This book is a Get Out of Jail Free card and a passport back into the playground.
The aim of this book is to set you free. But free from what? Free from neurosis. Free from the feeling that you have to obey authority. Free from emotional intimidation. Free from addiction. Free from inhibition.
The key to happiness, mental health and being the most that we can be is absolute and unconditional self-acceptance. The paradox is that many of our problems are caused by trying to improve ourselves, censor our thinking, make up for past misdeeds and struggling with our negative feelings whether of depression or aggression.
But if we consider ourselves in our entirety in this very moment, we know these things :
1. Anything we have done is in the past and cannot be changed, thus it is pointless to do anything else but accept it. No regrets or guilt.
2. While our actions can harm others, our thoughts and emotions, in and of themselves, never can. So we should accept them and allow them to be and go where they will. While emotions sometimes drive actions, those who completely accept their emotions and allow themselves to feel them fully, have more choice over how they act in the light of them.
Self-criticism never made anyone a better person. Anyone who does a “good deed” under pressure from their conscience or to gain the approval of others takes out the frustration involved in some other way. The basis for loving behaviour towards others is the ability to love ourselves. And loving ourselves unconditionally, means loving ourselves exactly as we are at this moment.
This might seem to be complacency, but in fact the natural activity of the individual is healthy growth, and what holds us back from it is fighting with those things we can’t change and the free thought and emotional experience which is the very substance of that growth.
Kate Winslet as Madeleine LeClerc in Quills (2000) (dir. Philip Kaufman) (based on the play by Doug Wright)
I've just done a guest post as Aussiescribbler (my erotica writing pseudonym) for Naoko Smith's Feminist Erotica Blog. I apply some of the ideas I've expressed here and in my Joe Blow books to the world of erotica as well as to broader issues of sexual desire, anti-social feelings and the need for free social expression of the dark side of our psyche.
The
psychological poisons in our souls don’t go away through
repression, through cutting off opportunities for their free
expression. All that does is to cause these poisons to stay there
festering away beneath the surface, becoming more and more dangerous.
Recently I
was reading some feedback comments on Natasha Tracy's Bipolar Burble Blog. The idea was put forward by one sufferer with bipolar disorder
that it is important to understand that the turbulent behaviour of
individuals with the condition comes from the disease and not from
the individual who suffers from it. Unfortunately my manner of
questioning the usefulness of this attitude caused some offence to the
individual in question. I realised in retrospect that the best way to
discuss such difficult topics without giving offence tends to be to
speak of personal experiences. So I thought I would use that exchange
as inspiration to give a very personal and detailed account of my
viewpoint here.
I've
experienced bipolar psychosis. To clarify my take on the “Is it
me or is it my disease?" question, I'd like to look at two
examples of my behaviour in a hospital emergency room while
experiencing a psychotic episode.
One of my
delusions at the time was that an apocalyptic transformation of human
society was taking place and that, in this new world which was coming
into being, things were acceptable which would not have been
acceptable before. I thought it was O.K. for me to grope the bottoms
of nurses. It took a couple of experiments before I recognised that I
might be mistaken. One nurse responded angrily, another broke down in
tears.
Was this me?
Or was it my disease? I wasn't to blame for my behaviour, because,
had I not been confused by psychosis, I would not have behaved in
that way. I had no desire to cause offence or distress. It was the
delusion that my behaviour would not cause such feelings which made
it seem acceptable to me at the time. But where did the impetus for
the behaviour come from? It came from my desire to grope women's
bottoms, something which had nothing to do with my psychosis. I
wanted to grope women's bottoms then. I want to grope women's bottoms
now. I have two reasons for not doing so :
1. Such
behaviour would lead to me being excluded from civilised society.
2. It would
be liable to cause distress the women involved.
One of the
symptoms of the manic phase of bipolar disorder is a loss of
inhibitions. When we lose our inhibitions, and thus our tendency to
censor our expression of our feelings, what is revealed is, arguably,
more our real self than the sanitised version we present when we are
concerned about making a good impression.
Something
else I did during this wild evening in the emergency ward was to
point at a fellow patient and shout : “You're not my father!"
Was that me?
Or my disease? Once again, I would not have done this if I had not
been psychotic. I had no desire to confound or frighten some poor
fellow patient. In my confused state he looked like someone I knew,
someone from whom I felt a desperate need to declare my independence.
(Not my actual father I should point out.)
My disease
was the source of my confusion. But the message of defiance,
misdirected as it was, was very much my own.
Stability in
the personality comes from integration of all of its aspects. If we
accept all aspects of our psyche as a part of who we are, then
wholeness is possible. If we view some aspect of our thought, feeling
or behaviour are something alien and/or hostile which we must
contain, fight against or attempt to expunge, then it will tend to
become more severe.
Let's look
at a hypothetical situation now. One of the major problems we may
have if we are suffering from some form of psychological condition
such as bipolar disorder or conventional depression is the pressure
which may be put upon our relationship with a loved one. No doubt I
was a source of distress not just to nurses but to friends and
members of my family when I was ill. But I've never been married or
had a comparable kind of relationship. What if I had?
