We are contradictory creatures, wondrously and terrifyingly so

September 28, 2024 1:28 AM

These pursuits certainly aren’t what you ought to do — much less post about — and yet I find that it’s when we dwell on our secret enjoyments that we learn the most about ourselves. Sexual and aggressive feelings, veering self-destructive, are finally confronted without the veneer of rationalization. Limits cannot hold when it comes to pleasure. What is too much one day is not enough on another. What is too much for one person is just enough for another. And so on. from I Don’t Need to Be a ‘Good Person.’ Neither Do You. [The New York Times; ungated]
posted by chavenet (49 comments total)

good?
posted by HearHere at 1:37 AM on September 28 [3 favorites]

Maybe not, but I'm going to try anyway.

Rule No. 1, people:

Don't be a dick.
posted by prismatic7 at 2:34 AM on September 28 [18 favorites]

New York Times editorial section accepting an opinion piece advocating for enjoying a little naughty norm violation is certainly something.
posted by srboisvert at 3:20 AM on September 28 [12 favorites]

The Shame Machine, a link from the article about a book about how much shaming is going on. Mostly about the emotions, somewhat about the money to be gotten from shaming people. Imho, not enough about how shaming people is an easy way to get attention.

Claire Dederer's Poser: My Life in Twenty-three Yoga Poses., is about gradually learning that she can want what she wants instead of having to justify everything.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 4:00 AM on September 28 [7 favorites]

As usual, much might be gained -- at least in the form of subject comprehension -- by reading, or at least skimming the article; a person's understanding of the premise based on the headline alone would be faulty. That said, the headline does say "good person," and not Good Person. She doesn't argue against being a Good Person, she argues against blindly striving to be a "good person" in the sense of conforming to perceived norms. In other words, she isn't arguing that you should mow down pedestrians with your environment-demolishing SUV or grope strangers on the subway; she's saying that you should question whether the guidance you are receiving about what it means to be a "good person" is really what it claims to be.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 4:53 AM on September 28 [31 favorites]

I'm not sure I trust anyone less than the New York Times to make a nuanced point about how to think about uh transgressing moral norms in 2024.
posted by ftrtts at 5:04 AM on September 28 [19 favorites]

Edit: Sorry, I'll stop.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 5:06 AM on September 28 [1 favorite]

As ye sow...

(YMMV)
posted by BWA at 5:13 AM on September 28 [1 favorite]

There's a difference between "you might want to thoughtfully challenge the norms of societal expectations" and "fuck you, got mine" and I am pretty sure people who are still eagerly reading the NYT are mostly on board with point B and will look at this argument for point A as a suitable further rationalization for their mostly full-time shitty behaviour.
posted by seanmpuckett at 5:26 AM on September 28 [19 favorites]

Setting aside the fact that the NYT sucks (which is a fact the majority of us agree on):

This was actually kind of thought-provoking, and got me to question what might be behind the current transgressive act I've been daydreaming about most recently.

Her story about the patient who was having trouble experiencing pleasure, but then had a breakthrough when she talked about an early "naughty act" as a teen, made me start to consider maybe just accepting that it was okay to be thinking the way I was, but maybe let's figure out the cause and satisfy that urge a different way.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:44 AM on September 28 [9 favorites]

After a futile struggle with my son over Call of Duty, I finally heard what drew him to play: the twisted entertainment of uttering the most obscene, vicious and, yes, witty words for the killcam seen by the other player before being exited from the video game.

Ah yes, the teenage wit honing how to call someone a f** free of consequence.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 6:14 AM on September 28 [12 favorites]

As a sort of artistic portrait of a certain type of psychological phenomena, the article is interesting and even provocative. As an analysis of a general psychological problem, diagnosis of its causes, or prescription for its cures, I just can't take it seriously. If it does something for you, then good. If not, throw it in the fire.

All the ways we now seek to manage ourselves deaden the little freedom we have, the possibility of exploring our wildest and worst fantasies in order to reconcile with them, and with it, take advantage of the minor pleasures we might achieve in life. In a world wrought with so much excess, I still believe this is true for each and every one of us.

Autonomy, self-management, and rule following are constitutive of freedom. Definitely more so than some sort of Freudian parental-personification-of-your-feelings mysticism. Creating psychological freedom involves critique and modification of your autonomous processes. Sometimes that will take the form of exploring feelings of shame, dark fantasies, re-assessing values, etc. But this reassessment, if its worth following at all, is just a subset of your decision making re: right on wrong. Flippant moral skeptics (much like the "problematic" comedians the author mentions in the piece) will explicitly dismiss some line of reasoning, then go on to do that very thing, just in a more circumspect, unexamined way.

