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DO NOT CARELESSLY DENIGRATE SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS OR CREATIVE ACHIEVEMENT #2 | | |
loneliness and confusion #3 | | |
For years, I saw a client who lived by himself.* He was isolated in many other ways in addition to his living situation. He had extremely limited family ties. Both of his daughters had moved out of the country, and did not maintain much contact, and he had no other relatives except a father and sister from whom he was estranged. His wife and the mother of his children had passed away years ago, and the sole relationship he endeavored to establish while he saw me over the course of more than a decade and a half terminated tragically when his new partner was killed in an automobile accident. #4 | | |
When we began to work together, our conversations were decidedly awkward. He was not accustomed to the subtleties of social interaction, so his behaviors, verbal and nonverbal, lacked the dance-like rhythm and harmony that characterize the socially fluent. As a child, he had been thoroughly ignored as well as actively discouraged by both parents. His father—mostly absent—was neglectful and sadistic in his inclinations, while his mother was chronically alcoholic. He had also been consistently tormented and harassed at school, and had not chanced upon a teacher in all his years of education who paid him any genuine attention. These experiences left my client with a proclivity toward depression, or at least worsened what might have been a biological tendency in that direction. He was, in consequence, abrupt, irritable, and somewhat volatile if he felt misunderstood or was unexpectedly interrupted during a conversation. Such reactions helped ensure that his targeting by bullies continued into his adult life, particularly in his place of work. #5 | | |
I soon noticed, however, that things worked out quite well during our sessions if I kept mostly quiet. He would drop in, weekly or biweekly, and talk about what had befallen and preoccupied him during the previous seven to fourteen days. If I maintained silence for the first fifty minutes of our one-hour sessions, listening intently, then we could converse, in a relatively normal, reciprocal manner, for the remaining ten minutes. This pattern continued for more than a decade, as I learned, increasingly, to hold my tongue (something that does not come easily to me). As the years passed, however, I noticed that the proportion of time he spent discussing negative issues with me decreased. Our conversation—his monologue, really—had always started with what was bothering him, and rarely progressed past that. But he worked hard outside our sessions, cultivating friends, attending artistic gatherings and music festivals, and resurrecting a long-dormant talent for composing songs and playing the guitar. As he became more social, he began to generate solutions to the problems he communicated to me, and to discuss, in the latter portion of the hours we shared, some of the more positive aspects of his existence. It was slow going, but he made continual incremental progress. When he first came to see me, we could not sit together at a table in a coffee shop—or, indeed, in any public space—and practice anything resembling a real-world conversation without his being paralyzed into absolute silence. By the time we finished, he was reading his original poetry in front of small groups, and had even tried his hand at stand-up comedy. #6 | | |
He was the best personal and practical exemplar of something I had come to realize over my more than twenty years of psychological practice: people depend on constant communication with others to keep their minds organized. We all need to think to keep things straight, but we mostly think by talking. We need to talk about the past, so we can distinguish the trivial, overblown concerns that otherwise plague our thoughts from the experiences that are truly important. We need to talk about the nature of the present and our plans for the future, so we know where we are, where we are going, and why we are going there. We must submit the strategies and tactics we formulate to the judgments of others, to ensure their efficiency and resilience. We need to listen to ourselves as we talk, as well, so that we may organize our otherwise inchoate bodily reactions, motivations, and emotions into something articulate and organized, and dispense with those concerns that are exaggerated and irrational. We need to talk—both to remember and to forget. #7 | | |
My client desperately needed someone to listen to him. He also needed to be fully part of additional, larger, and more complex social groups—something he planned in our sessions together, and then carried out on his own. Had he fallen prey to the temptation to denigrate the value of interpersonal interactions and relationships because of his history of isolation and harsh treatment, he would have had very little chance of regaining his health and well-being. Instead, he learned the ropes and joined the world. #8 | | |
sanity as a social institution #9 | | |
