You don't even realize there's a game. (And any contest, market, project or engagement is at some level a game).
You start getting involved and it feels like a matter of life or death. Every slight cuts deeply, every win feels permanent. "This is the most important meeting of my life..."
You realize that it's a game and you play it with strategy. There's enough remove for you to realize that winning is important but that continuing to play is more important than that. And playing well is most important.
You get bored with the game, because you've seen it before. Sometimes people at this stage quit, other times they sabotage their work merely to make the game feel the way it used to.
OK, so can we all just relax with the whole "Captain Coward" thing? For whatever he did, or didn't do, on and off the Costa Concordia on the night of Friday, January 13, Francesco Schettino will undoubtedly face the consequences in an Italian court of law. In the meantime, the global bullying campaign and the hysterical vilification of the man and his character has to stop.
And it's not because the real villain, as some claim, is the Carnival Corporation (owners of Costa Cruises), or because Schettino was actually heroic on the night by steering the stricken vessel into the shallows. No, instead the Schettino-bashing must end because the absolutism with which we decry his actions is blinding us to the fact that, really, we are all Captain Cowards.
Whichever way you read it, there is something fantastically human, and humanly fallible, about Schettino's alleged overconfidence on the night, and his alleged use of the Concordia as his personal 114,000-tonne Ferrari, whizzing close to the island of Giglio in order to impress both an old buddy on shore and, allegedly, a foxy lady on board.
I've lost track of the number of times I've done this in my own life - made stupid mistakes in a bid to impress. Right from the start, as a child in school, I remember violently flinging open a heavy wooden classroom door – with a cartoonish 'ta-dah!' - in the hope of gaining a giggle from those already inside, but not realising that a fellow student was kneeling quietly on the ground behind it, collating drawings, and directly in the line of fire. Bam! There were screams. There was blood. It was the first of many such Concordia moments. Doesn’t everyone have them?
Then there's the cowardice itself in Captain Coward, which seems to be provoking the most amount of apoplexy. He saved himself before the rest of the 4,200 souls on board. Now, I don't know about you, but I'd gladly take a bullet for my three children and, depending on whether we've argued or not that morning, my wife. Everyone else, however, is pretty much on their own.
Again, flashback time. I was in a bomb scare in a busy shopping centre in Dublin in the late 1980s. It was that moment when the crowd, body to body, goes crushing towards the exits. I don't remember at any point thinking 'Yep. I hope these two old ladies in front of me get out all right.' I'm sure I was thinking the opposite, wishing I was less socially gauche and had the confidence to elbow them brutally out of the way.
Of course, it makes things easier to join the Captain Coward lynch mob. In our condemnation of cowardice we suggest the opposite in ourselves. We are John Wayne to his simpering town sheriff. Or we are Harry Potter to his Ron Weasley. Schettino is thus a risible joke, and not someone from a long and noble line of Neapolitan sailors, of whom his 15-year-old daughter said recently: "My father is not a monster. He is a brilliant seafarer."
I go straight for Mark Twain who, three years before his death and ruminating on the totality of the human character, decided: "What a coward every man is! And how surely he will find it out if he will just let other people alone and sit down and examine himself. The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession but carrying a banner."
Why Do We Like To Watch Tearjerker Movies?
People enjoy watching tragedy movies like "Titanic" because they deliver what may seem to be an unlikely benefit: tragedies actually make people happier in the short-term.
Researchers found that watching a tragedy movie caused people to think about their own close relationships, which in turn boosted their life happiness. The result was that what seems like a negative experience -- watching a sad story -- made people happier by bringing attention to some positive aspects in their own lives.
"Tragic stories often focus on themes of eternal love, and this leads viewers to think about their loved ones and count their blessings," said Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick, lead author of the study and associate professor of communication at Ohio State University.
The key is the extent to which viewers thought about their own relationships as a result of watching the movie. The more they thought about their loved ones, the greater the increase in their happiness. Viewers who had self-centered thoughts concerning the movie -- such as "My life isn't as bad as the characters in this movie" -- did not see an increase in their happiness.
Knobloch-Westerwick said this study is one of the first to take a scientific approach to explaining why people enjoy fictional tragedies that make them sad. "Philosophers have considered this question over the millennia, but there hasn't been much scientific attention to the question," she said. Knobloch-Westerwick conducted the study with Yuan Gong, a graduate student, and Holly Hagner and Laura Kerkeybian, both undergraduates, all at Ohio State.
The study involved 361 college students who viewed an abridged version of the 2007 movie "Atonement," which involves two lovers who are separated and die as war casualties.
Before and after viewing the movie, the respondents were asked several questions which measured how happy they were with their life.
They were also asked before, after and three times during the movie to rate how much they were feeling various emotions, including sadness.After the movie, participants rated how much they enjoyed the movie and wrote about how the movie had led them to reflect on themselves, their goals, their relationships and life in general.What people wrote about as a result of seeing the movie was a key in understanding why people enjoy viewing fictional tragedies, Knobloch-Westerwick said.
People who experienced a greater increase in sadness while watching the movie were more likely to write about real people with whom they had close relationships, she said.
This in turn, increased participants' life happiness after viewing, which was then related to more enjoyment of the movie."People seem to use tragedies as a way to reflect on the important relationships in their own life, to count their blessings," she said.
"That can help explain why tragedies are so popular with audiences, despite the sadness they induce."
The researchers also tested the theory that people may feel more happiness after viewing a tragedy movie because they compare themselves to the characters portrayed and feel good that their own lives are not as bad. But that wasn't the case.People whose thoughts after the movie were about themselves -- rather than about their close relationships -- did not experience an increase in life happiness. "Tragedies don't boost life happiness by making viewers think more about themselves. They appeal to people because they help them to appreciate their own relationships more," she said.
But why would people have to get sad by watching a tragedy to feel grateful about relationships in their own lives?
Knobloch-Westerwick said this fits with research in psychology that suggests negative moods make people more thoughtful. "Positive emotions are generally a signal that everything is fine, you don't have to worry, you don't have to think about issues in your life," she said.
"But negative emotions, like sadness, make you think more critically about your situation. So seeing a tragic movie about star-crossed lovers may make you sad, but that will cause you to think more about your own close relationships and appreciate them more."
Research has also shown that relationships are generally the major source of happiness in our lives, so it is no surprise that thinking about your loved ones would make you happier, she said. "Tragedies bring to mind close relationships, which makes us happy."
Public Morality
Abortion, gay marriage, child abuse ... Are our moral foundations crumbling? No, godless liberalism may just work.
On balance I doubt I’ll ever have an abortion. Not personally, I mean. The sequence of events it would require ... no. I just don’t see it happening. The same is true of Jeremy Hunt, unless he’s hiding something, and hiding it very well.
Why, then, doesn’t he feel a terrible chump talking about it? I’ve had those conversations. I always end up feeling like I have mutton chops and a tailcoat, and am bemoaning the scandalous ruin of the Epsom Derby. You know? It’s a battleground of other people’s bodies, and a male perspective will only ever be somewhere between flawed and sinister. Have you read Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale, in which a sexual counter-revolution leaves America as a sort of Christian Saudi Arabia? Well, do, and then we’ll talk. Or, indeed, not talk.
Or so I thought on Saturday. Since then, though, it has occurred to me that I’m fairly unlikely to have a gay marriage either. I make no apology for that — I am what I am, and what I am needs no excuses — but it does strike me that I’m perfectly happy sounding off about that. It’s about the society I want to live in and the rules by which I want it to work. So possibly I’m being inconsistent here. Or possibly I’m just less scared of gays than I am of women. I’ll mull it over.
Anyway. This is not to be a column about either abortion or gay marriage. But it will, in a way, be about both. Because it strikes me that these are both subjects that in the swamp of our modern moral landscape function as signposts. As a result, views on both can often seem kneejerk, expedient or tribal. Opponents accuse each other of being religious fundamentalists or trendy weather vanes; nobody quite believes that anybody else is being wholly rational or wholly honest with themselves. And, indeed, often they aren’t quite. Both of these debates are about more than their direct subject matter. They’re about the sort of society in which you want to live; not just its rules, but also its tone.
Invariably it’s easier to spot noises that clash with your preferred tone than those that ring true. Actually Jeremy Hunt’s comments in The Times on Saturday about abortion — that he favoured reducing the time limit from 24 weeks to 12 — were nothing shocking. He was expressing a personal view about a matter on which he has already voted, and he did so with a timidity and a tact that later headlines didn’t really reflect. All the same, it jarred, because a 12-week limit isn’t just about a 12-week limit. It’s also about the autonomy of women over their own bodies and the role that faith should play in the morality of those who don’t share it. For me — and I think, for millions — in tone this is not where we are.
Where, though, are we? Public morality in Britain today lurches between the liberal and puritanical, seemingly at random. Gay marriage has popular support, even as traditional marriage is in decline. The public is shocked and disgusted by the abuse of teenagers, be it in modern-day Rochdale and Rotherham or in 1970s White City, and scarcely less so when a 15-year-old girl runs away with her teacher. Yet it’s not even a decade since girls just a few months older than Megan Stammers could be found posing naked in national newspapers. In a society that spoils its children like never before, there are 180,000 abortions every year and little sense of mass regret.
For the conservative religious Right this is an immoral mess and a slow decline into awfulness. In churches and mosques, in certain newspapers and, increasingly, in Parliament, there are those who would argue that if we dilute marriage so that even gays can do it and divorce sex and even pregnancy from inevitable procreation, our moral foundations crumble. This, they’d argue, is how Rochdales and Rotherhams happen. Keep going, they’d argue, and you end up in a world where morality holds no sway at all. This would be a more sexually violent, cannibalistic dystopia, much like you might find in Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.
