It's funny-I was writing a piece on how many people should care less (MUCH less) about what others think of and about them.
After thinking about it more, it's not that people should care less. They should stop leveraging 'social pressure' or 'judgement' or 'stigma' as reasons for sympathy. They should stop fighting against these things. They should stop trying to change the judgements of others, using guilt or manipulation or victim status. Judgment can be very good, and it's socially necessary. We should stop pretending otherwise.
An equally ridiculous idea in our modern world is that, somehow, we have the right to live free of others' judgements, and that judgement is always wrong and inappropriate (although no one applies that consistently). Being 'judgy' is a bad thing these days.
I suspect this comes from a general feminization of our culture and our bureaucracies and our politics. Women are more concerned with what others think of them (on average). They're more agreeable. They're more inclined to suffer under judgement or pressure, and they're more concerned with avoiding the label of 'stuck up.' They're more reliant on social maneuvering for status and more concerned with their appearance to others. (All of these statements are 'on average' of course) In brief, they're more conformist, and conformity implies a great deal of concern with the attitudes and conditions of those around you.
Think of the most common examples of complaints about judgment: women complaining about society's beauty standards ('body positivity'). Women complaining about parental expectations, or mothers expected to have/do/be it all. Women complaining about being (unequally) judged for promiscuous behavior. HR trainings and the concept of implicit bias and gender ideology-all phenomena of people becoming REALLY concerned with the opinions and attitudes of others.
If you want people to have a better opinion of you, do things that comport with their attitudes more often and better. Otherwise, don't worry about it. Not caring about things and ideas that you find to be ridiculous might be socially very costly but it's also very freeing. I've been doing that for years. It seems that this possibility is precluded for many women, and also many (modern) men. It only matters if you let it matter.
<Judgment can be very good, and it's socially necessary. We should stop pretending otherwise.>
<An equally ridiculous idea in our modern world is that, somehow, we have the right to live free of others' judgements, and that judgement is always wrong and inappropriate (although no one applies that consistently).>
<If you want people to have a better opinion of you, do things that comport with their attitudes more often and better. Otherwise, don't worry about it.>
I guess we ought to just think of social judgment as a tool. It's good if it helps incentivize things we think are good -- e.g. basic politeness -- and bad if it incentivizes things we think are bad -- e.g. conformity to one body type or something.
Anyway, I think that bridges our thoughts. Thanks for reading and responding.
I think you have a big general point, but also there's much truth in that *traditionally* many people who seek therapy were more likely to be on the "excessively concerned with reputation / social validation" end of the scale than "does not take things personally enough" (or even "inconsiderate and entitled bully"). That said. We are a hypersocial species ridiculously concerned with reputation and status. And maybe it's a mismatch by now? A bit like a passion for high fat high carb foods? Perhaps people (and our individualistic civilisation values) recognise that we don't need to feel as desperately concerned with belonging and acceptance as our ancestors. Perhaps the joys of socialty (for example helping and giving to others) can be had without as many pains of it (for example worrying about opinion of complete strangers about our unfashionable outfit or makeup free face). As someone who tended to "I only care about the special few" but moved to a stance of "I need community to survive so I better behave/try not to offend anyone directly", I have to say it SUCKS. Whether it's because it reminds me that I lost the capacity to be less interdependent or just because it takes effort, I'm not sure. I know why I do it, but just like your clients, I wish I didn't have to. It's just I know it's not some kind of mysterious inner drive, but cost/benefit calculation. Now excuse me, I need to finish a cake for a community event.
Evolutionary mismatch, did you say? Now you have my attention :)
How come you moved from the "special few" to "need community"? Surely having a special few is enough community for many people. Anyway, I agree that it's its own kind of prison, to be overly concerned about what too many people think, and that therapy can and should help a person titrate. An evolutionary perspective, for example, would point out that caring what others think has the ultimate purpose of establishing a good reputation among people who are going to be a part of your life. So, a neighbor rather than online stranger. That's likely going to restrict the number of opinions a client cares about. However, I'm a much bigger fan of reducing exposure to those opinions than trying to don a thicker skin toward them, and that, too, is because we're programmed to be highly sensitive to those opinions whether it "makes sense" to or not. Better to insulate oneself from them, IMO.
There’s the underlying evolutionary reason we care about our reputations, which is to encourage being prosocial, and then there’s the way reputation is built today, which is by participating in questionable status competitions.