For Drs. Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, the great depth psychologists, sanity was a characteristic of the individual mind. People were well-adjusted, in their views, when the subpersonalities existing within each of them were properly integrated and balanced in expression. The id, the instinctive part of the psyche (from the German “it,” representing nature, in all its power and foreignness, inside us); the superego (the sometimes oppressive, internalized representative of social order); and the ego (the I, the personality proper, crushed between those two necessary tyrants)—all had their specialized functions for Freud, who first conceptualized their existence. Id, ego, and superego interacted with each other like the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of a modern government. Jung, although profoundly influenced by Freud, parsed the complexity of the psyche in a different manner. For him, the ego of the individual had to find its proper place in relationship to the shadow (the dark side of the personality), the anima or animus (the contrasexual and thus often repressed side of the personality), and the self (the internal being of ideal possibility). But all these different subentities, Jungian and Freudian alike, share one thing in common: they exist in the interior of the person, regardless of his or her surroundings. People are social beings, however—par excellence—and there is no shortage of wisdom and guidance outside of us, embedded in the social world. Why rely on our own limited resources to remember the road, or to orient ourselves in new territory, when we can rely on signs and guideposts placed there so effortfully by others? Freud and Jung, with their intense focus on the autonomous individual psyche, placed too little focus on the role of the community in the maintenance of personal mental health. #10 | | |
It is for such reasons that I assess the position of all my new clinical clients along a few dimensions largely dependent on the social world when I first start working with them: Have they been educated to the level of their intellectual ability or ambition? Is their use of free time engaging, meaningful, and productive? Have they formulated solid and well-articulated plans for the future? Are they (and those they are close to) free of any serious physical health or economic problems? Do they have friends and a social life? A stable and satisfying intimate partnership? Close and functional familial relationships? A career—or, at least, a job—that is financially sufficient, stable and, if possible, a source of satisfaction and opportunity? If the answer to any three or more of these questions is no, I consider that my new client is insufficiently embedded in the interpersonal world and is in danger of spiraling downward psychologically because of that. People exist among other people and not as purely individual minds. An individual does not have to be that well put together if he or she can remain at least minimally acceptable in behavior to others. Simply put: We outsource the problem of sanity. People remain mentally healthy not merely because of the integrity of their own minds, but because they are constantly being reminded how to think, act, and speak by those around them. #11 | | |
If you begin to deviate from the straight and narrow path—if you begin to act improperly—people will react to your errors before they become too great, and cajole, laugh, tap, and criticize you back into place. They will raise an eyebrow, or smile (or not), or pay attention (or not). If other people can tolerate having you around, in other words, they will constantly remind you not to misbehave, and just as constantly call on you to be at your best. All that is left for you to do is watch, listen, and respond appropriately to the cues. Then you might remain motivated, and able to stay together enough so that you will not begin the long journey downhill. This is reason enough to appreciate your immersion in the world of other people—friends, family members, and foes alike—despite the anxiety and frustration that social interactions so often produce. #12 | | |
But how did we develop the broad consensus regarding social behavior that serves to buttress our psychological stability? It seems a daunting task—if not impossible—in the face of the complexity that constantly confronts us. “Do we pursue this or that?” “How does the worth of this piece of work compare to the worth of that?” “Who is more competent, or more creative, or more assertive, and should therefore be ceded authority?” Answers to such questions are largely formulated in consequence of intensive negotiation—verbal and nonverbal—regulating individual action, cooperation, and competition. What we deem to be valuable and worthy of attention becomes part of the social contract; part of the rewards and punishments meted out respectively for compliance and noncompliance; part of what continually indicates and reminds: “Here is what is valued. Look at that (perceive that) and not something else. Pursue that (act toward that end) and not some other.” Compliance with those indications and reminders is, in large measure, sanity itself—and is something required from every one of us right from the early stages of our lives. Without the intermediation of the social world, it would be impossible for us to organize our minds, and we would simply be overwhelmed by the world. #13 | | |
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I have the great good fortune of a granddaughter, Elizabeth Scarlett Peterson Korikova, born in August 2017. I have watched her carefully while she develops, trying to understand what she is up to and playing along with it. When she was about a year and a half old, she engaged in all manner of unbearably endearing behaviors—giggling and laughing when she was poked, high-fiving, bumping heads, and rubbing noses. However, in my opinion, the most noteworthy of all the actions she undertook at that age was her pointing. #15 | | |