When we are
suffering it is natural for our attention to centre upon ourselves.
If we are depressed or manic we will be selfish. This is inescapable.
We may fight against it. We may try to force ourselves to recognise
the needs of others. But our heart won't be in it. Maybe we will feel
guilty about putting an emotional drain on our partner. If we do, it
will make us more depressed or it will add to our mania. The essence
of mania is escape. Our situation seems intolerable, so rather than
facing it our mind races away into wild dreams or spending sprees or
sexual escapades, anything to avoid facing what would otherwise seem
to be our reality. I say “seem" because often what is so
unthinkable is unthinkable only because we have not yet discovered a
comfortable way to think about it. Our problems are not necessarily
objective problems.
“I know
I'm treating you terribly," we might say, “but it isn't me,
it's the disease. I love you."
What is
love? It's a form of communication characterised by openness,
honesty, spontaneity and generosity. Often what we think of as love
is something else - attachment, commitment or sexual attraction.
Attachment is when we desire the presence of a person or a thing. When
we pick someone to be our partner, we make a commitment to be
supportive of them and to try to keep our love for them alive. Love
exists when it can. It requires the qualities listed above. If we
have to hide something from our partner - be less than open - then
that compromises the love between us. The same is true if we lie to a
partner, if we fall into patterns of rigidly formulaic interaction or
if we are selfish.
If we feel
the need to say “I love you" then love at that point is at
best tenuous between us. Since love is a form of communication, both
parties can tell if it is happening or not. A more honest approach
might be to say : “I want to be with you" or “I want
love to occur between us".
One of the
barriers to love between someone who is suffering from depression and
the person who cares for them is the feeling on the part of both
parties that they need to be fair.
We all have
desires and needs. If those desires and needs are not met it can
cause feelings of frustration. This is irrespective of why those
desires and needs have not been met. First we feel disappointed or
angry, and only after that do we ask ourselves whether we are being
reasonable to feel this way. If we come to the conclusion that we are
not being reasonable, all the worse for us, because then we have two
layers of bad feeling - one the frustration and on top of that the
sense that we don't even have a justification for that feeling of
frustration.
The loved
one of a person suffering from depression can't possibly give them
all that they need. And it is unreasonable to expect it. But the
unreasonableness of such an expectation only makes it that much
harder to bare. This can become a negative feedback loop. The
depressed person places a burden on their partner. They know this is
unfair to their partner. So they feel guilty. The guilt makes them
more depressed. The more depressed they are the more of a burden they
put on their partner, which leads to more guilt, and so on.
But feelings
are only feelings. Once we have established that they do not conform
to what is reasonable, we can see them as a quality of being and not
as a message. What hurts is the implication that we are at fault. If
we understand that the other party is just “letting off steam",
i.e. giving vent to the frustration of their position, rather than
taking what they say as a criticism to be taken on board, even if
that is the verbal form it takes, then we can come closer together.
It is the log jam of “shoulds" that blocks the passage of
love in this kind of situation.
If we were
to insist that the bad feelings and the behaviour they impelled us
towards were “our disease, not us" then we would not be
able to come to an understanding of the dynamics that generate them
or those which could ease them.
And if I
told myself my desire to fondle strange women's bottoms was a symptom
of a chemical imbalance in my brain rather than an intrinsic part of
my sensual nature, then I might live in fear of an unpredictable fit
of glute groping rather than being able to look back with amusement
at my moment of madness.
I just designed a flier which looks like this to publicise How to Be Free. Finding a way to distribute it is not quite so easy, so I'm thinking I should create a mailing list. If you would be interested in being on such a list, just send me an email to aussiescribbler@dodo.com.au
Australian biologist Jeremy Griffith
has attracted a fair bit of attention over the years with what he
claims to be a liberating first principle biological explanation for
the human condition, i.e. our species' capacity for good and evil.
For a time I was a supporter of
Griffith's theories. Why would I not be attracted to the idea that
some great riddle had been cracked which would lead to an end to all
of humanity's problems - a reconciliation between the left wing and
right wing in politics, between science and religion, between men and
women - an end to war, poverty, mental illness? With his first book -
Free : The End of the Human Condition - Griffith really laid
on the hard sell, but the book was genuinely deep and full of
references to the fossil record and primate behaviour. Back then I
was prone to depression. Reading that book hurt like hell. They say
that the truth hurts, so this seemed to be in its favour.
If you want a brief, concise and
well-presented introduction to Griffith's theory and what he thinks
it means for humanity, this second book - Beyond the Human
Condition - is the one to read.
The first thing to acknowledge is that
Griffith spends little of his time in the book arguing from reason.
Much of the text consists of quotes from some of his favourite
writers, most notably Laurens van der Post, as well as the Bible. He
also paraphrases from popular songs the lyrics of which he wasn't
able to obtain the rights to quote. This is not a scientific
approach. The fact that Bruce Springsteen once said something in a
song does not constitute evidence.
