Lesson 6
ON FORCES
We often don’t realize how rigid our perimeter is and how resistant it is to change. We don’t realize, in other words, how powerful our emotional and behavioral patterns are. The reason is that we normally don’t resist them, but simply follow them automatically, as if it is the most natural thing to do. Following them requires very little effort. For example, an argumentative person doesn’t need to make any special effort to become argumentative—it comes to him naturally. Likewise, the workaholic doesn’t have to force herself to work hard—it is her spontaneous inclination.
This is especially true in the case of universal human patterns that are common to most human beings. For example, most of us act—without any special thought or effort—so as to be understood by others, to appear consistent and reasonable, to follow society’s rules of politeness, to make a good impression on our friends. Psychology textbooks are full of descriptions of such automatic patterns.
The result is that we feel as if we are free, although in truth we follow our personal or universal patterns and conceptions. In other words, we are confined to our little perimeter, but we don’t experience ourselves confined because this is where we feel natural and comfortable. Thus, when a normal person responds politely, or when an argumentative person argues, they don’t feel the walls of their prison if they have never tried to get out. Like a river that flows between two banks, they flow along a narrow path that is easy yet limited.
It is only when the river tries to climb over its banks—or when the prisoner tries to leave his prison—that they realize that they are really confined. In other words, when we try to break away from our patterns and conceptions, we find that this is extremely hard, and often impossible.
Many kinds of feelings pressure us to maintain our old familiar pattern: When I act unreasonably, for example, I feel anxious to correct or explain myself. Similarly, the shy person feels nervous when she decides to speak in public; the self-centered man feels bored in a conversation about others; the insecure woman feels embarrassed when asked to show her paintings; the smoker feels unbearable temptation when attempting to stop smoking; the suspicious man feels awkward when trying to express trust; the compulsive talker feels a tremendous urge to speak when asked to listen.
Such feelings and urges pressure us to return to our old familiar patterns and to their corresponding conceptions. And even if we overcome them once, we are likely to continue to feel the difficulty and sooner or later slide back to our usual patterns.
This means that the walls of our perimeter are real prison-walls. They act as forces that pressure us into our patterns and conceptions.
Psychologists and sociologists investigate the causes of these forces—inborn human tendencies, defense mechanisms, childhood traumas, social pressures, etc. But as philosophical practitioners we are interested in how these forces are manifested in the individual’s perimeter, not in the mechanisms behind them.
Example
Shortly after Nancy’s marriage, she discovers that she never says ‘no’ to her husband. If, for example, he suggests: “How about going to a Chinese restaurant, Nancy?” then she finds it almost impossible to refuse. After some reflection she realizes that this is also her attitude towards her parents, and towards her two best friends.
Strange, she thinks, her husband is so kind and sweet, and her parents never get angry, so why is she so afraid to say ‘no’? Besides, she is not afraid to contradict other people—the neighbors, her colleagues at work, even her boss.
After thinking about her behavioral pattern, she starts to understand the conception that stands behind it. It is as though something inside her says: “Love means total agreement.” Something inside her is afraid that disagreement would contradict her love relationships.
For several days she continues to think about this, as well as about other behaviors and emotions, and then she realizes that they all fall under one general conception: “To love means to merge. If you love somebody, the two of you become one person: one opinion, one behavior, one everything.” Now she understands why she always needs to know what her husband is doing and thinking, why she finds herself going into his office to clean it, why she is restless when he is out with his friends, and many other things.
Nancy decides to break her conception and the patterns that they create. The next day, when her husband suggests taking a walk in the park, she looks into his eyes and hesitates. She wants to say no, but his smiling face melts her decision. She feels she can’t disappoint him, that she doesn’t have the courage.
“I must try harder,” she decides when they return together from the park.
The next day, when her husband suggests going to visit their friend Tony in the evening, she manages to block her natural tendency to agree. Instead, she forces herself to reply: “No, not tonight, Kenny. Why don’t you go without me?”
Immediately anxiety fills her heart. She holds her breath, and finds herself searching his face again and again to see if he is angry or offended. For the rest of the day she is super-nice to him, trying to appease him.
