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 1: The Threat of Therapy?
In our earlier discussion of the "responsibility ethic," we talked about critics' common claim that personal development promotes an unrealistic sense of personal responsibility.
In this series, I'm going to respond to critics who take the opposite view -- that much self-help writing actually teaches people not to take responsibility for their lives. A frequent criticism of personal growth is that it encourages people to sit around whining about their emotional issues, rather than getting up and accomplishing something in the world.
Is Therapy Just A Blame Game?
The biggest offender, to the critics, is psychotherapy, because it often involves exploring how our past -- particularly our childhood development -- shaped the way we think and behave today. Therapy, in the critics' view, often gives us an excuse to blame our present problems on our parents, rather than simply bucking up and dealing with them.
For instance, in SHAM, Steve Salerno accuses psychiatrist Thomas Harris and similar authors of claiming that "you were basically trapped by your makeup and/or environment and thus had a ready alibi for any and all of your failings." Similarly, in One Nation Under Therapy, Christina Hoff Sommers and Sally Satel lament that "what the older moralists spoke of as irresponsible behavior due to bad character, the new champions of therapism . . . speak of as ailment, dysfunction, and brain disease."
I think these critics take a misguided view of psychotherapy. To them, it seems, people turn to therapy simply because they wish to stop blaming themselves for parts of their lives that aren't going well, and instead blame their parents or somebody else.
I doubt most therapists who explore their clients' histories would explain their methods this way. Of course, there are many possible reasons why a therapist and client might delve into the client's childhood. However, I suspect one common goal is to help the client let go of dysfunctional behaviors they continually find themselves doing.
Why Our Histories Matter
The theory goes, roughly, like this: many behaviors we do today developed in response to our childhood circumstances. For example, if our parents often scolded us when we asked them for something, we may have decided it was best to act totally self-sufficient, and never tell others what we want and need.
This show of self-sufficiency may have "worked" for us as children, because it protected us from our parents' anger. However, it may not work quite as well for us as adults. If we can't ask for what we want and need, intimacy with another person becomes very difficult.
Suppose a client came to a therapist with this sort of concern. The therapist might explore the client's past in order to show the client that this self-sufficient facade developed in response to the client's childhood.
The Power of Awareness
Now that the client is grown up, the therapist may help the client see, they no longer need this behavior to protect them from their parents. This awareness may help the client understand that it's now safe to let others know what they need and want.
As psychologist Kevin Leman whimsically puts it in What Your Childhood Memories Say About You, therapists' common practice of "asking about dear old Mom helps reveal patterns, and psychology is a science of recognizing patterns in human behavior."
For the therapist, then, exploring the client's past is not simply intended to help them blame their parents for their problems. Instead, the purpose of this exploration is to help the client let go of behaviors that aren't serving them -- to solve their own problems, we might say -- and thus to lead a more fulfilling life.
In that sense, I think it's fair to say that therapy actually promotes, rather than retards, the growth of personal responsibility.
Growth As An Opiate, Part 4: “Money Doesn’t Buy Happiness” Cuts Both Ways
Earlier I explored the argument, sometimes made by critics of personal growth, that practices for cultivating peace and happiness, like meditation and affirmations, are socially harmful. By encouraging people to "look within" for happiness, rather than basing their satisfaction on material rewards, personal growth makes people less interested in righting the economic unfairness of our society.
In other words, if people become convinced that "money doesn't buy happiness," they'll be less interested in redistributing income toward the less well-off -- because, after all, having more money won't make lower-income people happier anyway. As Barbara Ehrenreich writes in Bright-Sided, "if circumstances play only a small role . . . in human happiness, then policy is a marginal exercise. Why advocate for better jobs and schools . . . or any other liberal desideratum if these measures will do little to make people happy?"
I don't think this critique fully grasps the implications of the "money doesn't buy happiness" theory. To left-wing critics like Ehrenreich, this concept seems to counsel fiscally conservative policies like cutting taxes and rolling back the welfare state. In fact, however, one could use the assumption that money doesn't buy happiness to support policies more to Ehrenreich's liking.
