On Being Yourself
“The liberal story cherishes human liberty as its number one value. It argues that all authority ultimately stems from the free will of individual humans, as expressed in their feelings, desires, and choices. In politics, liberalism believes that the voter knows best. It therefore upholds democratic elections. In economics, liberalism maintains that the customer is always right. It therefore hails free-market principles. In personal matters, liberalism encourages people to listen to themselves, be true to themselves, and follow their hearts—as long as they do not infringe on the liberties of others. This personal freedom is enshrined in human rights.”—Yuval Noah Harari, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (2018)
My first serious girlfriend said that her motto, the creed which she lived by, was “go with the flow” (indeed, it was her high-school yearbook quote). She was, and is, such a sweet person. Such a good person: kind, loving, patient, wise. But, truth be told, I remember being viscerally repulsed by her yearbook quote, and, since I was arrogant and obnoxious at sixteen, I probably told her as much. Probably said something really mean. Something I’ve conveniently forgotten. Regardless, I remember thinking that even though my life was a complete mess, even though I was flunking out of school, even though I was totally confused, even though I was angry all the time for no good reason, even though I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, I could nevertheless be sure of at least one thing: I did not want to go with the flow!
Much of my twenties were consumed by a quixotic (and, in retrospect, rather ridiculous) attempt to live a life less ordinary. But when I look back now, at all that crazy counter-cultural stuff I did, I find that most of it was shockingly ordinary. When I swap war-stories with people my age, after a few beers, we invariably discover that we’ve got the same twenty stories from our twenties. Buddy of mine calls them twin tales. Because they’re so hard to tell apart. Proper nouns being their only distinguishing feature. Coming to terms with your own ordinariness is a bitter pill to swallow when you’ve been raised to believe that originality is a cardinal virtue. But it’s a bitter pill that most of us have swallowed. After all, the commonplace nature of my generation’s counter-cultural war-stories is hardly their most unflattering feature. The worst thing you can say about us—the thing that many of my friends still fail to acknowledge—is that the crazy counter-cultural stuff we did wasn’t particularly counter-cultural.
Nor was it particularly radical. As Thomas Frank makes clear in The Conquest of Cool (1997), much of what passes for counter-cultural behavior since the 1960s is in fact an integral part of the “flow” of consumer culture. So I guess you could say that I’ve been going with the flow for quite some time now, regardless of my intentions and pretensions. Even at the height of my twenties—when I was an obnoxious, self-righteous, left-wing vegan, with blue hair and tattoos—my individual-centered approach to social change pretty much ensured my complicity. As Tony Hoagland puts it at the end of “Hard Rain”:
“I used to think I was not part of this,
that I could mind my own business and get along,
but that was just another song
that had been taught to me since birth—
whose words I was humming under my breath,
as I was walking through the Springdale Mall.”
The personal isn’t necessarily political. Society benefits when individuals decide to, say, quit smoking, get in shape, or learn how to control their anger. But the benefits accrue primarily to the individuals in question. Those close to them (e.g., partners, children, family members, close friends) also benefit. But outside of that sacred circle, the benefits are largely negligible.
If the Devil’s greatest trick was to convince the world he didn’t exist, consumer culture’s greatest trick was to convince us that we could be radical without being political. The people running this system aren’t threatened by your tribal tattoos, your hard-core haircut, your skateboarding, your edgy music, your veganism, your yoga, your recreational drug use, your bisexuality, your dreads, your piercings, your kinky taste in porn—or anything else you do by yourself, or with other consenting adults, in the privacy of your own home. You may see a radical subculture; they just see another niche market.
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If a time machine like the one described in David Fiore’s Hypocritic Days (2014) was discovered tomorrow, and I was asked to write a travel brochure for the twenty-first-century West next week, I’d be sure to mention individualism as one of our era’s big attractions. The freedom to be yourself, do your own thing, choose your own profession, move to a new place, break with tradition, make a new family, be a little weird, have a little privacy: we take these things for granted far too often. Many of our ancestors would kill for what we have. Many of mine died for it. Many of yours did too.
Still, individualism is a human thing, and, like all human things, it’s flawed. The emancipation of the individual has come at a cost, sometimes a hefty cost. But I would nevertheless argue that the freedom to be yourself is one of our culture’s greatest accomplishments. It’s well worth fighting for, despite its drawbacks. At some point, however, in the not-so-distant past, we seem to have collectively forgotten what it is that we were fighting for all along, what it really means to be authentic, what it really means to be yourself. And I think I know why. We’ve confused being yourself with being original.
