MLK And Why I Write About Spirituality
Surprisingly, through all the talk about MLK we've heard today, there's one aspect of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. we aren't hearing that much about: the fact that he was a Christian.
Yes, believe it or not, he had that "Dr." at the beginning of his name because he had a doctorate in theology. Yes, he spent some time leading civil rights protests, but he spent much more time being a preacher.
Okay, maybe you knew that part. But what we really don't hear about often is that King's Christianity was rooted in his personal spiritual experience.
When discussing his spirituality, people usually say King was influenced by Christ's or Gandhi's "philosophy" -- as if, based on a sober assessment of their logic and evidence, King concluded their ideas were sound -- but they don't touch on what King saw as his firsthand encounter with the divine.
MLK's Epiphany
I've read and listened to a lot about King, but I only recently heard this story. One night in 1956, King's struggle was taking its toll, and he was feeling tired and defeated. Sitting at his kitchen table, he started praying out loud. Suddenly, he "experienced the presence of the Divine as I had never experienced Him before."
"It seemed as though," he wrote in Stride Toward Freedom, "I could hear the quiet assurance of an inner voice saying: 'Stand up for righteousness, stand up for truth; and God will be at your side forever.' Almost at once my fears began to go. My uncertainty disappeared. I was ready to face anything." This experience convinced him to stay on his course, and become the leader he became.
When reading about this event, it struck me that this would be a great story to tell the people I know and read who scoff at spiritual practice, and say it's a waste of time. "Why spend all that time meditating or praying? Why not go out and do some good in the real world?" they ask.
Some Crazy Ideas
Here's a controversial thought: what if the very idea of "goodness" has its roots in spiritual experiences like King's? In other words, what if we wouldn't even have any sense of what it means to "do good," without the guidance of people who have had personal encounters with divinity?
The founders of the great religious traditions -- Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad, and so on -- are all said to have had life-changing shifts in their consciousness that convinced them of their calling. These figures' spiritual experiences inspired the teachings and behavior they brought into the world, which in turn created much of what we now call "morality" and "ethics." At least, so some say.
And how about another crazy idea: what if the very purpose of spiritual practice -- meditation, prayer, chanting, and so on -- is to bring about that same state of consciousness? To give the everyday person access to the compassion, inner strength, and sense of universal interconnectedness that drove people like King to accomplish what they did?
If spiritual practice can do that for us -- and, in the interest of full disclosure, I believe it can -- I think it's actually one of the best uses we can make of our time.
Why Growth Is Good: New Free E-Book
I'm pleased to introduce you to a collection of articles from this site that I've put together called "Why Growth Is Good: The Case for Personal Growth, Self-Help and the 'New Age'," which is available here as a free e-book. I've edited many of my posts together into longer essays, and I've also written a new introduction.
These essays have the same goal as this site -- to present a compelling, organized argument for the value of personal development ideas and practices, and respond to their critics.
This book will be great food for thought if you've ever wondered about any of these questions:
* Are there practical benefits to self-development practices like meditation, yoga, and transformational workshops?
* Does self-help advice that encourages taking personal responsibility invite us to beat ourselves up?
* Does the same kind of advice discourage us from caring about others?
* Is psychotherapy about nothing more than whining about our families of origin?
* Did too much "positive thinking" cause the recent economic downturn?
* Do people who are into self-help tend to be more selfish and less generous?
* Is there a danger that self-development practices may make us feel "too happy" and neglect problem areas in our lives?
* Do personal development ideas discourage us from getting involved in politics?
I hope you enjoy this compilation, and I'm looking forward to your feedback!
(Sponsored by http://e-library.)
The Circumcision Ban And The New Atheism
You've probably heard about a recent campaign in San Francisco, California to put a measure on the ballot banning circumcision. I think this campaign illustrates some of the troubling assumptions people are increasingly making about spirituality in our culture, and I'm going to look at some of those assumptions in this post.
Lloyd Schofield, who started the campaign, explains the ban by saying that "it's a man's body, and his body doesn't belong to his culture, his government, his religion or even his parents." Thus, according to Schofield, forcibly removing a male baby's foreskin is immoral.
Religion Isn't Like A Nose Job
This argument may sound good on the surface, but if we examine it more closely, we can see that it proves too much. What about situations where surgery is required to save an infant's life? Should such operations be banned because "it's the infant's body" and no one has the right to invade it? I think most people would say no.
