The Myth of the Better

I’ve spent a fair amount of time discussing the role of social status in our lives today. The prevailing theme has been that we are genetically programmed to pay close attention to where we stand in the hierarchy and to take actions that lead to an elevation of our status. Moreover, this genetic influence is causing us more harm than good. What may surprise you is that I really believe things are not now as bad as they have been in the past. That, however, is not to say that there is nothing more to do to eradicate this negative influence from our lives. But first, a little history.

Status hierarchies in caveman days were true indicators of who would survive long enough to reproduce. Those at the top got access to the limited resources that provided for survival in the most inhospitable environment our species has ever seen. Those at the bottom, and their genes, disappeared, never to be heard from again. As time went on, however, humans learned to conquer their environment to the point that living and dying had less and less to do with status. Nevertheless, with the caveman genes intact, the quest for status lived on (and still does).

Bands of humans grew into tribes, which eventually grew into full-blown societies. An interesting feature of these societies is that status came to become codified, so to speak. In the Victorian era, for example, all people, at least all sane people, generally knew how things were. In those days, there definitely were some folks who were “better” than others, and this meant something concrete. It meant that the better did not have to treat lesser men with respect. This is mainly because the success of the lesser man was economically connected to the whims of upperclassmen.

Let’s think of ourselves, for a moment, as commoners in Victorian England. Suppose a Duke decides that we will no longer serve as a domestic in his home (where we have been making next to nothing, but we have a roof over our head). He need not offer a reason or be in any way conciliatory. We simply have no recourse. The government isn’t set up that way. And make no mistake - the consequences of being disfavored by the upper class are serious. If we can’t keep our job, we’re likely to end up on your own, trying to eek out a living in the parts of town that don’t see many members of the royal family. No, our only hope for remaining in the employ of a member of the noble class is to adhere to some very specific interpersonal rules. The kicker is the first - we are our class and will never rise above it. Next, our class says that we are to be seen only when needed and heard only when addressed. We must answer their questions; they need not even acknowledge ours. That’s how it is, and if things get rough on occasion, that’s how it is, too. No one said life would be easy.

Now, admittedly, we could resist, and certainly some folks do. However, we can look in the gutters at the remains of plenty of those who’ve resisted and failed. It isn’t pretty. We keep concluding that our best bet is to accept our lot in life and get as much out of it as we can. If we can’t be royalty, we might as well live for and in the presence of it. If anything, this takes a lot of the unpredictability out of life, which is quite an achievement in itself.

One of the hardest things about being a commoner is the fact that the ebb and flow of necessary resources, such as food and shelter, can be excruciating. There are quite a lot of people clamoring for many scarce things. The early bird definitely gets the worm, when there is one. The bottom line is that it’s a lot of scratching and struggling for a meager reward, but the reward is sustenance, at least for a while. Getting on board with the social structure established by the upper classes provides an avenue to the stable provision of life’s staples – food to eat and a safe, reliable place to stay.

Now let’s come back to reality. I cite the Victorian era as an example of how social structures became implicitly understood, but England isn’t the only example. Indeed, I can’t think of a single lasting society that didn’t arrive at a similar type of social structure. The real story is the societies that managed to take these anachronistic notions of status and place them on the sidelines. The United States stands out as the brightest instance.

On the matter of human rights, America’s philosophy came about via a strong reaction against the idea that some people are better than other people, simply by virtue of their birth. The laws of the land were built around the idea that all men are equal in the eyes of the law. The result has been the most powerful force for good that has ever existed on this planet. Never before had common men been given the chance to become uncommon, and this, it turns out, has made all the difference. But, regardless of the success this concept has spawned from an economic perspective, the past is still a bit of an open wound with many folks in this country, and the negative effects are constantly reverberating through all of us.

“He thinks he’s better than me.” We’ve all heard that statement come out of someone’s mouth. Not referring to anything in particular, just an overall sense of better. This, I believe, is a reflection on the quasi-caste systems of the past. Those who are on, or grew up in close proximity to, the low end of the socioeconomic spectrum are not, mentally speaking, far removed from the days when the mindset of their ancestors was that of the commoner in Victorian England. They had accepted their lower class lot in life. And, to their chagrin, as generations went on and they were emancipated, they continued to occupy the lower class of the free people, the people supposedly all created equal. Though they knew that the formal notion of better people was gone, they still experienced the same struggle in life that they did as commoners. Nothing much changed. That is, except for the creeping grip of resentment.

To be emancipated and yet powerless breeds contempt, contempt for the unjust system and contempt for the souls who, by the luck of the draw, benefit from it. This is the mindset of too many people nowadays. The thing is that it need not be this way. This notion of being inherently better or worse is utterly vacuous. Gaining a new lease on life, for these, the afflicted, is as easy as rejecting it.