If, like Natalie Portman’s character in Garden State (2004), you think that to be an individual, to be yourself, you’ve got to “do something that has never, ever been done before . . . throughout human existence,” you’re bound to go through life profoundly disappointed with yourself. Because this is an unrealistic goal, a silly ideal. You’re setting yourself up for failure. We can’t all be original. Just as there’s a limited amount of beachfront property in the world, there’s a limited number of people who can be first, unique, singular, and truly original (sui generis). To some extent this is a function of the limited number of geniuses in the world. But it’s mostly a function of dumb luck: some people just happen to be the first one to think or do something new. After all, someone has to be first.
In his classic essay on the subject—“On Thinking for Yourself” (1851)—Schopenhauer stresses that being the first one to think a particular thought isn’t what’s important. What’s important is that you make a thought your own. What’s important is that this newly discovered idea enter “into the whole system of your thought” as “an integral part, a living member”; “that it stand in complete and firm relation with what you already know; that it is understood with all that underlies it and follows from it; that it wears the color, the precise shade, the distinguishing mark, of your own way of thinking.”
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In The Prince (1532), Machiavelli famously maintains that it’s better to be feared than loved. I’m pretty sure my wise old mentor, Ron Walters, had this in mind when he told me, the night before my first job talk: “Remember, John, don’t make waves. When it comes to hiring committees, it’s better to be liked than loved.” In other words, don’t be yourself. I’ve since sat on numerous hiring committees and seen the truth of my mentor’s words on countless occasions. Rarely (if ever) do you get your first choice, or even your second choice, when you’re sitting on a hiring committee. The candidate who gets the job is usually somebody who everybody liked but nobody loved, somebody who was everybody’s third, forth, or fifth choice.
The same is not true in other domains (e.g., politics, religion, literature, activism, moral reform, etc.) wherein zealous minorities have proven far more effective than tepid majorities. In these domains, it’s better to be loved than liked. The political impotence of the environmental movement in the second half of the twentieth century is a case in point. Despite widespread support, it was remarkably ineffective because those who cared about the environment invariably cared about something else more (e.g., racism, feminism, abortion, free speech, pornography, terrorism, religion, Wall Street, etc.). Environmentalism was everyone’s third, forth, or fifth choice. It was the cause everybody liked but nobody loved.
If you strive to be liked by all, as people-pleasers habitually do, you’re probably misrepresenting yourself in big and small ways all the time. You’re probably sending out a lot of mixed and confusing signals. And you’re probably attracting all sorts of people who aren’t particularly well-suited to you. This is precisely why people-pleasers so often find themselves surrounded by people they can’t stand, people who wouldn’t like them much either if they knew them better. If you’re looking for love, you can’t be someone you’re not. If you strive to be liked by all you’re sure to be loved by none.
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“So, if I’m looking for love, I should just be myself, right?” Not necessarily. If you happen to be a thoroughly awesome person, then, by all means, be yourself. But few of us are. Like fixer-uppers on a renovation show, most of us need work. “Being yourself” is rarely the solution and often the problem, especially if you suck. “The future,” Haspel wagers, “will marvel that we regarded ‘be yourself’ as sound moral advice.” “Stop being yourself” is sounder advice. “Start being someone else” is even better, though it’s often hard for those of us who were raised in the modern West to see why this is the case. If you’re reading this, you probably subscribe to most of what Yuval Noah Harari refers to as “the liberal story”. Phrases such as these ring true to you: the voter knows best, the customer is always right, follow your heart, be yourself. The liberal story has taught us to revere the self-sufficiency of heroic individuals who figure things out on their own, and this has made it exceptionally hard for us to see the wisdom of copying, mimicry, and imitation.
If everybody had to brave the dark forest of change alone, and blaze a fresh trail to the other side, few of us would be equal to the task. Thankfully, however, this simply isn’t the case. You don’t have to go it alone, nor do you have to blaze your own trail. There’s a simple shortcut, a time-honored technique, well-known to ancient philosophers like Epictetus: “one of the best ways to elevate your character immediately is to find worthy role models to emulate.” Since you have in all likelihood internalized much of the liberal story, aping others in such a deliberate fashion might feel forced, strange, and inauthentic at first. But I encourage you to push through your initial discomfort: “Invoke the characteristics of the people you admire most and adopt their manners, speech, and behavior as your own. There is nothing false in this. We all carry the seeds of greatness within us, but we need an image as a point of focus in order that they may sprout.”
—John Faithful Hamer, Love is Not a Liquid Asset (2020)