“As the quotes in this book
reveal, all I have been able to add to the perception/soundness of
Jesus Christ and Sir Laurens van der Post is the biological reason
for the repression of our soul."
So how credible is this biological explanation for the human
condition? Let's first summarise its essence.
Most animals compete for food or mating opportunities. Because our
proto-human ancestors lived in the fertile environment of the Rift
Valley in Africa their nurturing period grew longer. The mothers were
nurturing their infants for genetically selfish reasons, because they
contained their own genes. But to the infants this seemed like
selfless behaviour. Not knowing anything about genetics, they thought
their mother's cared more about them than about themselves. And so
they learned that this was the way to be - they became “love-indoctrinated". This led to the flowering of our
ability to reason about the world, because we could think
holistically rather than have our view of the world fractured by the
us and them duality inherent in competition. It was also the origin
of our soul or conscience, our instinctive sense of what was right,
because learned behaviour over many generations becomes encoded in
the genes.
So now we had a rational mind and a genetic orientation towards
selfless behaviour. But the rational mind needed to experiment. Some
of these experiments would have led to behaviour which contravened
the genetic conscience, which would give the message that we were
doing something wrong. Unable to explain our need to experiment with
self-management, we became frustrated and eventually angry with this
genetic conscience. This led to anger at anything which reminded us
of it, such as nature or, if we were men, women. This was the origin
of our dark side. And yet we were not villains, we were the greatest
of heroes for defying the oppression of our idealistic instincts and
taking on self-corruption in order to find understanding of
ourselves, which eventually would lead to the understanding of how we
became “upset" in the first place, and with that
understanding would come liberation from our condition.
I'm no scientist, but I can see two problems with this theory on a
level which can be examined through observation of behaviour and
through introspection.
If our conscience was learned through being exposed to the nurturing
behaviour of mothers, then it should share the qualities of that
nurturing behaviour. Griffith gives the analogy that our conscience
is like the genetically-encoded flight path of a bird. Such a flight
path is presumably rigidly dictatorial as it remains the same year
after year. But the loving behaviour of a mother is anything but
rigid or dictatorial, it is flexible and improvisational. She is
engaged in a dynamic relationship with her offspring which is
tolerant of most behaviour as long as it is not dangerous for them.
So how does the infant develop from this a rigid dictatorial and
unforgiving genetic blueprint for behaviour?
Is it really credible that our conscience is stored in our genes? Why
is it that what makes us feel guilty varies from person to person and
culture to culture? Why do some people appear to have no conscience?
Is it not more likely that the conscience is learned, that it is a
part of our ego, the part where we store our expectations about
ourselves?
Griffith aligns love and idealism. But are these not contradictory
phenomena? We say that the purest form of love is unconditional love,
and what is idealism but the placing of conditions on our acceptance
of ourselves or our acceptance of others? Idealism can all too easily
consist in hatred of all that is not viewed as ideal.
He is right to identify idealism as something oppressive, but he does
not go far enough.
He has said that his first book “grew out of my desperate need
to reconcile my extreme idealism with reality." He views much of “upset" human behaviour as “an attack on innocence",
including consensual sex. He believes that recreational, as opposed
to reproductive sex, began during the time of Homo Erectus when men,
angry at women's criticism of their lack of ideality, began raping
them, something which was later civilised into something which could
be considered an act of love between men and women. He doesn't seem
to give any acknowledgement that orgasms feel good in and of
themselves, hence masturbation. This in spite of the fact that he
often points to bonobos, who spend a large part of their time rubbing
genitals with members of both genders, as an indication of what our
Australopithecine ancestors might have been like.
Bonobos
Griffith views himself as an innocent. He says that the rest of us
want to attack innocence. He says this has been necessary because
innocence is oppressive, and that we are heroes for having taken on
the job of fighting back against that oppressiveness. Would it be
unfair to describe this as an appeasement strategy?
I think that idealism is the heart of the problem, the root of all
evil. This is kind of what Griffith is saying, but not quite. He
thinks idealism was the problem only as long as we didn't understand
ourselves, and now he thinks he has made such an understanding
possible, thus making idealism no longer a problem.
I think idealism is a kind of conceptual virus which has plagued
humanity. Now this doesn't mean that we are wrong to want peace and
togetherness and kindness and to want to be less selfish. This is the
insidious nature of the negative feedback loop that is idealism. It
advertises itself as the road to Heaven when it is actually the road
to Hell. The harder we strive for the ideals, the further they
recede.
This is because the good things we want can only grow out of love,
and the foundation of love is unconditional self-acceptance.