It’s important to us all that these folks get their heads straight. It’ll instantly take a lot of the seething anger out of our society. After all, if you think someone unjustifiably thinks they are better than you, it isn’t hard to find yourself doing things to try to one-up them. It is, in fact, very easy to spend a lot of time trying to prove them wrong. It can get so out of hand that your entire self-opinion and ability to be happy revolves the status of this dispute over your worthiness. Now this may sound childish, but I can absolutely guarantee that a heck of a high percentage of today’s adults can relate to it.

To get around the rat hole that is the lingering concern over social class, one need only commit to rejecting any comparative discussions that do not adequately define terms. The word better is meant to provide information about the relationship of one thing to another, with regard to some characteristic or characteristics. If you don’t say what characteristic you’re talking about, the word “better” has no meaning. Therefore, when the words “better” or “worse” come up, they are considered seriously only if the object of discussion is identified sufficiently. Whamo! Problem solved.

“But, but, but…” they’ll say. No buts, I say. It really is that simple. The foundation of this reasoning is two-tiered. At bottom is the fact that our legal system is egalitarian – laws allow all people equal opportunity to own property and to pursue professions as they see fit. Above that is the fact that individuals from all imaginable backgrounds (even the worst) have successfully navigated our system to find success and happiness in life. Basically, if they can do it, it’s doable. We need only refuse to allow the unqualified notions of better or worse to have any impact on the opinions we form (of ourselves and others) to solve the problem.

The bottom line is that we have indeed come a long way baby. We do not live in a time when status is determined at birth and the chances of rising above are slim to none. We live in a time when the barriers to success are minimal, relatively speaking. More importantly, for the vast majority of Americans, the likelihood of getting over those barriers is primarily a function of their own actions and the decisions they make. This is the key. The idea that some people are inherently better than other people is useless, despite the fact that it is supremely powerful. It is a game with few winners and many losers. The good news is that there is absolutely no reason that anyone should play. I am convinced that the majority of hindrances to any individual’s progress are created in his or her mind. If this is true, then the solution is simply a matter of escorting these deleterious thoughts from one's consciousness. Though it may be hard at first, it’s worth it, and it gets easier over time. The point has come for those who are playing this terrible game to quit and get on with their lives. We’ll all be better off for it.

The Mass Produced Individual

As a teenager, I remember how important it was for many of my contemporaries to send a clear message to the rest of us that they were different. They loved music that no one had heard. They shunned sports and spent their free time in different ways. Some had weird haircuts. Some had piercings and such. But, above all, the prevailing method for individual differentiation was in clothing style. There were always plenty of in-style fashions to rebel against. When the cool kids were all wearing Polo shirts, the desperately different wore something else, anything else. It was as if they felt outside of the mainstream and, rather than accept this as their lot in life, they stood up against the very idea of mainstreamism.

This little view into human group dynamics tells a larger story. Everyone (or most everyone) wants to fit in. When we don't fit in where we want to fit in, we have a couple of options. We can either try harder to fit in, which is almost always transparent and leads to further ostracization. Or we can decide that we no longer want to fit in. When we decide the latter, we have to look for other groups to accept us. When we find one, it is nearly always the case that the fundamental feature of our new group is a distaste for mainstreamism. It's the misery loves company thing. The disaffected come together by virtue of their shared mistreatment at the hands of the cool.

The true irony of all this is the idea that those who reject the mainstream are being individuals, while the in-crowd is a engaged in the saddest kind of group think. I'm here to tell you - individuality is far more rare than most would like to admit. Even among the disaffected, the quest to fit in runs wild. There's the hippie subculture, with its commitment to the au natural lifestyle. Yet, standing in the parking lot of a Phish concert, it's hard to tell the individuals from the poseurs. Same thing with the body mutilation, tattoo set. Go into a tattoo parlor on the seedy side of town in khakis and a button down and you'll quickly see how much you represent the lemming-like mainstream society that so offends these people. Then, if you have the means and patience to go to these lengths, wear your oldest, dirtiest clothes and paint some artificial tattoos on your visible skin and go back into that same tattoo parlor. You'll find your reception is quite different. This probably comes as no surprise, but there is a point here.

Individuality happens in the mind. It's not about what you wear or whether you choose to pierce multiple parts of your body. It's about what you think and how you express yourself. I'm not saying we shouldn't try to make statements with our appearance - there's something very powerful about being able to influence the minds of others without saying a word. However, things get sticky when we believe that our outward appearance is the core of our individuality. The fact is that fitting in is so genetically in-grained into our species that nothing is ever going to extricate the quest for it from human discourse. To rebel against this and assume that, in doing so, we have achieved individuality is a serious mistake. This is putting the cart before the horse...big time. The price of this mistake is waking up later in life only to realize that we're really no different than what we rebelled against and that the time has long since passed for us to make out mark on this world. And it doesn't help that there are entire industries dedicated to helping us screw up.

