The Happiness Fantasy by Carl Cederström has forced me to rethink some of what I have been considering lately, notably in my posts Acts of (re)creation, Transcend and Good faith, though in the final one I had already started to assimilate some of the ideas from his book.
Cederström traces the growth of a particular focus on self-creation from the psychologist Wilhelm Reich through to Donald Trump. Reich believed that a form of self-transcendence could arise through sexual liberation. This allied conceptually if not thematically with similar theories about stripping back socialised and inhibiting self concepts through drugs (Thomas Leary and Aldous Huxley) and aggressive self-discovery through psychoanalysis or self-development (Werner Erhard and Fritz Perls at Esalen, est and, now, the Landmark Forum).
The initial flowering of this process was fully embraced by the Beat Generation, who wanted to make love not war, who abhorred the American Dream of a soulless nine to five job and a marriage bound up in the traditions of patriarchy and capitalism. It was not a moral vision, but an escape from responsibility; not a social contract but a self-focus. They didn't want to make the world better: they believed that by opting out, they could experience freedom and that, if everyone did so, the world would, magically, be transformed into a pleasure dome.
Over time, though, something changed within the self-development industry. The idea of improvement was tied to increased productivity, creativity and employability. By transforming yourself you could become richer, more successful and more powerful.
Here, a tangent. Power. We hear that word and think of oligarchs and media moguls, tyrants and dictators, gurus and gods. But power does not have to be solely the resource of the rich and dominant, nor is it necessarily normatively bad.
Spinoza thought that humans' potentia was their capacity to be true to their nature and act from that capacity. He wrote in Latin - this word translates as 'power' but also bears the meaning of 'capacity' or 'ability', as well as 'influence' and 'authority' - so consider the term as somewhat more nuanced than our definition of power. Nonetheless, he is advocating each person's right and responsibility to live up to and according to their potential capacity or ability. It is, in his ethics, normative. It is a failing not to be true to one's nature. However, it's worth noting that in his worldview, the unique potentia of the human is rationality. So he was demanding an application of reason. Nietzsche too talks of power. He goes big on it. And some of the implications of his philosophy have been dangerous, damaging and seriously immoral. But if we root down, there's more to the cryptic genius than is usually assumed. An example of how his thinking can feed into a truly ethical system can be found in the work of freelance philosopher Dan Fincke - this post offers a bite-sized introduction. And, as a final example of how power does not need to be seen in a negative sense, the social psychologist Amy Cuddy sets great store by a sense of ‘presence’: a feeling of personal power to act for ourselves – not, she stresses, dominant social power over others. It has been shown to increase persistence in problem solving, in performance, in abstract thinking and in creativity; to boost confidence, resilience and openness to new challenges; to enhance forgiveness, the ability to read others’ emotions and the chances of acting in a pro-social manner and to make people less self-engrossed. It increases confidence while decreasing stress.
What we see here is that Spinoza, Fincke (if not Nietzsche) and Cuddy offer a pursuit of self-development in order to unearth a valid and valuable strength.
Right. So.
What was problematic about the examples Cederström considers, in my view, was twofold: first the quality of the power and secondly the end to which this personal power was to be put.
The quality. If one develops one's ability to reason, the think critically, to judge, to distinguish truth from 'fake news', fact from 'pseudo science' and so on, surely there is little to condemn? And this is a faculty that the vast majority both have and have not fully, even partially, exercised. Could such power not empower the disempowered to some extent? If one develops one's own innate faculties for learning, sociability, creativity and so on, as recommended by Fincke, surely this leads to greater flourishing? Especially if, as Fincke advocates, such empowerment leads to the flourishing of others. An example here, the more I develop my skills as a teacher or surgeon, the more I benefit others. The more I enhance my skills as a painter, the more I inspire others involved in this practice and thus empower them. If one develops what Cuddy calls 'presence', the benefits seem to greatly overwhelm the dangers, if there are any dangers - ah, too much charisma, perhaps.
