In authenticity, validation happens through “recognition”—a concept especially elaborated by Hegel, one of the major philosophers of the age of authenticity.

Recognition is “inter-subjective”—it also requires a present peer. But not just anyone—you need another authentic individual to recognize your own authenticity. In authenticity you need an authentic soul mate instead of a sincere “role mate”. You need someone who is as special as you so that he or she in turn can truly recognize how special you are. In both sincerity and authenticity, you rely on present peers to validate your identity: you need to be seen by them.

These present peers, the role mates or soul mates, look at one another directly: They related to one another in the mode of first-order observation. In profilicity, a decisive switch happens. You need to be validated by your peers as well—but, curiously, by peers who are not present.

You need to be validated by a general peer.

Instead of simply being seen by present peers, in profilicity, you are seen as being seen. Think again of the celebrity as an archetype of this identity technology: You cannot relate to celebrities in first-order observation, only in second-order observation, you never see them directly; you see them as being seen.

In profilicity, you adopt the “celebrity mode” for yourself. You not only look at others but show yourself in this mode. You curate an image of yourself as if you were seen as being seen by a general peer. You see yourself as being seen.

Ethnography is a branch of anthropology and the systematic study of individual cultures. Ethnography explores cultural phenomena from the point of view of the subject of the study. Ethnography is also a type of social research that involves examining the behavior of the participants in a given social situation and understanding the group members' own interpretation of such behavior.

It is no accident that the Age of Reason was coexistent with the growth of a print culture, first in Europe and then in America. The spread of typography kindled the hope that the world and its manifold mysteries could at least be comprehended, predicted, controlled. It is in the eighteenth century that science—the preeminent example of the analytic management of knowledge—begins its refashioning of the world. It is in the eighteenth century that capitalism is demonstrated to be a rational and liberal system of economic life, that religious superstition comes under furious attack, that the divine right of kings is shown to be a mere prejudice, that the idea of continuous progress takes hold, and that the necessity of universal literacy through education becomes apparent.

Authors are not always trustworthy. They lie, they become confused, they over-generalize, they abuse logic and, sometimes, common sense. The reader must come armed, in a serious state of intellectual readiness.

Harvard, of course, was established early—in 1636—for the purpose of providing learned ministers to the Congregational Church. And, sixty-five years later, when Congregationalists quarreled among themselves over doctrine, Yale College was founded to correct the lax influences of Harvard (and, to this day, claims it has the same burden).

It is serious because meaning demands to be understood.

Whenever language is the principal medium of communication—especially language controlled by the rigors of print—an idea, a fact, a claim is the inevitable result. The idea may be banal, the fact irrelevant, the claim false, but there is no escape from meaning when language is the instrument guiding one’s thought.

[...] If a sentence refuses to issue forth a fact, a request, a question, an assertion, an explanation, it is nonsense, a mere grammatical shell. As a consequence a language-centered discourse such as was characteristic of eighteenth---and nineteenth---century America tends to be both content-laden and serious, all the more so when it takes its form from print.

To accomplish dissolving the true from the false, and rigorously eliminating the content of the printed text, one must achieve a certain distance from the words themselves, which is, in fact, encouraged by the isolated and impersonal text.

To engage the written word means to follow a line of thought, which requires considerable powers of classifying, inference-making and reasoning.