Whatever glib story we want to tell about the problems created by therapy-talk, tiktok advice, and patients living fake lives online, applies just as easily for the followers of the alternative dark fantasy indulgence / release from shame therapy approach. Sometimes the problem with shame is that it hasn't yet developed into a robust, coherent understanding of exactly why a particular desire inhibits your happiness and is destructive to your welfare. Humans are filled with diverse, inconsistent, awesome, terrifying, inchoate, incoherent desires. An important part of being human is designing a happy life for yourself both via and despite these desires, which sometimes does involve setting aside shallow prohibitions or abstentions in favor of indulgence and exploration, but at least as frequently involves a calm, reasoned deflation or dismissal.
posted by Hume at 6:23 AM on September 28 [19 favorites]

Well, surely a dismissal of what those bad people want, not what we want, of course!
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:28 AM on September 28 [2 favorites]

This is a fun game to play for those who were raised in multicultural households. What is no biggie for one side of the family is an abomination for the other. And it's unfair to go shocking and disappointing one side of the family more than the other. Each transgression requires a lot of thought, unless you embrace recklessness.
posted by SnowRottie at 6:55 AM on September 28 [10 favorites]

Setting aside the fact that the NYT sucks

Okay, let's set this aside. I looked up this author. Surprise, surprise. They have not written anything about - uh, without getting specific - the pressing moral issues of our time. Why would I listen to them? It's like getting bicycling advice from someone and then finding out they never actually use their bike.

I've been reading a lot of Baldwin lately. I love this conversation between Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin:

Nikki Giovanni: So the question for me, the question has always been power—
James Baldin: Yes.
Giovanni: And for you all, the question has been morals. You know, I never wanted to be the most moral person in the world.
Baldwin: I agree.
Giovanni: I mean, I would sell my soul. You know what I mean? "What does it profit a man to gain the world and lose his soul?" The world. You know what I mean? The world, that's what it profit.
Baldwin: I know.
Giovanni: So you take the soul, you know. "You take the world but give me Jesus?" Y'all can have Jesus, give me the world. You know? Even though it's losing 25 percent of its energy every hundred years or something ridiculous.
Baldwin: Oh please, don't believe everything you hear.
Giovanni: No, but I'm saying that's not my concern. Even though it's polluted, ugly, dirty, give it to me. Or I will take it.
Baldwin: I agree with you, I agree with you, but speaking for myself, but also speaking as representative of my generation, but it's probably safer to speak only for myself really. I know that in my own case, what I felt and still feel, perhaps in a different way but I felt very strongly in the years, for example, when we all were marching down those dusty highways with Martin...[trails off] Look, I left the church when I was 17 years old. I've not really been into a church since, except when I had to go for various fundraising rallies or this or that. I was not exactly the kind of Christian that Martin was if i could be described as Christian at all.
Giovanni: It's hard to be the kind of Christian that he was.
Baldwin: But I liked him. I loved him, in fact. I knew that something was happening through him. My concern was, yes, the world. But I'd seen what white people had done to the world and I'd seen what white people had done to their children. In gaining the world, they had lost something.
Giovanni: A lot.
Baldwin: They'd lost the ability to love their own children.
Giovanni: The ability to love themselves.
Baldwin: Which is the same thing, you know. And I didn't want that to happen, if I may say so, to you. It was not a matter of morals so much as a matter of being forced in my own case to keep suggesting that though it was indeed a matter of power— the word 'morals' is misleading. Power without some sense of oneself is another kind of sterility. And black people would become exactly what white people have become. You know what I mean?
Giovanni: Yeah, there's a danger.

posted by ftrtts at 6:55 AM on September 28 [18 favorites]

Actually I think this article makes some pretty good points! Although I wish the NYT had not paired it with all this clickbait about "I'm gay but I gladly buy products from actively homophobic companies" type stuff.

First:
1. It seems pretty clear that accepting that people can be very different from one another is critical to make a non-authoritarian society.
2. The internet is a great norming machine and that's helpful but also burdensome - like all the advice about how you have to wash your pillows every week or you're filthy and disgusting, etc, or the way that there are now rubrics for everything, sample dialogues for every conversation.
3. It also seems pretty clear that people rebel against and suppress wants that would be better examined honestly and that are often fairly innocuous. Selfishly blowing up your marriage or rendering your kids homeless so you can pursue your bliss, sure, that's bad, but people very often do slog along with duties and miseries that they really should not accept.