On the other hand, if one is developing one's ability to deceive others, to manipulate or control, that seems clearly problematic. Likewise if one is seeking a means to become malleable to the norms of a company's ethos (happy, quirky, creative and living for the job - at Zappos, Google or Apple) so that one can be successfully consumed by a corporate culture, that too is questionable. One is making one's 'self' the means to neoliberal ends at the expense of one's authenticity, while being sold the vision that one is finding authenticity.
And the end: if it is my end to have what Alasdair MacIntyre called the external goods - fame, riches, influence - then both my satisfaction and the ethical framing of the process come into question. Worse still if my aim is to disempower others or assert power over them. That is not intrinsic to power, it is an immoral application of power.
Back to self-development: Cederström is critiquing the process for the ends to which it is put. In the 60s, a narcissistic denial of responsibility; in the 80s and onward, a compulsory narcissism directed toward the ends of the neoliberal capitalist culture.
I think he is right.
Journalist and screen-writer Laurie Penny is also right in this excellent article in claiming that the wellness industry is a cruel distraction. The message of positivity mantras and kale-cults seems to be that there's nothing wrong with the society; the whole damn problem lies with you. If you'd only balance your chakras, irrigate your colon and do Tai Chi, you'd find the peace within and climate change, social inequality and right-wing extremism wouldn't matter. I have long been dissatisfied with the concept of 'acceptance' and by the idea that sending out positive energy is anything other than denial, delusion and self-righteous acquiescence. Better off drinking rosé and binge watching Tiger King.
There is one further element that I wish to bring up because I think that Cederström regards all processes of self-development as narcissistic. I can understand this criticism, especially in the light of the frame of his thesis. Personally, I do not feel, as the likes of Reich, Erhard and Perls seemed to, that there is some pearl of unchanging essential selfhood (like a soul) to be discovered if one tears off enough layers. Inside there's just neural networks responding to inputs from the external world, from memory and from the state of the physical being. Authenticity is a myth. This deserves more and I think I will have to dig into it more deeply.
I do not believe one has to come to terms with every event in one's past and fully know one's self. That does seem narcissistic. And exceptionally tedious. As John D. Donahue writes, it's better to focus on where you're going that how you're feeling.
Exactly: it seems to me that this has to be a forward-looking quest. How do I work out what the good is and what I can do to increase the good? That seems a reasonable starting place. It involves both education and self-education. Knowledge about the world and learning how to be effective in it. It has to be within a society and encompass society.
One might counter all such demands to improve myself by the Buddhist claim, if you want to make someone happy, show them compassion; if you want to make yourself happy, show someone else compassion. Fair enough. Start outside. Indeed, I have long been frustrated by the old saw that you must love yourself before you can truly love anyone else. Frankly, that's anodyne nonsense. You don't have to love yourself at all; you just have to be able to put aside your own selfish blinkers. Which demands recognising that you have selfish blinkers. Which demands some degree of insight and honesty. Which one develops through reason. This doesn't negate the 'show compassion' claim. I think there is truth in such an injunction. And I think that compassion is, or would be in my ethical system, a sine qua non. But it is not everything. Everything includes some understanding of what it would be best to do in the world, not just how it's best to feel. While compassion for a killer seems a noble response, one also wants to prevent her killing anyone else.
This effectively takes me to Fincke's argument: the point and purpose of becoming better is so that you can be better, act better and help make others - and society - better. The purpose of self-transcendence is not personal but social. It's the search for excellence within a practice, and that practice is the planetary community of living and non-living things.
To fail to be one's best is to fail to take up the hero's challenge. Most of us will fail to get further that Act I, Scene i or ii. But goddam it, at the very least we can try.
ADDED 19th July 2020
See this article on Herman Hesse - a warning about the evils of ruminations! - 'At some point, the self-development has to be a means, not an end.' - M. M. Owen in the article. It's well worth reading.
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