Throughout our lives our self-acceptance is being undermined by
criticism, rejection and by the condemnation implied by those
apparently unreachable ideals. The oppression of our conscience, of
those ideals we find so hard to meet, or, if we are religious, that
perfect God who makes us feel like pathetic worms for our lack of
perfection, all of these things can build up a seething pit of
resentment in us towards those who seem to be more in tune with the
ideals than ourselves. Sometimes, unable to acknowledge this well of
darkness in ourselves, we project it onto others, going into battle
against the terrible other.
William Blake
If love is the answer, then what is love? Love is a mode of
communication characterised by openness, honesty, spontaneity and
generosity. Fear, of others and of the darkness within us, causes us
to become rigid, to adopt character armour, which is the barrier to
love. All we need to open up to the love which will bring us the
peace and togetherness and freedom from our ego-prisons that we
desire, is to feel safe enough to put aside our armour. Our armour is
our egotism. And it is our alienation, that which blocks us from
experiencing the world as it really is and from thinking honestly
about ourselves and that world.
It is true that we have always needed a way to love the dark side of
our psyche. But love is not appeasement. Love doesn't bolster our ego
by saying, “You're a hero." Love releases us from our
enslavement to that ego, by saying, “You are forgiven now, and
you will be forgiven always." This was the essence of Jesus'
message. If God is a mythological figure representing the creative
principle of the universe, which in human affairs takes the form of
love, then every time we realise we have made a mistake, as long as
we are honest about it, God is there to forgive us. This is not some
supernatural assurance. The creative principle of the universe works
through evolution. Deviations from the norm are what lead to new and
wonderful things. Nature is no dictator, insisting on some kind of
perfection. And all human discord can be healed by love, which does
not judge. At the moment our self-acceptance is conditional and
therefore our love for others is conditional too. But in time the
barriers to unconditional love will melt away, and then all is
forgiven. Love is the sea that refuses no river.
Griffith is a major critic of what he terms “pseudo-idealistic"
movements - environmentalism, socialism, the New Age Movement, “political correctness", etc. He sees them as superficial
and escapist, because they don't address the deeper psychological
issues. This is fair enough up to a point. But he sees them as being
so powerful in the world now and so dogmatic that they might shut
down the search for understanding altogether. He quotes George Orwell :
“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping
on a human face [freedom] - for ever."1984.
To emphasise the danger he also quotes from the Bible (with his own
extrapolations) :
“'He [the self-deception that accompanies superficiality] will
invade the kingdom [of honesty] when its people feel secure
[when superficiality becomes popular enough], and he will seize it
[the kingdom of honesty] through intrigue...Then they
[those pushing self-deception] will set up the abomination that
causes desolation [the superficiality that leads to oblivion].
With flattery he will corrupt those who have violated the covenant
[self-deluding superficiality will seduce the exhausted], but the
people who know their God will firmly resist him [the less
exhausted will not be deceived].'"
Daniel, 11:21, 31, 32.
“'So when you see the'abomination that causes desolation' (spoken
of through the prophet Daniel) standing where it does not belong
[claiming to know the way to the new age] let the reader
understand... For then there will be great distress [mindless
superficiality and its consequences], unequalled from the
beginning of the world until now - and never to be equalled again. If
those days had not been cut short [by the arrival of the truth],
no-one would survive.'"
Matthew 24 and Mark 13
These passages, and the emphasis and interpretation Griffith puts on
them, deserve closer examination. Sometimes we see in our enemies a
reflexion of a truth we are hiding from ourselves.
“He [an extreme idealist] will invade the kingdom [the
establishment] when its people feel secure, and he will seize it
through intrigue [disguising his insistence on the ideals with a
cloak of pretend science]... Then they will set up the abomination
that causes desolation [idealism]. With flattery [by
telling us we are heroes] he will corrupt those who have violated
the covenant [technically, those who have broken from the
agreement to follow the precepts of the gospel, but probably more
broadly those who have been dishonest, judgemental or unloving],
but the people who know their God [those who understand the true
nature of love] will firmly resist him."
Now lets look at the passages from Matthew and Mark. In
Mark it says “...standing where it does not belong..."
but in Matthew it is more specific saying “...standing in the
holy place...". If “the abomination that causes
desolation" is idealism, then in what way might it have been
put “in the holy place"? “Holy" means “whole" or “of the whole". Griffith identifies
idealism with holism. He puts idealism in the place of holism.
Idealism, being founded on a dualistic split between good and evil,
cannot be reconciled with holism. Holism is necessarily pragmatic.
So why the talk about “great distress, unequalled from the
beginning of the world until now - and never to be equalled again"?
Certainly we live in very troubled times. How is this related to the
presentation of a theory that we are genetically idealistic?
If idealism has been the poison virus contaminating the human race
throughout its history (ever since it arose in the experimenting mind
of one of our ancestors), then to nail it down to our very bodies
themselves is the final straw. No escape, no defence. The enemy is within!
Just
after that in Matthew 24:19, Jesus says : “How
dreadful it will be in those days for pregnant women and nursing
mothers!"
Griffith believes that infants are born with an instinctive
expectation of an ideal world, thus they will be damaged by their
mother's lack of ideality.