She had discovered her index finger, using it to specify all the objects in the world she found interesting. She delighted in doing so, particularly when her pointing called forth the attention of the adults surrounding her. This indicated, in a manner not duplicable in any other way, that her action and intention had import—definable at least in part as the tendency of a behavior or attitude to compel the attention of others. She thrived on that, and no wonder. We compete for attention, personally, socially, and economically. No currency has a value that exceeds it. Children, adults, and societies wither on the vine in its absence. To have others attend to what you find important or interesting is to validate, first, the importance of what you are attending to, but second, and more crucially, to validate you as a respected center of conscious experience and contributor to the collective world. Pointing is, as well, a crucial precursor to the development of language. To name something—to use the word for the thing—is essentially to point to it, to specify it against everything else, to isolate it for use individually and socially. #16 | | |
When my granddaughter pointed, she did it publicly. When she pointed to something, she could immediately observe how the people close to her reacted. There is just not that much point, so to speak, in pointing to something that no one else cares about. So, she aimed her index finger at something she found interesting and then looked around to see if anyone else cared. She was learning an important lesson at an early age: If you are not communicating about anything that engages other people, then the value of your communication—even the value of your very presence—risks falling to zero. It was in this manner that she began to more profoundly explore the complex hierarchy of value that made up her family and the broader society surrounding her. #17 | | |
Scarlett is now learning to talk—a more sophisticated form of pointing (and of exploration). Every word is a pointer, as well as a simplification or generalization. To name something is not only to make it shine forth against the infinite background of potentially nameable things, but to group or categorize it, simultaneously, with many other phenomena of its broad utility or significance. We use the word “floor,” for example, but do not generally employ a separate word for all the floors we might encounter (concrete, wood, earth, glass), much less all the endless variations of color and texture and shade that make up the details of the floors that bear our weight. We use a low-resolution representation: If it holds us up, we can walk on it, and is situated inside a building, then it is a “floor,” and that is precise enough. The word distinguishes floors, say, from walls, but also restricts the variability in all the floors that exist to a single concept—flat, stable, walkable indoor surfaces. #18 | | |
The words we employ are tools that structure our experience, subjectively and privately—but are, equally, socially determined. We would not all know and use the word “floor” unless we had all agreed that there was something sufficiently important about floors to justify a word for them. So, the mere fact of naming something (and, of course, agreeing on the name) is an important part of the process whereby the infinitely complex world of phenomena and fact is reduced to the functional world of value. And it is continual interaction with social institutions that makes this reduction—this specification—possible. #19 | | |
what should we point to? #20 | | |
The social world narrows and specifies the world for us, marking out what is important. But what does “important” mean? How is it determined? The individual is molded by the social world. But social institutions are molded, too, by the requirements of the individuals who compose them. Arrangements must be made for our provisioning with the basic requirements of life. We cannot live without food, water, clean air, and shelter. Less self-evidently, we require companionship, play, touch, and intimacy. These are all biological as well as psychological necessities (and this is by no means a comprehensive list). We must signify and then utilize those elements of the world capable of providing us with these requirements. And the fact that we are deeply social adds another set of constraints to the situation: We must perceive and act in a manner that meets our biological and psychological needs—but, since none of us lives or can live in isolation, we must meet them in a manner approved of by others. This means that the solutions we apply to our fundamental biological problems must also be acceptable and implementable socially. #21 | | |
It is worth considering more deeply just how necessity limits the universe of viable solutions and implementable plans. First, as we alluded to, the plan must in principle solve some real problem. Second, it must appeal to others—often in the face of competing plans—or those others will not cooperate and might well object. If I value something, therefore, I must determine how to value it so that others potentially benefit. It cannot just be good for me: it must be good for me and for the people around me. And even that is not good enough—which means there are even more constraints on how the world must be perceived and acted upon. The manner in which I view and value the world, integrally associated with the plans I am making, has to work for me, my family, and the broader community. Furthermore, it needs to work today, in a manner that does not make a worse hash of tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year (even the next decade or century). A good solution to a problem involving suffering must be repeatable, without deterioration across repetitions—iterable, in a word—across people and across time. #22 | | |