My big disagreement here is that this seems to rely on there being an underlying "real" self that you need to dig down to and examine, "real" wishes versus "false" wishes imposed by society, etc, when I think it's all social, all constructed.

I guess this is the problem of writing as a therapist - if I'm happier suppressing various desires and being a good person according to my lights, I'm not going to the therapist about how I wish things could be different and no one writes about me. I tend to think that being a person always requires giving some things play and suppressing others, and that's not in itself bad - but of course, if you're making yourself miserable because of what you're suppressing, that's a problem.
posted by Frowner at 7:11 AM on September 28 [18 favorites]

Also, good larger point about the moral injury inflicted by everything being so horrible right now. Just the gross immorality and murderousness of our society, and how blatant and visible and yet intractable it is, that affects people emotionally. It's not just something that's on the news and we all tick along obliviously. We're in a society where we all know that the cops murder innocent people without consequences, we're sending billions of dollars to bomb civilians and we see video of those same civilians as eviscerated corpses after the bombs fall, our politicians are very publicly on the take, our corporations nakedly do things that most people hate and fear, etc.

This is obviously going to have some effect on how we see rules and morality.
posted by Frowner at 7:16 AM on September 28 [16 favorites]

And one more - implicit in this article (or possibly explicit and I missed it!) is that our society believes that seeking to be happy purely to be happy is intrinsically going to involve being selfish and hurting others. That is, being happy must involve ditching responsibilities to people you should care about, leaching off of others, taking advantage, lying, cheating, etc. A happy person must be a person who leaves a trail of destruction in their wake as they lie, cheat and ditch out on responsibilities.

But of course we know that's not true - people in aggregate are happiest when they have friendships and responsibilities and ways to do something valuable, whether that is teaching, parenting, being a good friend, making art, etc. People are happiest when they have a chance to experience nature and get whatever form of movement/exercise feels best to them. People are happiest when they have both routines and festivals. You can of course experience all these things by being a horrible selfish billionaire with a private island, but you don't have to.

You might be happy through minimizing how much you think about politics and minimizing your time in high-drama political communities, and that can be a kind of selfishness, but it's not necessarily going to leave a trail of destruction in your wake unless you constantly call the cops on people and vote for right wing causes.
posted by Frowner at 7:26 AM on September 28 [12 favorites]

I looked up this author. Surprise, surprise. They have not written anything about - uh, without getting specific - the pressing moral issues of our time. Why would I listen to them?

Because maybe they have a perspective you hadn't previously considered?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:19 AM on September 28 [9 favorites]

There can be something covetous and presumptuous about the idea of "being a good person". If you're healthy, well-fed and well-travelled, with a supportive partner and/or peer group, if you have all these things, why would you also want to lay claim to the qualification of "being a good person"? Where even does the idea come from that being a "good person" is something you're owed or deserve as a matter of course? Is it all marketing?
posted by dmh at 8:38 AM on September 28 [5 favorites]

Hiding this personal affair under the collective judgments bandied about on the internet — dressed up in the language of therapy speak — isn’t bringing us closer to knowing what is in our own hearts. This new godlike, all-knowing critic has us by the proverbial nose.

First, I think it's important to acknowledge that the author says "we" but really means a narrow subset of American society. Our democracy is currently being menaced by a whole bunch of people who think the appropriate response to a flickering of shame or even a request to do something relatively minor to help avoid collective catastrophe is to attack the Capitol building.

However, there is something to this. Allowing yourself to feel trapped in a murky swamp of therapy-speak and Internet Buddhism, one that is mostly imbibed by osmosis via the social media of your choice rather than by thoughtful encounter, is a mistake, and one you can see with some frequency in that narrow subset.
posted by praemunire at 8:46 AM on September 28 [4 favorites]

Being a good person is double-edged, like there's always the unconscious urge to say "I MUST be a good person, so what I do is good and if other people are different they are BAD".

But on the other hand, it seems helpful to have an ideal that you try to live up to. Every week, for instance, I truly DO NOT WANT to go to my volunteer shift immediately after work. Even knowing that I like my fellow volunteers, that it does me good to get out of the house and talk to people, etc, does not really motivate me when I know that I could just text the group and say that I can't make it and, as shift coordinator, tell them that we will need to skip this week. I can do that anytime, and the reason I don't is because I want to do the work, because I believe the work is good and that the kind of person I want to be does good work.