I was walking through a J.Crew store a few days ago, and I noticed that they are selling these old-looking t-shirts with faded logos ostensibly from ski resorts and mountain lodges. Now why would anyone want to buy something like this? It's simple. Wearing new t-shirts with J.Crew plastered across them is the equivalent of selling out in today's youth culture. Your clothes have to look old, so as to give the impression that you don't care what you look like. In years past, kids accomplished this by buying clothes at thrift stores or consignment shops, ironically putting a ton of effort into looking like they put in no effort whatsoever. Nowadays, however, clothing companies have figured out that they can mass market new clothes that are made to look like old clothes. And, crazy as it is, these clothes are selling like hotcakes. (Been to an Abercrombie and Fitch lately?) Now who's the sellout?

The idea I'm trying to get across here is that this notion of selling out or being viewed as mainstream is entirely unproductive. It produces lemmings of another stripe, but lemmings just the same. Group think is real, and the key to getting around it is not in pretending to be something we're not. I think individuality is essential to making the most out of life. We have to learn to think for ourselves. We have to learn to decide what we like and to have the courage to express it. New clothes that look like old clothes have nothing to do with it. When we figure out what makes us us, everything else, our fashion sense, our choice of friends, our jobs, everything falls into line. But this is hard. Taking the time to really get to know who we are as people is harder than simply donning the latest fashions and letting everyone else tell us who we are. Nevertheless, this is the task that lays before us. Let us not shrink from it for fear of what we might find.

Here's to the Ironmen

I'm coming off a weekend in Panama City, Florida. I went to watch a good friend participate in his first Ironman Triathlon. For those who don't know, this is one of the craziest sporting events on this planet. Competitors start by swimming 2.4 miles in the ocean. They then jump on their bikes and ride 112 miles. Not yet content that they've done enough for the day, these lunatics get off the bike and run a marathon. That's 26.2 miles on foot, after all that.

I wanted to see my friend accomplish his goal because I know how many years he's been thinking about it, and I know how hard he's trained over the last six or seven months. But aside from that, I also wanted to go because I am a big believer in the idea that getting out of your comfort zone is essential to getting the most out of life. The crowd at the event certainly served to reinforce that belief.

What struck me most was not the amazing condition of the elite athletes who showed up to win. It was the regular folks, the ones no one would expect to enbark on such a daunting endeavor. There were men and women of all shapes and sizes. The oldest guy was 79 years old! There was even a lady who was diagnosed a few years ago with terminal cancer. Her doctors gave her four months to live in 2000. Obviously, her body didn't get the memo. No, this event was not about the professional competitors. It was about the power of determination and the lessons that getting out of one's comfort zone bring to life as a whole.

I have long believed that our genes' ancient quest for survival makes us succeptible to settling for the status quo. As soon as we get all of what we need and most of what we want, it's easy to just shut down and become a slave to routines. But this, in my view, is a waste of our precious time here. Moreover, it makes us ill-equipped to handle change.

The fact is that, no matter how hard we try to insulate ourselves from it, the world is always in a state of flux. Things just simply don't stay the same. Those who are slaves to routine struggle constantly to deny this reality because, when the world changes, the routines have to change. Sometimes the changes are relatively minor, which means routines can be modified slightly without much ado. But occasionally, changes are dramatic, such as when jobs are lost or relationships fall apart. These new situations require actions that are often very unpleasant, and it is the Ironmen who are mentally prepared to do what has to be done.

By voluntarily committing themselves to the pain and anguish that comes with training for and competing in such a grueling event, these inspirational people are teaching themselves how to handle life at its toughest. It seems that our world is so properous that we have to fabricate tribulations to test our minds and bodies in the ways that our ancestors were tested in simply living life. Nevertheless, whether the tests are contrived or natural, the result is the same. The tested come away with the knowledge that they can endure when they have to.

The Ironman who gets downsized and faces the likelihood of having to get a lower paying job while studying at night to obtain the skills to get back into the workforce at his or her previous level has nothing to fear. The work may be hard but it'll never be as hard as the final 10k of the Ironman, and the payoff will be more valuable than the Ironman medal (at least in practical terms). The point is that we have to learn to push ourselves beyond what is required in everyday life to really know what we're made of. In the Ironman world, they have a saying: "The Ironman doesn't build character. It reveals it." So true.

So, to my friend Robbie, I say, hats off to you. You're an inspiration to us all. And to everyone else, I'd say it doesn't matter if you choose an Ironman triathlon or a public speaking course. Just get out there and get uncomfortable. Push yourself to achieve something you're afraid of. You'll learn a lot about yourself and what you're capable of, and you'll send a message to those around you that you are not adrift on the sea of life, that you are the captain of your seas. This is a contagious mentality, one that our world needs a lot more of.