Historically, anyway, this is not wholly absurd. The whole spate of abuses currently under investigation at the BBC, for example, happened at a very particular time. The teenager had just been invented and everybody was suddenly worried less about going to Hell and more about getting backstage. Children were sexualised like never before and the morals of a previous age must have looked as though they were going out of the window.
In the 1960s the feminist Andrea Dworkin wrote that sexual liberation of women had largely served as a spur to male sexual aggression. Maybe the sexual awakening of teenagers did something similar. How many pop and TV stars now in their sixties and seventies are sitting at home, waiting for the tabloid knock on the door? I mean, it sounds as if almost everybody was at it, doesn’t it? And those who weren’t knew about it. Maybe it just seemed as though this was the way the world was going.
But the world didn’t go that way. That’s the thing. Adults having sex with teenagers became less acceptable, not more. Sexual aggression of all sorts stopped being an amusing foible and became a shortcut to condemnation or jail. Indeed, looking back at whatever was going on in the 1970s, maybe our conclusion turned out to be a positive one. Back then this sort of thing happened at the heart of public life. Today you need to travel to the very fringes of British society to find its like: the minicab drivers and kebab-shop owners of Northern immigrant subculture.
This, I think, is a moral progress worth focusing on. Because it has happened, hasn’t it? Even against a backdrop of soaring godlessness and collapsing social institutions, our morality, here, has reached a conclusion that is palpably right. I worry about where, in a post-religious country, our values are going to come from and, indeed, whether they are going to come from anywhere. The religious have an easier time of it. Plenty of people cleverer than me have pondered how we live a good life in the absence of God, but my lingering memory of being a philosophy undergraduate is of none of them yet convincing me why we ought to bother.
And yet maybe it doesn’t matter. Because, although most of us lack the religious conviction to know with any certainty what our views on abortion or gay marriage or anything else ought to be, maybe we’re muddling along in the right direction all the same. Maybe it’s not The Road or The Handmaid’s Tale we’re bound for. Maybe there’s another story in the middle, which isn’t a dystopia at all.
Transhumans
The achievements of amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorius represents a deep shift in our ideas about what it means to be disabled – or human.
THE original Olympic games were religious ceremonies. At the 2012 London games, we worship such "deities" as peace, excellence and the future. Squint, and you also see worship of mortals pushing towards demigodhood, athletes who represent humanity trying to become more than human.
Philosophers take a more prosaic view of sport. Here's a general definition by Bernard Suits at the University of Waterloo, Ontario: "Playing a game is a voluntary attempt to overcome unnecessary obstacles". We agree on the unnecessary obstacles (rules) in order to make the game more interesting.
Enter athlete Oscar Pistorius. He was born without fibulae, and had his legs amputated below the knee. Even so, he excelled at sport, starting with rugby and turning to the 400 metres after an injury. There he came into his own, and with his carbon fibre blades is now on South Africa's 2012 team for both Olympics and Paralympics.
It has been tough. In 2007, the International Association of Athletics Federations introduced a rule banning "any technical device that incorporates springs, wheels or any other element that provides... an advantage over another athlete not using... such a device". Based on research at the German Sport University Cologne, the IAAF decided Pistorius could not compete. He fought, scientifically and legally, and won - but failed to qualify for the 2008 Olympics.
While biomechanics experts argue over whether Pistorius has an advantage, or a disadvantage, in fact he did not win an individual Olympic event, but he may yet win at the Paralympics.
The games are about more than competition, though. Tribalism, for example, helps us identify with athletes because they represent our group. This identification gives us vicarious pleasure: it is not just fit people doing what they are good at, but the affirmation that humans can do the near-impossible. If they can, we can. Uncertainty is also key. Pistorius is not so disabled he has no chance, yet not so enhanced he is guaranteed a win.
But his real significance may lie in a deep shift in our view of what it means to be disabled, enhanced - or even human. A few years ago, Nike used Pistorius in their ads. Marketers are pragmatic: they tap into the idea that humans have an evolved tendency to react with disquiet when people look too different, and will only use an image if they think enough people will respond positively. The fact they showed him running on his blades shows they were confident viewers would be impressed, that humans can sometimes override evolution. Pistorius has not been alone: Paralympians sell.
Some people will worry that Pistorius is opening up sport to all sorts of strangeness. But if people outside sport go on modifying (and enhancing) their bodies, it will be hard for sport to maintain its fairly puritan views.
Gratifyingly, there are signs that like Olympians, Paralympians are starting to be seen as elite demigods, too, perhaps because we recognise they have not just overcome a game's unnecessary obstacles, but their bodies' necessary obstacles.
What makes Us Individuals
No matter how alike two people seem, they're never the same. Find out the 11 features that make you truly peculiar.
LOOK at the people around you and you cannot fail to notice how different they all are. Their faces, bodies, behaviours and personalities all appear to be unique.
Now consider the whole of humanity. There are about 7 billion of us alive now and by some estimates about 100 billion people have lived and died in the past 50,000 years. As far as we know each of them is, or was, a total one-off. The same applies to all those yet to be born.
That is a staggering amount of variation within the archetype we recognise as "human". As we delve deeper into our biology and search for ever more sophisticated ways to verify people's identity, the ways in which we are all unique are being uncovered. Some, like DNA and fingerprints, are obvious. Others, less so.
So your mother was right: you are very special indeed. But don't just take her word for it. Here are 11 ways in which you are a one-off.
DNA
It's the obvious place to start. And it is also true: DNA does make you unique – up to a point. To get a measure of just how different you are genetically from everybody else try these numbers for size.
In 2001, the human genome project reported that all humans have 99.9 per cent of their DNA in common, leaving just 0.1 per cent to account for all our myriad differences. Over the past decade, this estimate has been revised upwards to about 0.5 per cent, but even that is a very small sliver of the genome. Is it enough to account for the variation we see?
In theory, yes, in spades. The human genome contains approximately 3.2 billion letters of the DNA code; 0.5 per cent of that is about 16 million letters. The code has four letters, so the number of possible combinations is four raised to the power of 16 million – an absolutely vast number of possible human genomes, more than enough to go around everybody who has ever lived, many times over. The chances of anyone having exactly the same genome as you is zero.
That is even true of identical twins. Although they are 100 per cent genetically identical at the time of conception, from that moment on their genomes diverge, and the older they get the more individual they become (American Journal of Human Genetics, vol 90, p 1).
In identical twins (and the rest of us too), these differences come from slight changes and chance mutations every time DNA is copied. These can result in single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), where a single letter of the code is changed, and also copy number variations (CNVs), where long sections of DNA are duplicated or deleted altogether.
Something similar happens with what are called epigenetic markers, which help regulate how genes are expressed. Identical twins drift apart on this measure from very early in life (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol 102, p 10604), and the rest of us undoubtedly do too, adding another vast layer of potential genetic variation.
What isn't yet known is the proportion of these genetic variations that actually make you different from other people. Many occur in non-coding regions that don't make proteins or regulate gene expression. And even if they are in coding regions, many are likely to be neutral, altering neither a gene nor how it is expressed.
We do know, however, that tiny genetic differences can have large effects on physical traits such as eye colour or susceptibility to disease. So it is safe to say that your uniqueness as a person starts with the genome.
But it is far from being the whole story. Many other factors come into play: the environment, the physical forces that acted on you in the womb and a healthy dose of randomness. A case in point is fingerprints.
Fingerprints
Another no-brainer: everyone knows that fingerprints are unique, so it might come as no surprise that their size and shape is largely determined by genes. But the developing fetus's fingerprints are also tweaked by subtle factors like the pressure of the walls of the womb and even the sloshing of amniotic fluid.
That means that while the fingerprints of identical twins can be very similar there are enough differences to tell them apart. Known in the fingerprinting business as "minutiae", these differences include variations such as a ridge splitting into two in a slightly different place in each twin or a loop being wound slightly more tightly. The same goes for toe prints.
Forensics notwithstanding, no one really knows what fingerprints are for. A recent study showed that, contrary to popular belief, they don't help with grip because they reduce, rather than increase, friction (The Journal of Experimental Biology, vol 212, p 2016). Other possibilities are that they protect the skin by making it more flexible, or that they improve our sense of touch by amplifying vibrations.
Whatever their purpose they clearly aren't crucial to survival. Earlier this year, researchers identified a mutation that has caused a handful of people in just five families to be born without fingerprints (American Journal of Human Genetics, vol 89, p 302). All seem to get along fine, at least until they get to border control – the condition is also known as immigration delay disease.
Face
Faces are our most obvious badge of identity and we find it easy to recognise people by face alone. But they are perhaps not as distinct as we like to think. Even leaving aside identical twins, there are plenty of doppelgängers around. One recent analysis of several thousand Norwegian faces found that 92 per cent of them had at least one lookalike that both humans and facial recognition software struggled to tell apart (Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 3832, p 33).
In another study, when asked whether two very similar photographs of faces came from the same person or not, neither human nor machine did any better than would be expected by chance. Humans got it right just 56 per cent of the time with unfamiliar faces and 66 per cent with familiar ones – surprisingly low considering how much of our identity is tied to our faces.
Gait
Since our ancestors first stood upright 1.5 million years ago, humans have all walked in more or less the same way: one foot in front of the other, swinging from the hip and rolling from heel to toe. Remarkably, every one of us to walk the Earth since may have done so in a slightly different style.
While we can't be sure that everyone really does have a unique way of walking, studies as far back as the 1970s showed that gait differs enough for us to recognise people we know just from the way they walk at least 90 per cent of the time.
Gait changes during childhood but settles down when we stop growing. Then, differences in the length of our legs and width of our hips, plus environmental factors such as the amount of muscle we build up through exercise combine to give us a characteristic walk.
It's something that is easy to spot, but difficult to describe, says Mark Nixon, who researches gait at the University of Southampton, UK. "We don't have the words to describe the motions," he says.