These universal constraints, manifest biologically and imposed socially, reduce the complexity of the world to something approximating a universally understandable domain of value. That is exceptionally important, because there are unlimited problems and there are hypothetically unlimited potential solutions, but there are a comparatively limited number of solutions that work practically, psychologically, and socially simultaneously. The fact of limited solutions implies the existence of something like a natural ethic—variable, perhaps, as human languages are variable, but still characterized by something solid and universally recognizable at its base. It is the reality of this natural ethic that makes thoughtless denigration of social institutions both wrong and dangerous: wrong and dangerous because those institutions have evolved to solve problems that must be solved for life to continue. They are by no means perfect—but making them better, rather than worse, is a tricky problem indeed. #23 | | |
So, I must take the complexity of the world, reduce it to a single point so that I can act, and take everyone else and their future selves into consideration while I am doing so. How do I manage this? By communicating and negotiating. By outsourcing the terribly complex cognitive problem to the resources of the broader world. The individuals who compose every society cooperate and compete linguistically (although linguistic interaction by no means exhausts the means of cooperation and competition). Words are formulated collectively, and everyone must agree on their use. The verbal framework that helps us delimit the world is a consequence of the landscape of value that is constructed socially—but also bounded by the brute necessity of reality itself. This helps give that landscape shape, and not just any old shape. This is where hierarchies—functional, productive hierarchies—more clearly enter the picture. #24 | | |
Things of import must be done, or people starve or die of thirst or exposure—or of loneliness and absence of touch. What needs to be done must be specified and planned. The requisite skills for doing so must be developed. That specification, planning, and development of skills, as well as the implementation of the informed plan, must be conducted in social space, with the cooperation of others (and in the face of their competition). In consequence, some will be better at solving the problem at hand, and others worse. This variance in ability (as well as the multiplicity of extant problems and the impossibility of training everyone in all skilled domains) necessarily engenders a hierarchical structure—based ideally on genuine competence in relation to the goal. Such a hierarchy is in its essence a socially structured tool that must be employed for the effective accomplishment of necessary and worthwhile tasks. It is also a social institution that makes progress and peace possible at the same time. #25 | | |
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The consensus making up the spoken and unspoken assumptions of worth characterizing our societies has an ancient origin, developing over the course of hundreds of millions of years. After all, “How should you act?” is just the short-term, immediate version of the fundamental long-term question, “How should you survive?” It is therefore instructive to look into the distant past—far down the evolutionary chain, right to the basics—and contemplate the establishment of what is important. The most phylogenetically ancient multicellular organisms (that is far enough for our purposes) tend to be composed of relatively undifferentiated sensorimotor cells.1 These cells map certain facts or features of the environment directly onto the motor output of the same cells, in an essentially one-to-one relationship. Stimulus A means response A, and nothing else, while stimulus B means response B. Among more differentiated and complex creatures—the larger and commonly recognizable denizens of the natural world—the sensory and motor functions separate and specialize, such that cells undertaking the former functions detect patterns in the world and cells in the latter produce patterns of motor output. This differentiation enables a broader range of patterns to be recognized and mapped, as well as a broader range of action and reaction to be undertaken. A third type of cell—neural—emerges sometimes, as well, serving as a computational intermediary between the first two. Among species that have established a neural level of operation, the “same” pattern of input can produce a different pattern of output (depending, for example, on changes in the animal’s environment or internal psychophysical condition). #27 | | |