Taxes and Happiness
One might argue, for instance, that because wealth doesn't determine our happiness, we might as well increase taxes on the rich. If it's really true that money doesn't buy happiness, redistributing wealthy people's income won't decrease their wellbeing or their incentive to produce. And if the ex-wealthy find themselves pining for their lost assets, perhaps they can just take up meditation and make it all better.
In fact, my friend Duff -- who, I suspect, shares many of Ehrenreich's political views -- makes a similar point in discussing Daniel Pink's Drive. Pink, says Duff, argues that people are more motivated by a desire for "autonomy, mastery, and purpose" in their work than the promise of material rewards.
If this is so, Duff writes, why not have the government impose a "maximum wage" -- for instance, cap everyone's annual income at $100,000? After all, reducing wealthy people's income won't substantially diminish their happiness, since studies show that their work satisfaction largely depends on their sense of meaning.
So, it seems, the notion that happiness doesn't depend on material rewards can be used to support either conservative or liberal economic policies. My larger point is that the idea that personal development is the linchpin of a right-wing conspiracy is misguided. So, too, is the idea that personal growth somehow promotes socialism -- which we'll explore in the upcoming series on self-development's "culture of victimhood."
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:
Growth As An Opiate, Part 2: The Hazards Of Happiness
In my last post, I looked at a common critique of personal growth that goes like this: personal development can't create lasting happiness, because it doesn't address the underlying cause of the unhappiness it's trying to address—which, the critics say, is the economic unfairness of our society.
In this article, I'll examine a related but distinct argument, which basically says the problem with personal growth—at least, in some forms—is that it works too well.
This argument focuses on personal development techniques aimed at transforming our inner experience—to make us happier, more peaceful, less stressed, and so on. Examples include meditation, yoga, and saying positive affirmations like “I love myself.”
Does Contentment Equal Complacency?
By helping us feel content, some critics claim, these techniques may have us neglect problem areas in our lives. Suppose, for example, that meditating gives me a deep sense of calm. On the surface, this sounds wonderful. However, let's say I'm deeply in debt.
If meditation takes away the stress of my financial situation, I may not be inclined to get the help I need. Perhaps I'll just sit there, blissed out in a lotus position, until my landlord throws me into the street. In this example, meditation has actually harmed me, because it has removed the anxiety that would have spurred me to take action.
In Artificial Happiness: The Dark Side of the New Happy Class, anesthesiologist Ronald Dworkin raises this concern. Dworkin mostly focuses on the pacifying effects of antidepressant drugs, but he argues that meditation and similar practices pose the same threat. The “artificial happiness” created by these practices, in Dworkin's view, can make people dangerously complacent about problems in their lives.
Critics who focus on the political implications of personal growth sound a similar note. Jeremy Carrette and Richard King write in Selling Spirituality: The Silent Takeover of Religion that modern spiritual practice is "the new cultural prozac, bringing transitory feelings of ecstatic happiness and thoughts of self-affirmation, but never addressing sufficiently the underlying problem of social isolation and injustice."
In other words, if meditation, positive thinking, and similar techniques really can make us happier, that may be a bad thing, because we may lose the righteous indignation that would have us seek political change or help others.
Are Happy People Uncaring?
As we've seen, some critics worry about personal growth's effects on an individual level, while others focus on self-development's political impact. However, their arguments share a common assumption, which we might call “happy people don't care.”
That is: if you feel happy or peaceful, you'll lose the desire to improve your own situation, or that of others. In other words, you won't work toward personal or social change without some amount of anxiety, anger or despair.
At least in American culture, people seem to take various versions of this idea as common sense: people who don't worry must be lazy, “if you aren't outraged, you aren't paying attention,” and so on. Perhaps these are vestiges of the U.S.'s dour Calvinist heritage. But can they be proven?
In the critical books and articles I've reviewed, I've seen no evidence that, say, unhappy or anxious people are more "successful" in life by some measure, or more generous to others. Nor have I seen evidence that people who pursue sources of so-called "artificial happiness," such as meditation and qi gong, make less money, get divorced more often, or "fail" more frequently by some other standard.
