Authentic Orange

To be an authentic anything, you first have to admit a few things to yourself. The first being that we as humans, are as Sartre explained it ” (Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism) Condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything that he does.” What this means in a nut shell is that we have the unfortunate task of creating everything for ourselves including, but definitely not limited to finding religion and values for yourself. Luckily, we Oregon State students used our freedom to choose this amazing university. Now we have the task of becoming true to our school, otherwise known as being authentic.

Authenticity is one of those terms that could be defined loosely to say what it means to you as an individual and still be correct. What I mean by this is that for me to be an authentic person I would just have to act weird and outgoing all the time. However, this is not what it would be something that an introvert would use to describe how they are as an authentic human being. In order to be an authentic OSU student, one would have to be a committed student, have fun, someone who is involved in the community at Oregon State, be involved in clubs or activities on campus, be a good sport, and above all be someone who is accepting of every person on and off of campus.

Something that is rather difficult in our community of Oregon State is not just following the crowd on fads or the “in” thing. “There is therefore no one who has more contempt for what it is to be human being than those who make it their profession to lead the crowd.” (Kierkegaard, The Crowd is Untruth) There is no other quote that could fit this idea better more multiple reasons. To follow the crowd means that you aren’t necessarily following your heart, therefore you aren’t being your authentic self. Another reason, is that the one who leads the crowd is expecting to others to follow, does this mean this leader doesn’t want others their authentic selves but rather a version of the leaders authentic self. Although there could be some instances in which the follower is authentic following a specific crowd in which they feel is what they truly believe in, yet they don’t feel comfortable as a leader. The greek system is a great example of this, it has a huge involvement here at OSU, and people seem to truly enjoy it, yet only a few are in charge of things in there greek house. Many of these people could be in the greek system because they truly feel like they belong there. In class we learned about how other philosophers described the crowd mentality. Heidegger called it “the they” and Nietzsche called it “the herd”. (lecture, 5/5/15)

To be a committed student here at Oregon State, you will have to stay first and foremost on top of your homework and classes. In order to do this authentically, you should not act in bad faith when doing your work and going to your classes. (Lecture, 6/2/15) We talked about a few examples of this exactly, a student had the dilemma of never doing their homework when they needed to, but rather they procrastinated until the last minute. This is a form of bad faith, in my opinion, of denying facticity. This is also a problem that so many students face on a daily basis. If we could just face that we don’t have forever to get an assignment done, we would be able to get it done as soon as possible and most likely do better on that assignment.

The last thing that I am going to touch on, is how we as Oregon State students need to have fun during our time here. This is up for interpretation in how one will have fun here at OSU. If the philosophers went to school here, this is how they would find fun on campus. Kierkegaard would be to find meaning from God, make “the leap of faith” and most likely join one of the many church groups here on campus (lecture, 4/23/15). Beauvoir would probably join a feminist group she believed that “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.” so she would try to diminish the idea of solid gender roles (lecture, 5/7/15). Now it is up to you to decide how you will have fun and be authentic to OSU.