As nervous systems increase in sophistication, and more and more layers of neural intermediation emerge, the relationship between simple fact and motor output becomes increasingly complex, unpredictable, and sophisticated. What is putatively the same thing or situation can be perceived in multiple ways, and two things perceived in the same manner can still give rise to very different behaviors. It is very difficult to constrain even isolated laboratory animals, for example, so thoroughly that they will behave predictably across trials that have been made as similar as possible. As the layers of neural tissue mediating between sensation and action multiply, they also differentiate. Basic motivational systems, often known as drives, appear (hunger, thirst, aggression, etc.), adding additional sensory and behavioral specificity and variability. Superseding motivations, in turn—with no clear line of demarcation—are systems of emotion. Cognitive systems emerge much later, first taking form, arguably, as imagination, and later—and only among human beings—as full-fledged language. Thus, in the most complex of creatures, there is an internal hierarchy of structure, from reflex through drive to language-mediated action (in the particular case of human beings), that must be organized before it can function as a unity and be aimed at a point.2 #28 | | |
How is this hierarchy organized—a structure that emerged in large part from the bottom up, over the vast spans of evolutionary time? We return to the same answer alluded to earlier: through the constant cooperation and competition—the constant jockeying for resources and position—defining the struggle for survival and reproduction. This happens over the unimaginably lengthy spans of time that characterize evolution, as well as the much shorter course of each individual life. Negotiation for position sorts organisms into the omnipresent hierarchies that govern access to vital resources such as shelter, nourishment, and mates. All creatures of reasonable complexity and even a minimally social nature have their particular place, and know it. All social creatures also learn what is deemed valuable by other group members, and derive from that, as well as from the understanding of their own position, a sophisticated implicit and explicit understanding of value itself. In a phrase: The internal hierarchy that translates facts into actions mirrors the external hierarchy of social organization. It is clear, for example, that chimpanzees in a troop understand their social world and its hierarchical strata at a fine level of detail. They know what is important, and who has privileged access to it. They understand such things as if their survival and reproduction depend upon it, as it does.3 #29 | | |
A newborn infant is equipped with relatively deterministic reflexes: sucking, crying, startling. These nonetheless provide the starting point for the immense range of skills in action that develop with human maturation. By the age of two (and often much earlier than that, for many skills), children can orient with all their senses, walk upright, use their opposable-thumb-equipped hands for all sorts of purposes, and communicate their desires and needs both nonverbally and verbally—and this is of course a partial list. This immense array of behavioral abilities is integrated into a complex assortment of emotions and motivational drives (anger, sadness, fear, joy, surprise, and more) and then organized to fulfill whatever specific, narrow purpose inspires the child for the moment and, increasingly, over longer spans of time. #30 | | |
The developing infant must also hone and perfect the operation of his or her currently dominant motivational state in harmony with all his or her other internal motivational states (as, for example, the separate desire to eat, sleep, and play must learn to coexist so each can manifest itself optimally), and in keeping with the demands, routines, and opportunities of the social environment. This honing and perfecting begin within the child’s maternal relationship and the spontaneous play behavior within that circumscribed but still social context. Then, when the child has matured to the point where the internal hierarchy of emotional and motivational functions can be subsumed, even temporarily, within a framework provided by a conscious, communicable abstract goal (“let us play house”), the child is ready to play with others—and to do so, over time, in an increasingly complex and sophisticated manner.4 #31 | | |
Play with others depends (as the great developmental psychologist Jean Piaget observed5) upon the collective establishment of a shared goal with the child’s play partners. The collective establishment of a shared goal—the point of the game—conjoined with rules governing cooperation and competition in relationship to that goal or point, constitutes a true social microcosm. All societies might be regarded as variations upon this play/game theme—E pluribus unum*—and in all functional and decent societies the basic rules of fair play, predicated upon reciprocity across situation and time, come inevitably to apply. Games, like solutions to problems, must be iterable to endure, and there are principles that apply to and undergird what constitutes that iterability. Piaget suspected, for example, that games undertaken voluntarily will outcompete games imposed and played under threat of force, given that some of the energy that could be expended on the game itself, whatever its nature, has to be wasted on enforcement. There is evidence indicating the emergence of such voluntary game-like arrangements even among our nonhuman kin.6 #32 | | |