Computers do it better, either by tracing the lines of the limbs and turning their movements into numbers, or by tracking the movement of various points such as hips, knees and feet and measuring their changing relationship as they move.
Another way to measure gait is to have someone walk over a pressure pad and record their unique footfall. This kind of system, developed by Todd Pataky's group at Shinshu University in Japan, could potentially be used to fast-track passengers through an airport.
Yet another idea, so far in its infancy, is to use the kind of motion sensors found in smartphones. Strapped to the leg, these could measure speed, acceleration and rotation. The technique could be used as a security feature for cellphones, so that they would only work when carried by their rightful owner.
Ears
You probably haven't paid that much attention to the exact shape of your ears, but if you look in the mirror and pull them out you will see that one is very slightly different from the other. Not only that, but each of your ears is different from everyone else's.
This is because the human ear develops from six tiny bumps that appear on the side of the head around five weeks after conception, then gradually fuse. While genes map out the general shape, the environment in the uterus, such as how the fetus lies, affects how ears turn out. Once formed, they hardly change shape as we (and they) grow and age.
Several researchers are working on ways to recognise people by the shape of their ears. A recent analysis found that ear identification is just as accurate as face recognition when identifying people from photographs (IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, vol 25, p 1160).
In the US and the Netherlands people have even been convicted on the basis of an "ear print" left at the scene of a crime. The science of recognition by ear print is more controversial, however, because the shape of the print changes depending on the amount and direction of pressure put on the ear. At least one suspect in the US has been released on appeal after ear-print analysis was ruled unreliable.
Eyes
The iris of each eye is unique enough for several countries, including the UK, US and Canada, to accept an iris scan as proof of identity. But as anyone who has their daddy's eyes knows, the appearance of the iris runs in families. So how can eyes that are the spitting image of the rest of the family's be totally unique?
The answer lies in the complexity of the iris's structure, a tangled mesh of muscles, ligaments, blood vessels and pigment cells that give it colour, depth, furrows, ridges and spots.
The colour and general texture of the iris is genetically determined, which accounts for family likenesses and for the fact that nearly everyone's left and right eyes look much.
the same. But iris-recognition systems used in airports ignore colour and texture and concentrate on the details of the ridges, furrows and freckles. These depend on the exact placement of the ligaments, muscles and pigment cells as the iris develops before birth, which is not controlled by the genes, but happens randomly. By this measure, each of your eyes is as different from the other as it is from anyone else's.
Voice
When you speak, the sound that comes out is the sum of many parts: the noise that air makes as it vibrates through the larynx, the way it bounces around through the mouth and nose, and how it is shaped into words by the palate, tongue, lips and cheeks.
Since it is highly unlikely that two people will have a larynx, mouth, nose, teeth and muscles of exactly the same size and shape, voices end up being unique and easily recognisable.
But unlike some features, such as fingerprints and iris, we can deliberately change our voice by altering how we use the muscles of our face and larynx to create volume, pitch and tone. According to Sophie Scott, a neuroscientist at University College London, that means most people are good at changing their voice when they want to, and even when they don't: our voices often change in response to social situations in ways we are unaware of.
Some people are clearly better at deliberately changing their voice. Scott is studying how impressionists can mimic others so convincingly. There are no clear answers yet, but she says that good impressionists seem to be highly musical, and adeptly imitate mannerisms as well as voice.
All of this means that there is no way of reliably identifying an individual voice by comparing waveforms or pitch and tone. There are a few voice signature systems on the market, but they tend to be backed up by an identity card or password, just in case a good impressionist turns bad.
Scent
Dogs have always known it, and now science can prove it: no two people smell alike. But is there really enough variation for all 7 billion of us to have a unique odour? Definitely, says George Preti of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. "Just think about what nature does with only four bases in DNA. In the armpit alone there are at least a couple of dozen odorants, perhaps more, and you can have lots and lots of variation in relative amounts and concentration."
We don't have just one scent, of course, but several. Our various nooks and crannies have different types and quantities of secretions, and harbour different kinds of bacteria, which turn our mostly odourless secretions into scent.
A recent analysis of the volatile organic compounds in the sweat of 200 volunteers showed that out of the mix of nearly 5000 acids, alcohols, ketones and aldehydes, 44 of them varied enough to give an individual chemical profile that can be read like a fingerprint (Journal of the Royal Society Interface, vol 4, p 331). Many of these compounds seem to have no other function than to make us smell. They may have a role in how we identify each other, Preti suggests.
No one has invented a way of capturing the total scent of a person and using it to identify them, although the US government is said to be interested in such a technology and Preti says he is working on it too.
Heartbeat
Crooners would like to have you believe that two hearts can beat as one. In reality, no two heartbeats are the same. You wouldn't notice by putting your ear to somebody's chest, but it is possible to tell hearts apart by recording their electrical impulses.
An electrocardiogram (ECG) records three peaks: the P wave, which is the impulse that contracts the upper chambers, the QRS complex, which is the stronger contraction of the lower chambers, and the much smaller T wave as the heart relaxes.
Each heart varies in size and shape, so the height, length and spacing of the peaks varies from person to person. And while the spacing of the peaks changes as the heart rate speeds up with exercise or stress, the individual signature can still be discerned.
Because heartbeat is subconsciously controlled it is almost impossible to fake, and a handful of biometrics companies are working on scanners that could be used to check identity. Apple, too, is working on using heartbeat as a password to protect private information. Where they lead, others will undoubtedly follow.
Brain waves
What could be more individual than the way you think? It's something that seems obvious, but only recently has evidence started to emerge that measurable differences exist.
Humans are born with a huge number of neurons and our brains gradually prune out an astonishing 50 per cent of them during infancy and childhood. What is left after this lengthy process – which is driven largely by experience – leaves each person with a unique brain that goes about the same tasks in a slightly different way. By listening in to the electrical activity of the brain with EEG, it is possible to see these subtle individual differences.
A 2001 study by Raman Paranjape at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, Canada, found that a type of brain activity called alpha waves was different enough in 40 people to tell them apart. Another study found that the strength of a different kind of brain wave – gamma oscillations – also varied in 100 people while they were doing a standard test of object recognition.
Could brain differences explain why we all have different personalities? Possibly, though what isn't known yet is whether a person's brain waves would be recognisable if they were measured on different days or even years later. Without that, there's no way of knowing if your brainwaves are like a fingerprint or just unique to one moment in time.
Microbiome
One aspect of your uniqueness isn't, strictly speaking, part of you at all. It comes from the 100 trillion bacteria that live both on and in you. They outnumber the body's cells 10 to 1 and in genetic terms they are even more dominant: microbes account for 3.3 million genes, compared with your measly 23,000. "You're 0.7 per cent human," says Jeremy Nicholson, a biochemist at Imperial College London.
Of the more than 1000 species that commonly live in and on the human body, each of us harbours only 150 or so, mostly in the gut (Nature, vol 464, p 56). And everyone's bacterial population is made up of a different cast of characters.
Skin bacteria, too, vary from person to person though they are remarkably stable over time. A recent study found that a unique bacterial fingerprint is transferred from our fingers to the things we touch, such as a computer keyboard or mouse, and will hang around for up to two weeks (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol 107, p 6477). Even identical twins, who are difficult to distinguish on the basis of DNA, are easy to tell apart when you check out their bacterial companions.
Bacteria also contribute to uniqueness by modifying our metabolism. All humans share a basic biochemistry, but layered on top of this is a microbial biochemistry that is much more diverse. The metabolites that microbes produce affect a range of things, including cholesterol and steroid metabolism.
"There are a few thousand basic enzymatic reactions in the human body but there are tens of thousands of metabolites – because our metabolism interacts with microbial metabolism," says Nicholson. What this ultimately means is that without our non-human component, we wouldn't be ourselves at all.
Who among Us Identifies with All of Humanity?
We all want to promote world peace and live in harmony, but what does that really mean? What does the intersection of praxis and theory look like? Is it a bumper sticker on your car, an annual donation to an international aid group, a bi-annual religious service attendance of your choice? New research attempts to quantify some of these philosophical questions. The results could shed light on everything from liberal-conservative differences to conflict resolution between Israel and Palestine. A scale developed by psychologists Sam McFarland, Matthew Webb, and Derek Brown at Western Kentucky University measures the degree to which people identify with all humans, not just their kin, local communities, or other assorted in-groups. The Identification With All Humanity Scale (IWAH) builds off of work by the towering figures Alfred Adler and Abraham Maslow and attempts to measure active willingness to help those in need.
Adler and Maslow saw active and engaged “social interest,” or a sense of oneness with all humankind as a more mature and fully realized mode of being. Maslow held that each individual had a hierarchy of needs, starting with basic physiological needs, then security needs, friendship, acceptance and love, all the way up to the psychological drive toward self-actualization. Once the more basic needs are met, in this view, individuals are free to pursue higher goals of moral and personal flourishing. For Maslow, the more psychologically mature an individual was, the more they tended to identify with all of humanity as opposed to just their own family, race, or nation.
While neither psychologist developed operational measures in their lifetime, at least five scales have been established to measure social interest and moral identity in recent decades – most notably Americus Reed and Karl Aquino’s 2003 study on moral identity and expansive moral regard, and Shalom Schwartz’s nod to universalism in his 10 basic values. But these focused more on how people saw or evaluated their own morality as opposed to how actively they tended to identify and engage with humanity. Significantly, one previous paper presented at the International Society of Political Psychology in 2001, titled “Can humanity constitute an in-group?,” did directly measure active social identification. The study found that those who reported warmer feelings toward outgroups tended to have more critical ratings of whites, the predominant in-group for their Minnesota sample.