I could be just way more flawed than other people, but I think I'm probably average, and honestly there are lots of times when I'd like to do selfish things, whether that's calling the cops on someone being extremely noisy, taking more than my share of a common good, neglecting relationships where people really need my support, etc, and "I want to be the kind of person who is supportive, generous and honest" is all that gets me through the day. I had always assumed that most people had to struggle at least a little to avoid just doing randomly self-serving things, but maybe that's not the case?
posted by Frowner at 8:48 AM on September 28 [6 favorites]

So there's this Youtube channel about film I follow (I swear this is relevant): two guys who were college roommates review films, but one is a filmmaker and the other is a therapist, so they're reviewing things from a mental and emotional health perspective - "films which have examples of healthy marriages", "how HOT FUZZ depicts workaholism", etc.

Their most recent video is a review of Inside Out 2, and they get way into how that film deals with people wrestling with whether or not they're "a good person" - only their perspective is more about dealing with the anxiety so many of us have that we're "not good enough". It's now got me wondering whether the whole drive so many people have to "be a good person" is really because they're trying to deal with THAT.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:29 AM on September 28 [5 favorites]

Interesting article that raises a number of nuanced and thoughtful questions, thanks very much for sharing it.

Whenever I hear somebody making the kind of value judgement the writer is talking about, e.g. they or someone else are or want to be good/bad, useful/useless, moral/immoral, etc, my question is always "to whom and for what?"

These kinds of judgements are always situational and reflect the power dynamics in play. For generations, a woman was considered "good" if she stayed quiet and small and showed respect for the men around her, but that probably wasn't good for her, and her resulting anger and frustration might have made life worse for her children and others around her. I'm personally proud of being a very "bad" woman according to my sibling, who thinks they should have unfettered access to my time and resources in support of their inherently more valuable and morally superior interests.

Any shift in thinking that gets people to focus on their own intuition and core values is going to be disruptive to current power structures, which is why there is so much pressure to conform and chase ideals they are never going to reach. The resulting shame serves someone, but it's probably not us.
posted by rpfields at 11:01 AM on September 28 [9 favorites]

Being a good person is double-edged, like there's always the unconscious urge to say "I MUST be a good person, so what I do is good and if other people are different they are BAD".

But on the other hand, it seems helpful to have an ideal that you try to live up to.

I think these are separate, though? Or at least can be. I try to build my ideals around what I do, and with what intention (in your example, show up for the shift), not who I am (be a "good person"). Maybe it's just a hangover from the Protestant childhood--"As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one."
posted by praemunire at 11:07 AM on September 28 [3 favorites]

If you're healthy, well-fed and well-travelled, with a supportive partner and/or peer group, if you have all these things, why would you also want to lay claim to the qualification of "being a good person"?

I'm not sure what this means. Should one abandon goodness as a pursuit if one is sufficiently materially comfortable? I mean, that definitely scans with how extremely rich people become amoral. But that doesn't make it good or right. One's goodness - and by this I mean one's moral integrity, kindness to others, ability to keep promises, refusal to take advantage of others, etc. - is completely distinct from one's financial situation. It is not a label that can be feely applied or laid claim to - it is earned through behavior. As prismatic7 said above, don't be a dick.
posted by grumpybear69 at 11:30 AM on September 28 [4 favorites]

America is still a young nation — but not child-young; adolescent-young. Go to Japan or France, keep your eyes open, and you will experience cultures that have very ancient mores, deep-seated aesthetics, and fairly calcified societal constraints. They feel real and present; in Japan, I felt, the grandmother is always looking over your shoulder ready to purse her lips if you eat too loudly on the bullet train or if the soles of your sneakers are too dirty.

The U.S. is still unsettled, but the emotional and societal frontiers are closing. And unfortunately, in lieu of the stern grandmother or the general ancestors we have the watchful eye of motivational memes on Instagram or the neighborhood association that will fine you if you replace your lawn with a garden. It's just kind of rootless, stochastic closing-in — but it is a closing-in. And the little wave-top of exuberant youth-led capitalism peaked around 1965; now to be young is not to be free but to be constantly at risk of prematurely failing your way into your parents' mythical basement.

I was thinking about something like this when I watched this interview with a Phish follower from 1996. I think she lives in one of the last little pockets of frontier, where being a drugged-out mellow kid with a dog following a band was a viable form of freedom. Maybe it is still? I don't know. But I think the technocracy we live in disapproves, with increasing efficacy.
posted by argybarg at 12:00 PM on September 28 [7 favorites]

In my experience, the people who are all 'ooh I’m enjoying this forbidden thing so much!' are still so self-conscious they are barely experiencing whatever it is in the first place, much less fully enjoying it.

