1 - 9 - 18 Same Old Questions, No New Answers

This morning I listened to Art of Charm podcast #685 about the positive effects of encouraging pro-social emotions such as compassion, gratitude, and the correct kind of pride.

Compassion will make it easier for us to perform unselfish acts because we’ll actually wish to do them. Gratitude grants us greater life satisfaction holding actual quality of life equal. And pride, not hubris, will instill the kind of confidence in our abilities that will make us more willing to share and take risks. This will in turn make people want to collaborate with us more readily.

I’m trying to summarize the podcast as briefly as possible because it’s not really the point I want to get to. The point I’m trying to get to is that the new wisdom we generate every year through social experiments and psychological studies is not new at all! The new research, the new self-help books, the new “life-hacks” that come out perennially aren’t unique, aren’t original, aren’t new.

And this isn’t a phenomenon of the past ten years either. There’s a bit in How to Win Friends and Influence People where Dale Carnegie tells a story that I think illustrates the exact point I’m trying to make. He’s telling of a writing teacher who instructs his students that they have to be genuinely interested in people, they have to genuinely like people in order to write good fiction. He apologizes for repeating what they probably hear on Sundays, that in order to be effective in this world we need to love people.

I’m sure if I read enough I could find even older examples of people arriving at the same conclusion as scripture by the secular route of thought.

The more I explore the productivity psychology that’s popular today, or the new networking tips, or the best way to inspire trust in people, the more I am amazed at how I’ve heard all of it before sitting in a pew.

There’s been a long and contentious debate, which I hope is finally resolving but I’m sure will revive soon if it does die down, about whether it is better to be altruistic or selfish as it relates to our professional success. The zeitgeist currently is that if you want sustainable (i.e. long-term with people who know you) success in your career you need to be honest, unselfish, and considerate. But I think many of us learned that in Catechism when we were six.

Meditation is a hot craze now as interest in productivity and mental well-being boon, which was no surprise to any established religion from Islam to Buddhism to Christianity. Most of the popular secular meditation practices, from my experience, are based on the Buddhist tradition. I think that’s likely because it’s non-Western so people don’t as readily recognize its religious origins, as well as the nature of Buddhism as being less god-oriented than many other religions.

But I just find it so curious that there’s this massive distrust of traditional knowledge when it’s been proven right so many times. There’s an old adage that every generation imagines itself to be smarter than the former and wiser than the next. I’m not even sure that’s true anymore. There seems to be no respect for life experience or past experimentation in the way people order their lives today. It’s as if novelty is a more attractive feature than proven success. People would rather do hot yoga with goats than sit in a chair and pray, simply because they are so repulsed by surrendering to a traditional value system.

But as I heard in the Art of Manliness podcast about the importance of being part of demanding groups and wholeheartedly agree with, this desire for individuality for the sake of individuality really makes us all less interesting, less effective, less real. Who cares for the opinion of a person who jumps on every fad? Are you more authentic and interesting if you have a deep interest and history in some life philosophy, be it Stoicism or something more spiritual, or just know all about the new mindfulness exercise that Buzzfeed just posted on their snapchat story?