When to Internalize?

I think there's a fine line between internalizing our environment too much and ignoring it too little. In fact, I've long thought that the nexus between the environment and the mind is where life, for most of us, is really played out. And, despite how much I've contemplated this idea, I don't have much to show for my musings. I can, however, offer some general observations.

Let's begin with the over-internalizers. If we internalize too much, everything that happens to us hits home. A guy I know hates to see runners along the roads. He says they remind him that he should be working out, even though he can't seem to get around to it. This guy is internalizing his environment too much. For guys like him, every little situation serves as a mirror reflecting back who he really is. Since he resents himself for not being what he thinks he ought to be, it pains him to be reminded frequently. In short, his environment makes him feel bad about himself. The opposite can also be true.

Folks close to the former president, Bill Clinton, say that he is literally addicted to public adulation. I don't know him, so I can't say if it's true. But let's suppose it is. If this is true, Bill also internalizes his environment too much. He needs an external world to bring him happiness, so he continuously internalizes the public's demand for his presence to bolster his self-opinion. Indeed, Dick Morris (who, admittedly, has been grinding an axe against the guy for years) says that Clinton jumped out of the recovery bed recently to stump for Kerry not so much because he loves the Massachusetts Senator, but because he needed a praise fix. I guess everybody needs something to keep them going. But, for some people, that something is definitely not their environment, or at least not a conscious concern about it.

We can call these the under-analyzers. People like this go through life oblivious to what is going on around them, especially with regard to the people around them. Some are total bafoons, and they can't help themselves. But there are others, and I think they constitute the majority of under-analyzers, are some of our brightest achievers. They're the most driven among us. It's as if they've latched onto the formula for modern success, and they are working it for all it's worth. There are two big problems with this.

The first is a matter of a majorly flawed premise. What exactly is modern success? I'm shocked at how many people will instantly respond with a litany of material possessions. In their minds, we are what we own. So, it's no surprise that these kinds of people equate being successful with making a ton of cash. And...as America is still the land of opportunity, they figure out somewhere along the way that all they have to do to get cash is to work hard and make good long-term decisions. Voila...add one more to the rat race. The problem is that this model of success is backwards. I say that the problem is a flawed premise because, though it may be true that the best way to become successful by society's modern standards is through crushing hours of work, there is no evidence to suggest that being successful by society's standards has any inherent value. Prozac anyone? This brings us to the second big problem.

I am thoroughly convinced that the best things in life are times spent having fun with loved ones. In fact, my personal measure of success is how frequently I can make these things happen. The under-analyzer, however, does not share my sentiments. He or she will breeze right by the spouse, partner, kids, or whomever, and head off to the office, only to return home after dark when the day is all but over. He or she will, when confronted, go on and on about providing for the family and how that takes hard work. But the fact is that the environment (the family, etc.) means less than the vision of and commitment to modern success. It's sad really, but it's everywhere.

The thing about internalizing is finding the right balance. I'll admit that I don't know exactly how to figure it out. But I think I've got some useful guidelines. First, I think we need to be realistic and honest when we look at the world around us and when we deal with the people in our lives. That means we have to let the world in when the world is telling us something. But then we have to accept whatever it is and move on. For example, my friend who hates to see runners needs to just accept that there will always be people who work out more often than he does. He needs to either get off the couch or accept that he simply doesn't have the time to make fitness a priority. Then, when he sees a runner on the road, there's nothing to contemplate. It's already settled. When we do this, we keep the environment mostly external, except when it has something new to tell us.

Knowing when the environment has something to tell us really the tough part. But I think it's easier if we always give our loved ones the benefit of the doubt. That means we can't ever take them for granted. I try to remember how I treated my wife when I was courting her. Then I compare (and admittedly often contrast) that with how I treat her now. What changed? If anything, she deserves to be treated better now because she has loved me for years and she is the mother of my child. Yet, I'll sometimes leave out the pleasantries that used to roll so eloquently from my tongue. It's as if she has, figuratively speaking, taken on the role of a house plant. She is not new and, therefore, she blends into the rest of the environment - the one I don't internalize. But it doesn't have to be this way.

I find that simply reminding myself of these little things is a powerful tool. I give the world no influence over my motivation or my emotional state unless it tells me something I don't already know. But I make an exception where my loved ones are concerned. I try to transport myself back to when our love was new and I was thrilled to shine it. Then, I hung on every word or gesture. I was genuinely preoccupied with the emotional state of my favorite people. The world, at least where they were concerned, was almost directly connected to my emotional hinterlands. Maybe I don't need to be that gooey these days, but I'm certainly better off if I keep the channels wide open for those for whom I care the most. That way, I never miss the chance to internalize the good times. That's what it's all about.