But this, I'm sure Schofield would respond, doesn't undermine the ban, because circumcision is never (as far as I know) needed to save babies' lives. Instead, he has said, it's more like "cosmetic surgery." No one should be forced to get a facelift, the argument goes, and the same principle applies here.
The trouble with this argument is that, for many, if not most, of the people who choose to have their babies circumcised, the procedure is not akin to cosmetic surgery at all. It's a religious requirement. If you believed, as these people do, that God exists, He is the ultimate arbiter of morality, and He wants you to circumcise your child, I don't think you'd see it as a trivial matter.
In other words, when we unpack the rationale for the circumcision ban a bit, we can see that it's based on an idea hostile to religion: that religious practices are just as frivolous and unnecessary as cosmetic surgery.
If we want to have an honest debate about this law, I think we need to acknowledge that it's based on anti-religious assumptions of the sort we often see in the writings of "New Atheists" like Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris, and ask the ban's proponents to justify those assumptions.
The False "Religion Vs. Morality" Distinction
But there's a deeper, and more problematic, assumption behind the ban -- the notion that the ban is justified by moral principles that are separate from, and superior to, religious beliefs. "People can practice whatever religion they want, but your religious practice ends with someone else's body," says Schofield.
Again, this sounds convincing at first, but let's take a closer look. Where do the ban's defenders get the moral rule that "your religious practice ends with someone else's body?"
Did they learn this through scientific observation? No. As philosophers have often pointed out, moral principles are different from laws of nature like the law of gravity -- we can't learn what's right and wrong by conducting experiments.
Some might argue that Schofield is expressing moral values most people share. However, even assuming most people buy the principle that "your religious practice ends with someone else's body," that doesn't make the principle true. To use a timeworn argumentum ad Hitlerum, a majority of the German people may have supported Hitler's rise to power, but I think you'd agree that doesn't mean it was a good thing.
My point is: it's far from obvious that the principle "your religious practice ends with someone else's body" is somehow more valid than the religious view "God commands me to circumcise my child." Neither principle is more "neutral" than the other, and there's no good reason to dismiss the second one just because it contains the word "God."
I suspect we'll see more and more legislation influenced by "New Atheist" ideas being proposed, and I think we need to understand those ideas and the role they're playing if we want to have a fully informed discussion about these laws.
Rhonda Byrne’s The Power: Is The Packaging The Problem?
A common reason people attack The Secret (and now, Rhonda Byrne's sequel, The Power) is that it promotes a self-centered and "consumerist" attitude. Byrne, critics say, encourages us to focus on "manifesting" luxury cars, expensive shoes, and so on, rather than on helping others.
It's true that the Law of Attraction is often packaged as something we can use to improve our own lives, rather than those of others. The publisher's description of The Power, for example, proclaims that "perfect health, incredible relationships, a career you love, a life filled with happiness, and the money you need to be, do, and have everything you want, all come from The Power."
On the other hand, we can certainly imagine people using the Law of Attraction (assuming, for the moment, that it works) to serve others. Perhaps we might visualize a sick relative getting better, hungry people receiving food, or a dangerous tropical storm abating -- just as Buddhists pray for the wellness of all beings in Metta, or loving kindness, meditation.
So, I suspect many critics' real gripe with the Law of Attraction has to do with the "self-centered" way they think it's marketed, rather than the concept itself.
The "Opportunity Cost" of Spirituality
To be sure, some critics recognize that the Law of Attraction -- again, assuming it works -- can potentially be used to help others. The real problem, they say, is that it obviously doesn't work. Wishing a tropical storm won't devastate a town simply won't have any effect.
Even if this critique is right, I think it's open to the objection "so what?" People do all kinds of pointless activities, such as (in my opinion) watching reality TV and tweeting about what they ate for breakfast. Even assuming it accomplishes nothing, why is visualizing the improvement of others' lives more problematic?
This is where some charge that trying to "manifest" what we want isn't just a waste of time -- it's socially harmful, because every minute we spend visualizing is a minute we could have used taking concrete action to help somebody.
Interestingly, this is the same objection we often see critics of "mainstream religion" making. People who pray to God to relieve suffering in the world are misguided, the critics say, because there is no God. But more importantly, churchgoers are squandering time they could be spending on real charitable work. (This is the sort of thing we often hear from "New Atheist" Sam Harris.)
Religious People Give More
If this argument is right, we should expect religious people to do less charitable giving than unbelievers. While believers are uselessly propitiating their imaginary sky-god, atheists are down in the trenches, solving real people's problems -- right?
