If it ever happens to you to be
diverted to things outside, so that you desire to please another, know that you
have lost your life's plan.
Be content then always to be a
philosopher; if you wish to be regarded as one too, show yourself that you are
one and you will be able to achieve it.
—Epictetus,
The Handbook, Chapter 23 (tr Matheson)
I still
remember quite a few of my elders, many of them with all the trappings of
success, telling me that I had to read Dale Carnegie’s How to win friends and influence people if I ever wanted to amount
to anything. Many people no longer know of this book, but for decades it was
the best-selling primer for rising in the business and social world, and the
beginning of so much of the modern self-help movement, which offers us various fixes,
formulas, and lists for making it in this life.
Even at
a tender age, the proto-Stoic within me was troubled just by the title. Are
friends really things we “win”? And is “influencing” people really the right
way to approach any relationship? I would have been more comfortable with a
title along the lines of How to love your
friends and respect people.
But I
read the book, mainly out of curiosity, and as much as I tried to give Carnegie
every chance, it confirmed that this was coming from a completely different
view of the human good, and therefore of how we should relate to others. As the
years went by, I began to see how entrenched Carnegie's approach actually was, both
on a professional and personal level.
Carnegie
suggested that we should change our own behavior to change the behavior of
others, and by doing so we can win influence and benefits for ourselves. This
seemed to me to be nothing more than manipulation, and later I understood
Sinclair Lewis’ critique of the whole model: "smile and bob and pretend to be
interested in other people's hobbies precisely so that you may screw things out
of them.”
Despite
all of my reservations, I still managed to misdirect years of my work life to
this way of thinking. If I could find a way to please others, I thought this
would circle back to me, and I would find all that professional security
everyone was telling me was the end goal. I was warned that the nail that
sticks out gets hammered down, that I should appear willing to please, and I
then would one day end up with people willing to please me.
I fell
for a similar trap personally. I was in love with a girl, who it so happens
ended up becoming a master of the Carnegie Method, and I found myself always
trying to find ways to please her. I think I saw other people thinking this was
love, so I did much the same.
The
dilemma was that if I thought or acted for myself, I was shunned, and would
sheepishly return straight back to obedience. If I was obedient, I was met with
a whole new and more demanding set of requirements. It never seemed to end,
though I now realize I was expected to be doing my own manipulation while being
manipulated, and the best manipulation would win.
I, for
one, will stick with Epictetus. I should concern myself with being a good man,
and I should never seek to define myself by how well I have won the respect of
others. Such living is hardly selfish if I think of the good man as one
dedicated to justice and service, and not to manipulation and profit. I need to
prove this only to myself, in good conscience, and not to others.
As soon
as I am concerned with impressing another, I will gladly sacrifice the actual
reality of merit with the mere perception, and simply the appearance will be
enough to get me what I selfishly want.
I
remember a photograph from graduate school, where a number of my fellow students were gathered around an esteemed visiting scholar, and they were all laughing at
one of his clever intellectual jokes. I was there that day, and I also remember
how many of those same students in the photograph spoke freely about how much
they disliked the professor, though they were willing to flatter him for their
professional benefits. That same image was used for many years in university
promotional materials, and it always made me sad.
I kept
only one photograph of the lost love of my life, not as an object of adoration
but as a warning reminder. My father and I were playing the traditional game of
holiday chess on Easter Sunday, and the picture showed us duking it out as my
beloved looked on with great interest. It was only years later that I realized
how feigned that interest was, and that she was deliberately posing for the
camera and for the record here in private, in exactly the same way she did at
public events. I had foolishly ignored all the signs.
I have
slowly learned not to resent my former colleagues or my lost friend, and only
because I have had to struggle with exactly the same temptations in my own
choices and actions.
Both
these occasions remind me how easily drawn we all are to playing others to
bolster ourselves. Like those old, successful men who told me I had to read
Carnegie or perish, there was much to be found there in the world of wealth,
influence, and appearance.
But I
did have to learn the hard way that this will leave the mind and heart empty
and cold. There can never be happiness and virtue when truth is compromised for
appearance, or when love is sacrificed for convenience.
Image: Jacques de L'Ange, Allegory of Pride (1642)
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