In fact, this study argues that "frequent positive affect" actually causes "favorable life circumstances" -- that being happier leads to better job performance, income, and so on. In other words, perhaps happiness actually "buys" money, rather than the other way around. Barbara Ehrenreich, to be sure, disputes studies like this one, arguing that all they prove is that employers in the U.S. are irrationally biased in favor of happy (or happy-looking) employees.
More importantly, I've also found psychological studies suggesting that happier people are actually more compassionate. One study found that children who felt pleased about having accomplished a school task were more likely to help a fellow student. Another concluded that people with a greater sense of “subjective well-being” were more inclined to give to charity. (For a great summary of the research on happiness and generosity, see page 4 of this paper.)
I think these studies are actually consistent with common sense. Unhappy people, at least in my experience, are more likely to criticize or avoid others than to help them. If we feel okay about ourselves, on the other hand, we'll feel more secure turning our attention toward others' needs.
What Is "Real" Happiness?
There's another interesting assumption behind the critiques we're looking at, which is that happiness brought about by personal growth practices somehow isn't "real" or "legitimate." Thus, the inner peace I may find through meditation -- no matter how wonderful it may seem to me -- is somehow "fake."
"In real life," Dworkin tells us, "people succeed if they are rich, famous, powerful or glorious." Happiness brought about by other sources, to Dworkin, is "artificial." I think Dworkin correctly states the conventional wisdom about what creates happiness for people. However, I don't think he gives a satisfying reason why we should take the conventional wisdom at face value.
If I feel happy when I'm meditating, that experience is certainly "real" to me -- no less "real" than the happiness I imagine Donald Trump experiences when he closes a real estate deal. Even assuming the average person gets no happiness from meditating, that doesn't make my experience "false." To say that would be like arguing that, if I like an underground form of music such as Christian death metal, my enjoyment of the music is somehow "artificial" because the genre isn't popular. This is a logical fallacy called "argumentum ad populum."
In short, I think the critics overstate the danger happiness allegedly poses to society. In my next post, I'll ask a deeper question: are the kinds of practices I'm talking about in this post -- meditation, yoga, and so on -- simply intended to "make people happy"? Or do they have a greater purpose?
Other Posts in this Series:
The Responsibility Ethic, Part 5: The Politics of Responsibility
This is the final installment in my series on what I've been calling the "responsibility ethic" in personal development -- the notion 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 address an argument often made by critics of personal growth that has to do with the relationship between the responsibility ethic and politics. This is a complicated argument, but I think it's an important one, so bear with me as I flesh it out a little.
Is The Responsibility Ethic Anti-Political?
The critics argue that, if I believe I'm responsible for my circumstances, I am unlikely to participate in politics -- to vote, protest, debate issues with others, and so on. In other words, if I think I hold the power to change my life situation, I won't see any need to use the political process to improve my circumstances.
Say, for instance, that I run a business, and a tax imposed by the city is hurting my bottom line. If I believe I have full control over my destiny, I won't see any reason to lobby the city government to reduce the tax. After all, because I have the power to fix the situation, I can solve the problem myself -- by, say, moving elsewhere, or just increasing my revenues to make up for the loss.
To the critics, because it convinces people there's no need to participate in politics, the responsibility ethic is anti-democratic, in that it discourages an informed, politically active public. What's more, the critics argue, we do need the political process to change aspects of our life situation. Critics with a left-wing bent commonly argue that only the government can remedy the economic unfairness in our society, and the responsibility ethic blinds the "have-nots" to this by deceiving them into thinking they, individually, can solve their financial problems.
Thus, they might say, the responsibility ethic serves as a kind of "opiate for the masses." As sociologist Micki McGee writes, personal growth teachings tend to trap their followers in a futile "cycle of seeking individual solutions to problems that are social, economic, and political in origin."
Clearing Up Some Confusion
Simply put, I think this argument misunderstands the responsibility ethic. All the responsibility ethic says is that I am responsible for the situation I'm in, and I have the ability to change that situation if I wish to do so. It does not address the specific actions I should take to improve my situation, or whether "political action" is a good option.