“In every
generation, individual women had a very brief life in innocence
before being soul-destroyed through sex. They then had to try to
nurture a new generation, all the time trying to conceal the
destruction that was all around and within them. Mothers tried to
hide their alienation from their children, but the fact is if a
mother knew about reality/upset her children would know about it and
would psychologically adapt to it."
I'm sure that being a mother is a tough job to begin with without
this kind of unfounded pressure. I don't believe infants are born
expecting anything particular, and what they most need is a relaxed
mother. If love is open, honest, spontaneous and generous
communication, it will be impeded by feelings of anxiety or guilt.
And being sexually repressed won't help either.
You might say, “But how can this bring great tribulation to the
world when hardly anyone has actually read it?" Every book
written is in some way an articulation of a broader and deeper social
current. We could look at Griffith's books not so much as a wind
blowing us off course as a weather vane in which the direction of
that wind is indicated. They are a crystallisation of the pathology
of idealism which has plagued us down the centuries. Job's prayer was
: “Oh, that my enemy had written a book!" Through Jeremy
Griffith, idealism has done just that.
The
other day I was having a discussion with a friend about whether or
not a particular song in a famous Broadway and Hollywood musical
amounted to an offensively racist caricature. I was countering the
arguments for it being seen as racist, but I knew that, for me, it
was just a game. The song made my friend angry. To me it was just a
song in a musical which I enjoy.
I
thought about this further to myself, but didn't express my broader
thoughts on the topic at the time. “Nothing offends me," I
thought. “As far as I'm concerned someone could do a whole
musical in blackface and I wouldn't be bothered by it. It wouldn't
make me feel bad personally, and why should I be offended on someone
else's behalf. Aren't we all able to be offended for ourselves
without any help."
This
may seem callous or selfish. I'm not saying that this is how everyone
should view these things. But if we examine what is going on here I
think we can learn something useful.
We
have a saying : “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names
will never hurt me." But we know that this is not true. Other
people's insults and putdowns do hurt us. Often they hurt a lot. But
why?
To
understand this we need to go back to our childhood. The reason we
had greater emotional resilience and a greater capacity for joy when
we were young children is because our self-acceptance had not yet
been compromised. We seemed to ourselves acceptable because nobody
had yet taught us that we might be unacceptable in any way. As we got
older we were subjected to criticism by adults and other children. If
we understood this as an expression of displeasure with our behaviour
alone and not a sign that there was something essentially wrong with
us, our self-acceptance would not have been compromised. But this can
be a fine distinction for a child to have to make. Also we were
taught a value system and a set of social norms. If these were
unreasonably harsh then we probably developed unforgiving
expectations regarding our own behaviour. We developed a conscience
which was less like a friendly guide and more like an oppressive
dictator who punished us for all failures to follow his orders by
undermining our sense of ourselves as acceptable.
The
basis for mental health is unconditional self-acceptance. But what
happened as our self-acceptance was eaten away is that it became
conditional. We could accept ourselves if we were good. We could
accept ourselves if we were successful. We could accept ourselves if
other people accepted us. This is a very vulnerable position to be in
because others can undermine our self-acceptance at any time by
removing the conditions on which that self-acceptance depends.
We
may not realise it but we live within a kind of psychological economy
in which the traded commodities are the requirements for
self-acceptance. Most of the control others exercise over us and of
the control we exercise, or try to exercise, over others comes from
the application of self-acceptance bribes and threats. When we treat
someone well, we help them to bolster their self-acceptance. If we
try to control another's behaviour by, for instance, making them feel
guilty or shaming them in front of others, we are attempting to
blackmail them into behaving in a way which conforms with our own
wishes or beliefs about what is right or wrong by trying to take away
the conditions for their self-acceptance.
The
good news is that we can drop out of this sick economy. Or, if we
chose, we can continue to use it against others while being
invulnerable to it ourselves. I'm not saying that that would be a
healthy thing to do, but it would be possible. The healthy thing to
do is to hurt-proof ourselves and teach others how to do likewise.
The more hurt-proof individuals there are in the world, the less
scope there is for anyone to oppress others.
Of
course not all forms of oppression are based on exclusively
psychological transactions. Those in positions of power can make
decisions prejudicial to those they don't like for whatever reason.
And there is always the possibility of violence. But if we are
hurt-proof we have a better base from which to deal with problems of
organisational prejudice or violence. And there is more solidarity
between hurt-proof individuals to stand against such forms of
oppression because social relations between such individuals are not
compromised by the inherent fragility of self-acceptance exchanges.
The less we need the more we are there for each other.
So
how do we hurt-proof ourselves?
Let's
go back to that saying : “Sticks and stones may break my bones,
but names will never hurt me." Why do names hurt us? If we are
black, why does it hurt to be called a “nigger"? If we are
gay, why does it hurt to be called a “queer"? Why does it
hurt if someone says we are “ugly" or “pathetic"
or “a loser"?
