I gained a realization while writing the above. We can choose to speak and act inauthentically to gain some goal we desire. When we speak and act inauthentically, we will find the goal, even when we attain it, as inauthentic and unsatisfying as the original intention was inauthentic. When we lie to ourselves and others to get what we think we want, what we really get remains the result of a lie. It stays alien to us because we have gained it inauthentically. It can't form part of our whole being when we gained it outside and in ways alien to that being. In some very perverse way, we have made ourselves a means to an inauthentic end that we intended because our identity felt that the artificial gain it made in this way would offer genuine connection to the unconditional.
Truth does not come from lies. The authentic does not come from the inauthentic. We have violated the ends principle and taken ourselves out of the moral sphere even if we do it to ourselves. In our search for the becoming self, we can find many distractions and desires in the material and endlessly wanting world of things that we hope will make our self-alienation bearable. They don't, so we endlessly strive to gain more and more of less and less.
At some point, most of us will face the reality of this paradox of apparent gain and undeniable loss. At some point, Polly and Mack will see beyond the inauthentic mask originally presented to them as an object of desire. They may even discover that the apparently minor differences of taste in food and taste in movies represent a very deep difference in essential values or even in unquestioned meaning perspectives. Polly may like Chinese food because she believes in life as an exploration of the unknown and the unfamiliar. She sees life as an adventure in which we can care about others as part of that adventure and value them in all their differences from ourselves. Mack may watch violent movies because he holds a very strong belief that life operates as an endless struggle against others. Life is war, and everyone else may, at any point, come to him as the enemy in that war. Anyone with differences from him means that they are inherently suspicious and dangerous. He doesn't seek growth and change in life. He wants things the way they always were. He wants them his way.
This dissonance between values and beliefs, between conscious and unquestioned perspectives, will initiate a critical moment of cognitive and emotional dissonance. That moment will give Polly and Mack the opportunity to discover more of the truth about themselves, what they wanted from each other, and that they have both deluded themselves and each other. It will become a moment of possible liberation from the unquestioned meaning perspectives within them when they seek to resolve their individual and shared dissonances courageously and honestly. When they seek to simply escape those dissonances through self-justification, they will transfix on their meaning perspectives all the more, each working with all her/his might to prove the other wrong.
When we speak and act outside the compassionate model by speaking and acting inauthentically, even violently, we return to the questionable comforts of the dominator model. When Polly and Mack reach their critical moment, it won't simply be about them in that moment; it will be about their personal and world views. If they choose domination, they will choose the having way of life as well. They will seek to possess their desires, to own them and keep them for themselves. When they choose compassion and the unconditional, they will choose the being way of life when we experience everything in life fully and meaningfully not as an owner but as conscious part of the becoming universe. They will experience the adventure of their whole being and the becoming self. Having deadens our way of living, takes us into what Fromm calls "necrophily," a love of dead things that reifies us as well. When I love an It, I enter into an It/It relationship. Being opens us to participating in the essential and eternal wonder of life endlessly becoming more, what Fromm calls "biophily," a love of life and living themselves that imbues us with more life. When I love a Thou, I enter into an I/Thou relationship of being and becoming. In such a realization of being, we find a measure of success in our quest of aspiration, in our search for the becoming self.