Imitation: When the fake becomes truth and the truth becomes fake

Source: Kierkegaard on the crowd: When individuals become faceless imitations

"The crowd is the lie... The crowd is the untruth.

Even if each and every individual, in and of himself, holds the truth – the moment they gather together into a crowd, the untruth is immediately present. For the crowd is an abstraction... The 'crowd' is the concept through which the individual prevents himself from taking responsibility and expressing remorse... The crowd is composed of individuals who have become faceless imitations."

(Søren Kierkegaard, The Point of View for My Work as an Author, 1859)

Explanation: The existentialism of solitude: Why truth requires being alone

Kierkegaard, the father of existentialism, argues that when a person joins the crowd, they lose their authentic existence. The crowd operates by force of blind imitation and the fear of personal decision-making. "No one would have dared spit on Jesus alone, but as part of a crowd—everyone spat." Social imitation is the refuge of the moral coward. Truth demands solitude.

Perspective: Banality in the guise of authenticity: The comfortable fake vs. the piercing truth

We live in an age of banality in the guise of authenticity. Everyone gets "unique" tattoos that look exactly the same. Everyone "thinks outside the box" in precisely the same way. Plato argued that art is an "imitation of an imitation" and therefore a lie (the Form, the realization of the Form in reality, and art imitating that reality), but our society is an imitation of an imitation of an imitation. We prefer the comfortable fake over the piercing truth. That is why we worship frauds (like the "Tinder Swindler," who got his own Netflix special), yet at the same time they are the only ones exposing the lie of the system.

Going Deeper: The forger who became a hero: The story of Han van Meegeren and his triumph over the experts

During World War II, the Dutch painter Han van Meegeren sold paintings that had ostensibly been looted from Jews. Göring, one of the top Nazi leaders, who had purchased works from van Meegeren, gave him up to the Allies after being captured. When van Meegeren was arrested and charged with treason (selling a national treasure to the Nazis), he confessed: "I am not a traitor, I am a forger! I painted it myself!" To prove it, he painted another "Vermeer" under the watchful eyes of court-appointed supervisors. He was acquitted of treason and became a national hero for having preserved authentic Dutch masterpieces and duped the Nazis. The imitation was so good that the experts could never prove the works were forgeries, particularly the Vermeers. Van Meegeren realized that people wanted the name "Vermeer," not the art. The imitation defeated the experts and the buyers, who simply wanted to own a Vermeer—much like buying a knockoff Prada bag.

Culture: The Pygmalion effect: When imitation becomes authentic — fake it till you make it

In Bernard Shaw's famous play Pygmalion, Professor Higgins wagers with a friend that he can turn Eliza, a humble flower girl, into a high-society lady through imitation and drill, even while deep down she remains as simple as ever. Higgins wins the bet when Eliza successfully passes as a duchess at an embassy ball.

The story is based on the myth recorded by Ovid, the first-century Roman poet, in which Pygmalion kisses a statue of a woman and turns her into flesh and blood, making her his wife. In the original play, Bernard Shaw chooses to part Higgins—who has fallen for Eliza—from the flower girl, but in the musical version, retitled My Fair Lady, there was a happy ending: Higgins marries the lovely Eliza.

Out of this story emerged the concept of the "Pygmalion effect"—imitation that becomes internal and authentic. Or as they put it in English:

'Fake it till you make it'.