We can understand this by returning to my earlier example, where my city imposes a tax I think is bad for my business. If I accept the responsibility ethic, I will believe I'm capable of improving this situation. But the question remains: what is the best way to change it? Should I move to another city? Try to increase my revenue? Lobby the city council to repeal the tax? The responsibility ethic is silent on this issue.
In other words, it doesn't follow from my belief that I can improve the situation that political activity will not be an effective method of doing so. Supporting a politician who pledges to repeal the tax might indeed be an effective method of getting what I want. Thus, I think it's a mistake to cast the responsibility ethic as inherently anti-political.
The Politics of "Non-Responsibility"
This becomes even clearer when we consider the extreme opposite of the responsibility ethic, which I'll call the "non-responsibility ethic." A person who accepts the non-responsibility ethic (in other words, someone with an external locus of control) sees events in their lives as the product of luck, or of forces they can't control.
Suppose I believe in the non-responsibility ethic, and I'm faced with the same situation where the city tax is hurting my business. If I believe my actions are unlikely to make a difference, what will I do to improve my situation? If I really think I'm a helpless pawn of fate, I'll probably do nothing.
As this example illustrates, it's also a mistake to call the responsibility ethic inherently politically conservative, as left-wing critics of personal growth tend to do. If these critics want to see more redistribution of wealth, it won't help them to have a nation of people with an external locus of control who feel powerless to change the status quo.
In light of this, it's no surprise that some of the most popular personal growth books use political leaders to illustrate their ideas. Even the much-maligned Think and Grow Rich cites Gandhi as "one of the most astounding examples known to civilization of the possibilities of faith." Gandhi's faith in his ability to change the world, writes Napoleon Hill, drove his contribution to ending British rule of India.
The Psychology of Responsibility
I won't harp too much on the psychological evidence, because I've done it a lot in past posts. Suffice it to say that several psychological studies have suggested that people with an internal locus of control -- a belief in their own capacity to affect events -- are actually more inclined to participate in politics.
For example, one study surveyed some newly voting-aged college students, and found that the ones who described themselves as having an internal locus of control were more likely to vote in a presidential election. Another found that people who tended toward an internal locus of control were more likely to participate in political activism.
In other words, it seems that a person's belief that they're responsible for their circumstances leads them to be more politically active, not less, which also belies the critics' claim that the responsibility ethic is somehow anti-political.
In my next post, because I find this issue fascinating, I'll talk more generally about the political implications of personal growth and spirituality.
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:
The Responsibility Ethic, Part 2: Responsibility Vs. Blame
This post continues my discussion of what I've called the "responsibility ethic" in personal development -- the idea that it's best for us to see ourselves as responsible for our situation in life. I've been looking at the common argument that buying into the responsibility ethic causes people to beat themselves up over the setbacks they face. You can read the last post in this series here.
2. Responsibility Vs. Blame
The critics of personal growth aren't the only ones aware of what I'm calling the "self-blame argument." Many personal development teachers understand it as well. What they often say is that it's possible to see ourselves as responsible for our circumstances without blaming ourselves for them. In other words, if we suffer a setback, we can admit how our actions contributed to it without suffering over it. If I'm in debt, for instance, I can acknowledge what I did to create the debt without calling myself lazy or stupid.
As we saw earlier, psychological research suggests that people can, and do, make this "responsibility versus blame" distinction. People who tend toward an external locus of control -- the belief that they lack control over their lot in life -- often punish themselves for the difficult events in their lives, even though they see themselves as helpless.* People who tend toward an internal locus of control, although they see themselves as in control of events, actually do less self-flagellation when they get bad results.
Some critics acknowledge this distinction but reject it, arguing that it effectively destroys any notion of morality. For example, in Self-Help Inc., sociologist Micki McGee derides Deepak Chopra's discussion of responsibility in The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, in which Chopra advocates "not blaming anyone or anything for your situation, including yourself." "This notion of responsibility," writes McGee, "suspends the literal meaning, ensuring that no one is actually accountable for anything," and creating "a mystical world without need of morality or ethics."
The Philosophy Behind Self-Blame
Is this true? Let's take this question to a deeper level. As I think you'll see, this discussion is a good example of how the debate over personal growth ideas raises some important, and timeworn, philosophical questions.