The deepest pleasures are self-abnegating, and the author gives no indication that she even knows that state exists.
posted by jamjam at 12:48 PM on September 28 [3 favorites]

Say [Prophet], "Shall we tell you who has the most to lose by their actions,

whose efforts in this world are misguided, even when they think they are doing good work?

It is those who disbelieve in their Lord’s messages and deny that they will meet Him." Their deeds come to nothing: on the Day of Resurrection We shall give them no weight.

Their recompense for having disbelieved and made fun of My messages and My messengers will be Hell.

But those who believe and do good deeds will be given the Gardens of Paradise.

There they will remain, never wishing to leave.

Say [Prophet], "If the whole ocean were ink for writing the words of my Lord, it would run dry before those words were exhausted"- even if We were to add another ocean to it.

Say, "I am only a human being, like you, to whom it has been revealed that your God is One. Anyone who fears to meet his Lord should do good deeds and give no one a share in the worship due to his Lord."

****
The Noble Quran, Surah al-Kahf (18), ayats 103 -110

Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem
posted by rabia.elizabeth at 12:59 PM on September 28 [2 favorites]

So, I have certainly seen some pretty substantial social media blowups about people or relationships being “good” or “bad”. I’m lightly involved in some kink and polyam communities, and there are strong opinions about the “right way” to do kink or have polyamorous relationships. Every now and then a big influencer weighs in, the argument escapes into a wider audience, and everyone gets to have a huge fight.

Those fights can seem to get pretty abstract to me, condemning people for doing things Wrong without being able to point to actual bad impact (except perhaps that the speaker had a bad experience in their past). But if you’re Very Online then it can be easy to take those arguments to heart and start thinking maybe you are wrong, even when everyone involved in your relationships are happy and no one is getting hurt.

And I don’t think those communities are uniquely contentious. Heck, I see it every now and then in tabletop roleplaying discourse, for example — “am I somehow a bad person for playing D&D instead of an indy game?”

To the extent that this therapist may have clients grappling with how to process this kind of online discourse… Sure, I’m willing to accept that it’s a real thing, and that many of her clients need to accept it’s ok for them to do things they enjoy and aren’t hurting other people. Even if Internet people are yelling about that thing being bad.

Not sure why it needed to be a NYT opinion piece though.
posted by learning from frequent failure at 1:00 PM on September 28 [3 favorites]

Should one abandon goodness as a pursuit if one is sufficiently materially comfortable?

Maybe? I don't think anyone gets to be a billionaire without having been a monster. I think there's some truth in the saying about camels and needles and rich men and heaven.

Certainly in the West, we are so incredibly (and unsustainably) rich. We've been so greedy and insatiable for so long that it's causing crises on a planetary scale. I don't know if we also get to be the good guys. I'm just not sure.
posted by dmh at 2:27 PM on September 28 [1 favorite]

During the Pandemic, I'd had it. Every "casual" racist / homophobic / transphobic / anti-vaxxer / vain / narcissistic / selfish / etc person that I'd put up with — some for decades — or made excuses for ("they're from a different generation / culture / etc.")... I cut out of my life without explanation to them. One day, I simply blocked them all and never really thought about it again. Is this fair? Perhaps not. Is it healthy? It was for me! It was surprisingly easy when I did it all at once. There was no back-and-forth like you'd do on a case-by-case basis. It was just done. My brain put them all in a labyrinth to wander around with each other for eternity.

I am not a good person. I don't try to be. However, I am careful to not be a bad person. Those are very different things. Everything about life is better without these people in your life. Every minute not spent making excuses for them or rationalizing your relationship or listening to their hatred / bigotry / nonsense / drama is another minute for myself and the other not-bad people in my life.

Don't strive to be good. Strive to be not-bad.
posted by dobbs at 2:40 PM on September 28 [12 favorites]

I'm going to leave it alone after this, but the substance of the article is not "abandoning goodness" and leading a life of hedonistic nihilism, although I agree that would be a terribly interesting article and maybe one that was more likely to actually be read. I think what the author of this relatively short piece that anyone can read for free by following the link is saying is not that, but something else. I will leave the discovery of that exciting revelation to whomever is so bold as to actually take five minutes out of their day to read this article.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 2:40 PM on September 28 [3 favorites]

I think the pull quote cuts off at a really unfortunate point--I saw the title, and that it was written by a clinical psychologist, and immediately had a sense what it was about. And when I hit the end of this paragraph, I knew exactly what kind of phenomenon this article was about:

Limits cannot hold when it comes to pleasure. What is too much one day is not enough on another. What is too much for one person is just enough for another. And so on. This trouble with pleasure can be lived with. What seemingly can’t is the feeling that the basic laws that shore up our society are only just functioning; every day we face new evidence of how ruthlessly these are being undermined by those in power. As if to make up for this vacuum — while not really doing much about it — I think we now seek to impose rules on ourselves and shame on others. Whom do we really want to control?

