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.)
Growth As An Opiate, Part 5: Self-Development And The “War On Envy”
The idea that societies with more economic inequality -- whether in terms of income, net worth, or something else -- are less moral is nothing new.
In the past, people have usually made this argument from a philosophical perspective -- for instance, John Rawls' famous argument that, if you designed a society from scratch, with no idea where you personally would end up on the economic scale, you'd choose a society where inequalities were only allowed if they benefited the worst-off.
Today, however, people are increasingly making this argument in psychological terms. The larger the economic inequalities in a society, advocates of this view argue, the more emotional distress and "lack of social trust" -- i.e., envy -- people will feel.
For example, in The Spirit Level, a book Evan pointed out to me, epidemiologists Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson claim that societies with more wealth inequality, and therefore more (if you will) envy per capita, tend to suffer from lower lifespans, more teenage pregnancy, and a host of other problems. Not surprisingly, Pickett and Wilkinson argue that -- at least, in already rich countries -- more wealth redistribution will create a healthier and happier population.
Thinking about this argument raises two interesting questions for me. First, even assuming envy creates social ills, is designing government policy with the goal of reducing envy a good idea? Second, are there other ways to reduce society-wide envy that don't involve the use of state power?
Mission Creep In The "War On Envy"
I'll admit, the argument that the government should act to combat envy is disturbing to me. One reason is that, although The Spirit Level and similar books focus on envy created by inequalities of wealth, there are obviously many other forms of inequality that cause jealousy.
For example, suppose I resent what I see as your biological superiority -- maybe you're taller and have lost less hair than me. Or perhaps I'm jealous of your relationships -- maybe you're married to the woman of my dreams, and I wish she were with me.
If money-related envy causes social ills, I'd wager that other types of envy have similar effects. In other words, if wishing I were as rich as you renders me more susceptible to disease and shortens my lifespan, surely "wishing I had Jessie's girl," or that I had somebody else's athletic talent, will also be debilitating.
You can probably tell where I'm going. Does this mean the government should engage in "sexual redistribution," and compel attractive people (by whatever measure) to accept intimate partners they wouldn't otherwise choose? Should we adopt Harrison Bergeron-style rules requiring, say, people with natural athletic ability to wear weights on their legs?
In other words, if we're willing to redistribute wealth in the name of fighting a "War on Envy," it's hard to see why social policy shouldn't reach into other areas of our lives in ways most people -- regardless of political persuasion -- would find repugnant.
Does Self-Development Soothe Envy?
Earlier in this series, I discussed critics of personal development who cast it as a sort of modern-day "opiate of the masses." These critics argue that practices like psychotherapy, meditation, and affirmations, precisely because they're geared toward relieving human suffering, are socially harmful.
Why? Because, these authors say, the main source of human angst in modern times is economic inequality. At best, self-development practices only offer a temporary "high," because they don't attack the root of this problem. At worst, these practices perpetuate injustice, because -- like "cultural Prozac" -- they distract the masses from the inequality-induced suffering that would otherwise spur them to rise up against an immoral capitalist system.
What if we took this critique at face value for a moment, and assumed that self-development does reduce some of the pain caused by envy? In other words, what if meditating, saying affirmations, or doing similar practices actually can cause people to feel less jealous of others? In my own experience, this has some truth to it -- the more I've kept up my meditation practice, the less I've found myself unfavorably comparing myself to others.
Perhaps the widespread adoption of these practices would make people less interested in redistributing wealth. But if that's true, in all likelihood, these practices would also lessen people's tendency to suffer over other kinds of inequality -- envy about other people's intimate relationships, jealousy over others' looks and natural aptitudes, and so on.
So, if we take Pickett and Wilkinson at their word, and assume envy causes all kinds of social ills, it stands to reason that personal development -- at least, the types of self-development with real emotional benefits -- may help create a happier and healthier society. On balance, maybe a little "cultural Prozac" isn't such a terrible thing after all.
Other Posts in this Series:
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?
Guest Post At Mindful Construct: “3 Things The Personal Development Critics Got Wrong”
I've published a guest post at Melissa Karnaze's blog Mindful Construct called "3 Things The Personal Development Critics Got Wrong." It mainly deals with critics' arguments against personal development's ethic of taking responsibility for your circumstances, including the claims that this ethic encourages selfishness and self-blame.
I think this article will be a useful summary for people who have recently discovered my work at this blog. I think you'll also appreciate Melissa's articles, which take an approach to personal development that's rooted in cognitive science and psychology. Enjoy!
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 4: A Postscript On Compassion
In the interest of clarity, I want to add a brief note summarizing what I'm saying in this series.
I believe there are two basic ways to think about compassion. The first is to see it as a way of acting. If you take certain actions in the world, in other words, that makes you a compassionate person.
People, of course, have vastly different ideas about which behaviors are compassionate and which aren't. Some think of compassion in terms of individual acts, such as giving to a person begging on the street. To others, compassion has more to do with a certain distribution of resources in society -- if we work toward a nation where people have roughly equal incomes, perhaps, we are compassionate people.
The second way of thinking about compassion is to see it as an emotion, or a sensation we experience in the body. For me, when I am feeling compassion, I experience a warm, open sensation in my heart area. Some might describe this in more mystical terms as a sense of "union with all that is."
Most People See It As A Behavior
It seems clear that, in Western culture at least, people usually take the first perspective -- that you are compassionate so long as you behave a certain way. It doesn't matter how you feel while you are doing the act. If you give to a charity, but only so that your name appears on the charity's website, you are being compassionate nonetheless.
I think this perspective is one reason why, in the West, we don't tend to see practices for cultivating a felt sense of compassion as particularly important. Why bother doing practices like Buddhist loving-kindness meditation, we might think, when we can go into the world and actually help people?
