Authentic Orange

Submitted By: Aubrey Hills.

I don’t think there is a way to authentically “Be Orange.” Bad faith is, as we discussed in lecture, lying to yourself or someone else about something. Examples of acting in bad faith would be denying transcendence or facticity (Lecture, 5/26/15). If you think about it, trying to fit students into a box of “Being Orange” or “Being a Beaver” is denying both transcendence and facticity. In my opinion, trying to authentically “Be Orange” is a form of bad faith.

The idea that one can authentically “Be Orange” is denying transcendence. Transcendence is the idea of one’s existence beyond the normal or physical level (Lecture, 5/26/15).  If I were to say that I am currently living “Authentically Orange” I would be lying to myself because I only joined an institution that others has joined before me and other will join after me. Nothing is personal or special about going to a higher level of education in school at this particular institution.

The idea that one can authentically “Be Orange” also denies facticity. By trying to authentically “Be Orange” I am denying that I am not technically affiliated with the institution of OSU. Yes I do pay tuition here and I am a student with finals and summer classes but I just as easily could have been a student at the University of Oregon, paying tuition there and writing an essay on what it means to “Bleed Yellow and Green.” By saying that I live authentically “Orange” I am lying to myself about who I am without an outside institution that educates me and takes my money.

Simone de Beauvoir says in The Ethics of Ambiguity that authenticity is man having the power to lay down “the foundations of his own existence” (Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, conclusion). Just from this I already see flaws in the idea that there is a way to authentically “Be Orange”. For one, everyone that goes to OSU all the way back to the first class of students obviously was not involved in the founding of the university, therefor they did not lay the foundation of his or her existence within the schooling setting.

An obstacle to becoming an individual in the Orange community of Oregon State University can be explained using the idea that Nietzsche had about herds that we talked about in lecture. If Oregon State University is thought of as a single community as it generally is then everyone involved in the community is just part of the herd. As discussed in lecture, there is no way to become an individual while in a herd unless one escapes the herd and becomes a true individual on his or her own (Lecture, 5/28/15). If a student of faculty member at OSU wants to be authentic in his or her identity, he or she has to acquire the conviction to break free of the herd that is the university institution and find a distinct identity without the comfort and support that is always constant in the university environment. The ability to break free from the herd, or in Kierkegaard’s view, the crowd, is diminished and weakened because the crowd makes the individual irresponsible and unrepentant (Lecture, 5/5/15). So the deeper one is enveloped into the crowd the harder it is for one to break free and find what makes them authentic to themselves. Basically stated, the more one tries to authentically “Be Orange”, the harder it will become for one to be authentic to themselves. That is why authentically “Being Orange” is not possible.