The Myth of the Manufactured Self

In Part 10 of Beyond Material Salvation I wrote that modern identity has become a kind of moral credit system—one where we borrow traits, virtues, and performances from the future self we hope to become.

“Fake it until you make it” is the slogan of that system.

This is the heart of Material Salvationism: the belief that virtue, competence, and even personhood can be constructed through external signals—through the right behaviours, purchases, aesthetics, and performances.

A curated identity that can be displayed long before it can be inhabited.

In traditional materialism, people buy objects.

In Material Salvationism, people buy selves.

And like all things purchased too early, identity becomes something financed—held on credit—maintained through effort, consumption, and constant presentation.

This is why so many people feel spiritually exhausted and financially strained at the same time.

The exhaustion is the debt.

When people say “fake it until you make it,” what they are really saying is:

“Perform a version of yourself you haven’t grown into yet—and hope the world validates it before you collapse from holding the pose.”

That is the moral debt I talk about in Part 10.

A debt not owed to a bank, but to the very image we project.

And the interest rate is shame.

Because every time we fake competence, confidence, or identity, we widen the gap between the true self and the presented self.

And that gap—the façade—is where burnout, anxiety, and alienation grow.

Part 10 argues that the problem isn’t merely personal pride; it’s structural.

We live in a society where:

• worth is equated with appearance

• identity is measured by performance

• validation is outsourced to the crowd

• success is a curated narrative

• and agency is surrendered to external judgment

  
  

“Fake it until you make it” is just the moral expression of the economic rule “buy now, pay later.”It is identity purchased in instalments.

But as I argue in Part 10, no amount of external signalling can substitute for the internal work of becoming.

Real agency—the kind that frees us from debt (financial or moral)—comes from:

• embracing imperfection

• accepting apprenticeship

• suffering the awkwardness of early attempts

• leaning into community rather than performance

• and grounding identity in action, not aesthetics

  
  

When you stop faking it, something remarkable happens:

you stop living on borrowed selfhood.

The future self no longer has to repay the debts of the present self’s pretence.

You are no longer cosplaying competence; you are cultivating it.

And that is the difference between a life built on credit

and a life built on character.