To find out how we define authenticity i think it helps to first define what it is not, and what it is pushing back on.

I think what people in my orbit are feeling is an unease about great technological advancements that create concerns of furthering wealth consolidation, the lowering of expectations of the livelihood of people who are not winning the capatilist game, the investor class. The bedrock of the worry is not about a lack of idealistic virtues in todays western inhabitants, its that it doesn't look like they are going to be financially secure by any metric.

In a world where we are fed more disturbing information on an hourly basis than most people got in a week even 50 years ago is an undeniable underpinning of a desire to life one's life in a more "authentic" way. A "re-embracing of ancient wisdom" seems to be where we are looking when things seem like they're going in the wrong direction.

I think I’m living an authentic life. I wasn’t before. I wasn't doing the thing I wanted to do. I wasn’t living the life I wanted for myself. 

What does authenticity mean to me? It means being happy with yourself. You can only live an authentic life when you stop living your life in order to fulfill other people’s expectations. Your friends, family, what you think society wants. There’s nothing wrong with doing that btw. It’s good to know what’s expected, and it’s completely understandable to try to operate in a way that’s in accordance with the people you love and seek validation from. But at a certain point you have to find what’s right for yourself. It takes knowing what others expect of you in order to find out to what degree you want to deviate from that. You try something on for size and see if it fits. Know what you’re deviating from, know what you're pushing up against.