27 April 2024
PART I-B-2: Grouped People
What all of these definitions and descriptions show are values. Values were cited by Heraclitus, Aristotle, and the existentialists who maintained that we internalize values and move toward making them real in our lives. What are the found values articulated by Twenge & Campbell (2009)?
In attempts at Aristotelian Stoicism, moderation is a standard. As such, I have no eudaimonically-based objection to moderate self-admiration or of genuine individualism. More on this soon. Those two values conditionally excluded; four of the remaining values defy authenticity of being. To crave youth, attention, fame, or celebrity is to crave external validation through the admiration of others. Wealth is not necessarily bad or good; it’s all about the goals you have for it and the impact you allow it to have on your life and person. But extrinsic goals are generally not from within, they’re from without, and that’s often a problem.
Now quick logic may have you thinking that many values found in the world e.g., water, sex, apples, and sunlight don’t come from within but, interestingly all four of those values are required to sustain human life. Porsches, designer jeans, handmade boots, and regular trips to Diocletian’s Palace are all cool but one can live a very well-spirited life never having possessed any of these. More significantly, the latter four values come from direct and indirect marketing providing you with a message: If you are a winner, you possess these things.
In simple terms, that’s bullshit. In more complex terms, that’s unthinking adoption of someone else’s value system. One of the themes of this book is that authentic individualism is in peril. After all, who is thinking for herself, the woman who says I’ll work at something I love and wear self-chosen clothes that leave me feeling good about myself or the woman who says, I’ll work in miserable conditions doing something for which I have little respect so I can drive my Porsche while wearing designer jeans and handmade boots crafted in the piazza near Diocletian’s Palace? The first woman is living to be herself; the second is living to be seen, vindicated, and admired. The research says that that poor soul enjoys only momentary glory as a more admirable competitor will appear any moment now, displacing her much-sought spotlight. (If interested, the concept behind this restless dissatisfaction is hedonic adaptation.)
It gets grittier. The woman with the beautiful boots doesn’t experience eudaimonia because she hasn’t invested self in making choices based on her own values. She acquires her values for the same reason she acquires her boots: to be seen—by others—and admired for being someone else’s version of a winner. That term, winner, has been used twice. That’s part of the con game behind marketing. In real life, 99% of the time, there are no winners and there are no losers. There are people who are trying to live values-driven lives and there are people who resent the very notion of values.
If you invest your thought, judgment, and action in acquiring values deemed important by you, there’s an integrative chain of cause and effect coming directly from and through you. To perform these very adult tasks: thinking independently, judging alone, and acting on these findings is to increase the bond between you and the world. In Table 3, Dimensions of the Soul, above, it states that the soul…flourishes in proportion to extensive, active, situated opportunities for intelligent interactions. Actively using your soul in the world in a directed and disciplined manner is to bring about consequences. We’re not guaranteed to be right so sometimes we’ll fail. That hurts, brings bruises, but is also highly instructive. That’s how we grow in a healthy way. Being what others suggest we should be is to shrink away from life’s challenges in an unhealthy way. Ultimately, that shrinking fosters self-consciousness, shame, humiliation, and resentment.
In Twenge & Campbell’s (2009) defence, they state that the Internet and social media have catalyzed a vast extrospective energy. Knowing the self is the introspective opposite; self-knowledge is about knowing one’s own responses to the external world while also realizing that these may be your values alone, or values shared by millions of people. The point is the valuation of time spent focusing on external baubles (the latest car, interior decor, clothes, vacation destinations, clubs…) versus focusing on understanding and improving the self. This is why I cannot share Twenge & Campbell’s critical view of self-admiration or individualism without qualification.
In fact, our leitmotif (my wife & I), in raising our children, was a consistent reminder to be yourself as fully and strongly as you can. The intent of that motif was the opposite of fostering two more attention-seeking people. The intent was to foster self-knowledge and fearless occupancy of those selves. That is also the point and hypothesis of this book: to state, in black and white, that the more self-actualized our population, the more peaceful, productive, and fulfilled i.e., eudaimonic that population will be. More concisely put, quiet pride in one’s objective individual excellence is not narcissism; it is, in fact, a necessary condition of self-actualization.
To be continued next week.
Dan Chalykoff is a Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying). He works at CMHA-Hamilton and Healing Pathways Counselling, Oakville, where his focus is clients with addiction, trauma, burnout, and major life changes. He writes to increase (and share) his own evolving understanding of ideas. Since 2017, he has facilitated two voluntary weekly group meetings of SMART Recovery. Please email him (danchalykoff@hotmail.com) to be added to or removed from the bcc’d emailing list.
Twenge, J. M. & Campbell, W. K. (2009). The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement, Free Press.
Comments