After pouring through the previous literature, McFarland and his team discovered that while some work on the concept of universalism (or a general feeling of kinship with all humanity) had been done, it was a fairly passive form of group membership which merely found that people with a greater sense of universalism tended to see themselves as part of the human family. It didn't really cover active identification or engagement--willingness to help others, willful acquisition of knowledge about international affairs and so on. They crafted their IWAH scale and then set out to test it on several different groups of people.
Building on previous work, McFarland and team established a series of ten studies, using self-reports as well as reports from close others. The researchers found that the IWAH was stable over time, distinct from a general empathy and tendency to identify with others, and was more than the mere absence of authoritarianism, social dominance and ethnocentrism. The IWAH did correlate with all these traits, but showed itself to be a distinct construct which manifested in a greater commitment to universal human rights, willingness to aid others, and greater acquired knowledge of international aid issues.
As expected, the IWAH related positively with increased knowledge of and willingness to help with international aid issues. But a few surprising things did pop up. For instance, IWAH related to the personality traits of agreeableness and openness to experience, as expected, but it also related to neuroticism. Although perplexed by this unexpected finding, the researchers suggested that perhaps people who were ‘thin skinned’ and worried more might also be more likely to empathically worry or show concern for others. And while social dominance orientation and in-group identification were predictive of ethnocentric valuation of American over Afghani lives, authoritarianism, self-rated conservatism and religiosity were not. In fact, using a subscale of McFarland’s, Ravi Iyer found that, assuming one is not involved in a zero-sum game, ingroup love does not always equal outgroup hate.
Nevertheless, this study is likely to find itself in the groaner column for conservatives who’ve grown weary of presumed-liberal researchers publishing studies demonstrating how wonderfully self-actualized and mature their own moral tendencies and preferences are. Identifying with your fellow man sounds great, but can there be too much of a good thing? Pathological Altruism, a fascinating book that came out last year, highlights the ways in which giving and good intentions can go terribly wrong. Ideologues can get so addicted to the high of moral self-righteousness that no amount of common sense could convince them that burning a Koran might just not be the best idea. Excesses of empathic guilt and identification can cause women to take abusers back into their lives. Even at the more mundane levels of daily life, we all have competing demands coming from the different levels of self, in-group, and out-group all jockeying for position and favor. If you pour out compassion for outgroup members, you may have less left for your family; if you say yes to every ingroup request that comes your way, you may promote social cohesion and group fitness but sacrifice your own personal fitness.
There are many practical, group level applications for this line of inquiry as well. Creating effective church, non-profit, and social justice organizations depends on the leadership’s ability to convert passive, well-meaning interest into active engagement. Most of us want to live according to our values, but moving from the occasional church attendance or charitable contributions to daily engagement, routine giving, and a full-time commitment to a values-centered life can take a herculean will. In this world of abundant pressures and distractions, it’s hard to find the time to even reflect on what we should be doing, let alone doing it. Conservative church groups and liberal non-profits alike will surely be interested in gaining clarity about the identifications underlying donor behavior. Moving from passive group membership to active, engaged social interest can help donors attain their higher-order needs for self-actualization, even as they help fulfill the basic needs of others.
Is Reproduction the Meaning?
From an evolutionary gene’s-eye perspective, the genes are immortal, and our role, the meaning of life, is to perpetuate the genes. In a few centuries, all traces of our existence as human individuals — memories of us, all our accomplishments –will likely be gone and forgotten, except for genes that survive from those of us who successfully reproduced through the generations.
But, of course, we don’t experience the world from a gene’s eye evolutionary perspective. One experiences the world as an individual person, not as a gene dispenser (fun as that may be). The joy we get from parenting comes not from some abstract generic idea of gene propagation, but from specific love and interaction with our own children — making your own baby son giggle uncontrollably when you make ridiculous animal noises, the bittersweet emotional rush you feel as you watch your daughter walk down the aisle. We care about ourselves and others as persons, not as a gene menagerie. Humans create our own meanings.
But — reproduction as the answer to life’s meaning cannot be dismissed quite so easily. Genetic evolution is the meaning of biologic life, in that it is the why and how of it, as well as the stock of future biological existence. The genes that survive — and in turn the organisms they make — are the winners in the existence game. Can we just dismiss this when considering the meaning of our own individual human lives? Sure, evolution itself does not have a specific direction or teleology, and genes themselves are not conscious, so there is not meaning in that sense. But evolution cannot just be shrugged off as something apart from us, take it or leave it. It is the biological explanation of who we are, how we got here, and the diversity of life. Over billions of years, life left the oceans, stretched limbs to cover the earth, raised wings to fly. Underlying it all are the replicating molecules that continue to copy themselves even now. We owe our existence to this process, and our future depends on it. Perhaps the meaning of your life as a biological creature is to make babies and help ensure the survival of life. In discussing the children she had with Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan put it like this: “When we come closest to each other we can create new life forms that carry on that continuity that stretches back all those billions of years, and in them are the generations of human beings who have struggled. That is magnificent.”
By making babies, we continue life’s pageant. In children, we cheat death.
Yet something seems fundamentally very wrong, or incomplete, with this idea that making babies is the meaning of life. I wouldn’t be jumping with jubilation if my teenage son announced today that he was going to be a father. Do we laud the parents of extremely large Mormon, Hasid, Catholic, and Muslim families as public exemplars of a meaningful life? Do we honor the most popular sperm donor as humankind’s greatest philanthropist?
Even if our genes get perpetuated, our genes are not us. After a few generations of genetic mixing and shuffling, there’s unlikely to be anything unique or identifying about us in our offspring. If your great-great-grandchild has your brown eyes and your blood type, but no other personality or physical traits uniquely identifiable to you, how much of “you” has really lived on? Further, if the idea is to perpetuate our genetic lineage, what if we have children, but no grandchildren?
Fundamentally, as humans, the problem with identifying the meaning of life with having children is this — to link meaningfulness only with child production seems an affront to human dignity, individual differences, and personal choice. Millions of homosexuals throughout the world do not have children biologically. Millions of heterosexual adults are unable to have children biologically. For many adults, not having children is the right choice, for themselves, the world, the economy, or for their would-be children. Socrates, Julius Caesar, Leonardo da Vinci, George Washington, Jane Austen, Florence Nightingale, John Keats, Vincent van Gogh, Vladimir Lenin, and Steven Pinker as far as we know did not have biological children. Would we deny the meaningfulness of their impact or existence? The meaning of life for childless adults — roughly 20% of the population in the U.S. and U.K. – has nothing to do with fame, but everything to do with what makes life meaningful for everyone: experiencing pleasure, personal relationships, and engagement in positive activities and accomplishments.
From a moral perspective if you are giving of your life for an adopted child, a parent, creative production, teaching, volunteer work, or anything that helps others, adds to happiness, and makes the world a better place — then an evolutionary genetic perspective seems irrelevant. It is from such bedrocks that human meaning springs. Human meanings are worthwhile regardless of long-term, universal, final consequences, because they are meaningful now.
Also, it’s not just the seed alone that produces bountiful produce, it’s the entire garden and all it takes to nurture it. The environment is a critical part of the equation. Evolution by natural selection occurs by differential survival and reproduction of genes in a population as a consequence of interactions with the environment. There is also the danger of overpopulation, which could result in famine, disease, and environmental catastrophe, perhaps jeopardizing the future evolutionary success of the entire species. So, ironically, perhaps not having children is the best way to ensure longevity of the human genome. Unlike other animals, we can be conscious stewards of the future.
So is making babies — and having genes survive through the generations — the meaning of life? The answer is yes — from an evolutionary gene’s eye view. Making babies, and also other actions and social structures that result in the survival and reproduction of one’s gene, such as protecting one’s relatives. Differential reproduction is a process which, in conjunction with environmental interactions, has led to all life as we know it, with all its diversity and grandeur, including conscious experience itself. This is modern knowledge that is not to be taken lightly, and has impact on how we view our own meaning.
But from almost every other perspective — individual, group, moral, environmental, or concern for life as a whole — the answer to the question is no. Meaning from these perspectives — from life as it is actually experienced — is up to us. Reproduction and genetic survival may be the meaning of Life, but it is not inescapably the meaning of your life.
So, in the end, the full answer is no — we do not bestow having babies as the sole guardians of life’s meaning. But we do need to respect and grapple with the view. Differential genetic success, as a result of reproduction and environmental conditions will — for better or worse — provide the template for what humans will become in the future. It is to evolutionary genetic success that we — and all life — owe our existence, and to which the future of all life on Earth depends. Including creatures that create our own meaning. We perform our solos with passion, but we are playing in nature’s grand symphony.
Is Life A Movie? (Seth Godin)
We are not living in a movie
We're not even living in a lousy reality show.
Entertainment has seduced us into believing that we have a chance to live the life they live in the movies. Even the people in the movies don't live that life.
It doesn't take 135 minutes to make a life, it takes almost a century.
Everything doesn't depend on what happens in the next ninety seconds. Ever.
The people around us don't live secret lives. Spaceships and evil cowboys and pathogens aren't going to upend the world tomorrow, either.
Life is actually far better than it is in the movies. And it takes longer.
10 Things To Care About
1.Realize that nobody cares, and if they do, you shouldn't care that they care. Got a new car? Nobody cares. You'll get some gawkers for a couple of weeks—they don't care. They're curious. Three weeks in, it'll be just another shiny blob among all the thousands of others crawling down the freeway and sitting in garages and driveways up and down your street. People will care about your car just as much as you care about all of those. Got a new gewgaw? New wardrobe? Went to a swanky restaurant? Exotic vacation? Nobody cares. Don't base your happiness on people caring, because they won't. And if they do, they either want your stuff or hate you for it.
2. Some rulebreakers will break rule No. 1. Occasionally, people in your life will defy the odds and actually care about you. Still not your stuff, sorry. But if they value you, they'll value that you value it, and they'll listen. When you talk about all of those things that nobody else cares about, they will look into your eyes and consume your words, and in that moment you will know that every part of them is there with you.
