Today we're pleased to share with you an audio essay written and read by Brett McCracken

entitled Unpacking You Do You.

Brett is the author of The Wisdom Pyramid, Feeding Your Soul in a Post-Truth world from Crossway.

Unpacking You Do You, Written and Read by Brett McCracken.

The Age of Authenticity

The slang phrase, you do you, may seem innocuous enough.

Picture a large group of 20-something sharing a dinner at a pizza restaurant, trying to

decide whether to place one order of pizzas to share or let each individual order separately.

Even if a quorum lands on a couple of pizzas that sound good to everyone, invariably a dissenter

or two will protest, preferring something else on the menu. Rather than reason together

to achieve full consensus, a possibly arduous, painfully long process, they're hungry. They simply

release the dissenter to order separately. Sue yourself, man, you do you. We've all been there,

whether in placing dinner orders or deciding how to spend free time on a family vacation.

Consensus is hard, especially in an individualistic culture where,

Have It Your Way, consumerism is the air we breathe.

Sometimes it's just easier to say, you do you, I'll do me, and let each person go their separate way, like the modern

family whose every member sits at the dinner table glued to their own personal device.

They're alone together, sharing the same space, but living in different worlds.

Beyond these situational contexts, however, you do you has taken on a bigger cultural meaning, defined in various places as the act of doing what one believes is the right decision, being oneself, urban dictionary, or as a phrase used to say that someone should do what they think is best, what they enjoy most, or what suits

their personality, Cambridge Dictionary. You Do You has become a symbolic phrase that perfectly

captures the spirit of what Charles Taylor calls the age of authenticity. If on the surface it

evokes the virtues of rugged individualism and personal empowerment,

...