is important because the consumption rate is a critical measurement of commercialism. It does not care if what it is selling is needed, only to sell more and more. Don’t be a fake person and buy all kinds of things you don’t want or need.
The Cost of Fake Happiness
Realize there’s a heavy price for not joining the collective beliefs and values. There’s no room for thinking outside the box. To belong, you must ascribe to the beliefs and values of our cultural folklore.
As we maintain this false persona and drive ourselves into debt, we simultaneously create a plethora of health issues. Trying to cover up unhappiness means we must be untruthful with ourselves. You can’t live this way and expect not for it to have consequences.
“Fake happiness is the worst kind of sadness.” ― Dominic Riccitiello
So, can you be awake and still look like you are faking it with the rest of them? Is it possible to live a double life? Yes, anything is possible. However, the price to pay for joining the cultural narrative is heavy. It will cost you the authentic life you were born to live. The only way to awaken people hoarding and controlling resources is to make it unacceptable. Fake happiness is the worst kind of unhappiness.
Make it a practice to question everything in the cultural narrative. Learn to use your mind to determine fact from fiction. To do this, you must learn to think using common sense and logic, but it’s not surprising that our dominant cultural narrative doesn’t want you to do this. That means you must take some time to study on your own.
We suggest using the full complement of analytical tools. Start with an understanding of logical reasoning. Then add the spiritual axioms to your list of tools; these will help you recognize the common sales ploys used to sell ideologies. Last is the toolbox for spotting logical fallacies. These are the most common tactics used to sell us things that are untrue.
Don’t be a fake person
Don’t be a phony or a pretender. Instead, take the opposite path in life and strive to be genuine and authentic, going against the flow of organized religion and corporate commercialism. In this way, you need not pretend at all. You won’t have to pretend you are happy, and you won’t need to join with others who have imaginary friends.
It’s important to realize you will create yourself every day. If you walk with authenticity, people will notice. Your happiness does not come from buying things or belonging to a group of pretenders. So be true to yourself. Be authentic, don’t be a fake person!
References
(1) Abrahamic Religions.
(2) How does U.S. life expectancy compare to other countries?