I think the trouble with this perspective is that it renders the concept of compassion vulnerable to abuse. It enables people who don't actually experience the felt sense of compassion to use the ideal of compassion as a weapon against others, for personal gain.
The Consequences
Look at typical political debates, for example. Each side accuses the other, in venomous and belittling terms, of lacking compassion, honesty, morality and so on. Ask yourself: would they make such accusations against each other if they actually experienced compassion as a feeling -- that sense of warmth and openness in the heart I described?
On a larger scale, many political and religious ideologies have claimed to be rooted in compassion. Christianity is said to be based on the compassionate teachings of Jesus. Marx claimed that communism was a compassionate political philosophy. And yet, of course, people have committed atrocities in the name of both worldviews.
Would these abuses have occurred if the people responsible had genuinely experienced the feeling of compassion, rather than simply believing in the abstract ideal? (I don't mean to pick on Christianity or communism per se -- I think any doctrine or philosophy, in the hands of someone who isn't actually feeling compassion, can be used to justify destructive behavior.)
In other words, when we're in touch with the felt sense of compassion -- not just the philosophical abstraction -- we become far less inclined to hurt others. This is why I think practices that help us actually experience the sensation of compassion are so important.
There are many practices aimed at this, and different approaches work better for different people. In my own case, I know that heart-opening exercises in yoga are particularly helpful. But the point is that these practices, far from being forms of "woo-woo navel gazing," are actually key to creating the kind of world many of us desire.
Other Posts In This Series:
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:
Self-Help and Selfishness, Part 2: Cultivating Compassion
We've been talking about the argument, sometimes made by critics of personal growth, that self-development practices are basically selfish. This criticism goes that, when we "work on ourselves" -- whether by taking workshops, meditating, or something else -- we only benefit ourselves, and the time we spend doing those practices could be better used serving others' needs.
As I noted earlier, there's much research in psychology showing that, the happier we feel, the more generous we're likely to be toward others. This is why, I suggested, personal growth practices that help us develop peace and happiness benefit more than just the immediate "user."
I can imagine a critic responding: "but why do all these things to 'develop' compassion? Why not just go out and be compassionate by giving your time and money to those who need it?" As Barbara Ehrenreich writes in her important book Bright-Sided, "why not reach out to others in love and solidarity or peer into the natural world for some glimmer of understanding?"
Do Motives Matter?
It seems that, to some personal development critics, being compassionate, kind or generous is simply a matter of taking the right actions. If you give your time, energy or money to someone, and receive nothing material in exchange, you qualify as a compassionate person.
From this perspective, it doesn't matter whether you actually feel a sense of love or kindness toward the person you're serving. Perhaps, for instance, you hope to tell others how generous you've been and receive praise. As long as your actions help someone else, by definition, you're being compassionate.
On the surface, this makes sense. If I give money to a foundation that helps children with a serious disease, for instance, those children will benefit even if I don't really care about them. Even if I only want to brag about how giving I am to my friends, or get mentioned as a "platinum-level donor" on the charity's website, I still serve those children with my contribution.
False Compassion Creates Suffering
However, this example becomes more troubling when we look at what I'm getting out of my donation. I'm giving to the charity because I want recognition from others. But what if I don't get the kind of recognition I want? What if my friends don't praise me for my generosity, or at least don't praise me as much as I want?
The answer, I suspect, is that I'll feel resentful. I'll see my friends as insensitive and uncaring, and retaliate against them in overt or covert ways. So, by helping someone out of a desire for recognition, I actually set myself and others up for suffering.
This problem becomes clearer when we look at acts of false compassion within a family. In a common scenario, a parent gives a lot of time and energy to their child, in the secret hope that the child will please the parent in return.
If the child doesn't show the kind of appreciation the parent wants, the parent feels resentful, and strikes back at the child through abuse or neglect. In other words, when a parent serves their child out of a desire for recognition, rather than genuine love, both parent and child are likely in for suffering.
Compassion as a Way of Being
When we help others out of actual feelings of kindness, rather than a desire to prove that we're "good," we don't create this kind of suffering for ourselves and others. If our actions are solely motivated by a desire to help, it doesn't matter whether the other person falls over themselves to thank us, and we won't resent them if they don't.
This is why I think personal growth practices that help us develop genuine compassion for others, like Buddhist metta meditation, are so important. Metta may be the most obvious example, because it involves explicitly wishing all beings well, but many other self-development methods help us cultivate kindness in subtler ways.
The Promise of Psychotherapy
Psychotherapy is a great, and frequently misunderstood, example. Critics often talk about therapy as if it's merely a self-indulgent exercise in griping about the past (an issue I'll deal with at length later). I think this ignores many key goals of therapy -- the most important one being, for our purposes, to meet needs that went unrecognized in a client's early childhood.
As I touched on earlier, psychologists often observe that, when a parent's early needs for love and recognition were unmet, they unconsciously seek to meet those needs in their relationship with their children. In other words, the parent expects the child to give them the affection and appreciation they never got when they were little. When the child doesn't meet these needs, the parent gets angry and withdraws their love. (There's an illuminating discussion of this in Kathleen Faller's Social Work with Abused and Neglected Children.)
As long as the parent's childhood needs are unmet, we might say, the parent will have difficulty experiencing real love and compassion for their children. However, a skilled therapist can help the parent meet those early needs outside the family structure. When the parent no longer seeks validation from their children, genuine love becomes possible.
Once we can see why actually feeling compassion -- not just looking compassionate -- is important, we understand why "working on ourselves," and our own peace and happiness, can actually be a gift to the 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:
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?
