The most difficult thing about listening to others is becoming deaf to yourself.
Introduction
Many of the things that others consider normal, I consider strange1. Constantly going out to seek new experiences, try out new hobbies, and do new things, people seem to always want to be busy. This was brought into stark relief during the COVID lockdowns of 2020, where everyone was forced to shut themselves up at home. Netflix and other streaming services exploded in popularity, gardening and home improvement became everyone’s new hobby. Online shopping exploded in popularity, news and social media became everyone’s points of reference, and everyone ran off to do something.
This explosion of energy was a reaction to the stresses of being cooped up at home – and others coped poorly. Suicides and divorces caused by people realizing they didn’t like each other, people going stir-crazy thanks to being cooped up inside and unable to talk with others, and all sorts of interesting behaviors appeared because of the pandemic.
When you think about it, this is all very strange. Instead of taking the time to reflect and examine one’s own life, people instead went into a frenzy of activity, filling their days with things they barely even enjoy or think about, or that help them. To tell the truth, it struck me less as them wanting to do something than them having to do something. Then, the behavior struck me as familiar.
Beyond Honor Students
I was only a year out of school in 2020, so my school life was still fresh in my head. The modern compulsion to do something reminded me of the kids who would go on to gain great accolades - top-flight grades, plenty of extracurriculars, very sociable - but also nervous, appearing to never sleep, always working on that next feather in their cap. Suddenly, everyone was like this, when they only made up a handful of the students I’d ever met, and not even they were this bad.
No, to me, this was something else. This wasn’t a genuine enthusiasm or a desire for success. This was closer to fear - the only question was, fear of what?2
Measuring Up
Compared to past eras, we live in a world where information and ideas are at our fingertips, and thanks to social media, we know exactly what everyone else is doing. Having all these references to draw upon for everything has fundamentally changed the way we understand things, changing into what I call a referential mode of reasoning.
Referential reasoning, instead of taking the time to think through a problem step-by-step, is basically borrowing our logic from the massive body of information that is instantly available to us. There is nothing wrong with this in principle – we all borrow from one another, after all, but thanks to the scale and breadth of the information available to us, the situation is now far different.
Because of how many ideas are floating around out there in the Internet for everyone to see, the individual in the modern world is confronted with examples of every kind. The prospective writer can read all the greats and see writing in every niche. The prospective singer can hear all sorts of cover artists, original singers, and all the celebrities they used to be able to hear. The prospective computer programmer can not only take classes on probably any and every language online, they can also look into one-man video game projects, freelancers talking about their experiences, and all sorts of things.
For some people, this burns them out and makes them sad, or anxious, as they feel they can never measure up to those greats. While the problem has only been exacerbated by the modern world, it has likely happened even before them, leading us to ask – why?
Trained to Follow, Not to Lead
From childhood, the individual is trained by society to follow, not to lead. There is an obvious reason for this – children don’t know anything yet. However, the deluge of modern information also creates two other vectors for fear of the self to take root – regimented school life, and an obsession with safety.
The regimented school life is quite easy to explain, as all of us have likely lived through it. School comes with strict schedules, boxed lessons, and very few avenues for personal expression. A strict code of discipline makes sure that the individual student follows the rules and has little opportunity to try things and mess up. The boundless energy of youth is all bottled up by hours of class time, releasing itself in a loose and undirected manner. Parents encourage their kids to spend time studying, reasoning that good grades and a college degree are a requirement in this day and age. Combined, this turns off many kids who may be better-suited to other endeavors from honing their craft, while turning the ones who do get high grades into a different class altogether – people who “get” it and are expected to succeed.3
While this seems like a mistake from the individual standpoint, from the point of view of society, this process is necessary. Teaching people the necessary skills and ideas to function and proceed to higher education in the modern world is a very good idea, and although the one size will not fit all, it provides a common point of reference that everyone can use. What is most troubling, however, is when this regimentation follows the student home.
Thanks once again to the barrage of information in the modern world, the media also has a barrage of catastrophes and dangers to warn the public about. The fact of the matter is that bad news sells, and if the competition breaks the news first, you lose. There is no reason, therefore, to not simply load up the news with catastrophe and danger, creating a constant climate of fear. Doesn’t matter what it is – a new COVID variant (the hundredth by now, I’m sure), climate change (once global warming, and before that global cooling), online predators (sexual or otherwise), or local crime (murder, mass shooting, kidnapping, robberies ad nauseam), we are constantly flooded with a torrent of bad news.4
From the stories I hear, parents used to be more lax with their children, letting them go out and do the things they wanted with less fear of their trouble. There wasn’t as much fear of falling behind in one’s studies or crime, and not as much pressure to excel or measure up to those around them. Modern parents, by contrast, have it far more difficult. Not only do they think and believe that there is more crime and that grades are incredibly important, their peers also believe it. A child who does poorly reflects poorly on the parents, while a parent that appears to be lax in their duties appears to be failing their child. A parent (or parents) who do not follow the orthodoxy risk suffering scorn from all sides, making it easier to simply follow the mainstream and push their children into following the rules and excelling.
