I've been reading Michael Ignatieff's CBC Massey Lecture The Rights Revolution and I had to laugh a little when I came across this section regarding authenticity:
The central idea I absorbed then---chiefly, if not exclusively, from feminism---was that each of us has a right to choose the life we lead and that we must fight to exercise this right against all comers. This could be called the ideal of authenticity. In the name of this ideal, we all went off to find ourselves. This meant getting away from family, career, society, and going in search of the self's authentic impulses. Sometimes the results were laughable: the 1960s cult of authenticity produced dull conformity in no time. We all went in search of ourselves and ended up in graduate school.
Sounds about right! Ah well, at least grad school is more productive than bumming around a ski resort for two years.
Beside that point, The Rights Revolution is a really excellent read about rights culture, civic and ethnic nationalism, and the balance between individual and collective rights in Canada. Ignatieff frames Canada as three distinct founding nations that coexist with a diverse and prominent immigrant population, and when you look at the country through that lens, it's pretty amazing that it still exists in one piece. It's even more amazing that the constitutional and legal framework has managed to satisfy---more or less---all of these different interests. There is still more to be done and although there have been bumps along the way and some very dark chapters, things could be much worse. Just read Ignatieff's Blood and Belonging.