That said, I don't think the article engages as much with this point as I would have liked. My partner, reading along with me, said aloud, "I wonder if she knows about the Calvinism?" She skirted that at one point but then ambled away.

Anyway, the basic idea that personal shame and the rules we create for ourselves are an attempt to reflexively control the uncontrollable dissolving of moral fabric that we are seeing in the powerful in our society seems very relevant right now.

An example: a family member was at a festival the other day. The local library was giving out a free book as part of a month of programming. She wanted the book; she wanted it even more badly after I told her I had already read it and it was a great book. But, she told me while we were getting lunch, she told the librarians she couldn't take the book. Because she lived in another city and was just visiting, and wouldn't be able to participate in any of the programming. This would be taking away resources from the library and a community she wasn't part of, she should leave it for people less well-off than her (reader: she has been unemployed for a year living with her parents who are single income with one disabled spouse), and she should really just go and check out the eBook from her own library instead of adding another paper book to her "too much stuff" (which fits in a single bedroom). All of these "rules" stemming from things she had internalized about community, about libraries, about privilege, in response to the collapse and gutting of social services and growing income equality, all of which she had no control over and nevertheless felt understandably anxious, depressed, and otherwise stressed about.

I told her, "The librarians don't care, that isn't why they're giving this out. Take the damn book."

She hesitated.

"Or ask your mother to go get it for you," I said, gesturing at her. Her mother, a gregarious woman with barely a concept of shame, would easily and willingly have done so. I was being a little cruel in this moment, because I knew that she had an equal amount of shame about asking her mother to do anything for her, because her mother is disabled. It doesn't matter that she's a woman who's almost entirely impossible to keep still, and that five minutes later she'd make the same jaunt herself simply for the joy of looking at a birdfeeder. Asking her mother to do anything for her while she already suffered so much from the daily ableism and chronic pain she was in was unthinkable (note that this didn't stop her from wanting her mother to do things for her).

Unfortunately, the fact that I said it aloud in front of said mother had her gearing up to do so already--her daughter had to either shut it down entirely or go and ask for the book herself.

She went and got the book.

I'd had a long day and was feeling a little unfiltered and petty, so I said to my companions while she was gone: "She finds new things to feel guilty about every day."

And god knows I do the same! Though I've put a lot of work into not letting it happen every day, at least. To me, this is what the article is about. The ways in which we find endless things to feel shame and guilt about our desires because we feel that we must adhere to some rule that will falsely make us feel like we have control over everything that seems to be breaking down in our society--climate change, income equality, human rights, the energy crisis, etc. etc. These symbolic denials have such power over us because we don't have power in the things that matter. If the only thing you can control is yourself, then doesn't it make sense to become overcontrolled in the face of an overwhelming lack of control? It isn't everyone's experience, but I think it is a lot of people's experiences.

Are there things that it is good and healthy to feel shame about, and to avoid? Sure, but that's not what this article is necessarily about. What it's about is the rules we create that act as compulsions to reduce the anxiety of what's happening in the broader world. In my family member's example, she saw the book, she wanted it. She thought about things like the gutting of library services, about the difficulty of building communities in this day and age, about consumerism, about income equality, and all of these things made her anxious. Denying herself the book symbolized control over all of these things that she couldn't control, and this relieved the anxiety. It didn't make the desire go away, though. So there comes the shame

And like... it's just a damn book. But it's so easy for so many of our desires to become symbols, for self-denial to become a ward against the evil we see in the world. This is cultural Christianity in action: many people, especially young people in the US, have eschewed the organized religion aspects of Christianity but still view the world and their behavior through its lens without realizing it. You don't need to have ever been a believer to internalize cultural Christianity and its attitudes towards rules, desire, sin, self-denial, etc. In some ways you could say that these rules we create in response to our powerlessness are a new kind of faith. But that's a little too deep in the theology for me to explore properly; I would need to tap some of my colleagues in spiritual care to say more on that.

