1,996 words
Mark Twain reportedly said, “‘Be yourself’ is the worst advice you can give some people.” The problem with Twain’s assertion is that, if you don’t tell people to “be themselves,” who else can they be? You don’t really have a choice. You can’t be somebody else. So, like it or not, we are doomed to be ourselves.
In ethics and psychology, another term for “being yourself” or “becoming yourself” is self-actualization, also called self-realization. For many, self-actualization is the definition of happiness. Thus they define the pursuit of happiness as self-actualization, becoming who you are.
There’s a distinction between objective and subjective forms of self-actualization. Advocates of the objective form include Aristotle, Schopenhauer, and Carl Jung. Advocates of the subjective form include Nietzsche, Ayn Rand, and legions of self-help gurus.
Objective self-actualization presupposes that the self you are trying to actualize already exists, but in a state of potency. Just as the oak tree already exists in the acorn, our self already exists within us. It just needs to grow to maturity. On the objective model, nothing new happens in the process of self-actualization. Instead, we simply see the emergence of what was already there from the start.
Michelangelo said that a statue is slumbering in every block of marble. His job was just to release and awaken it. That’s a lovely metaphor, but it isn’t really true. It downplays Michaelangelo’s own powers of invention. He never turned down a commission because he couldn’t find the piece of marble in which the commissioned statue was slumbering. Marble is pretty much a blank slate. You can sculpt virtually anything out of it. The same block of marble from which he carved The David could have been carved into a giant statue of Mickey Mouse.
Subjective self-actualization is modeled on artistic creation, not natural growth. On the subjective view, in the beginning, there is not a determinate seed but an indeterminate raw material—the potter’s clay, the sculptor’s marble, the child’s Silly Putty—from which we create a self. Thus subjective self-actualization can also be called “self-invention.” Ayn Rand put it nicely: “Man is a being of self-made soul.”[1]
I wish to argue three theses about self-actualization. First, objective self-actualization is essential to happiness. Second, objective self-actualization is not the standard of right and wrong. In other words, self-actualization is not always a good thing. Third, subjective self-actualization or self-invention is a highly damaging delusion.
1. Self-Actualization Is Essential to Happiness
For Plato, the pursuit of happiness requires the wise use of the gifts of fortune. One of the primary gifts of fortune is one’s objective nature. But how do we use it wisely?
In his “Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life,” Arthur Schopenauer argues beautifully that our only choice about our objective nature is to live in accordance with it or not. If we choose a life that goes against the grain of our nature, we will be unhappy.
A man of Herculean strength who is endowed with unusual muscular power and is compelled by external circumstances to follow a sedentary occupation, to carry out with his hands minute and intricate tasks, or to pursue studies and mental work that demand powers of quite a different order from those he possesses, and consequently to leave unused those powers in which he excels, will feel unhappy all his life. But even more unhappy will be the man whose intellectual powers are of a very high order, and who must leave them undeveloped and unused in order to pursue a common business that does not require them, or even some physical work to which his strength is not really adequate.[2]
If, however, we choose a life that goes with the grain of our nature, we are more likely to be happy, but even then, happiness is not guaranteed. Thus we can conclude that self-actualization is necessary but not sufficient for happiness. I find this argument completely convincing.
The objective self exists both in actuality and potency. The happy life requires actualizing its potential.
Schopenhauer believed that the objective self in its state of potency was the basis of the ancient idea of the “daimon,” a spirit assigned to each person at birth to serve as a guardian and guide.[3]
One of Heraclitus’ most intriguing fragments reads, “ethos anthropo daimon,” usually translated “Man’s character is his destiny.” The Schopenhauerian paraphrase would be: “Our objective self in a state of potency is our guiding/guardian spirit.”
As we progress through life, our daimon guides us to choose a path that harmonizes with our nature and warns us away from paths that go against our nature. When we choose rightly, we are rewarded with happiness. When we choose wrongly, we are punished with suffering.
Interestingly enough, the ancient Greek word for happiness or well-being is “eudaimonia.” The prefix “eu-” means “well.” “Daimonia” doesn’t exactly mean “being” as such, but it can be understood as “being oneself.” Happiness is being oneself well, meaning living in accordance with one’s objective nature. Unhappiness, or “dysdaimonia” means being oneself badly, i.e., living against one’s objective nature.
We don’t have a choice about who we are. Our objective self is a daimon, a destiny, not our creation. Our only choice is to embrace or betray who we are. If we embrace our destiny, our daimon rewards us with happiness. If we betray our destiny, our daimon scourges us with misery.
2. Self-Actualization Isn’t Necessarily Good
Self-actualization may be necessary for happiness, but is self-actualization necessarily a good thing? What do you do with a bad seed? Would you say to Jeffrey Dahmer, “Jeffrey, you’ve just got to be yourself. After all, you can’t be anybody else.”