The universal rules of fair play include the ability to regulate emotion and motivation while cooperating and competing in pursuit of the goal during the game (that is part and parcel of being able to play at all), as well as the ability and will to establish reciprocally beneficial interactions across time and situation, as we already discussed. And life is not simply a game, but a series of games, each of which has something in common (whatever defines a game) and something unique (or there would be no reason for multiple games). At minimum, there is a starting point (kindergarten, a 0–0 score, a first date, an entry-level job) that needs to be improved upon; a procedure for enacting that improvement; and a desirable goal (graduation from high school, a winning score, a permanent romantic relationship, a prestigious career). Because of that commonality, there is an ethic—or more properly, a meta-ethic—that emerges, from the bottom up, across the set of all games. The best player is therefore not the winner of any given game but, among many other things, he or she who is invited by the largest number of others to play the most extensive series of games. It is for this reason, which you may not understand explicitly at the time, that you tell your children: “It’s not whether you win or lose. It’s how you play the game!”* How should you play, to be that most desirable of players? What structure must take form within you so that such play is possible? And those two questions are interrelated, because the structure that will enable you to play properly (and with increasing and automated or habitual precision) will emerge only in the process of continually practicing the art of playing properly. Where might you learn how to play? Everywhere . . . if you are fortunate and awake. #33 | | |
the utility of the fool #34 | | |
It is useful to take your place at the bottom of a hierarchy. It can aid in the development of gratitude and humility. Gratitude: There are people whose expertise exceeds your own, and you should be wisely pleased about that. There are many valuable niches to fill, given the many complex and serious problems we must solve. The fact that there are people who fill those niches with trustworthy skill and experience is something for which to be truly thankful. Humility: It is better to presume ignorance and invite learning than to assume sufficient knowledge and risk the consequent blindness. It is much better to make friends with what you do not know than with what you do know, as there is an infinite supply of the former but a finite stock of the latter. When you are tightly boxed in or cornered—all too often by your own stubborn and fixed adherence to some unconsciously worshipped assumptions—all there is to help you is what you have not yet learned. #35 | | |
It is necessary and helpful to be, and in some ways to remain, a beginner. For this reason, the Tarot deck beloved by intuitives, romantics, fortune-tellers, and scoundrels alike contains within it the Fool as a positive card, an illustrated variant of which opens this chapter. The Fool is a young, handsome man, eyes lifted upward, journeying in the mountains, sun shining brightly upon him—about to carelessly step over a cliff (or is he?). His strength, however, is precisely his willingness to risk such a drop; to risk being once again at the bottom. No one unwilling to be a foolish beginner can learn. It was for this reason, among others, that Carl Jung regarded the Fool as the archetypal precursor to the figure of the equally archetypal Redeemer, the perfected individual. #36 | | |
The beginner, the fool, is continually required to be patient and tolerant—with himself and, equally, with others. His displays of ignorance, inexperience, and lack of skill may still sometimes be rightly attributed to irresponsibility and condemned, justly, by others. But the insufficiency of the fool is often better regarded as an inevitable consequence of each individual’s essential vulnerability, rather than as a true moral failing. Much that is great starts small, ignorant, and useless. This lesson permeates popular as well as classical or traditional culture. Consider, for example, the Disney heroes Pinocchio and Simba, as well as J. K. Rowling’s magical Harry Potter. Pinocchio begins as a wooden-headed marionette, the puppet of everyone’s decisions but his own. The Lion King has his origin as a naive cub, the unwitting pawn of a treacherous and malevolent uncle. The student of wizarding is an unloved orphan, with a dusty cupboard for a bedroom, and Voldemort—who might as well be Satan himself—for his archenemy. Great mythologized heroes often come into the world, likewise, in the most meager of circumstances (as the child of an Israelite slave, for example, or newborn in a lowly manger) and in great danger (consider the Pharaoh’s decision to slay all the firstborn male babies of the Israelites, and Herod’s comparable edict, much later). But today’s beginner is tomorrow’s master. Thus, it is necessary even for the most accomplished (but who wishes to accomplish still more) to retain identification with the as yet unsuccessful; to appreciate the striving toward competence; to carefully and with true humility subordinate him or herself to the current game; and to develop the knowledge, self-control, and discipline necessary to make the next move. #37 | | |