Anyway, I think this article is a great starting point for examining how we use rules, shame, and guilt to symbolically control our sense of powerlessness in the face of... the universe. Hm, no wonder this feels so goddamn spiritual all of a sudden. Fascinating!
posted by brook horse at 5:13 PM on September 28 [18 favorites]

Brook horse, please let your family member know that the librarians must surely have been delighted to give her the book. First of all, she wanted to read the book, which is wonderful. Second of all, any book they did not give away had to be packed up and carried back to wherever the library's giveaway books are stored. There were probably hundreds of giveaway books, and boxing them all up and lugging them around would be no small undertaking; it sucks. It is a very happy occasion when a book goes from being back-breaking cargo to a source of joy for a happy reader. No one cares where that reader lives.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 5:31 PM on September 28 [3 favorites]

Many of those were things I relayed to her as soon as she came back with the book! I probably should have led with them but, as mentioned, long day and a bit unfiltered. Thankfully once she had actually acquired the book the shame appeared to vanish. Which doesn't always happen with these sorts of symbolic self-denial things, but luckily it did here.
posted by brook horse at 5:36 PM on September 28 [2 favorites]

The problem with advice one finds on the internet is that no bit of advice or observation about human behavior or needs will ever be universal, and even when the source of the advice or observation is trying to be clear about their audience (not often the case on the internet, in my observation), people will take things as applying to them when they shouldn't.

It happens in teaching, on a smaller scale. If I give general advice to a largish class about studying, or note-taking, or something like that, the students who are already doing too much and should probably actually work on being less anxious and more relaxed are the ones most likely to pay attention and attempt to follow my advice, while the ones my commentary was actually aimed at will not be paying attention or will assume it doesn't apply to them.

Anyway. Some people I know would benefit from being a bit more selfish. Others are too selfish. You will, of course, likely be able to guess which ones tend to pay attention to random internet advice or newspaper or magazine articles about being more self-effacing and accommodating to others and which ones tend to pay attention to messages about shame not being a useful emotion, the importance of self-care, when a habit of small self-denials is unhealthy, etc.
posted by eviemath at 5:40 PM on September 28 [5 favorites]

Assuming I'm reading between the lines correctly, I actually don't find that to line up that easily, eviemath. A number of the people I know who are too selfish are that way because they are so focused on being a "good person" in all of these various rule-following ways, which often restricts them from doing things an actually good person would do. Their constant self-denial is not selfless, it's about assuaging their own anxiety, which they pay attention to vastly more than the needs of others.

This is of course not the case for everyone who experiences the phenomenon in the article, but I definitely see a correlation between "paying attention to random internet advice about being more self-effacing and accommodating" and "acting in ways that are incredibly self-centered even as said person is terrified of ever asking anything of anyone." It's an interesting paradox.
posted by brook horse at 5:47 PM on September 28 [2 favorites]

Their constant self-denial is not selfless, it's about assuaging their own anxiety, which they pay attention to vastly more than the needs of others.

That reminds me of one of my favourite quotes by Katherine Whitehorn: "You can recognize the people who live for others by the haunted look on the faces of the others."

Sometimes martyrdom is designed to provoke a reaction in others that is neither Good nor kind.
posted by rpfields at 6:40 PM on September 28 [6 favorites]

A king, in search of the wisest man in his kingdom, finds a sage known for his profound knowledge and insight. Impressed, the king appoints the sage as his chief adviser, expecting him to live a life of virtue and responsibility. However, once the sage assumes this role, he surprises the court by indulging in lavish feasts, wine, and all manner of debaucheries.

Confused, the king confronts the sage. "How can you, the wisest of men, fall into such debauchery when you are now my closest adviser?"

The sage smiles but says nothing. Instead, he invites the king to ride with him to the farthest borders of the kingdom. There, standing at the edge of the realm, the sage finally speaks. "You see, Your Majesty, I have partaken of much but now I leave. Can you say the same?" And with that he rode away.
posted by storybored at 7:21 PM on September 28 [2 favorites]

Their constant self-denial is not selfless, it's about assuaging their own anxiety, which they pay attention to vastly more than the needs of others.

When I think of people being selfish, I tend to think in terms of their impacts on others and the space they take up, not their self-image or as the opposite of self-denial. Totally agree that being self-centered and self-denial are not infrequently co-morbid traits. Your experience may well be different, of course, but the folks I know who would meet your description are very much into those clickbait articles about how hard it is being an empath and how everyone should be nicer to them. In terms of their impacts, I would describe them as on the selfish end.
posted by eviemath at 8:54 PM on September 28 [4 favorites]

Anyway. Some people I know would benefit from being a bit more selfish. Others are too selfish.