3. Spend your life with rulebreakers. Marry them. Befriend them. Work with them. Spend weekends with them. No matter how much power you become possessed of, you'll never be able to make someone care—so gather close the caring.
4. Money is cheap. I mean, there's a lot of it - trillions upon trillions of dollars floating around the world, largely made up of cash whose value is made up and ascribed to it, anyway. Don't engineer your life around getting a slightly less tiny portion of this pile, and make your spirit of generosity reflect this principle. I knew a man who became driven by the desire to amass six figures in savings, so he worked and scrimped and sacrificed to get there. And he did ... right before he died of cancer. I'm sure his wife's new husband appreciated his diligence.
5. Money is expensive. I mean, it's difficult to get your hands on sometimes - and you never know when someone's going to pull the floorboards out from under you - so don't be stupid with it. Avoid debt on depreciating assets, and never incur debt in order to assuage your vanity (see rule No. 1). Debt has become normative, but don't blithely accept it as a rite of passage into adulthood — debt represents imbalance and, in some sense, often a resignation of control. Student loan debt isn't always avoidable, but it isn't a given - my wife and I completed a combined 10 years of college with zero debt between us. If you can't avoid it, though, make sure that your degree is an investment rather than a liability - I mourn a bit for all of the people going tens of thousands of dollars in debt in pursuit of vague liberal arts degrees with no idea of what they want out of life. If you're just dropping tuition dollars for lack of a better idea at the moment, just withdraw and go wander around Europe for a few weeks - I guarantee you'll spend less and learn more in the process.
6. Learn the ancient art of rhetoric. The elements of rhetoric, in all of their forms, are what make the world go around—because they are what prompt the decisions people make. If you develop an understanding of how they work, while everyone else is frightened by flames and booming voices, you will be able to see behind veils of communication and see what levers little men are pulling. Not only will you develop immunity from all manner of commercials, marketing, hucksters and salesmen, to the beautiful speeches of liars and thieves, you'll also find yourself able to craft your speech in ways that influence people. When you know how to speak in order to change someone's mind, to instill confidence in someone, to quiet the fears of a child, then you will know this power firsthand. However, bear in mind as you use it that your opponent in any debate is not the other person, but ignorance.
7. You are responsible to everyone, but you're responsible for yourself. I believe we're responsible to everyone for something, even if it's something as basic as an affirmation of their humanity. However, it should most often go far beyond that and manifest itself in service to others, to being a voice for the voiceless. If you're reading this, there are those around you who toil under burdens larger than yours, who stand in need of touch and respect and chances. Conversely, though, you're responsible for yourself. Nobody else is going to find success for you, and nobody else is going to instill happiness into you from the outside. That's on you.
8. Learn to see reality in terms of systems. When you understand the world around you as a massive web of interconnected, largely interdependent systems, things get much less mystifying—and the less we either ascribe to magic or allow to exist behind a fog, the less susceptible we'll be to all manner of being taken advantage of. However:
9. Account for the threat of black swan events. Sometimes chaos consumes the most meticulous of plans, and if you live life with no margins in a financial, emotional, or any other sense, you will be subject to its whims. Take risks, but backstop them with something—I strongly suspect these people who say having a Plan B is a sign of weak commitment aren't living hand to mouth. Do what you need to in order to keep your footing.
10. You both need and don't need other people. You need others in a sense that you need to be part of a community—there's a reason we reflexively pity hermits. Regardless of your theory of anthropogenesis, it's hard to deny that we are built for community, and that "we" is always more than "me." However, you don't need another person in order for your life to have meaning—this idea that Disney has shoved through our eyeballs, that there's someone out there for all of us if we'll just believe hard enough and never stop searching, is hokum ... because of arithmetic, if nothing else. Establish your own life—then, if there's a particular person that you can't help but integrate, believe me, you'll know.
11. Always give more than is required of you.
An Overview (John Horgan)
This post was inspired, in part, by a recent conversation with two friends that followed a familiar pattern. My friends have adopted a Buddhist practice that makes them feel good. They urged me to try it, and I said I’m just not into Buddhism or any other spiritual path; I’m fine bumbling along in my usual fashion, gabbing with my students about why Freud isn’t dead, knocking particle physics on my blog, fretting over my kids, watching Homeland with my girlfriend.
Socrates, when he said "The unexamined life is not worth living," implied that there is one optimal meaning of life. He was wrong.
My friends became annoyed. They seemed to feel I was condescending to Buddhism and hence to them. Hoping for a truce, I said that we were, in effect, arguing about the “meaning of life,” and that all such arguments are silly, because the meaning of life is a totally personal issue.
My friends reacted with shrugs rather than eager agreement. At the risk of confusing or irritating even more people, I’ll try here to explain more clearly what I meant. In so doing, I hope to solve once and for all what I call the “Meaning of Life Problem.”
First, let me define “meaning of life.” It is whatever gives you joy, or consoles you when life has got you down. It is something you believe or do that makes your life worth living. And by “you” I mean not the collective you but the individual you, unlike every other person past, present or future.
Long ago, some of our ancestors came up with the idea that there must be One True Meaning of Life—one optimal set of beliefs, behaviors, values–for everyone. The most obvious embodiments of this idea are religions such as Taoism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Scientology, each of which—to true believers—represents The Meaning of Life. The One and Only True Meaning.
If you don’t dig religion, you may still insist that some meanings of life are better than all others. The pursuit of scientific knowledge, for example, or artistic illumination, or social justice, or freedom, or pleasure, or power and glory. Socrates implied that there is one optimal meaning of life when he said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” I loathe this aphorism. I enjoy pondering existence myself now and then, but I certainly don’t fault those who prefer, say, fly fishing or fantasy football.
When we assert that our favorite meaning of life is objectively, universally valid, we are committing what philosophers call a category error. We are placing the meaning of life in the same category as truth, which can indeed be objective and universal (in spite of what Thomas Kuhn and other misguided skeptics would have us believe).
The meaning of life belongs in the category of beauty, not truth. It is an aesthetic and hence fundamentally subjective phenomenon. You are moved by the Upanishads, the Koran, The Interpretation of Dreams. I prefer Emily Dickinson, James Joyce, Breaking Bad. You believe in Allah or in Nirvana. I believe in free will and the imminent end of war.
In other words, what makes life meaningful is a matter of taste. Arguing that your meaning is better than someone else’s is like arguing that strawberry ice cream tastes better than Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, or that Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself is superior to Song of Solomon, or that Bach beats The Beatles.
You demanding that I love Jesus is as absurd as me demanding that you love my girlfriend (although she is awfully lovable).
There are as many possible meanings of life as there are individuals. “Plushies” and “furries,” for example, are people who have sex with stuffed animals or dress up in furry animal suits and have sex with each other. This behavior doesn’t appeal to me. But neither does being celibate and praying or meditating all day, which some religions have exalted as the best thing that you can do with your life.
My meaning of life isn’t even absolute for me, because it keeps changing as the circumstances of my life change. When I was young, I couldn’t imagine having kids. Who needs the hassle? Now my well-being is inextricably entwined with the well-being of my son and daughter. But I would no more urge my childless friends to have kids than I would exhort my gay friends to go straight.
It’s natural, if you find something that delights you, to want to share your discovery with others. I recently raced through all the novels of Jane Austen, and I’ve been raving about her to strangers at parties. But I accept that you can have a perfectly wonderful life without ever reading Jane Austen. After all, my life wasn’t so bad before I discovered her.
I’m not a total relativist. We can and should make judgments about the empirical plausibility and practical advisability of various beliefs and behaviors. But even if we rule out ideologies like young-earth creationism and white supremacy, that leaves lots of room for diversity. And most of the harmful consequences of beliefs stem from the insistence of believers that everyone agree with them.
I’m critical of religions that purport to be uniquely “true,” or that make empirical claims (for the therapeutic benefits of meditation, for example) that I find dubious. But I’m also critical of militant atheists who denigrate all beliefs that supposedly contradict their cramped, reductionist vision of reality. Science has told us a lot about how the world works, but reality is in many ways still as baffling as ever.
Hence I try to be tolerant toward people who have a greater capacity to suspend disbelief than I do about matters such as extra-sensory perception. The geneticist Francis Collins, who leads the National Institutes of Health, manages somehow to believe in modern physics and biology and in a loving God who occasionally performs miracles. As long as he doesn’t insist that I share his outlook, power to him!
So what does all this have to do with “Global Conflict,” which I mentioned in my headline? The notion that there is one true meaning of life is not only wrong. It may be the worst idea that humans have ever invented, in terms of how much harm it has caused.
If we can all accept that there is no universal Meaning of Life–and that each person must find his or her own unique, personal meaning—imagine how much more peaceful the world would be! My belief in this possibility helps make my life more bearable—and meaningful.
Overview: The Sequel
In my last post, I argued that there is no single, “true” meaning of life, which applies to everyone. The meaning of life is a matter of taste, not of empirical truth. Thus, no matter how meaningful we find some belief system or activity or set of values, we shouldn’t insist that others embrace it.
Meaning of life, says 1983 Monty Python film, is, "Try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then."
My post was inspired, in part, by two friends’ gentle attempt to persuade me to try a Buddhist retreat, but let me offer a more extreme example of proselytizing: I once encountered a Christian who, when I resisted his exhortations to embrace Jesus, compared me to a man on a burning plane, to whom he was offering a life-saving parachute.
He saw himself as compassionate. I saw him as nutty. Demanding that people embrace your faith because it works for you is as absurd as demanding that they listen only to Lady Gaga or have sex only with stuffed animals. If we could all adopt a live-and-let-live perspective toward each others’ meanings, we’d be a lot better off.