Actually, much evidence suggests the opposite: religious people tend to be more generous than unbelievers. In Who Really Cares, a study of charitable donation, economist Arthur C. Brooks found that religious belief was the strongest predictor of giving to charity among the factors he looked at -- more so than any political orientation, age group or race.
So, while it may be true that believers spend time in worship that nonbelievers don't, it seems religious people nonetheless find the time to do more giving. But why?
One plausible explanation I've heard is that religious people are happier. They feel more secure, and grateful, living in a universe they see as orderly and benevolent. And psychological studies have found that happier people tend to give more generously.
In any case, all this suggests that we shouldn't be too quick to conclude that adherents of the Law of Attraction are less likely to be charitable, simply because they believe their thoughts can affect reality. Of course, because the ideas in The Secret are different in many ways from traditional religion, we shouldn't necessarily assume The Secret's followers are more giving either.
We'll explore this issue in more depth soon.
Personal Development Politics, Part 2: The Elections and Self-Responsibility
We've been looking at the argument, made by some personal growth critics (Salerno posted about this, for example), that self-development's emphasis on personal responsibility favors political conservatism. If this is true, I've been asking, why do self-development teachers tend to be politically liberal? Is it because they don't see the implications of their ideas?
Like I said in my last post, I think the answer is no. I've seen many examples of personal growth teachers consciously embracing both liberal politics and a belief in human beings' ability to control their circumstances.
This recent Huffington Post piece by meditation teachers Ed and Deb Shapiro is a good illustration. The Shapiros don't seem particularly thrilled about the recent U.S. election — they describe it as characterized by “weird and unqualified people vying for top government positions," by which they presumably mean some of the Republicans who swept the House of Representatives.
At first, the Shapiros may sound like they're counseling people who are upset about the elections to give up, and accept that there's nothing they can do to change the situation. "It is our ability to be fully present and engaged that enables us to accept every situation exactly as it is," they write, inviting us "to embrace difficulties, deep sadness, upset feelings, or injustice while staying aware, present, and available."
Self-Responsibility and Social Change
However, the Shapiros go on to reveal a strong, perhaps even radical, belief in personal responsibility. We can only work for social change, they explain, when we drop our griping about the situation, "for in that moment of acceptance we can move to transform it."
Once we fully accept what's true right now, the power of our thoughts and actions to change the world is at its height. "Everything we think, say, and do has an immediate effect on everyone and everything else," they write, and this "means that we have enormous resources available to us at all times."
In other words, although they stop short of embracing a full-blown "Law of Attraction," and saying we can conjure up things we want through thought, the Shapiros clearly are firm believers in individuals' ability to shape their situation, and reject the Marxian notion that we're basically pawns of impersonal social forces.
Also, notice that the Shapiros' belief in self-responsibility doesn't lead them to reject politics as a means of solving social problems -- their whole piece, though abstract, is about how adopting an attitude of mindful acceptance can actually empower people to reverse the current political trend.
But What About "Blaming The Victim"?
I can imagine a critic arguing that, although the Shapiros may think it's consistent to be politically liberal and believe in radical self-responsibility, they're simply wrong.
This is because, the argument goes, a major tenet of political liberalism is that the government should create a fair society by redistributing wealth. This, in turn, is based on the notion that each person's wealth is mostly a matter of luck -- how much they inherited, their genetic makeup, and so on.
However, the belief that we can create our circumstances implies that we're responsible for how wealthy we are. If we're poor, that can't be due to bad luck -- it must be because we're lazy. And if we're lazy, that means we don't deserve to have wealth redistributed in our favor.
As I've touched on briefly before, I disagree. I don't think you need to believe that everyone's circumstances are solely, or even mostly, the result of chance to consistently be a political liberal, as I've defined it.
I'll list four reasons why below. (Notice how the arguments I'll make can also be used to justify voluntary charity, if government redistribution of wealth isn't your thing.)
1. Social Harmony. Some, like this organization that Evan pointed out, argue that societies with lower disparities in wealth are more harmonious, in that their people tend to live longer, they have fewer violent crimes and less teen pregnancy, and so on.
I haven't looked in detail at their evidence, so I'm agnostic about what they say, but the point is that it can be used to justify economic equality regardless of whether the less well-off "deserve" contributions from the better-off.
