For
we take a friendly view of our own private affairs, and partiality always
obscures our judgment. I fancy that many men would have arrived at wisdom had
they not believed themselves to have arrived there already, had they not
purposely deceived themselves as to some parts of their character, and passed
by others with their eyes shut: for you have no grounds for supposing that
other people's flattery is more ruinous to us than our own.
Who
dares to tell himself the truth? Who is there, by however large a troop of
caressing courtiers he may be surrounded, who in spite of them is not his own
greatest flatterer?
The vanity begins within myself, and
then it lashes out at whoever stands in my way. I am so full of myself that
nothing else can enter. Worse yet, I am so full of myself that my bitterness
overflows, and it burns others.
I complain that the world is always
wrong, but it rarely occurs to me that I might be wrong. I am smug,
self-satisfied, immediately ready to cast blame, and hardly willing to receive
it.
Over the years I have done some odd
things, and been to a few interesting places, but something common to all of
them was that I overheard quite a bit of what other people had to say, far more
than they may have thought. I don’t need to get involved, or say anything at
all; I just need to listen.
Through it all, I sadly discern a
common pattern. Put two or more people together, give them a certain problem,
and they will almost always point fingers. The fault is out there, not in here.
They cover for themselves, and they circle the wagons.
Others are the villains, and they
are the suffering heroes. The more they talk it over, the stronger their
indignation becomes. Sometimes even the facts start changing, as some aspects
are grossly exaggerated, while others are ignored completely.
I suspect that when we are in
groups, we are simply tempted to magnify the self-righteousness that is already
simmering inside of us. Give me another to back me up, and I feel vindicated. I
now have a further justification for not thinking clearly.
The more the heads nod in agreement,
the more the thinking seems to get rattled. This must be why the most important
people like having a crew of yes-men to follow them around.
By looking outside, it distracts me from
looking inside. I am now free to judge everyone and everything besides myself. I
don’t need to learn anything new, because I already know it all. I don’t need
to become a better man, because I am already the best man there is. How
ridiculous the self-deception can become!
Sometimes we are so adamant in
telling a lie that we actually come to believe it, and at no time is this more
apparent than when we lie to ourselves. The degree to which we express how
deeply we are shocked, appalled, or offended can far too easily reflect the
delusions about our own bloated sense of self.
The Stoic remembers that the biggest
obstacle to wisdom and virtue is in our own hearts and minds, not in the way
the rest of the world happens to unfold. How ironic that the thing closest to
me, my very self, is the most difficult for me to look at fairly and honestly.
My self-imposed ignorance of my own character is surely at the root of my doubt
and uncertainty about a good life.
Written in 4/2011
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