What is self-blame? I'd put it this way: When we blame ourselves for an event in our lives, we are 1) judging ourselves as worthy of punishment or suffering because it happened, and 2) administering punishment -- by, perhaps, tensing our bodies painfully when we think about the event. For example, I'll bet you can think of a time when you got really angry at someone, in a way you now see as inappropriate -- and that you cringe (punish yourself) when you remember it.
When you think about it, the idea that I should suffer because of something I did is based on some interesting metaphysical assumptions. The idea seems to be that, when I do something wrong (whatever that may mean to me), I basically knock the universe out of balance. I can only restore the cosmic equilibrium by experiencing suffering proportional to the suffering of my victim. The fancy philosophical term for this idea is "retributive justice."
We see this mindset in how people tend to talk about the criminal justice system. For instance, people often say of a criminal that he must "pay for his crime." This means that the criminal has drawn on a sort of "cosmic bank account" by creating suffering for another person, and he must repay the "debt" through his own suffering -- most likely, by going to prison for some number of years.
Justice Without Retribution
In essence, many personal growth teachers, while asking us to take responsibility for our situation, also invite us to let go of the philosophy of retributive justice. I can acknowledge my role in creating my circumstances, they say, without punishing myself if those circumstances aren't up to my standards. What's more, when I stop wasting time and energy punishing myself for the past, I become able to look to the future and take constructive action -- make a plan to reduce my debt, perhaps, or look for a new relationship.
If we do what these teachers suggest and let go of the retributive justice idea, do we also eliminate morality? I think not. It's certainly possible to believe in moral rules -- that is, rules of right and wrong conduct -- without accepting the concept of retributive justice.
I could believe, for instance, that stealing is wrong, without also believing in retribution against people who steal. Instead, I might believe that people who steal should be required to pay their victims the money they stole, or the value of the property they took, to put the victim in the position he was in before the theft. In other words, I may accept what's called compensatory justice, but not retributive justice.
What's more, I would be far from the first to take this stance -- many philosophers have argued against the concept of retributive justice, and the notion that people should suffer for their misdeeds to restore some abstract cosmic balance. The idea of dispensing with retribution against ourselves and others is not some kooky New Age innovation.
But Isn't Guilt Good For Society?
Now, I think some personal growth critics would acknowledge that we can retain some notion of right and wrong, even if we stop blaming or punishing ourselves when our results are less than perfect. But that, the critics might argue, is not the real issue -- the point is that, if we don't blame ourselves when we act wrongly, morality loses any practical significance.
The very reason we act morally, they say, is because we're afraid that, if we don't, we'll beat ourselves up over it. If people lost the capacity to self-blame, society would descend into violent anarchy. "There's a name for people who lack guilt and shame: sociopaths," writes Wendy Kaminer in I'm Dysfunctional, You're Dysfunctional. "We ought to be grateful if guilt makes things like murder and moral corruption 'harder.'"
What will I say about this? It's a nail-biting cliffhanger! Stay tuned, dear readers, for Part 3 of The Responsibility Ethic.
* As psychologist Helen Block Lewis puts it in The Many Faces of Shame, "behavior theorists have described a cognitive paradox in depression: If depressed people are as helpless as they feel, logic dictates that they should not also feel self-reproaches (guilt) for what they are unable to do." And yet, oddly enough, they do feel guilt.
Other Posts In This Series:
The Responsibility Ethic, Part 1: Self-Blame
A common theme in personal development literature is that we should take responsibility for our circumstances in life. It's best for us, in other words, to see ourselves as in control of our situation, as opposed to believing that forces beyond our control create it. I'll call this idea the "responsibility ethic."
On the surface, this doesn't seem controversial. If I'm in debt, for instance, it won't do me any good to sit around blaming the stock market, my family, the current phase of the moon, or some other outside force. I have no reason to take steps to get out of debt unless I accept that my actions -- cutting my expenses, selling stuff I don't need, and so on -- can fix the situation.