To illustrate, if I was certain that giving money to someone in poverty would extend my lifespan by five years, I'd probably do it regardless of whether he was responsible for being poor.
2. Compassion for people who make bad choices. Suppose your friend became a drug addict and, as a result, lost his job. Would you feel no compassion for him, and refuse him help, because he chose to use drugs? I don't think you would. In other words, it's certainly possible to feel compassion for people whose predicament is arguably "their own fault."
3. The "Unconscious Beliefs" argument. It may be the case that (1) we're all totally, or mostly, responsible for the situation we find ourselves in, but (2) not everybody knows that.
For example, suppose I harbor the unconscious belief that "I deserve to suffer and be poor." I'm "responsible" for this belief, in the sense that it exists in my own mind, but I may not be conscious of its existence or my power to change it. Many self-development teachers (T. Harv Eker is a popular example when it comes to money) see it as their role to make people aware of "limiting beliefs" like these.
What's more, one might argue, so long as there are people who aren't conscious of their ability to control their economic circumstances, redistribution of wealth or private charity is sometimes needed to help such people.
4. Divine Command. As you know, many people believe that God, or another supernatural force, has given them an unqualified command to be charitable. From these people's perspective, it's our job to help the less well-off, regardless of whether they're "at fault" for their plight.
What do you think? Is a strong belief in personal responsibility inherently conservative?
Can Politics And Science Cure All Ills?
It’s been a long time since I rock and rolled, but I was inspired to write here again after my recent review, on my other blog, of Robert Augustus Masters’ Spiritual Bypassing: When Spirituality Disconnects Us from What Really Matters.
Spiritual Bypassing is about how we tend to use spiritual practice to escape from, rather than confront, our psychological wounds. One thing that particularly struck me in the book was Masters’ statement that, ideally, spiritual practice is about releasing everything in our lives from the “obligation to make us feel better.”
The point is that spirituality is certainly far from the only thing people use to “take the edge off” their pain. Drugs are another obvious example, but there are subtler and more “socially acceptable” examples as well. I regularly notice instances of what I’d call “political bypassing” and “scientific bypassing” in our culture.
To illustrate the former, some people I know came close to hailing Obama as a messiah when he was elected — looking, for the next few days, like they were in a spiritually-inspired state of bliss, and their personal tribulations were healed or at least put out of their minds. (Ironically, the same people usually scoff at the mere mention of spirituality, associating it with evangelical Christians and/or Republicans.)
Most importantly for our purposes, we can also see the embrace of political and scientific “bypassing” among critics of personal growth and spirituality.
Political Bypassing and Personal Growth
I’ve commented before on personal growth critics who basically claim — much like Marx — that the main source of discontent among human beings is economic inequality. Personal development distracts people from this issue, by encouraging them to focus on their private achievements and relationships. Thus, self-development is not only ineffective — it retards social progress.
These critics’ vitriol often obscures the wide-eyed idealism of their basic assumption: that, if everybody only had equal material resources, nobody would suffer again. No more loneliness, depression, or alienation for the human race, ever.
If the notion that spirituality can address all our “issues” is unrealistic, I think, the same can surely be said of the utopian notion that state-mandated “equality” will cure all human ills.
Scientific Bypassing and Spirituality
As for scientific bypassing, I think we can see this in the “New Atheist” critiques of religion that have been so popular over the last few years, by authors such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. These critics say that spirituality and science/reason are in irreconcilable conflict, and we’d have a much better world if we only discarded the former and embraced the latter.
One problem these critics face is that science seems incapable of answering moral questions. Some have no problem with this, and simply deny the existence of objective morality, because “there’s no scientific evidence for it.” But this answer is instinctively unsatisfying for many people — to use a timeworn example, can we really accept the idea that Nazi medical experiments on prisoners weren’t objectively wrong?
Others respond that science can, at least, tell us what actions and policies will advance “human flourishing” — how to eat nutritiously, for example. However, these critics need to explain why our actions should serve the goal of human flourishing at all — why shouldn’t kangaroo or algae flourishing be our priority? Science can’t tell us why we ought to prefer the well-being of one species to that of another.
My point is that I think it’s important to be wary of “bypassing” — relying on one particular practice or institution to “make us feel better” — in all areas of human life. The realm of spirituality and personal development certainly isn’t the only place where this happens.
Personal Growth’s “Victim Culture,” Part 2: Support Groups and Selfishness
In this series, I've been responding to the common criticism that personal development encourages people to see themselves as victims, and discourages them from taking responsibility for their problems.