Combine these, and you have the source of the modern disease – the constant fear of failure to launch combined with the constant fear for one’s safety, daily reinforced by an obliging media and well-intentioned and successful-looking peers. These create conditions of permanent stress and tension, resulting in rising rates of depression, withdrawal from society (NEETs), and the surge in substance abuse, best exemplified by the collective neurosis of the COVID lockdowns and pandemic. This is what I call fear of the self.
Fear of the Self
Because our society is now so referential, so obsessed with measuring up and pegging ourselves to the standards set by others, many people are now afraid to use their own judgment, and listen to their own voice. While the younger generations might be stronger in understanding the world around them, they also suffer in their striving to improve their own conditions. Fed with a constant diet of stories of others’ failures and the dangers of the modern world, they consider everything slowly and carefully rather than approach situations with confidence. Couple that with seeing their peers excel on social media, posting their wins while hiding their losses, it creates an impetus for success - and a burning jealousy of those who have it. The popularity of self-deprecation and anxiety speaks to the true feelings of those who undertake them – fear of themselves and their ability to change things, possibly for the better, likely for the worse.
This is the core of what I call “fear of the self” - a toxic brew created by high standards, a feeling of pervasive danger, and a constant feeling of never measuring up to one’s peers. Combined, they lead to a minset of people who merely follow approved methods of thought and ideas, never deviating or reasoning from what they are told, and ruthlessly hating those that hold different opinions, for whatever reason they may hold them. All this for one purpose - in order to climb their way to the top and one day become the success everyone is jealous of.
In my opinion, this is also the reason for the explosion in hobbies, particularly into video and tabletop games. With people no longer able to run after goals in the real world, thanks both to the worsening odds and the greater fear of failure, they now instead buy into social groups and affiliations. Buying a PlayStation, an Xbox, or a gaming PC makes you a gamer, in the same way that buying D&D books to put on the shelf and never play with makes you a tabletop gamer. This phenomenon has reached the point that we describe ourselves using labels rather than adjectives – “I’m a gamer”, “I’m a feminist”, “as a man/woman”, de-emphasizing the individual and emphasizing the collective. Claiming one of these labels appears to replace actually doing the thing itself – to the point that there are writers like Patrick Tomlinson (Twitter), who writes more words on Twitter than he does in his books.
That is how strong the fear of the self is. It drives people to hide behind labels and run for affiliation, even though they end up repressing their true feelings and ideas. The clearest manifestation of this is with cancel culture.
Cancel Culture
Cancel Culture (Wikipedia) is, simply put, the ostracism, boycotting, or shunning of those who are believed to have acted or spoken in an unacceptable manner. While this is a natural phenomenon, the modern fear of the self easily twists this into a dangerous phenomenon.
One of the consequences of the modern fear of the self is the endless quest for external validation, creating a natural weakness to cancel culture. Combine this with the stress and tension of those people who see themselves as failures when compared to their expansive circle of social media “peers”, and you have a toxic brew of deadly poison, waiting to be applied.
As the bar for success gets higher and higher and the number of places for that success gets lower and lower, there is a natural tendency for those who feel they have failed to envy the positions of others. In addition, the easiest way to make a spot available is to clear it yourself. Cancel culture, or really, just good old shaming, is an easy way to do that. By relentlessly accusing and attacking a public figure (or really, anyone more successful than you), you can bring them down to your level and cast them to the ground, or at least distract yourself from the pain within. Whether they actually did anything worthy of the canceling is beside the point – all that is required is that you bring them down in your mind.
Let us say, however, that you now take the place of your previous target as the top dog and the success? Who is to say that you yourself will not fall victim to the same attack? Who is to say that another upstart, one of many, you are sure, will rise up and challenge you with the same tactics you yourself used?
In the end, your victory is hollow, because you achieved it not by pulling yourself up, but by dragging another down. You have not overcome your fear – merely weaponized it.
You are your Best and Only Advocate
All of this flies directly in the face of something that has always struck me as a hard and fast rule – you are your best and only advocate. Nobody else knows what you really like and dislike, what you want to do and what you do out of duty, and what truly matters to you versus what doesn’t. Nobody else can tell you that – and even if they wanted to, they can only do what they think is good for you, not what you actually believe is so.
While I’m not telling you to go out there and give everyone who’s ever given you advice the middle finger, the truth is that they can only ever help you. They can’t make you overcome your fears or challenges – only you can do that.
So to whoever is reading this – take a good look at your life right now, a good, honest look, and take on your challenges today. It may be a long and hard road, but you’ll be better for it.
I am strange. I admit it.
It’s in the title.
I say “expected” because sometimes it’s the kids with high grades that don’t pan out. Perhaps fear of the self is part of why.
Whether it’s true or not doesn’t matter - only that it is believed. Besides, the media already got your attention, which is all they ever wanted.
This one: (I am not going to read it again.) I think every paragraph is a jewel. It explains my whole life. I have broken away from authority, and have learned a deep trust in myself. I don't even have to be "right". I call it my "Own Process", and it is self-correcting.
"The most difficult thing about listening to others is becoming deaf to yourself."
My whole blog is about this, a coaching on simple steps to develop more trust in yourself. (And I say that you already know it all, but don't even trust your own knowledge.) One of the key posts is this one:
https://dialogs4change.substack.com/p/4-authority
So I am not going to write it again here.
Thanks