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Could I have Madeoff by Faking Authenticity?

December 29, 2008 by serge the concierge

In a year where banks showed that what once looked like solid profits was in many cases a mirage, could I have madeoff by faking authenticity.

OK these two words side by side sound like strange bedfellows.

I got started on the topic after reading the Outside Edge column If you can fake it, you will make it by Jonathan Guthrie (FT, December 28).

He notes:

 "At one executive leadership seminar I attended recently, the trainer explained that authenticity was the main attribute delegates needed to radiate, including “different types of authenticity for different audiences”. This means being a technocrat in the boardroom, a pragmatist among middle managers and an Average Joe on the shop floor."

This led me in turn to Fake Authenticity: An Introduction by Joshua Glenn for Real? Fake 'Hermenaut' magazine.

You have to give him kudos for managing to quote Jean-Paul Sartre and an SUV ad in the same paragraph.

He who might not be Joshua Glenn also wonders:

"Will there never be an end to the spectacle of (white, middle-class) people draping themselves in exotic fabrics, bribing sherpas to haul them up mountains, spending $15 for turkey-burgers in urban hunting lodges, ooh-ing and ahh-ing over macaroni paintings by schizophrenics, throwing out perfectly good old kitchen tables for new tables into which fist-sized holes have been carefully drilled."

Can the next big career coach-reinvention guru become successful by promising that nothing she/he says is true?

Irony, existentialism and city slickers on the menu for Monday Work Etiquette # 70

Previously: Forced to Take a Holiday Break (as in Silicon Valley) How do you take it?

Posted on December 29, 2008 in Books, Consumer Products, Health, Personal Organizer, Restaurants, Serge the Concierge, To Do Lists, Travel, Weblogs, Wine | | Comments (0)

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