I visited a restaurant in Toronto with my wife, son, and daughter while writing this. As I made my way to my party’s table, a young waiter asked if he might say a few words to me. He told me that he had been watching my videos, listening to my podcasts, and reading my book, and that he had, in consequence, changed his attitude toward his comparatively lower-status (but still useful and necessary) job. He had ceased criticizing what he was doing or himself for doing it, deciding instead to be grateful and seek out whatever opportunities presented themselves right there before him. He made up his mind to become more diligent and reliable and to see what would happen if he worked as hard at it as he could. He told me, with an uncontrived smile, that he had been promoted three times in six months. #38 | | |
The young man had come to realize that every place he might find himself in had more potential than he might first see (particularly when his vision was impaired by the resentment and cynicism he felt from being near the bottom). After all, it is not as if a restaurant is a simple place—and this was part of an extensive national organization, a large, high-quality chain. To do a good job in such a place, servers must get along with the cooks, who are by universal recognition a formidably troublesome and tricky lot. They must also be polite and engaging with customers. They have to pay attention constantly. They must adjust to highly varying workloads—the rushes and dead times that inevitably accompany the life of a server. They have to show up on time, sober and awake. They must treat their superiors with the proper respect and do the same for those—such as the dishwashers—below them in the structure of authority. And if they do all these things, and happen to be working in a functional institution, they will soon render themselves difficult to replace. Customers, colleagues, and superiors alike will begin to react to them in an increasingly positive manner. Doors that would otherwise remain closed to them—even invisible—will be opened. Furthermore, the skills they acquire will prove eminently portable, whether they continue to rise in the hierarchy of restaurateurs, decide instead to further their education, or change their career trajectory completely (in which case they will leave with laudatory praise from their previous employers and vastly increased chances of discovering the next opportunity). #39 | | |
As might be expected, the young man who had something to say to me was thrilled with what had happened to him. His status concerns had been solidly and realistically addressed by his rapid career advance, and the additional money he was making did not hurt, either. He had accepted, and therefore transcended, his role as a beginner. He had ceased being casually cynical about the place he occupied in the world and the people who surrounded him, and accepted the structure and the position he was offered. He started to see possibility and opportunity, where before he was blinded, essentially, by his pride. He stopped denigrating the social institution he found himself part of and began to play his part properly. And that increment in humility paid off in spades. #40 | | |
the necessity of equals #41 | | |
It is good to be a beginner, but it is a good of a different sort to be an equal among equals. It is said, with much truth, that genuine communication can take place only between peers. This is because it is very difficult to move information up a hierarchy. Those well positioned (and this is a great danger of moving up) have used their current competence—their cherished opinions, their present knowledge, their current skills—to stake a moral claim to their status. In consequence, they have little motivation to admit to error, to learn or change—and plenty of reason not to. If a subordinate exposes the ignorance of someone with greater status, he risks humiliating that person, questioning the validity of the latter’s claim to influence and status, and revealing him as incompetent, outdated, or false. For this reason, it is very wise to approach your boss, for example, carefully and privately with a problem (and perhaps best to have a solution at hand—and not one proffered too incautiously). #42 | | |
Barriers exist to the flow of genuine information down a hierarchy, as well. For example, the resentment people lower in the chain of command might feel about their hypothetically lesser position can make them loath to act productively on information from above—or, in the worst case, can motivate them to work at counterpurposes to what they have learned, out of sheer spite. In addition, those who are inexperienced or less educated, or who newly occupy a subordinate position and therefore lack knowledge of their surroundings, can be more easily influenced by relative position and the exercise of power, instead of quality of argumentation and observation of competence. Peers, by contrast, must in the main be convinced. Their attention must be carefully reciprocated. To be surrounded by peers is to exist in a state of equality, and to manifest the give-and-take necessary to maintain that equality. It is therefore good to be in the middle of a hierarchy. #43 | | |
This is partly why friendships are so important, and why they form so early in life. A two-year-old, typically, is self-concerned, although also capable of simple reciprocal actions. The same Scarlett whom I talked about earlier—my granddaughter—would happily hand me one of her favorite stuffed toys, attached to a pacifier, when I asked her to. Then I would hand it, or toss it, back (sometimes she would toss it to me, too—or at least relatively near me). She loved this game. We played it with a spoon, as well—an implement she was just beginning to master. She played the same way with her mother and her grandmother—with anyone who happened to be within playing distance, if she was familiar enough with them not to be shy. This was the beginning of the behaviors that transform themselves into full-fledged sharing among older children. #44 | | |