You can buy Greg Johnson’s The Trial of Socrates here.
The bad seed problem points to a larger issue. Human beings have a lot of potential. We have the potential for greatness and squalor, good and evil, virtue and vice. If self-actualization were always a good thing, then what about our potentialities for evil? Is an ethics of self-actualization, therefore, an invitation to be as bad as you can be? To find the right kind of badness for you?
This is why Aristotle does not define happiness as “self-actualization” per se but self-actualization in accordance with virtue, i.e., the good kind of self-actualization. So Aristotle would not say “Be yourself.” Instead, he would say: “Be the best version of yourself.”
In Plato’s dialogues, one way to test an account of the good is to ask, “Can this ever be bad?” For instance, if one says that “Pleasure is the good,” a position called hedonism, the proper response is to ask, “Yes, but can there be good pains and bad pleasures?” If there are, then pleasure cannot be the good. Plato’s assumption here is that the good must be unconditionally good, good in all circumstances. If pleasures can be bad, then pleasure cannot be the good.
The same is true for self-actualization. If the actualization of certain potentialities can be bad, then self-actualization is not unconditionally good.
What, then, is the good? The good is that which allows you to distinguish good and bad pleasures, good and bad potentialities. So we all already know what the good is. But philosophers have been arguing for more than 2,000 years about how, precisely, to put that knowledge into words.
For Plato and Aristotle, the good is human happiness, well-being, or eudaimonia, which has an element of self-actualization, but only the good kind.
For both Plato and Aristotle, happiness and wisdom are unconditional goods, but they have different opinions about how they are related.
Can there be bad forms of happiness? If so, then happiness cannot be the good either. The answer hinges on whether monstrous people can be truly happy. If Jeffrey Dahmer or Stalin were happy, then happiness is not necessarily a good thing, so the good itself must be something different from happiness.
3. Self-Invention Is a Harmful Delusion
Why do I think self-invention is a false path to happiness? Self-invention is basically a subjective form of relativism. The relativist claims that values are relative to the individual. What’s good for me might not be good for you. The subjectivist claims they are relative to the individual mind, meaning that they are subjective constructs: “X is good for me simply because I say so.”
You can buy Greg Johnson’s From Plato to Postmodernism here
Now, if life is all about the pursuit of happiness through the acquisition of good things, the subjective relativist has no excuse not to be happy. If he can simply define anything as good, then no matter what is happening in his life, he can declare it good, and by that very fact, he will be happy.
So why isn’t everyone happy? If the “one simple trick” to being happy is to declare whatever situation we are in to be good, you’d think that it would have caught on by now, and that all human beings would be happy. If there are no wrong answers in the game of life, then we would all have won the prize.
The reason that so many people are unhappy is that there are wrong answers, which means that there are objective truths about human happiness, and a central truth is that we do not invent ourselves.
There’s also a metaphysical problem with the idea of self-invention. If you believe in self-invention, who is doing the inventing? Presumably, the self that invents is just as plastic and indeterminate as the material it works upon. It is nothing in particular, working on nothing in particular, to invent a self that presumably can be reinvented at will.
Aristotle claimed that only actual beings can be causes. This makes sense. You can’t do anything if you don’t exist. On the objective model of self-actualization, you and your potentialities are created by your parents. At a certain point in your development, you become more independent and capable of directing your own life and realizing your potential.
Thus for Aristotle, self-invention is nonsense. To invent yourself, you must already be someone, but self-invention is the idea that you only become someone after you invent yourself. But again, who is doing the inventing?
Every inventor is somebody else’s invention. Thus the person who thinks that he is a radically free artist inventing himself out of nothing is simply deluded.
So who is the self-inventor really? His sense of inner freedom is simply a lack of self-knowledge, which always includes knowledge of our limits. Perhaps the reality of his life is so terrifying and traumatic that he flees into a world of fantasy. The infinitely plastic material from which he constructs himself is the stuff of fantasy. It is less a self than a self-image, which exists in his mind and the minds of others, who think the images he creates are real. In short, we are dealing with narcissists who derive a sense of reality and worth by feeding upon other people’s reactions to the images of themselves that they construct in the minds of others.
But if Schopenhauer is right that happiness requires living in accordance with our objective natures, self-invention is not a road to happiness but a road to misery, because self-invention is actually self-betrayal: the betrayal of your objective self.
Your real self can’t live in a fantasy world. While you are pretending to be someone else, your real self is being neglected. Its needs are not being met. It is crying out in pain. But its pains are your pains.
When you betray your daimon, it turns into an avenging angel. It will torment you with negative emotions until it bursts your bubble of fantasy and self-betrayal and forces you to confront the reality of your life.