I hoped for, and got, some critical responses, which I’m posting, along with my replies, here. My Stevens colleague Garry Dobbins, a philosopher, objects to my interpretation of Socrates: “You err when you say, ‘Socrates implied that there is one optimal meaning of life when he said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”‘ Socrates was not saying that the only life worth living is one in which someone sits around all day examining his life! No! Socrates was saying that EVERYONE, whatever she or he does, who never, and regularly, challenges her or himself by asking such questions as ‘Am I lying to myself saying/doing this?’ ‘Is that bastard over there who just accused me of being partial, or prejudiced, really TOTALLY mistaken?’ and so on, is not living an ‘examined’ life, and is thereby not living up to what we might fairly call a ‘high’ standard. You might say to me, ‘I don’t CARE to live UP to any such standard!’ To which I would say, ‘Out of your own mouth you stand condemned: not mine!’ So, Socrates’ words are perfectly consistent with someone being a doctor, lawyer, or Indian Chief–or candlestick maker for that matter–and examining her, or his life, or NOT.”
My reply: “Garry, I admit Socrates irks me. To me he comes across as an arrogant jerk, bragging about how wise he is compared to poets, politicians and everyone else. (He’s wise because he knows how little he knows! The irony.) You try to soft-peddle the implications of his ‘unexamined life’ remark, suggesting that he’s asking only for a little ethical introspection now and then. I don’t buy it. Socrates demands much more of us. His allegory of the cave describes ordinary people as hopelessly benighted, living in a world of illusion. If you’re not trying to escape the cave, you’re not really alive, hence your life is worthless. This is exactly the sort of extremism that I’m deploring, and that I see in both religious and secular zealots today.”
Lee Vinsel, who teaches science and technology studies at Stevens, writes: “Isn’t your philosophy just a tepid form of liberalism? The problem with this kind of philosophy, which also fits some forms of Existentialism, is that it squishes all of the interesting tensions in life by pretending they don’t exist. The ‘Whatever, man; you do your thing; and I’ll do my thing; and as long as our two things don’t interfere with each other’s things, dude, then everything is copacetic, dig?’ answer isn’t very interesting a) because it describes what, like, dormant kids who sit around in their pajamas and play World of Warcraft all day think anyway, b) because this variety of liberalism has been around for a long time to not much effect, and c) because it experienced a major uptick in the 60s and look how that turned out. Finally, isn’t the fact that the U.S. liberal, ‘whatever, man’ consensus is leading our world right off the cliff environmentally and otherwise proof that philosophically this isn’t the way to go?”
My reply: “Lee, liberalism hasn’t had much effect? Really? Looking just at the 60s, that was an era of enormous advances in rights for women, gays, blacks and other oppressed groups, and major grass-roots challenges to U.S. militarism and imperialism. Young people questioned the values of their elders and experimented with alternative forms of spirituality and social organization. Many of those experiments failed, but they were well worth trying, to my mind. I also reject your suggestion that liberalism is somehow to blame for our global problems. Ideological self-righteousness–whether religious or economic or nationalistic–is what threatens to lead us ‘off the cliff,’ as you put it.”
A friend who’s into meditation writes: “You portray us as born-again Buddhists trying to browbeat you into trying Buddhist meditation because WE liked it. Not fair. In fact, we only argued that if you were going to keep CRITIQUING meditation, you should really try it. (Not by reading about it, interviewing people about it, or taking a class here and there over the years – but by doing sustained meditation.)”
My reply: “I’ve never been psychoanalyzed or taken an antidepressant. Does that mean I shouldn’t criticize SSRI’s or psychoanalysis? I’m often faulted for not knowing enough about things I criticize, but no one ever accuses me of ignorance when I praise their pet belief. Now, you could argue that my criticism of others’ beliefs is inconsistent with the live and let live philosophy I spell out in my post. I worry about that now and then. But when I look at the world today, I don’t see it suffering from an excess of skepticism. Quite the contrary. Anyway, that’s my convenient self-justification.”
Dr. Strangelove comments on my blog: “We like to believe there is no universal meaning of life. What about democracy, human rights, right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness? Don’t we all agree to that?”
I reply: “As I said, I’m not a total relativist. There are certain meta-beliefs, or meta-values, that are good for us to share, collectively, so we can create a society in which we can pursue our individual meanings as freely as possible. These are the meta-values embodied in liberal democracy. Now some people will devote their lives to promoting the spread of democracy, tolerance, open-mindedness, and so on, and that’s fine. But if you insist that others join you in your social activism–and that your life is more meaningful than the lives of others who are not social activists–that’s not fine.”
Prazeologue comments on Twitter: “Logically your observation is self refuting. If it is true then it refutes itself. Bit like saying ‘I’m always lying.’”
I reply: “Yeah, as I once said about Thomas Kuhn, all skeptics are self-refuting. When I say no meaning-of-life system is true, I’m offering up another meaning-of-life system, which must also be false. I get it. But that, I like to think, is a paradox and not a contradiction.”
Andy Russell, an historian of technology at Stevens: “I’m glad fishing is part of this discussion. At the moment one of my favorite philosophers is Billy Currington, who wrote ‘A bad day of fishin’ beats a good day of anything else.
I reply: “Now THAT is a wise man. I bet Socrates never went fishing.”
Why is advice largely useless?
Advice is autobiographical. Austin Kleon put it best: “It’s one of my theories that when people give you advice, they’re really just talking to themselves in the past.”
What this means is that your objectives must neatly map with a historical version of the person you take advice from, otherwise the advice you receive is unlikely to be useful or relevant.
It is extraordinarily rare that you will find another human being whose circumstances, experiences and desires overlap with yours. So that’s why most advice is not useful.
Self-Compassion Works Better Than Self-Esteem
In 1986, California state assemblyman John Vasconcellos came up with what he believed could be “a vaccine for major social ills” like teen pregnancy and drug abuse: a special task-force to promote self-esteem among Californians. The effort folded three years later, and was widely considered not to have accomplished much.
To Kristin Neff, a psychology professor at the University of Texas, that’s not surprising. Though self-esteem continues to reverberate as a pop-psych cure-all, the quest for inflated egos, in her view, is misguided and largely pointless.
There’s nothing wrong with being confident, to answer Demi Lovato’s question. The trouble is how we try to achieve high self-regard. Often, it’s by undermining others or comparing our achievements to those around us. That’s not just unsustainable, Neff argues, it can also lead to narcissism or depressive bouts during hard times.
Neff proposes a better path: Self-compassion. In other words, treating yourself just like you would your best friends, even when they (you) screw up.
I recently interviewed Neff about how self-esteem fails us and how we can boost our compassion for ourselves instead. An edited version of the conversation follows.
Olga Khazan: What are some contexts in which we usually hear about boosting self-esteem?
Kristin Neff: Well, it seems like it's just deeply permeated, especially American culture, where we have very high levels of self-esteem and narcissism. I think because of the big self-esteem movement, people just got it in their heads that the key to psychological health was self-esteem. Jean Twenge and Keith Campbell showed that because of this emphasis on self-esteem, we actually got a generation of narcissists. I think it’s generally out there in the culture, but maybe especially among parents and educators.
Jenny Crocker—she’s one of the best people who talks about this. She says, you have to stop the costly pursuit of high self-esteem. It's not having high self-esteem is the problem, it's pursuing it, which is usually based on feeling special and above-average or better than others. The best way to think about the problem of self-esteem is not whether or not you have it, but what you do to get it. That's where the issues really come in.
Khazan: So what's wrong with telling people to have better self-esteem?
Neff: When you take it too seriously, you become a narcissist. And we know narcissists tend to have problems with relationships, they push people away, so there are definitely maladaptive consequences to narcissism.
The other thing is, it's pretty common, at least in American society, that in order to have high self-esteem, you have to feel special and above-average. If someone said, "Oh, your performance was average," you would feel hurt by that, almost insulted.
When we fail, self-esteem deserts us, which is precisely when we need it most.
And so the problem is we're constantly comparing ourselves to others. We try to puff ourselves up. We have what's called self-enhancement bias, where we see ourselves as better in almost any culturally valued trait. There's a large body of research showing that bullying is largely caused by the quest for high self-esteem—the process of feeling special and better-than.
So if I can pick on the weird, nerdy kid, I actually get a self-esteem boost. Then, if you look at things like prejudice, at least some element playing a role in prejudice is if I feel that my religious group or my ethnic group is better than yours, that's one way to make a social comparison, and I am actually boosting my self-esteem. So that's a problem. And also the fact that on some level, someone is always going to be doing it better.
When I teach workshops I say, it's logically impossible for everyone to be above average at all times, so we're basically predicating ourselves with a logical impossibility. Eventually that's going to hit reality. Maybe somebody does do that better than me. Do I accept that or am I destabilized by that?
Usually, self-esteem is highly contingent on success. And the three domains it’s contingent on are, first, peer approval. That's what other kids at school and other people of work think of me, which is a really lousy source of information, because a) they don't know you very well and b) you don't know what they think of you very well.
And then, perceived appearance, which for women is especially damning, and it's also the most important domain for self-esteem for women. One of the reasons boys don't suffer as much from low self-esteem is that boys, growing up, they think they're pretty attractive. They rate their own attractiveness pretty high. The standards of beauty are much higher for girls than for boys. For girls, from the third grade, you start seeing a nose-dive in how attractive they think they are. Starting in third grade think, girls think, "I'm fat," and "I'm not pretty enough," and start comparing themselves to high standards and their self-esteem takes a hit. Boys stay pretty stable.
The final one is success. The real problem with that is self-esteem is only available when we succeed. But when we fail, self-esteem deserts us, which is precisely when we need it most. And some people argue that the instability of self-esteem going up and down is more damaging than the level of self-esteem itself.