Recovery groups -- for example, Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) -- are a frequent target of anti-personal growth authors. The critics have many concerns about these groups, as we'll see, but a common complaint is that, by encouraging members to share about their personal suffering, they trivialize the suffering of genuinely needy people.
The "Trivialization" Argument
The argument goes like this: recovery groups tend to serve as a forum for people to talk about challenges they're facing, or their past hurts. Giving people a place to talk about their emotional issues implies that those issues are really important -- that the suffering these people are enduring is significant. If I'm part of a support group, for instance, and the group gives me time to "check in" about marital troubles I'm having, that necessarily implies that my marital issues are important enough to merit the group's attention.
However, even if I'm having conflicts with my wife, there are clearly people in the world who are suffering worse than me -- people with terminal illnesses, living in war-torn countries, and so on. By treating my suffering as if it deeply matters, my group may encourage me to see these people's suffering and mine as equivalent. And if I start to see the world that way, I may become less interested in helping genuinely unfortunate individuals.
Wendy Kaminer, in I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional, seems very concerned about this possibility: "Recovery gives people permission always to put themselves first, partly because it doesn't give them a sense of perspective on their complaints," she writes. "The failure to acknowledge that there are hierarchies of human suffering is what makes recovery and other personal development fashions 'selfist' and narcissistic."
What About The Facts?
Like many arguments against personal growth, this argument is usually presented as if it were common sense. Kaminer, for example, doesn't offer evidence that people in recovery groups, on average, give less to charity, express less concern for people in third-world countries, or do anything else suggesting a "selfist" mentality -- except to say that, in her own visits to recovery groups, she didn't hear a member remark that another person's suffering was worse than their own.
What's more, there's psychological evidence suggesting that people who join support groups actually tend to become more generous as a result. For instance, a New Zealand study of a support group for chronic pain sufferers found that participants in the group became more inclined to help others. Similarly, a study in Communication Quarterly reported that people in an HIV/AIDS support group "experience[d] increased self-esteem associated with helping others."
Granted, no two support groups are the same, so this research doesn't prove that the recovery movement in general creates more compassionate people. It does, however, cast doubt on Kaminer's claim that support groups foster selfishness in their members. What's more, these studies make intuitive sense -- oriented as they are toward mutual support and caregiving, it seems natural that recovery groups would help members come to understand the joys of serving others.
How About The Philosophical Navel-Gazing?
On a philosophical level, we can begin to see the oddness of Kaminer's argument if we look at the following example.
Suppose you and I were close friends, and I griped to you about marital conflicts I was having. I don't think you'd somehow conclude, with righteous indignation, that I must be equating my relationship troubles with the plight of, say, paraplegics. Nor would an outside observer conclude that, because you allowed me to vent about my problems, you must be encouraging me to see my marriage and things like paraplegia as morally equivalent, and thereby turning me into a self-centered person.
In other words, no one would morally condemn the kind of conversation Kaminer is complaining about if it took place outside a support group. There's no reason to make it wrong simply because it occurs in an AA meeting or a similar context.
But at a deeper level, do we really need to believe in what Kaminer calls a "hierarchy of human suffering" to be interested in helping others? We'll explore that question in my next post.
Self-Help and Selfishness, Part 3: Compassion And Justice
We've been talking about the claim, commonly made by critics of personal growth, that self-development techniques are "selfish" because they only benefit the person using them. As I noted earlier, there's a good deal of evidence that effective personal growth practices actually help us develop more compassion and generosity toward others. So, it seems to me, personal development can actually serve as a source of positive social change.
Why don't the critics see it this way? Why do they often treat personal development as, in fact, an obstacle to "social justice"? My sense is that they, like much of Western political philosophy, think of justice as a set of abstract rules to follow. Our society, in this view, will be good and just once it starts complying with the right set of rules.
For people who are usually called conservatives, these rules are mostly concerned with preventing forms of violence like killing and theft. A just society, from this perspective, is one where that conduct is minimized. For those who tend to be called liberals, the rules are more about how resources are distributed -- to them, a just society is one where the right distribution of money, medical care, and so on exists.
Justice: Just A Philosophical Abstraction?
For all their differences, these models of justice have at least one thing in common, which is that they treat the way people feel about each other as irrelevant. Even if citizens of a given society don't care one whit about each other, that society is nonetheless just if it follows the correct rules -- whether through preventing violence, equitably parceling out resources, or something else.