Notes
[1] Ayn Rand, “Philosophy and Sense of Life,” The Romantic Manifesto, second ed. (New York: New American Library, 1975), p. 28.
[2] Arthur Schopenhauer, “Aphorisms on the Wisdom of Life,” Parerga and Paralipomena, trans. E. F. J. Payne, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 200), vol. 1, p. 320.
[3] Schopenhauer, “Transcendent Speculation on the Apparent Deliberateness in the Fate of the Individual,” Parerga and Paralipomena, vol. 1, esp. pp. 210–12.
28 comments
Really enjoyed this essay. But it is too much on reproval and too little on mechanism or advice. I wrestle with what my true nature or talents might be. What about those of us who have no true talents or intrinsic worth? I find myself frittering among different pursuits without forming a true mastery or abiding interest in any one thing. Where would my energies most appropriately be applied? For example, by studying combinatorics, am I seen as spinning my wheels on a topic which I have no grasp of or innate ability? Do I like my work or is it something I’m trying to escape from? How can we answer these questions?
Girard has a sort of different take on happiness, that human activity is to a large degree imitative. We want what others seem to want, hence our happiness is predicated on what makes others happy. This goes a long way to explaining leftists too.
The only advice I can give a stranger is pretty general: find out who you are, what works for you, and live accordingly.
Imitating others is fine for learning language and customs as a child. But to attain happiness, we need to know ourselves and act accordingly.
Oh thank you! As per the earlier thread, while we have your attention, how many centuries do you think western philosophy was put back due to the Holocaust?
None
“…human activity is to a large degree imitative.”
I concur, monkey see monkey do! It is fundamental for social beings. What I’m wondering is whether you need to isolate yourself for X amount of time to figure out who you really are. Social settings cause areas of the brain to respond to stimuli that wouldn’t otherwise be there to “interrupt”. Although it’s important to know yourself in social contexts too.
FWIW, Aleister Crowley would recommend to figure out your mission in life and pursue it single-mindedly.
I’ve never liked the idea of self-invention but could never articulate why.
The idea never sat well with me either. My first reaction was: Who is doing the inventing? The truth is that self-invention is really mask-invention and role-playing.
Yes agreed
Tbf Bowden proved it could be entertaining, insightful, and inspiring if done correctly.
Jonathan’s confabulations were pretty banal.
An insightful article. I enjoyed reading it. I think you nailed the etiology of the trans lunacy with this:
Perhaps the reality of his life is so terrifying and traumatic that he flees into a world of fantasy…In short, we are dealing with narcissists who derive a sense of reality and worth by feeding upon other people’s reactions to the images of themselves that they construct in the minds of others.
Thanks. A good part of the trans phenomenon is indeed pathological narcissism.
I just finished reading The Daimon and the Soul of the West: Finding identity, meaning, and purpose in a sacrificial life by Bernardo Kastrup, his latest short book about exactly this topic. Bernardo is a libtard who denies race, but is otherwise a great philosopher. I’m routinely floored by how much his writings and worldview resemble those of William Luther Pierce and William Gayley Simpson despite I’m sure having no acquaintance with them.
Thanks. I will look at that.
Important piece.
I would throw in a couple of other real world things. Identifying barriers to self-development, and then having some way forward to negotiate those problems. And some of those problems may be life long hardwired problems and will never be solved. They aren’t things you can flick a switch over. They may need constant attention.
But I wouldn’t like to call them the ‘real you’, it’s pretty bleak, they are unpleasant things that need constant management, a mixture of work and acceptance where you can’t change something easily. The struggle becomes the real you. Or we could say the ‘real you’ just sucks, and we have to do something with it.
The topic of self-hatred is a very interesting one to me.
Also today, there is far more choice it seems. And those choices are perplexing to many. The authentic choice may not be known at different points in life.
And it looks like CC is serving an older cached version here for most content since a couple of days ago. Think it’s about 24 or 36 hours behind.
I really liked this essay. I have contemplated this subject matter for many years, and was not aware that you could also find thoughts on it by Plato and Aristotle.
Thanks. Yes, the whole idea of self-actualization goes back to the Greeks.
Greg, this is some of your best writing in my humble opinion. Is it an excerpt from one of your books?
I believe it’s a waste of time to try to “find oneself.” There are folks who know that they wish to become a doctor, so they take the necessary steps to actualize that goal. This, however, is not the majority of people.
We become the greatest version of ourselves, by honoring the commitments we make to others to advance common long term goals. This offers a strong sense of purpose, and deep satisfaction. These days, many more men than women seem to understand this.
Thank you.
This is based on some old lecture notes, but it will go in an essay collection this spring.