My first take on this article was, oh yeah ... self-abusing "martyrs" aren't going to read this, but the EST-holes are gonna run with it. The NYT knows their audience.
posted by Surfurrus at 7:13 AM on September 29 [2 favorites]

Yeah, I think we are just experiencing different flavors of folks. The people I’m thinking of will forgo so many things that it makes them incapable of being kind and supportive friends, family, or community members; at the same time they still believe they are bad people and that they can’t ask anything of anyone. It leads to a strange situation where it’s like, well, yes, you are in fact being a bad friend/family member/community member but it’s not because you’re a fundamentally bad person, it’s because you’re too busy being caught up with “if I drive 20 minutes to give this gift to a friend I am contributing to climate change and car culture and fossil fuels and” to do the things that you in fact want to do that would make you a more selfless participant in your relationships. Those kinds of people wouldn’t be reading articles about how people need to be nicer to them, they would be reading articles about “here is what YOU CAN DO to limit your impact on the environment” and take everything in it as a religious proscription, and their failure to live up to these rules as evidence they need to be doing More Rules.
posted by brook horse at 7:18 AM on September 29 [2 favorites]

I kinda think that being a good person is just being kind to others. 🤷🏽
posted by WatTylerJr at 4:49 PM on September 29 [1 favorite]

a family member was at a festival the other day. The local library was giving out a free book as part of a month of programming. She wanted the book; she wanted it even more badly after I told her I had already read it and it was a great book. But, she told me while we were getting lunch, she told the librarians she couldn't take the book. Because she lived in another city and was just visiting, and wouldn't be able to participate in any of the programming. .....

I told her, "The librarians don't care, that isn't why they're giving this out. Take the damn book."

She hesitated.

"Or ask your mother to go get it for you," I said, gesturing at her.

....Is....is there any reason YOU didn't go get her the dang book?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:01 PM on September 29

Those kinds of people wouldn’t be reading articles about how people need to be nicer to them, they would be reading articles about “here is what YOU CAN DO to limit your impact on the environment” and take everything in it as a religious proscription, and their failure to live up to these rules as evidence they need to be doing More Rules.

/nods/ Same idea - mismatch between who the article or advice is for versus who is likely to read and/or apply it to themselves.
posted by eviemath at 8:24 PM on September 29

...Is....is there any reason YOU didn't go get her the dang book?

Because I was recovering from a two week long acute asthma attack and I have unfortunately not yet learned how to teleport myself halfway across a fairground.
posted by brook horse at 9:02 PM on September 29 [1 favorite]

I kinda think that being a good person is just being kind to others.

Sure, but what does that mean in practice? Does it mean always giving up your own hopes, dreams, free time, money etc to help someone else? Does it mean deferring to others’ discomfort, even if doing so might cause you discomfort, or does it mean helping that person live with it or change the situation for themselves? Does it mean, in the example in the comments above, stepping in to get something for someone when you know they want it but won’t say so or act themselves, even though you are not feeling well and doing so would involve more effort on your part? Is it about shielding people from uncomfortable truths or making sure they know them so they can make informed decisions? Does it mean refraining from doing certain things because they upset a beloved elderly parent?

Something like “just be kind” can be complicated advice to follow, and it’s another situation where I often like to ask “to/for whom and for what?” The burden of kindness can fall much harder on some people than others, and the beneficiaries are not always who you would expect.
posted by rpfields at 9:11 AM on September 30

Many families (and friends etc. but focusing on families for the example) believe they are being kind by taking over and doing for their family members all of the things which make them anxious or distressed. This provides short-term relief but results in long term exacerbation of anxiety and feelings of helplessness and despair. In these situations it is especially complicated to figure out when being kind means helping and when being kind means stepping back and holding boundaries so they can face their own anxiety/distress/etc. Always stepping in and solving the problem for them feels kind, but it’s often harmful and can even be selfish (as often it’s about relieving our own anxiety about seeing them in distress).

And it is never simple to tell if you’ve gotten right either. Are you helping them build independence or making them feel unsupported? Are you helping them cope through the anxiety or are you in a cycle of reassurance-seeking that only makes it worse? You don’t get to know. Being OK with being uncertain about whether or not you’re a “good person” and acceptance of the idea that you might actually not be doing good is a critical part of being able to actually do good. Otherwise you’ll only do the things that definitely feel good, not the messy work of actual good, which is far less certain and often makes you feel bad as much as it makes you feel good.

This was another one of the reasons I didn’t go get her the book, because “when do we accommodate vs ask her to face her own distress instead of externalizing it onto others” is something we’ve been balancing for a while, but I didn’t feel like typing all that up in response to a flippant comment so I gave a flippant (but also true) reply.
posted by brook horse at 10:09 AM on September 30 [5 favorites]