At night, after he goes to Tony’s, she feels nervous. “This nervousness is stupid,” she says to herself. “Why shouldn’t I let him be by himself one evening?” But her reasoning does not calm her, and her emotions continue to speak in the language of her old conception. She can’t conquer her anxiety.
For months she struggles against her emotional and behavioral patterns. But although she becomes better at forcing herself to leave her husband alone from time to time, nevertheless it continues to be difficult. She keeps feeling the urge to merge with him, and only through conscious decision and effort can she resist it. Deep in her heart her conception of love remains unchanged.
In philosophical practice
Our contemporary culture is enchanted with the idea of self-change and self-improvement. The market is swamped with self-help books and self-improvement workshops and classes: How to become happier, how to gain self-confidence, how to be a better parent, how to have better sex. Presumably we are not good enough, and must be better.
But in philosophical practice such an approach would be misguided. This kind of self-improvement may be a legitimate task for certain psychotherapies, but philosophy can adopt it only at the price of becoming trivial and superficial. It would turn philosophy from a search for wisdom into pragmatic techniques for behavior-improvement or emotion-modification. Furthermore, it would simply replace one pattern with another pattern, from shyness to assertiveness, from anger to smiles, from one prison to a more comfortable prison.
In philo-sophia we do not aim at pragmatic solutions or comfortable prisons. Our aim is more ambitious: to open ourselves to broader horizons of understanding and life. But this doesn’t mean that we attempt to abolish the walls of our perimeter. Once we appreciate the immense resistance of our patterns and conceptions, we realize that this is an unrealistic goal. We understand that it is virtually impossible to eliminate our basic personality and attitudes to the world.
To a limited extent we can, of course, make changes in ourselves. We can acquire new knowledge; we can modify specific behaviors that are peripheral to our personality (e.g., smoking, though even this may be extremely difficult!); we can adopt new techniques to deal with a specific problematic emotion (e.g., a trick for overcoming fear), we can learn how to speak differently (e.g., say positive things), or how to think about ourselves with a new vocabulary. Many therapies do exactly that. But although these superficial changes may help us feel better, they leave unchanged the basic outlines of our perimeter.
As philosophical practitioners our primarily goal is to grow through understanding, not to fix behaviors or emotions. We understand the immense forces that sustain our patterns and conceptions. We realize that our will-power and self-control have little capacity to change ourselves. As counselors or workshop-leaders we give up the naïve hope that philosophical self-knowledge would enable the counselee to change himself in a substantive way. We understand that even when counselees are aware of their patterns, and even when they decide to change them, the distance to an actual change is enormous.
When I understand the forces maintaining my patterns and conceptions, the result is humility. I accept the weakness of my self-control and will. I understand how little my efforts can influence my perimeter. My busy conscious ‘self,’ who likes to control and decide and dictate, realizes its limitations.
This inspires me to let go of my controlling self, to abandon my self-controlling attitude, and open myself to other attitudes. I open in myself a space for other sources inside me, for new fountains of inspiration, of understanding, of wisdom. I allow them to act in me by pushing aside my smart little self.
This is, indeed, an important moment in the process of philosophical practice: the moment of discovering that I am not as free as I thought, that I am a prisoner of powerful patterns. This realization opens the door for a real philosophical understanding and change—not a change imposed by reason on my behavior and emotions, but rather a new dimension of being. But this is a topic for a future lesson.
Exercise
In this exercise your task is to feel the forces of your patterns and conceptions by trying to resist them. If you are like most people, who don’t like making a fool of themselves, you can do as follows:
Go to a store and ask to buy something that is obviously not sold there. For example, go to a ticket office and ask for a sandwich, or go to a restaurant and ask to buy a hammer. Even if you don’t have the courage to do the exercise, try to go as far as you can. Whether or not you succeed, be aware of your inner resistance: the tension and anxiety, the inner struggle, the effort.
Perhaps you wish to object: “I don’t want to do it because I don’t want to offend anybody,” or “I don’t want to waste their time,” and so on. These are excuses. Most likely you don’t have the courage to do so, which means that your pattern is too powerful. It is probably the pattern of following social expectations, expressing the conception “One should behave as expected,” or “One should appear reasonable.”
You can also do a similar exercise with a personal (not universal) pattern that is particularly yours. Again, whether or not you succeed, note the inner resistance, the effort, and the struggle.