At the risk of seeming reductive, it occurs to me that this trope in therapy culture occurs because the field has coalesced on the solution that works most of the time, which is giving the correct medicine (stop caring so much) in high dosage (completely) for the problem which afflicts the demographic that typically seeks therapy (anxious women). This generally alleviates the symptoms, but it doesn’t try to actually understand the mechanism behind the unhappiness and comes with some side effects.
Instead of blanket not caring or caring, I think a better approach would be to figure out what it is someone wants as their place in society, and designing a system meant to achieve that. That might be a mercenary cost benefit analysis, or it might be creating an internal set of values based on what matters to those who are significant to you. Either way, the goal should be satisfying a set of internal criteria that you've designed, rather than losing control to the selfishness or envy of others.
So the provocative way I would describe it is that the currently dominant status competition is how attractive you are to women. For women, this is the recursively weighted sum of how envious your life makes other women, which means you need to "have it all". In addition to being thin, hot, young, successful, happy, this also includes being likable to all. I don't know if you're watching the new season of White Lotus, but this seems to be the focus of the Jaclyn group plot.
It probably came about as a combination of innate prosocial tendencies and the rise of social media, which expanded the circle of caring from your local community to the entire world.
The reason I call it questionable is that I have a sort of standard for judging status competitions: I don't agree with the categorical imperative as a general rule, but given that the entire point of status games is to incentivize global participation in some activity, I think the two concepts fit well together.
I am not watching the new season, but think I understand your perspective regardless. I'll sit with it and see how it fits. Thanks for sharing and commenting.
Definitely, good point. Perhaps "modern resurgence" is a better phrase. In navigating this tension, no doubt people frequently oscillate between the two poles, on the one hand of not giving a crap what others think and on the other caring too much. It would make sense that over history, schools of thought, techniques, philosophies, and so forth would spring up at various points on the spectrum. Its an enduring problem.
At the moment, the U.S. is definitely closer to the "don't care what anyone thinks" than at other times in its history and compared to other countries at the moment (Japan, Singapore). It's possible, too, that therapy has been a driver of this, and I don't think that's good.
Paired with being or in the service of being an excellent person though rather than just following one’s whims, yes? An important distinction I’d suggest.
One of the best takes I’ve seen on this topic—spot on about the tension between individualism and social belonging. The ‘you do you’ mindset feels freeing until you realize social rejection still has consequences. Love the line about therapists acting like bodyguards for their clients’ feelings. That hit. Balance is the key, but our culture loves extremes. Wish more discussions like this existed in therapy spaces!
Thanks for saying so, and I agree, I wish more of these discussions existed. That said, I think they will start to. Books like Bad Therapy by Shrier and The Anxious Generation by Haidt are both very popular and push back against extreme therapeutic assumptions such as coddling children or "you do you." And Jean Twenge has some books (Generation Me) on self-centeredness specifically, though I've only read Generations so far. But, yeah, I do foresee a cultural shift coming. Let's hope so.
Some ruminations your post inspired. Is my own personal happiness the highest value to be pursued at all costs? I suspect that many of our great-great-grandparents were more concerned with character; and I wonder if we wouldn´t, ironically, be happier as a society if we were more concerned about character too. Kindness often demands we restrain our authentic selves.
I´m in a long-term relationship with someone who has a chronic mental illness. A therapist once implied, albeit subtly, that I might be happier alone -- and I might be! I could abandon my loved one in a burst of codependent-no-more affirmation, but would that be the best thing for him? Does he matter?
"Kindness often demands we restrain our authentic selves." - Definitely, and I love the idea of character as the highest value. I think there are just limits and thresholds...your partner matters as does your own, self-centered happiness...it's just kind of taking them all into account, which the blithe "you do you" does not. Thanks for your comment, as always.
Well, I tried writing a modern-day Walden, but didn't really pull it off. But I did get into Freud and Jung during that period, so my career at least came out of it. Anyway, thanks for your curiosity. I'm sure I'll come back to it in future writing.
Hm, well many commenters have also urged the opposite, for therapists to give more advice. They're tired of therapists remaining behind the veil.
I was trained the same way you were, but I don't agree with that training anymore. In many cases a) I am right, b) my correct advice improves the alliance with my client, and c) my client does listen. Other times, the opposite happens. So we devolve into psychotherapy's favorite answer: "It depends."