My daughter, Mikhaila, Scarlett’s mother, took her child to the outdoor recreational space on top of their downtown condo a few days before I wrote this. A number of other children were playing there, most of them older, and there were plenty of toys. Scarlett spent her time hoarding as many of the playthings as possible near her mother’s chair, and was distinctly unimpressed if other children came along to purloin one for themselves. She even took a ball directly from another child to add to her collection. This is typical behavior for children two and younger. Their ability to reciprocate, while hardly absent (and able to manifest itself in truly endearing ways), is developmentally limited. #45 | | |
By three years of age, however, most children are capable of truly sharing. They can delay gratification long enough to take their turn while playing a game that everyone cannot play simultaneously. They can begin to understand the point of a game played by several people and follow the rules, although they may not be able to give a coherent verbal account of what those rules are. They start to form friendships upon repeated exposure to children with whom they have successfully negotiated reciprocal play relationships. Some of these friendships turn into the first intense relationships that children have outside their family. It is in the context of such relationships, which tend strongly to form between equals in age (or at least equals in developmental stage), that a child learns to bond tightly to a peer and starts to learn how to treat another person properly while requiring the same in return. #46 | | |
This mutual bonding is vitally important. A child without at least one special, close friend is much more likely to suffer later psychological problems, whether of the depressive/anxious or antisocial sort,7 while children with fewer friends are also more likely to be unemployed and unmarried as adults.8 There is no evidence that the importance of friendship declines in any manner with age.* All causes of mortality appear to be reduced among adults with high-quality social networks, even when general health status is taken into consideration. This remains true among the elderly in the case of diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, emphysema, and arthritis, and for younger and older adults alike in the case of heart attacks. Interestingly enough, there is some evidence that it is the provision of social support, as much or more than its receipt, that provides these protective benefits (and, somewhat unsurprisingly, that those who give more tend to receive more).9 Thus, it truly seems that it is better to give than to receive. #47 | | |
Peers distribute both the burdens and joys of life. Recently, when my wife, Tammy, and I suffered serious health problems, we were fortunate enough to have family members (my in-laws, sister and brother; my own mother and sister; our children) and close friends stay with us and help for substantial periods of time. They were willing to put their own lives on hold to aid us while we were in crisis. Before that, when my book 12 Rules for Life became a success, and during the extensive speaking tour that followed, Tammy and I were close to people with whom we could share our good fortune. These were friends and family members genuinely pleased with what was happening and following the events of our lives avidly, and who were willing to discuss what could have been the overwhelming public response. This greatly heightened the significance and meaning of everything we were doing and reduced the isolation that such a dramatic shift in life circumstances, for better or worse, is likely to produce. #48 | | |
The relationships established with colleagues of similar status at work constitute another important source of peer regulation, in addition to friendship. To maintain good relationships with your colleagues means, among other things, to give credit where credit is due; to take your fair share of the jobs no one wants but still must be done; to deliver on time and in a high-quality manner when teamed with other people; to show up when expected; and, in general, to be trusted to do somewhat more than your job formally requires. The approval or disapproval of your colleagues rewards and enforces this continual reciprocity, and that—like the reciprocity that is necessarily part of friendship—helps maintain stable psychological function. It is much better to be someone who can be relied upon, not least so that during times of personal trouble the people you have worked beside are willing and able to step in and help. #49 | | |
Through friendship and collegial relationships we modify our selfish proclivities, learning not to always put ourselves first. Less obviously, but just as importantly, we may also learn to overcome our naive and too empathic proclivities (our tendency to sacrifice ourselves unsuitably and unjustly to predatory others) when our peers advise and encourage us to stand up for ourselves. In consequence, if we are fortunate, we begin to practice true reciprocity, and we gain at least some of the advantage spoken about so famously by the poet Robert Burns: #50 | | |