Dustin Hoffman as Lenny Bruce in the movie Lenny (1974)
doing his infamous piece about racist words
The
reason is that we don't fully accept ourselves. Our self-acceptance
has been worn down by this kind of thing. We've taken the put-downs “on board". We have allowed ourselves to get to the point
where our self-acceptance is dependent, among other things, on people
not calling us these things. When people do so, it upsets our
emotional equilibrium. It makes us feel angry or hurt or frightened.
Of course the fear may sometimes be applicable if the behaviour is
indicative of a desire to do violence to us.
The
way to hurt-proof ourselves is to re-learn unconditional
self-acceptance. I say re-learn because we knew how to
unconditionally accept ourselves as young children. The learning
process we went through was that of learning that we were
unacceptable or could be unacceptable in various ways. So
hurt-proofing can be understood as a kind of unlearning or
deprogramming of the unhelpful lessons we learned growing up. We are
not brainwashing ourselves to believe that we are acceptable. We are
rediscovering a more accountable truth about ourselves.
This
may all seem very theoretical, but there is a very powerful and
simple strategy which can help us down this path. Unconditional
self-acceptance is something we practice, and the more we practice
the more proficient we get at it. It is like building up a muscle.
This is an important analogy because, while we want to become more
like our child self, what we don't want is the child's vulnerability
to having its self-acceptance under-mined. Back then we had
unconditional self-acceptance because we had not yet been exposed to
the harsh realities of life among those whose loss of such
self-acceptance also undermined their acceptance of others, including
ourselves. For a few years we are usually protected from the full
savagery of the neurotic economy of the psyche. We need to regain our
state of health, but we also need to know what we did not know as a
child, and that is how to protect that state.
Re-gaining
unconditional self-acceptance can involve constantly reminding
ourselves that we are acceptable irrespective of what we do, what we
feel, what we think, what we have and what others think of us. You
might question the inclusion of “what we do". Aren't we
unacceptable if we do something really terrible? The problem with
this way of thinking is that we are blackmailing ourselves. We are
saying that the reason not to do something really terrible is that we
will remove our self-acceptance if we do. But a shortage of
self-acceptance is most likely the motivating force behind doing
something really terrible in the first place. The natural state of
the unconditionally accepting, and thus non-neurotic, individual is
one of benevolence, love, clarity of mind and creativity. If we wish
to persuade ourselves not to do something really terrible, the best
argument is not that it would make us unacceptable, but that it would
be against our own best interests. People who do really terrible
things rarely have very rewarding lives. And past actions can't be
changed, so to view ourselves as unacceptable because of a past
action, no matter how terrible, would only be appropriate if viewing
ourselves that way was going to make us less likely to do something
like that in future. Since lack of self-acceptance is the root cause
of destructive actions, this would be likely to have the opposite
effect.
We
might want to make use of an affirmation. In this case, why not use
the simple affirmation : “I am acceptable." The problem
with some affirmations, it seems to me, is that they can set up
expectations. If we say : “I am as calm as the lily pad that
floats on a tranquil pond," that's all well and good until the
next time we lose our temper, and then our self-acceptance is likely
to be undermined by the fact that we haven't lived up to our own
affirmation. “I am acceptable," doesn't seem to have any
short-comings and it is a simple expression of the truth with which
we are seeking to reconnect.
But
this is not the powerful strategy. The powerful strategy is one which
we can use when presented by anything which might emotionally
destabilise us, especially things others might say which tend to
leave us feeling angry or hurt.
In
our state of conditional self-acceptance, what happens if someone
says something to us which compromises that state? What if someone
upsets those conditions on which our self-acceptance depends? The
first thing which happens is that we take on board what they are
saying. If it were a missile we would say that it hits home. Then, if
we don't collapse in a heap, we mount our resistance. We tell
ourselves why what the other person has said is not true or not
relevant. Or we tell them, perhaps angrily. So we may fight back, but
only after having been wounded. The habitual defences,
conceptual and or verbal, that we use to defend ourselves in these
situations are a fundamental part of our character armour. Character
armour is a structure of defensive habits. It tends to come into play
when we feel threatened, but it can also be something we hide behind
in anticipation of being threatened.
If
we think of the words or attitudes which might upset us as missiles
and ourselves as a ship against whose hull they are aimed, then there
is an alternative to the armour which only comes into play after we
have been struck. That alternative involves making the ship itself
so invincible that the missiles explode impotently like amusing
fireworks rather than doing any damage.
This
involves a trick which gives us control over the emotional
transaction.
Let's
look at an example :
Fred
comes up to me on the street and he says : “Joe, you're a
disgusting piece of shit."
I
don't respond. What I say to myself is : “Fred is a person who
is saying that I'm a piece of shit."
Of
course this is a skill which might take a little while to learn. We
need to learn to take pause, and that in itself can be a challenge.
But the more we practise the easier it gets. It won't protect us the
first time, but it will after the point at which it becomes habit.