Personal growth's critics, however, often argue that the responsibility ethic has unsavory consequences. A person who believes they control their lot in life, the critics say, will be prone to self-flagellation -- i.e., to beating themselves up. If they don't get the results they want, in whatever area of life they're trying to improve, they'll blame themselves.
Suppose, for example, that I do everything in my power to get out of debt -- I cut up my credit cards, sell unnecessary stuff, and work with a debt counselor -- and I still fail to reduce my debt by the desired amount. If I think I'm 100% in control of my situation, I'll see this failure as proof that I'm lazy or stupid, and suffer over it. As Steve Salerno writes in SHAM: How The Self-Help Movement Made America Helpless, "if you make people believe they have full control over their lives, and then their lives don't get better (or even get worse), how could that not throw their synapses into turmoil?"
Reasons To Doubt The "Self-Blame" Argument
In this series of posts, I want to examine this argument more deeply. First off, I'll talk about three reasons to question the assumption that the responsibility ethic promotes self-blame.
1. Psychological Research. Psychologists use the term "locus of control" to describe a person's beliefs about the degree to which they are responsible for their circumstances. The more I tend toward an "internal locus of control," the more I believe in my own power to direct my destiny. By contrast, the closer my beliefs are to an "external locus of control," the more I think I'm at the mercy of factors I can't influence.
For example, suppose I'm a student, and I'm about to take a test. If I have a strong internal locus of control, I'll believe that, if I work hard enough, I'll get a good grade. But if I have a strong external locus of control, I'll assume that studying will have little effect on how well I do, and the grade I get will be largely the result of luck. Not surprisingly, psychologists have found that students who tend toward an internal locus of control usually study harder.
The locus of control concept is relevant here, because psychological research has repeatedly found a relationship between people's locus of control and the likelihood that they will suffer from depression. People closer to an internal locus of control, as it turns out, are less prone to depression than people who tend toward an external locus of control.
In other words, people who see themselves as responsible for their circumstances in life are less likely to get depressed. In fact, it's those who see themselves as mere pawns of other people or forces who are more likely to have that problem. This makes sense, psychologists say, because of the feelings of helplessness and despair created by their perceived lack of control.
These findings don't mesh well with the critics' argument. If the critics are right, and people who see themselves as in charge of their lot in life are likely to beat themselves up, we should expect them to be more prone to depression than those who believe they're at the mercy of outside forces. But the exact opposite appears to be true, which casts doubt on the idea that the responsibility ethic is creating all this unnecessary suffering for people.
We Need More Evidence
I'm not claiming that this completely settles the issue. After all, if we really want to know whether personal growth's responsibility ethic is causing suffering, we need to study people who do some kind of personal development activity -- reading self-help books, going to transformational workshops, or something along those lines -- and ask whether that activity has any relationship to depression, problems with anger, and so on. And these, of course, would have to be books, workshops, and so forth that encouraged a sense of personal responsibility for one's situation.
Psychological researchers have only recently begun to look into the effect of personal development techniques (if we don't count psychotherapy) on mental health issues like anxiety and depression. There is no clear consensus yet: in one study of a wide range of self-help books, the vast majority of the readers surveyed reported "a significant improvement in their condition."
Another suggested that saying positive affirmations like "I love myself," while apparently helpful to some people, may actually cause people with low self-esteem to feel worse. There have also been many studies of the psychological effects of meditation, suggesting that meditation helps alleviate depression and other emotional problems.
However, as far as I'm aware, there is no concrete evidence that the responsibility ethic, whether presented through books, workshops, or some other medium, is doing all the psychological harm to people that the critics allege. Thus, the "self-blame" argument against the responsibility ethic isn't obviously correct or commonsensical at all.
In the interest of keeping these posts at least vaguely succinct, that's all I'll say for now. In my next post, I'll discuss my second reason to question the self-blame argument, and also discuss why, even if the argument is correct, it doesn't follow that we should reject the responsibility ethic.
Other Posts In This Series:
Also By The Author
Connect With The Author
Categories
- Critical Thinking
- Defining Personal Growth
- Happiness
- Morality
- Personal and Political
- Personal Growth Culture
- Positive Thinking
- responsibility
- Selfishness
- The Bottom Line
- Thoughts And Things
- Victimization