Given these typical ways of thinking, it's no surprise that critics of personal growth see self-development practices as basically irrelevant to achieving justice. Meditating, for example, may well make people more compassionate, but that emotion alone does nothing to further the cause of a just society. If anything, practices like meditation waste time that could be better spent fighting real-world injustice. As Barbara Ehrenreich puts it in Bright-Sided, "why spend so much time working on one’s self when there’s so much real work to be done?"
At best, if meditation causes people to be kinder, people may do more charitable giving, and thus advance the goal of equitably dividing resources. But that's hardly the most efficient path to a fair distribution of wealth. Why not simply have the government take some people's property and give it to others? Meditation, from this perspective, is an inadequate and unnecessary solution to the problem of inequality.
Abstract Justice In A Non-Abstract World
In the real world, we can see this mentality in communist countries' approach to achieving justice. To Marxist thinkers, practices for finding inner peace do nothing but distract people from the quest for equality. Thus, Marxist regimes banned religious and spiritual institutions and practices, from the Orthodox Church in the Soviet Union to the Falun Gong movement in China.
These countries' history, I think, illustrates the danger of seeing justice as nothing more than a set of rules for preventing coercion or distributing wealth. These regimes treated abstract concepts of justice as more important than the lives of actual people, and killed and imprisoned millions they saw as standing in the way of their ideal society. I think this history shows that, when compassion our inner experience is taken as irrelevant to justice, justice itself becomes a monstrosity.
Compassion Is Critical To Justice
It's important to realize, I think, that compassion is not only relevant to justice -- it's actually the foundation of justice. Our rules of right and wrong stem from our instinctual concern and respect for each other. The reason people want a society without killing and stealing, or with a certain distribution of wealth, is because they see such a society as the best vehicle for relieving human suffering.
Of course, as human beings, we are not always in touch with our sense of compassion. We're also aggressive, competitive, and survival-oriented creatures. When those drives completely take over, we're unconcerned with others' suffering, and we think only of our own survival and power.
When we're under the sway of these instincts, no abstract principles will keep us from harming others. Reminding a mugger of the Golden Rule, for example, probably won't stop him from taking your money. What's more, as in the communist regimes I described, concepts of justice themselves can be used as a weapon, justifying mass murder in the name of "equality" and "fairness."
How Personal Growth Can Help
This is why, I think, merely following the right set of abstract principles isn't enough to create a just society. As legal scholar Robin West puts it in Caring For Justice, it's important to recognize the "injustice -- not the justice -- of divorcing the pursuit of justice from natural inclination, from the sentient, felt bonds of friendship, and from the moral dictates incident to the pull of fellow feeling."
Instead, we must experience -- firsthand, viscerally, in the body -- the emotions and instincts at the root of those principles. We must actually feel compassion for one another -- not simply make and follow a logically consistent set of rules.
At their best, I think, personal growth practices help us genuinely experience concern for each other. Techniques like meditation and yoga work to accomplish this goal at a level deeper than the rational mind, which is why intellectuals are often wary of them. But I think they're worth taking seriously if we truly want a more peaceful world.
Other Posts In This Series:
Is Self-Help Selfish?
Critics often put down personal growth practices on the ground that they're selfish, or at least self-absorbed. The time people spend meditating, saying affirmations, taking workshops, and so on, according to the critics, could be better spent helping others.
"The question is why one should be so inwardly preoccupied at all," writes Barbara Ehrenreich in Bright-Sided. "Why spend so much time working on one’s self when there’s so much real work to be done?" Similarly, in The Last Self-Help Book You'll Ever Need, Paul Pearsall writes, in questioning the value of much self-help literature, that "most of the problems we think we have stem from too much self-focus rather than too little." The phrase "selfish help" has also become popular on blogs that are critical of personal development.
This criticism may have some appeal on the surface. After all, when I meditate, I'm the only one who gains calm and clarity. My meditation practice doesn't cause food to appear on the tables of impoverished people. Similarly, if I see a therapist, that can only help resolve my mental health concerns -- it does nothing for catatonic people in psychiatric hospitals.
But if we look a little deeper, I think it becomes clear that this critique has some flaws, and I'm going to discuss them in this post.
Does Self-Help Mean No "Other-Help"?
I think the most obvious problem with this argument is that it assumes that a person can't do both personal growth work and charitable work, or at least that people involved in personal development are less interested in helping others.