I agree that a lot of what passes for “finding oneself” is Romantic mush. But there’s no question that we are happier when we find lives that suit us, including jobs. But I think “career fulfillment” is massively oversold as a goal.
The truth is that most jobs are only more or less alienating. Only very few are deeply fulfilling. Thus to seek one’s happiness is work is a mistake for most people.
In truth, the greatest source of human happiness are personal relationships, for which most people merely tolerate jobs as means to that end.
I’ve observed that in common parlance, “finding myself” usually involves a lot of partying and dissolute behavior, basically part of an extended adolescence. My take is that if people don’t really know who they are already, that’s lame. The ghost of Ayn Rand would scold them mightily.
Yes, about “90%” of finding oneself post-Baby Boom means bumming around experimenting with drugs, with the idea that maybe in the end one will settle down somewhere and do something practical, like become the next Andy Warhol. A lot of people think “finding oneself” involves a “eureka!” moment, when they finally start “feeling like” doing something.
A lot of that is psychologically naive. But here’s the thing: the core of truth to it is that one cannot be happy if one’s life goes against one’s nature, as per the Schopenhauer example. The big questions are: how much does one’s work fit into happiness/unhappiness, how does one learn who one is, and how does one know it when one does.
Modern life as a wage slave precludes most mens nature. Like thomas friedman said, it’s a straight jacket.
What determines what makes us happy? I imagine that is simply part of our nature, and so “we must live in accordance with our nature to be happy” would be trivially true. (Or, if our nature doesn’t determine what makes us happy, then I don’t think it’s obviously true that we must live in accordance with it to be happy.)
That said, I think most people’s natures are conflicting and inconsistent. It’s probably a rare person indeed who can satisfy every aspect of his nature simultaneously. So we must choose which aspects to satisfy. This relates to the idea of virtue and the good. I think duty also has a claim on us, but perhaps that’s subsumed into virtue and the good.
But as for what the good is, I also see conflict. You wondered if a mass murderer could be truly happy, and if so, argued that happiness would not be the good. But I think that is defining the good in some societal (“greater good”) sense, which can conflict with the good in an individual sense. As social creatures the two often align, but there may be dominant or lone wolf types – or just people whose social nature is unusual or defective – for whom the good individually doesn’t align with the good societally, perhaps radically so. I feel like this relates to one of the Platonic dialogues you wrote about, where it was argued that because the mighty can be overpowered by the many that one way or another everyone is compelled to align himself with societal notions of the good. A partial counterargument is that a dominant character can still get away with quite a bit before arousing a lynch mob, so there may be space for pursuing some individual version of the good that conflicts somewhat with the societal version – at least as a practical matter, without granting it moral license.
Which brings us to an interesting question: if one’s personal nature and well-being conflict with that of society, to what degree are we obligated to sacrifice our own well-being for the good of others?
Which brings us to an interesting question: if one’s personal nature and well-being conflict with that of society, to what degree are we obligated to sacrifice our own well-being for the good of others?
Wise comments, all of them, AdamMil. I think that the eastern folk say something to the effect of how fortunate you are if your own will aligns with “God’s will”. I don’t think that is something you do, though. It’s something that happens to you. I can sure understand why some people (men, I guess, mostly) would go and live in some isolated place, all alone and relatively self-sufficient (as in living off roots ‘n’ berries) to contemplate life, or to at least be away from the rabble.
But how do we define “well-being” anyway. Sometimes our well-being will ultimately be served by some bastards coming along and making us uncomfortable in order that we might ramp up our understanding a notch or two. This life is supposed to be about attaining wisdom, not just having fun and being comfy 24/7 and thinking that’s “well- being”, as if we are little children. And if there is any wisdom to be gained without having our arses kicked mightily once in a while, I don’t see how that could be. Maybe this calamity on our doorstep (extermination of our race) is about teaching us to reject at least some parts of Christian teaching.
Grist for the mill.
Good points. Certainly what’s best for my children sometimes involves them being unhappy in the present for the sake of future benefit. Why would it be different for me?
This is an important essay. If we were a sane society, it would be published in the Atlantic magazine or the New Yorker. I say this because what immediately jumps to mind is I have an image of a single woman in her late 30’s or mid 40’s, never married, without children, with her yoga mat, dressed in lululemon. Her evenings are spent watching Netflix and eating haagen daz ice cream. She follows all of the liberal orders regarding self actualization, but mistakenly believes it is autonomous self creation. Without admitting it to anyone, not her best friends, not her parents, to no one but her doctor, she takes prescription anti-depressant medications. Any novelist could easily write a story about this kind of character, and it would tell us everything we already know about ourselves. As always, great job Dr Johnson.
Thanks so much. There is a sequel in the works.
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