Khazan: So what is self-compassion? How is it better?
Neff: It means treating yourself with the same kind of kindness, care, compassion, as you would treat those you care about—your good friends, your loved ones.
One component is self-kindness, which is in a way the most obvious. But it also entails a recognition of common humanity—in other words, the understanding that all people are imperfect, and all people have imperfect lives. Sometimes, when we fail, we react as if something has gone wrong—that this shouldn't be happening. “I shouldn't have failed, I shouldn't have had this issue come up in my life.” And this sense that “this shouldn't be happening,” as if everyone else in the world were living perfectly happy, unproblematic lives. That type of thinking really causes a lot of additional suffering, because people feel isolated and separated from the rest of humanity.
So, when we have self-compassion, when we fail, it's not “poor me,” it's “well, everyone fails.” Everyone struggles. This is what it means to be human. And that really radically alters how we relate to failure and difficulty. When we say, "Oh, this is normal, this is part of what it means to human," that opens the door to the grow from the experience. If we feel like it's abnormal, this shouldn't be happening, then we start blaming ourselves.
Self-compassion also entails a mindfulness. In order to have self-compassion, we have to be willing to turn toward and acknowledge our suffering. Typically, we don't want to do that. We want to avoid it, we don't want to think about it, and want to go straight into problem-solving.
And in fact, I would argue that self-compassion also provides a sense of self-worth, but it's not linked to narcissism the way self-esteem is. It's not linked to social comparison the way self-esteem is, and it's not contingent, because you have self-compassion both when you fail and when you succeed. The sense of self-worth that comes from being kind to yourself is much more stable over time than the sense of self-worth that comes from judging yourself positively.
Khazan: What would someone who experienced a major setback say to themselves if they were being self-compassionate?
Neff: I write a lot about this in my book because my son was diagnosed with autism. He's 14 now. In my book, I talk about, thank God I had many years of self-compassion practice under my belt, because immediately when it happened, I knew what I needed to do. Instead of just going into “what type of therapy, what type of treatment?” I knew I had to acknowledge that this was difficult for me, that it was emotionally painful. I had to really think about being kind and caring and understanding to myself, letting myself feel whatever feelings were coming up, whether or not I thought I should be having them.
The self-worth that comes from being kind to yourself is much more stable than that which comes from judging yourself positively.
I remember one time I was at the playground and there were all these mothers with their kids and they were all laughing and interacting, and my son was off in a corner not interacting. I started going down the path of self-pity. You know, “why me, why me ...” But when I remembered common humanity, I had this very powerful experience where I remembered, wait a second, maybe these mothers are not dealing autism, but every single one of these mothers will have challenges with their child in some form or another. Maybe a mental health issue or a physical issue or maybe they'll have a very conflict-filled relationship. Once I had made the switch from “poor me” to “this is what motherhood's all about—we have challenges with our children and we love them anyway,” it really radically reframed how I related to my own emotional difficulty. It made it much more easy to cope.
Khazan: I noticed that you found this works for romantic relationships, for body image ... what are some of the various contexts that you found that this works in?
Neff: One is coping and resilience. A lot of people think self-compassion is weak. Well, it's not. For instance, there's some work with combat vets, on their level of self-compassion— are they an inner enemy or an inner ally? The vets who were an inner ally instead of an inner enemy cope much better and are much less likely to develop PTSD symptoms. It helps people cope with divorce, pain, age.
A big one, which a lot of people just can't quite believe, is that it enhances motivation. People who are more self-compassionate, when they fail, they're less afraid of failure. There was a study where helping people be more self-compassionate about failure [on a test], later on when they had a chance to study for a second test, they actually studied longer than people who were not told to be self-compassionate. Because, basically, it creates an environment where it's safe to fail, so self-compassionate people are often more likely to try again. They also have more self-confidence, because they aren't cutting themselves down all the time.
There's some work on physical health, showing that self-compassion is linked to better immune function. Studies show that it stabilizes glucose levels in diabetes patients, another one looking at telomere lengths—it's associated with longer telomeres. [Self-compassionate] people are healthier, they take better care of themselves, they are more likely to exercise and eat well, more likely to go to the doctor. Self-compassion is caring about yourself and not wanting yourself to suffer.
Khazan: One of your findings is the men have more self-compassion than women. Why is that?
Neff: It's a very small difference, but it's consistent: Women tend to be less self-compassionate than men. Now, we're doing research looking at gender role orientation, and androgynous women—women who draw equally on their masculine and feminine sides— have exactly the same level of self-compassion [as men]. It seems to be the feminine women ... when you think about it, when you really identify with norms of self-sacrifice, “I should always be meeting the needs of others,” a lot of those problems that come from identifying with the traditional female stereotype. They're the ones who seem to suffer more. This is kind of new data, I haven't even published this data yet, it's kind of interesting but it makes sense to me. Women are told they should not take care of themselves; that they should always be outwardly focused.
Khazan: Is there a risk, though, that you can sort of forgive yourself for too much?
Neff: That's another surprising finding. People who are more self-compassionate are more likely to take personal responsibility for harming others and are more likely to apologize. When it's safe to make a mistake and you have the resources to say, “I can't believe I said that...” Self-compassion gives you the resources to acknowledge that and see yourself clearly, because you're not saying you're a horrible person, you're just saying, “Wow, I was out of line there.” And that actually increases your ability to take responsibility and apologize.
You might think that I'm batting all of these concerns away, but the research is pretty clear now. All the fears we have of self-compassion are pretty much based on misconceptions. And the research shows the opposite. Self-compassion helps you be motivated, it helps you take responsibility. It's not self-indulgent, it's not selfish, it leads to better relationships. I find it's quite remarkable how much research there is supporting these ideas.
Khazan: That’s great. So, how do you cultivate it if you’re not a naturally self-compassionate person?
Neff: One of the easiest ways is, "What would I say to a close friend I cared about in this situation?" So most of us have a lot more experience being compassionate to others than to ourselves.
Another one we talk about, actually, believe it or not, is physical touch. The physiological compassion system is triggered by the main three triggers, which is physical warmth, gentle touch, and soothing vocalizations (an ahhh sound), so it's amazing what you can do with a gesture. You know, putting your hands on your heart, or something for you that's supportive. What happens is your physiology calms down and the caregiving system gets activated and helps facilitate the talking to yourself in a kinder way. I always tell people, yes it is touchy-feely, but don't underestimate it because we are mammals at the end of the day.
Khazan: One reason this is hard for me to conceptualize is that I just don't think that's what friends say when their friends mess up? I think friends are more likely to say, “oh, it wasn’t really that bad,” or “that person deserved it.” To sort of minimize, rather than acknowledge the friend’s wrongdoing.
Neff: I think that's a good point. I think, in some ways, a parent might be a better example, because a parent is really invested in the well-being of their child. And a parent really wants to make sure that child grows up not doing things that are going to be harmful to them.
People have access to the language more easily when they think about how they treat a friend, because they are just much more experienced at it. But again, that mindfulness has to be there. If the compassion is used to say, “Oh, it's no big deal,” if it doesn't acknowledge the big deal ... you have to be aware when you use self-compassion that you aren't using it in a tricky way or in a superficial way, to make the pain go away and pretend there's not a problem when there really is one. You have to fully acknowledge that there's a problem here, a mistake was made. And once you do that, framing it in a larger compassionate perspective helps you to simultaneously acknowledge it, hopefully do some healing, and move on.
68 Bits of Advice
• Learn how to learn from those you disagree with, or even offend you. See if you can find the truth in what they believe.
• Being enthusiastic is worth 25 IQ points.
• Always demand a deadline. A deadline weeds out the extraneous and the ordinary. It prevents you from trying to make it perfect, so you have to make it different. Different is better.
• Don’t be afraid to ask a question that may sound stupid because 99% of the time everyone else is thinking of the same question and is too embarrassed to ask it.
• Being able to listen well is a superpower. While listening to someone you love keep asking them “Is there more?”, until there is no more.
• A worthy goal for a year is to learn enough about a subject so that you can’t believe how ignorant you were a year earlier.
• Gratitude will unlock all other virtues and is something you can get better at.
• Treating a person to a meal never fails, and is so easy to do. It’s powerful with old friends and a great way to make new friends.
• Don’t trust all-purpose glue.
• Reading to your children regularly will bond you together and kickstart their imaginations.
• Never use a credit card for credit. The only kind of credit, or debt, that is acceptable is debt to acquire something whose exchange value is extremely likely to increase, like in a home. The exchange value of most things diminishes or vanishes the moment you purchase them. Don’t be in debt to losers.
• Pros are just amateurs who know how to gracefully recover from their mistakes.
• Extraordinary claims should require extraordinary evidence to be believed.
• Don’t be the smartest person in the room. Hangout with, and learn from, people smarter than yourself. Even better, find smart people who will disagree with you.
• Rule of 3 in conversation. To get to the real reason, ask a person to go deeper than what they just said. Then again, and once more. The third time’s answer is close to the truth.
• Don’t be the best. Be the only.
• Everyone is shy. Other people are waiting for you to introduce yourself to them, they are waiting for you to send them an email, they are waiting for you to ask them on a date. Go ahead.
• Don’t take it personally when someone turns you down. Assume they are like you: busy, occupied, distracted. Try again later. It’s amazing how often a second try works.
• The purpose of a habit is to remove that action from self-negotiation. You no longer expend energy deciding whether to do it. You just do it. Good habits can range from telling the truth, to flossing.
• Promptness is a sign of respect.
• When you are young spend at least 6 months to one year living as poor as you can, owning as little as you possibly can, eating beans and rice in a tiny room or tent, to experience what your “worst” lifestyle might be. That way any time you have to risk something in the future you won’t be afraid of the worst case scenario.
• Trust me: There is no “them”.