Clearly, the first of these is not true. It's surely possible for me to lead a life that includes both, say, meditation and volunteering at a homeless shelter.
I suppose one could argue that the time I spend doing personal growth activities detracts from the time I could spend being generous to others. But if we take that argument seriously, most of what we do in life -- apart from, I guess, eating and sleeping -- becomes "selfish" and unacceptable.
After all, every minute we spend hanging out with friends, watching a movie, hiking, and so on is one less minute we could spend serving others' needs (whatever that may mean to you). This argument holds people to an impossible moral standard that I doubt even the most generous critic of personal development could meet.
Nor have I seen any evidence that people who do self-development work are less inclined to help others. I've yet to see a study suggesting that, say, people who have read The Secret are less likely to give to charity.
Emotions Influence Actions
More importantly, I think the claim that "self-help is selfish" misses the deeper point that our emotional state affects how we act. If my personal growth practices put me in a happier or more peaceful state, that's likely to change -- for the better -- the way I relate to others.
It may be that, while I'm in the process of meditating, I'm the only one gaining peace and clarity. But when I'm done meditating, I take that peace and clarity out into the world. Doesn't it stand to reason that, if I'm feeling more peaceful, I'll behave more peacefully toward other people?
This idea is more than just common sense -- there's substantial research supporting it. You may remember that, in an earlier post, I pointed to several psychological studies suggesting that happiness actually causes people to be more giving toward others. I've also discussed the evidence showing that people who believe they're responsible for their life circumstances -- a belief often promoted in personal development -- behave more generously.
However, there is also research bearing more directly on the relationship between self-development practices and qualities like kindness and compassion. One study, "Mindfulness-Based Relationship Enhancement," found that couples who meditated reported more satisfaction with their relationships. Another found that Buddhist metta meditation "increased feelings of social connection and positivity toward novel individuals" in study participants.
On a subtler level, the way we feel affects those around us, even when we aren't doing or saying anything. Daniel Goleman's Social Intelligence, for instance, describes how our bodies instinctively detect and mimic the emotions of people we're with. Goleman, for example, points to studies of couples showing that one partner's anger or sadness induced the same emotions in the other person.
In other words, because humans are empathic creatures, it makes sense that the emotional benefits we get from personal growth would "rub off" on others. This is why, I think, one of my mentors says that "the greatest gift you can give to others is to work on yourself."
So, I think it's important to look not only at how a personal growth practice benefits its immediate "user," but also how it affects their actions toward others and the way they show up in the world.
The Promise of "Stealth Transformation"
I can imagine a critic of personal growth responding that I'm painting an unrealistic picture of self-help methods and the reasons people use them. People don't get involved in personal growth to cultivate compassion for others, they might say. They do it because they want more money, better relationships, improved health, and so on.
I think this actually points to one of the great social benefits of personal development -- what's sometimes called "stealth transformation." Yes, some people may meditate because they want to be calmer in business meetings; some may do yoga because they want a more attractive body; and so forth. However, no matter what their intentions are, the peace and happiness they gain from their practices can positively affect their behavior toward others.
In other words, even if people go into self-development practices for purely "self-interested" reasons, they may find their relationship with the world changing in ways they didn't expect or intend. I know this happened in my own meditation and yoga practices. I didn't begin them with serving others in mind, but the composure I got from those practices has helped people feel more relaxed and open around me.
Other Posts In This Series:
The Responsibility Ethic, Part 4: Responsibility And Compassion
We're talking once again about what I call the "responsibility ethic" that's common in personal development -- the idea that it's best to see ourselves as responsible for our life circumstances, as opposed to seeing our situation as the product of chance or forces beyond our control.
Today, I'll look at another argument personal growth critics often make against the responsibility ethic. The argument goes like this: if I am responsible for my lot in life, it follows that other people are responsible for theirs. For instance, if I assume my own actions created my financial situation, logically I must also assume other people's actions created theirs, and thus I must accept that poor people's own actions created their poverty.
What's more, if I believe poor people are responsible for their situation, there's no reason for me to help them. After all, because their choices and actions created their situation, it's "their own fault." Thus, if we accept the responsibility ethic, we must jettison any semblance of compassion for others. Wendy Kaminer, for instance, decries the "antisocial strain of the positive thinking/mind-cure tradition," which holds that "compassion is a waste of psychic energy."