What
are we doing when we take this approach? We are removing ourselves
from the subjective situation and giving ourselves a way to look at
it objectively.
What
we would normally be doing is going through this kind of process :
“Joe,
you're a disgusting piece of shit."
(I'm
a piece of shit. Hey, wait a minute. I'm not a piece of shit. How can
Fred say something like that. I'll get Fred for saying I'm a piece of
shit.)
Fred
has got to me.
Even
if my response is modified somewhat by saying “Fred thinks I'm a
piece of shit", this is still something which might make me feel
less acceptable.
By
thinking “Fred is a person who is saying that I'm a piece of
shit" I am stripping the situation down to the bare facts. I am
not validating the opinion that I am a piece of shit. I'm not even
validating the idea that Fred genuinely thinks I'm a piece of shit.
He is a person who is saying that. (Of course, it might be more
correct to say "he is a person who said that" but somehow
the present tense has a more powerfully distancing effect to the past
tense.)
Rather
than being a person who experiences themselves as being under attack
we have put ourselves in a role comparable to that of a scientist
observing Fred's behaviour as if he were an amoeba on a laboratory
slide.
From
this perspective our assessment of what has been said becomes
evidence-based rather than emotion-based. Fred is someone who is
saying that I'm a piece of shit. Is there evidence for his point of
view? Why might he think this way? Is there something wrong with him?
Are there factors not directly related to me which are influencing
his current attitude? We have the equanimity to ask ourselves these
questions because we didn't take on board what Fred was saying
directly as a transaction in the economy of self-acceptance. And the
more we practise this approach the more our self-acceptance becomes
disentangled from what others have to say about us.
You
might think I'm advocating a life-style of cold rationality. Nothing
could be further from the truth. This is a technique to be used where
it is useful, not something adopted as an habitual approach to life.
If I'm walking down the street and a pretty girl smiles at me I'm
hardly going to say to myself : “There is a member of the female
gender who is looking at me and curling her lips in a way
traditionally associated with friendly feelings." It feels good
to be smiled at. This strategy is aimed only at learning how to
become invulnerable to social transactions which would leave us
feeling disempowered. And it is aimed at disempowering those who
would hold us to ransom over our own self-acceptance.
This
is also a strategy we can use on ourselves. Let's look at a way it
might be used to help us beat addictive behaviour. Maybe I have a
problem with chewing my nails. There I am chewing my nails and
thinking “I just can't stop chewing my nails." I'm hardly
likely to learn to stop when I'm arguing so persuasively against my
own ability to do so. Let's try that again. “I'm a person who
chews his nails." Not much better, because I'm tying my
self-identity to the fact that I chew my nails. “I'm a person
who is chewing his nails." Now I'm clearly faced with the
situation, with nothing to undermine any strategy I might come up
with to help me stop. And the situation seems much less overwhelming.
By
following this strategy we can take ourselves out of the defensive
position, and this brings tremendous benefits. Over time we find that
we don't need our character armour, and it is only when we no longer
need it that we discover just how much of an impediment it was.
When
we are armoured we can only acknowledge reality to the extent that it
doesn't seriously threaten our armour. Where to acknowledge the truth
about something would destabilise us, because our self-acceptance is
conditional on that thing not being true, we are forced to live in
denial.
Let's
say that Sally sees a beautiful clearing in the woods and thinks it
would be the perfect place to set up a vegan donut stand. People say
she is crazy, you can't sell donuts in the middle of the forest. But
she goes ahead and buys the land and builds her donut stand. And it
turns out to be a big success. She's never succeeded at anything
before in her life. Everyone said she was a loser. Now people are
travelling all the way into the woods to buy her delicious donuts.
People don't call her a loser any more. They love her because of her
donuts. But then, one day, an ecologist comes and tells her that the
place where she has built her successful donut stand was once the
breeding ground of the fluorescent woodpecker. As a result of her
donut stand, this beautiful bird has become extinct. We will never
see one again. What can she do but put her fingers in her ears and go
"blah-blah-blah"? In her own mind her acceptability as a
human being is dependent on the ideas that she doesn't harm animals
and that her donut stand is a success.
Many
of us have our own vegan donut stands and our fluorescent
woodpeckers. It is the truths we can't face about ourselves, because
they would compromise our fragile self-acceptance, which lead to a
spectrum of problems from failed marriage to war. Love is a form of
communication characterised by openness, honesty, spontaneity and
generosity. If a relationship is between two people whose
self-acceptance is not conditional, it will be a loving relationship.
But a relationship of dependence based on fulfilling the other
party's conditions for their own self-acceptance is bound to be
fraught with tension and not conducive to love. Why does marital
infidelity sometimes make us so mad that we will kill our partner and
risk spending many years in jail? Because our self-acceptance has
become totally conditional on having a faithful partner. We would
view the incident as a trivial one if this were not the case. It is
the damage done to our fragile ego which keeps it from being trivial.