I think we so often say "it depends" for good reason, though. The proposition of a therapist curing someone's psychic distress or illness is kind of absurd. I mean, it's hard enough for a plumber to fix my radiators, and a radiator system is pretty simple. The system that outputs subjective experience is exceedingly complex. Therapists are supposed to become adept at this in 2-3 years?
My agenda is for therapists to at least work with correct information when we have it. In this case, an evolutionary view would at the very least frame the tension between individual and group interests as an inevitable, long-standing one. A shared understanding of that, or say the adaptive role of emotions, would cut down on the variety of responses client's receive. Not entirely, of course, but hopefully significantly.
Curious to hear your thoughts, and thank you for reading and responding.
It's funny-I was writing a piece on how many people should care less (MUCH less) about what others think of and about them.
After thinking about it more, it's not that people should care less. They should stop leveraging 'social pressure' or 'judgement' or 'stigma' as reasons for sympathy. They should stop fighting against these things. They should stop trying to change the judgements of others, using guilt or manipulation or victim status. Judgment can be very good, and it's socially necessary. We should stop pretending otherwise.
An equally ridiculous idea in our modern world is that, somehow, we have the right to live free of others' judgements, and that judgement is always wrong and inappropriate (although no one applies that consistently). Being 'judgy' is a bad thing these days.
I suspect this comes from a general feminization of our culture and our bureaucracies and our politics. Women are more concerned with what others think of them (on average). They're more agreeable. They're more inclined to suffer under judgement or pressure, and they're more concerned with avoiding the label of 'stuck up.' They're more reliant on social maneuvering for status and more concerned with their appearance to others. (All of these statements are 'on average' of course) In brief, they're more conformist, and conformity implies a great deal of concern with the attitudes and conditions of those around you.
Think of the most common examples of complaints about judgment: women complaining about society's beauty standards ('body positivity'). Women complaining about parental expectations, or mothers expected to have/do/be it all. Women complaining about being (unequally) judged for promiscuous behavior. HR trainings and the concept of implicit bias and gender ideology-all phenomena of people becoming REALLY concerned with the opinions and attitudes of others.
If you want people to have a better opinion of you, do things that comport with their attitudes more often and better. Otherwise, don't worry about it. Not caring about things and ideas that you find to be ridiculous might be socially very costly but it's also very freeing. I've been doing that for years. It seems that this possibility is precluded for many women, and also many (modern) men. It only matters if you let it matter.
Agree with all of these:
<Judgment can be very good, and it's socially necessary. We should stop pretending otherwise.>
<An equally ridiculous idea in our modern world is that, somehow, we have the right to live free of others' judgements, and that judgement is always wrong and inappropriate (although no one applies that consistently).>
<If you want people to have a better opinion of you, do things that comport with their attitudes more often and better. Otherwise, don't worry about it.>
I guess we ought to just think of social judgment as a tool. It's good if it helps incentivize things we think are good -- e.g. basic politeness -- and bad if it incentivizes things we think are bad -- e.g. conformity to one body type or something.
Anyway, I think that bridges our thoughts. Thanks for reading and responding.
I think you have a big general point, but also there's much truth in that *traditionally* many people who seek therapy were more likely to be on the "excessively concerned with reputation / social validation" end of the scale than "does not take things personally enough" (or even "inconsiderate and entitled bully"). That said. We are a hypersocial species ridiculously concerned with reputation and status. And maybe it's a mismatch by now? A bit like a passion for high fat high carb foods? Perhaps people (and our individualistic civilisation values) recognise that we don't need to feel as desperately concerned with belonging and acceptance as our ancestors. Perhaps the joys of socialty (for example helping and giving to others) can be had without as many pains of it (for example worrying about opinion of complete strangers about our unfashionable outfit or makeup free face). As someone who tended to "I only care about the special few" but moved to a stance of "I need community to survive so I better behave/try not to offend anyone directly", I have to say it SUCKS. Whether it's because it reminds me that I lost the capacity to be less interdependent or just because it takes effort, I'm not sure. I know why I do it, but just like your clients, I wish I didn't have to. It's just I know it's not some kind of mysterious inner drive, but cost/benefit calculation. Now excuse me, I need to finish a cake for a community event.