The Psychology Of Generosity
As in my last post, I think it's useful to begin this discussion with a reality check. Again, the critics are speaking hypothetically. No one, to my knowledge, has any evidence that people involved in personal growth actually give less to charity, or do anything else that might suggest they lack compassion for the less fortunate. What the critics say is that, if people took the responsibility ethic to its logical extent, they would stop being generous to others.
Admittedly, I don't have conclusive evidence that personal growth books or seminars make people more generous either. However, there is evidence suggesting that people who see themselves as responsible for their circumstances -- in other words, people who accept the responsibility ethic -- are actually more inclined to help others, not less.
You may recall that, in the first post in this series, I described a concept in psychology called "locus of control." As the psychologists have it, people with a more internal locus of control believe they have the power to determine their destiny, while people who tend toward an external locus believe their destinies are largely shaped by outside forces.
As it turns out, there has been much psychological research finding that people who tend toward an internal locus of control are actually more concerned for others' welfare. One study of children, for instance, found that children with a more internal locus of control were more likely to help another child struggling with an academic problem. Another study found that people who tended toward an internal locus of control were more likely to act in an environmentally responsible way.
Intuitively, this makes sense. If I believe I have control over events in the world, I'll be more inclined to think I can make a difference in someone's life. So, if I help another person study for a test, they'll probably do better. But if I don't see myself as capable of affecting events, why would I bother helping another student? If nothing I do seems to change anything, why should I expect them to benefit?
It stands to reason that, if self-development ideas are causing people to see themselves as responsible for their circumstances, those ideas may actually be promoting generosity and compassion, not stifling them.
And Now, Back To Philosophy Land
We've seen that, even if we assume that the responsibility ethic, taken to its logical extent, would cause people to lose compassion for others, it's not at all clear that people who believe they're responsible for their circumstances are -- in practice -- less generous. Now, let's turn back to the original, abstract question: if I see myself as creating my circumstances in life, does it follow that others' circumstances are "their own fault," and I shouldn't help them?
I think the answer is plainly no, for several reasons. To keep this post to a readable length, my discussion of each will be brief, and I may not approach them from every possible angle. I'll happily hash them out with you further in the comments.
1. I'm Responsible, You're Responsible? If I believe I'm responsible for my life situation, it doesn't follow that I must believe others are responsible for theirs. I may see myself as someone with the health, resources, social network, and so on that I need to have control over my reality. However, I might see others who lack the same advantages as helpless, or as less capable of influencing their situation than me.
Personally, this way of thinking strikes me as irritatingly paternalistic, but the point is that, at least, it's not illogical to think this way.
2. Responsibility Vs. Blame Redux. As we saw earlier, it's possible to see yourself as responsible for an event in your life without blaming yourself or beating yourself up over it. By the same token, I think, it's possible to see someone else as responsible for their situation without judging them as "at fault" and unworthy of help.
As I said to Evan in an earlier exchange, suppose you have a friend who has a decent job and is capable of supporting himself. However, he becomes addicted to drugs, and because of his addiction he falls into poverty. Would you lack compassion for him because he chose (at least, initially) to take drugs? I doubt you would. In other words, although your friend is responsible for his situation, that doesn't mean you'll automatically lose any desire to help him.
3. Unconscious Beliefs. We'll delve deeper into the concept of unconscious thoughts and beliefs later on. For now, I'll note that, according to many personal growth teachers, our situation in life often results from thinking that occurs outside our awareness.
In one sense, we're "responsible" for these beliefs, because we're the only ones who can become aware of and change them. No one else can do that for us. However, it would be hard to argue that we're "to blame" for our unconscious thinking, as it's often the product of our childhood conditioning, and letting go of those harmful ways of thinking can take a lot of time and energy.
For instance, suppose I harbor the unconscious belief that I'm unlovable, and thus I have trouble forming relationships. I'm "responsible" for this belief, in the sense that no one else can change it for me. However, I don't think anyone would claim in this example that the difficulties I'm having are "my own damn fault" and I'm unworthy of compassion.
Next time: Is the responsibility ethic anti-political?
Other Posts In This Series:
E-Book: Why Growth Is Good
Most Popular Posts
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Thoughts on the Mankind Project Lawsuit
Personal Development Politics, Part 2: The Elections and Self-Responsibility
Regulating Self-Help, Part 2: What Is a Benefit?
Rainbow Right-Wingers, and Other Myths About Personal Development Politics
Authenticity Answers, Part 1: How Deep Is Your Want?