• The more you are interested in others, the more interesting they find you. To be interesting, be interested.
• Optimize your generosity. No one on their deathbed has ever regretted giving too much away.
• To make something good, just do it. To make something great, just re-do it, re-do it, re-do it. The secret to making fine things is in remaking them.
• The Golden Rule will never fail you. It is the foundation of all other virtues.
• If you are looking for something in your house, and you finally find it, when you’re done with it, don’t put it back where you found it. Put it back where you first looked for it.
• Saving money and investing money are both good habits. Small amounts of money invested regularly for many decades without deliberation is one path to wealth.
• To make mistakes is human. To own your mistakes is divine. Nothing elevates a person higher than quickly admitting and taking personal responsibility for the mistakes you make and then fixing them fairly. If you mess up, fess up. It’s astounding how powerful this ownership is.
• Never get involved in a land war in Asia.
• You can obsess about serving your customers/audience/clients, or you can obsess about beating the competition. Both work, but of the two, obsessing about your customers will take you further.
• Show up. Keep showing up. Somebody successful said: 99% of success is just showing up.
• Separate the processes of creation from improving. You can’t write and edit, or sculpt and polish, or make and analyze at the same time. If you do, the editor stops the creator. While you invent, don’t select. While you sketch, don’t inspect. While you write the first draft, don’t reflect. At the start, the creator mind must be unleashed from judgement.
• If you are not falling down occasionally, you are just coasting.
• Perhaps the most counter-intuitive truth of the universe is that the more you give to others, the more you’ll get. Understanding this is the beginning of wisdom.
• Friends are better than money. Almost anything money can do, friends can do better. In so many ways a friend with a boat is better than owning a boat.
• This is true: It’s hard to cheat an honest man.
• When an object is lost, 95% of the time it is hiding within arm’s reach of where it was last seen. Search in all possible locations in that radius and you’ll find it.
• You are what you do. Not what you say, not what you believe, not how you vote, but what you spend your time on.
• If you lose or forget to bring a cable, adapter or charger, check with your hotel. Most hotels now have a drawer full of cables, adapters and chargers others have left behind, and probably have the one you are missing. You can often claim it after borrowing it.
• Hatred is a curse that does not affect the hated. It only poisons the hater. Release a grudge as if it was a poison.
• There is no limit on better. Talent is distributed unfairly, but there is no limit on how much we can improve what we start with.
• Be prepared: When you are 90% done any large project (a house, a film, an event, an app) the rest of the myriad details will take a second 90% to complete.
• When you die you take absolutely nothing with you except your reputation.
• Before you are old, attend as many funerals as you can bear, and listen. Nobody talks about the departed’s achievements. The only thing people will remember is what kind of person you were while you were achieving.
• For every dollar you spend purchasing something substantial, expect to pay a dollar in repairs, maintenance, or disposal by the end of its life.
•Anything real begins with the fiction of what could be. Imagination is therefore the most potent force in the universe, and a skill you can get better at. It’s the one skill in life that benefits from ignoring what everyone else knows.
• When crisis and disaster strike, don’t waste them. No problems, no progress.
• On vacation go to the most remote place on your itinerary first, bypassing the cities. You’ll maximize the shock of otherness in the remote, and then later you’ll welcome the familiar comforts of a city on the way back.
• When you get an invitation to do something in the future, ask yourself: would you accept this if it was scheduled for tomorrow? Not too many promises will pass that immediacy filter.
• Don’t say anything about someone in email you would not be comfortable saying to them directly, because eventually they will read it.
• If you desperately need a job, you are just another problem for a boss; if you can solve many of the problems the boss has right now, you are hired. To be hired, think like your boss.
• Art is in what you leave out.
• Acquiring things will rarely bring you deep satisfaction. But acquiring experiences will.
• Rule of 7 in research. You can find out anything if you are willing to go seven levels. If the first source you ask doesn’t know, ask them who you should ask next, and so on down the line. If you are willing to go to the 7th source, you’ll almost always get your answer.
• How to apologize: Quickly, specifically, sincerely.
• Don’t ever respond to a solicitation or a proposal on the phone. The urgency is a disguise.
• When someone is nasty, rude, hateful, or mean with you, pretend they have a disease. That makes it easier to have empathy toward them which can soften the conflict.
• Eliminating clutter makes room for your true treasures.
• You really don’t want to be famous. Read the biography of any famous person.
• Experience is overrated. When hiring, hire for aptitude, train for skills. Most really amazing or great things are done by people doing them for the first time.
• A vacation + a disaster = an adventure.
• Buying tools: Start by buying the absolute cheapest tools you can find. Upgrade the ones you use a lot. If you wind up using some tool for a job, buy the very best you can afford.
• Learn how to take a 20-minute power nap without embarrassment.
• Following your bliss is a recipe for paralysis if you don’t know what you are passionate about. A better motto for most youth is “master something, anything”. Through mastery of one thing, you can drift towards extensions of that mastery that bring you more joy, and eventually discover where your bliss is.
• I’m positive that in 100 years much of what I take to be true today will be proved to be wrong, maybe even embarrassingly wrong, and I try really hard to identify what it is that I am wrong about today.
• Over the long term, the future is decided by optimists. To be an optimist you don’t have to ignore all the many problems we create; you just have to imagine improving our capacity to solve problems.
• The universe is conspiring behind your back to make you a success. This will be much easier to do if you embrace this pronoia.
More Advice
Three quarters of a million students are just starting university. They’ve left childhood, where the future was laid out for them — timetables, exams, success — for adulthood in a coldly insecure world, where their choices and the uncertain consequences of them will be theirs alone.
It’s a freedom and a great burden. Last year the Prince’s Trust found half of 16 to 25-year-olds felt fearful about their future every day; 59 per cent thought their generation’s prospects frightening; and a third already felt their lives were spiralling out of control.
We don’t offer much assistance with such lonely responsibility. “You do you!” is the prevailing message. Today’s 18-year-olds get guides to freshers’ week, not to life. It’s seen as too soon for that. Major decisions are for the far distance. Young adulthood, now running to the early thirties, is for experimentation and enjoyment.
That’s neither true nor helpful. Not every bad decision can be remedied: friendships, attitudes and habits formed now shape a lifetime. The best ones leave us less vulnerable. Now my cohort can see old age ahead, we know what we regret not understanding or prioritising when young. Here’s what I’d like to know if I were 18 today.
Life isn’t fair. Your early years, when parents and teachers tried earnestly to give you equal shares of cake, attention or presents, were misleading. Don’t make yourself miserable by expecting it. Revel in the moments when the man/friend/employer chooses you; shrug when the less brilliant/capable/charming person is mortifyingly preferred.
If you’d like to tip the scales in your favour, read How to Win Friends and Influence People. It’s alarmingly revelatory. Be genuinely interested in people if you’d like them to engage with you. Remember everyone is the centre of their own universe, not a minor figure at the edge of yours. Don’t be panicked by disagreement. If it’s from someone whose opinion counts, listen. Your fiercest critics can be mollified once they know they’ve been heard.
Don’t trust others to keep your confidences. Most people can’t — secrets are too thrilling or burdensome to be known alone. The exceptions: spies, hacks protecting sources, the editor of Private Eye.
GCSEs are the lowest point in a thoughtful person’s life. Nothing you’re asked to do professionally will be as dreary or demoralising again. The consolation: after that, things only get better.
Avoid a workplace that doesn’t value who and what you are. Look at the hierarchy and be wary if those flourishing have very different characters and attributes to your own. Whatever organisations claim, cultures are resistant to change. Battling as a pioneer is admirable but can be fruitless. Conserve your energy. Identify the bosses wanting someone like you. When you’re stretched and supported, work can be more fun than fun.
But be wary of impulsively following your dreams. Those who urge it have survivorship bias. They’ve read about the Musks, Dysons and Jobses. They forget the thousands who threw up their jobs and lost their footing in the world. We all think we’re better and luckier than average. Don’t stake your future on that assumption. Be practical as well as brave.
Read myths, fairytales, Aesop’s Fables. They tell truths about the randomness of luck and human capriciousness. Lust, vengeance, cunning, fury at exclusion, fear of decrepitude, resentful stepmothers: they’re guides to human nature.
Don’t bother trying to find your true self. There’s no such thing. British and American societies are living through the cult of the individual. We’re encouraged to be proudly independent and told that finding our self, defining and staying true to it, is the purpose of our lives. It’s a route to loneliness. Don’t fall for it. We’re social creatures, shaped by and dependent on those around us for meaning, reassurance and support. Concentrate on finding your group, not yourself.
In fact, find varied groups — college friends, ex-colleagues, book clubs, tennis players, allotment neighbours. Individual friendships are splendid but there’s great peacefulness in being accepted somewhere just because you belong. Gossip is more enthralling when you’re in a social web, and bonds are stronger too.
Avoid inspiring jealousy, on Instagram or while bragging anywhere else. You want allies, not competitors. Think twice. And avoid being told anything uncomplimentary your friends have said about you. We’re all critical of friends at times. It doesn’t mean we don’t love them, just that nobody’s perfect, and indeed no one would want to be friends if they were. Talking about one another isn’t cruel — it’s how we make sense of who we are, what we admire, who we want to be. The subjects don’t need to hear it, though.
There’s no such thing as The One. But discovering one that suits you is the best thing you could do to make your life happier, more interesting and more fulfilled. Having someone you love and respect stand at your side against the world feels like a superpower. Not everyone is so lucky. Don’t leave it late or assume a limitless supply. Prioritise the search.
Relationships can flourish after boredom or affairs if both partners care to try. They won’t recover from violence or contempt.
Don’t be boring or bitter. Nobody owes you their time or concern. Leave people feeling glad they saw you, not reluctant to return. Respect others’ qualities, take joy in them, be generous when you can.