And for many patriotic individuals, the belief that their country is
a knight in shining armour and any country which would attack it or
interfere with its interests could not possibly have a legitimate
grievance, is a major feature of their character armour. If this were
not the case, peace in the Middle East would not be such an elusive
dream.
Let's
look at the subject of political beliefs. I'll keep it very simple.
I'm not interested in how political beliefs differ, only in how we
relate to our own political beliefs and those of others. So we'll
just talk about one person who identifies themselves as a
conservative and another who identifies themselves as a liberal.
How
grounded a person's political belief system is, whether conservative
or liberal, is dependent on their level of self-acceptance. If our
self-acceptance is unconditional then we will look around us at the
world and take in what is going on and listen to all sorts of
different ideas. There will be no need to filter what we take in in
the way of information or ideas in order to protect us from anything
which might contravene the conditions of our self-acceptance. This
means that, when we form our belief system, conservative or liberal,
it will be founded on a lot of information and a clear understanding
of what various individuals on both sides of the political spectrum
propose. Such an individual will have stability when it comes to
discussing politics as they will in all other areas, as a result of
the solid foundations of their self-acceptance. But if someone's
self-acceptance is heavily compromised and thus conditional, their
political allegiance may quickly become a part of their character
armour. I'm acceptable because I'm a liberal. I'm acceptable because
I'm a conservative. This leads to two things. If I'm acceptable
because I'm a liberal, that means that conservatives are not
acceptable. So I am in a strongly adversarial position from the get
go, where the vehemence of my opposition to conservatives may become
a crucial element in maintaining my self-acceptance. Also, to
maintain my position, in the absence of the grounded understanding
achieved by the unconditionally self-accepting individual, I will
need to filter out or deny any information or ideas which might call
my insecure liberal position into question. I may also find myself
focussing obsessively on the misdeeds of individual conservatives as
a way of reinforcing my liberal-good, conservative-bad dichotomy.
And, of course, all these things would be the same if I were a
conservative whose conservatism was a crucial part of his character
armour.
We
can get an idea of how armoured someone is in their political views
by how angry they become at those with the opposite allegiance. This
doesn't mean that a person whose political views are less armoured
may not view the fact that so many people push for an opposite
approach as a problem, but they will not feel it as a personal
affront. A doctor recognises that cancer is a problem, but he doesn't
launch into a tirade about the evil of cancer. He calmly sets about
doing something about the problem. When we look around at a lot of
the political conflicts that are going on in our society we can see
just how many of us are so desperate to hang onto our fragile vision
of ourselves as good guys standing in opposition to bad guys that we
are not living in the real world.
So
lets get back to where we started with the question of protecting
ourselves or each other from racist musicals. Being subjected to
abuse and prejudice because of one's skin colour can tend to
undermine one's self-acceptance. A musical in which white actors wear
black face, in this day and age, might be one straw too many for the
camel's back, even though all that is happening is that a bunch of
actors are putting a particular kind of make-up on their face. The
thing itself is trivial. The effect it has may not be. To someone who
has learned the art of unconditional self-acceptance, it's intrinsic
triviality is clear. It is no skin off their nose how somebody else
decides to comport themselves on a theatre stage.
Now
I'm not advocating that we reinstate the institution of the Black and
White Minstrel Show. I use this example in order to highlight a
significant problem and two approaches to dealing with it. Racist
musicals are not a common problem in our society, but other hurtful
expressions are. There is hate speech and cyber-bullying on the
internet. And many of us are subjected to verbal abuse at other
times.
The
main approach we take to trying to address these problems and protect
those most vulnerable to them is by trying to control such
expressions. We may legislate against them and/or we may try to shame
those who engage in such practices into stopping. But control
strategies never actual solve problems. They may contain them
temporarily or they may push evidence of them from one place or time
to another place or time. Laws and social pressure give us the
ability to force individuals to repress expression of their hostile
feelings, but repression doesn't make those hostile feelings go away.
The roots of hostility can only be healed when everything is out in
the open. The road to health is one which leads towards freedom not
away from it.
I'm
not arguing that we should abandon attempts to control expressions of
hostility. I'm only trying to highlight the limitations of that
approach.
The
other approach is to promote an understanding of how we can
hurt-proof ourselves. We can't possibly protect a psychologically
vulnerable individual from all of the expressions of hostility or
prejudice which might be painful for them, but we can easily teach
the skill of hurt-proofing, so that they don't need such protection.
And the same technique addresses other problems. Take body image. We
can't protect a vulnerable teenager from seeing fashion magazines,
but teach them unconditional self-acceptance and they can't possibly
develop anorexia or bulimia.
But
one word of warning. Don't try using the method I've outlined above
out loud with someone. To have one's power taken away to such a
degree must be incredibly frustrating. When having an argument with a
friend I responded to his expression of a particular opinion with “You are a person who is saying that. Why should it effect me?"
He ended up physically attacking me. Be aware that, if words cease to
hurt you, some may resort to sticks and stones.
