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Get Over Yourself
Finally! An academic research grant I can get behind! From Quartz:
Self-obsessed people who just can’t “get over themselves” hardly sound like a subject worthy of academic research. But Candace Vogler, from the University of Chicago, and Jennifer Frey, from the University of South Carolina, disagree. The importance of “getting over yourself” — or self-transcendence — is key to their major 28-month project on virtue, happiness, and the meaning of life. The research proposal received a $2.1-million grant from the John Templeton Foundation and unites a team of around 20 international scholars, working in philosophy, religion, and psychology.
Okay, full disclosure: the John Templeton Foundation is also the parent of Templeton Press, publishers of the Virtue series to which I contribute (which are available here!)
But still: I like the sound of this.
Vogler tells Quartz that the inspiration for the project came from noticing how many privileged people seemed dissatisfied with their lives. “There was a hollowed-out place in the middle of their life where some purpose or happiness was supposed to be,” she says.
Okay, yes, “privileged” is a trigger word for me, and many of you, too, I’m sure. But here’s how I look at it: to be alive in America in the 21st century is a privilege. It really is a miracle time. Yes, yes, I know: lots of problems, but dying of starvation, diarrhea, small pox, civil war eruption, childbirth, sepsis, or a lot of other stuff isn’t something we have to worry about anymore. Plus: cell phones, computers, Purell, and cheese-in-the-crust pizza at the door in 30 minutes. So we’re all #privileged.
But that’s not without consequences:
“I think the biggest difference between people who are okay with the life they’ve built and people who are not is that you have to kind of get over yourself,” says Vogler. “There’s lots of anecdotal evidence to show that people devoted to self-advancement, self-expression, self-actualization, authenticity, major ambitions—people who are too wrapped up in themselves and their immediate families—are not inhabiting a big enough world for human good.”
I’d say that “self-expression” is the worst and most irritating of the traits listed above. And after that, “self-actualization,” whatever that means.
Much of the philosophical groundwork comes from Aquinas, a figure who is relatively under-studied in philosophy, in part because of his focus on God. But Frey and Vogler believe that, even for those who don’t share Aquinas’s religious views, his ideas are hugely important. For while Aristotle set out the importance of virtue, Aquinas expanded on the notion of self-transcendence.
Aristotle believes that for any living thing to flourish, it should be the “fullest realization of its potentiality,” Frey tells Quartz. Just as an oak tree has fully realized the potential of an acorn, humans can become fully realized by developing certain virtues—such as courage, wisdom, justice, and temperance. “If you don’t cultivate these virtues, it’ll ruin your life,” says Frey. “You need virtues to live well and achieve potential.”
Okay, so it’s coming down to this: you want to achieve your highest potential — you want to be self-actualized. And that’s okay. (Still not clear on what self-actualized really means, but it sounds like a not-too-bad personal goal to achieve.) But all of that personal ambition can evolve — or erupt — into a Unified Theory of Me First, All the Time. The Magnificent Me is all over the place: smiling insanely on Facebook, tweeting every tiny thought, curating a Potemkin life on Instagram. So what keeps us all from turning into Me Monsters?
“Aquinas thinks being happy and living a good life is about getting over yourself. That cultivating virtue is being able to see that a good life is, in really important ways, about looking outward and not being worried about whether it’s good for you.”
This is where the idea of “getting over yourself” becomes worthy of serious philosophical contemplation. “If you really want to be participating fully in the kind of good there is for human beings in your life,” Vogler says, “you need to have a life that’s connected to something bigger and better than you are.”
Hard to do at the end of a selfie-stick.
Published in Culture, Religion & Philosophy
A whole article about self-obsessed people without a mention of Trump? I don’t know if I’m disappointed or relieved.
I think this explains the absence of the philosopher king.
Too wrapped up in family? I think that’s where getting over one’s self begins.
That’s a great sentence, Rob.
Ayn Rand called St. Thomas Aquinas a giant among philosophers. She did add a disclaimer about his Catholicism.
It must be a very dark day indeed when someone realizes that they are not G-d’s greatest gift to mankind. Darker still when they realize everyone they know knew that from the first moment they had met.
A good dose of humility helps, too. A priest told me that it helps to remember, too, that you’re just not that important! (Not you, Rob, any of us.)
Sure, but the armor provided by being the Gift, or the One, insulates against that realization. Sometimes it never happens until the mortal coil is shed.
Rob co-founded a website specifically to create his own mass of digital worshippers for him to bestow his Imperial glory upon. I woulda thought that he’d be afraid of studies into the phenomenon of self-importance.
I kid! I kid!
Why do I love to bust Rob’s chops so? Maybe I should discuss the matter with a therapist…
Yes, Susan, humility is one of our most powerful weapons against many of the seven deadly ones. However, I agree that Rob could never be guilty of anything remotely similar to a deadly. This was a fun post to read.
It sure is related. Is family simply the next layer of the onion of our social life? Self is first, then family, then neighborhood, etc.? Balance, grasshopper.
So, self-absorption and self-actualization (whatever that means) are not a key to fulfillment and happiness. I guess I need to work on that.
And then there are those of us who are simultaneously self-centered and self-loathing.
One of my favorites:
“No Room” by T.E. Brown (published anonymously in 1875)
If thou couldst empty all thyself of self,
Like to a shell dishabited,
Then might He find thee on the Ocean shelf,
And say — “This is not dead,” —
And fill thee with Himself instead.
But thou art all replete with very thou,
And hast such shrewd activity,
That, when He comes, He says — “This is enow
Unto itself — ‘Twere better let it be:
It is so small and full, there is no room for Me.”
Unless family is used as a way to draw attention to yourself.
— “Look at me! Aren’t I an amazing ______!” (fill in the blank with your favorite relationship mom/dad/wife/husband/sister/brother/etc.)
— “Look at my _____ (same as above)! I’m so lucky to have them in my life!” — Translation: “Look at me! Aren’t I amazing to have them in my life?”
I hate how awesome I am.
mo’ awesome mo’ problems.
It’s a burden, right?
The signal quality of both sin and mental illness is an inability to transcend (escape from, really) oneself. As Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff have pointed out, we’ve been training our children to focus relentlessly on themselves—their feelings, their self-esteem, their talents, their accomplishments, their success—and the result is a lot of privileged Yalies making themselves miserable because even Yale can’t make the Self happy.
They are ungrateful—which is not just irritating (they have so much to be grateful for!) but tragic. Gratitude=real, deep happiness.