Evolutionary mismatch, did you say? Now you have my attention :)
How come you moved from the "special few" to "need community"? Surely having a special few is enough community for many people. Anyway, I agree that it's its own kind of prison, to be overly concerned about what too many people think, and that therapy can and should help a person titrate. An evolutionary perspective, for example, would point out that caring what others think has the ultimate purpose of establishing a good reputation among people who are going to be a part of your life. So, a neighbor rather than online stranger. That's likely going to restrict the number of opinions a client cares about. However, I'm a much bigger fan of reducing exposure to those opinions than trying to don a thicker skin toward them, and that, too, is because we're programmed to be highly sensitive to those opinions whether it "makes sense" to or not. Better to insulate oneself from them, IMO.
Also your cake comment made me laugh.
There’s the underlying evolutionary reason we care about our reputations, which is to encourage being prosocial, and then there’s the way reputation is built today, which is by participating in questionable status competitions.
At the risk of seeming reductive, it occurs to me that this trope in therapy culture occurs because the field has coalesced on the solution that works most of the time, which is giving the correct medicine (stop caring so much) in high dosage (completely) for the problem which afflicts the demographic that typically seeks therapy (anxious women). This generally alleviates the symptoms, but it doesn’t try to actually understand the mechanism behind the unhappiness and comes with some side effects.
Instead of blanket not caring or caring, I think a better approach would be to figure out what it is someone wants as their place in society, and designing a system meant to achieve that. That might be a mercenary cost benefit analysis, or it might be creating an internal set of values based on what matters to those who are significant to you. Either way, the goal should be satisfying a set of internal criteria that you've designed, rather than losing control to the selfishness or envy of others.
What do you mean by questionable status competitions? I think I agree with you, but say more.
Otherwise you're spot on with the diagnosis of the problem, and I like the methods you mention for addressing it.
So the provocative way I would describe it is that the currently dominant status competition is how attractive you are to women. For women, this is the recursively weighted sum of how envious your life makes other women, which means you need to "have it all". In addition to being thin, hot, young, successful, happy, this also includes being likable to all. I don't know if you're watching the new season of White Lotus, but this seems to be the focus of the Jaclyn group plot.
It probably came about as a combination of innate prosocial tendencies and the rise of social media, which expanded the circle of caring from your local community to the entire world.
The reason I call it questionable is that I have a sort of standard for judging status competitions: I don't agree with the categorical imperative as a general rule, but given that the entire point of status games is to incentivize global participation in some activity, I think the two concepts fit well together.
I am not watching the new season, but think I understand your perspective regardless. I'll sit with it and see how it fits. Thanks for sharing and commenting.
It's not modern. The ancient Greek Cynics and Stoics trained themselves to stop caring what other people think.
Definitely, good point. Perhaps "modern resurgence" is a better phrase. In navigating this tension, no doubt people frequently oscillate between the two poles, on the one hand of not giving a crap what others think and on the other caring too much. It would make sense that over history, schools of thought, techniques, philosophies, and so forth would spring up at various points on the spectrum. Its an enduring problem.
At the moment, the U.S. is definitely closer to the "don't care what anyone thinks" than at other times in its history and compared to other countries at the moment (Japan, Singapore). It's possible, too, that therapy has been a driver of this, and I don't think that's good.
Anyway, thanks for your comment.
And this modern resurgence is perhaps related to the current resurgence of interest in Stoicism.
Yea, could be...
Paired with being or in the service of being an excellent person though rather than just following one’s whims, yes? An important distinction I’d suggest.
Excellent article. Thank you for writing this.
Appreciate that, thanks for saying so.
One of the best takes I’ve seen on this topic—spot on about the tension between individualism and social belonging. The ‘you do you’ mindset feels freeing until you realize social rejection still has consequences. Love the line about therapists acting like bodyguards for their clients’ feelings. That hit. Balance is the key, but our culture loves extremes. Wish more discussions like this existed in therapy spaces!
Thanks for saying so, and I agree, I wish more of these discussions existed. That said, I think they will start to. Books like Bad Therapy by Shrier and The Anxious Generation by Haidt are both very popular and push back against extreme therapeutic assumptions such as coddling children or "you do you." And Jean Twenge has some books (Generation Me) on self-centeredness specifically, though I've only read Generations so far. But, yeah, I do foresee a cultural shift coming. Let's hope so.
Some ruminations your post inspired. Is my own personal happiness the highest value to be pursued at all costs? I suspect that many of our great-great-grandparents were more concerned with character; and I wonder if we wouldn´t, ironically, be happier as a society if we were more concerned about character too. Kindness often demands we restrain our authentic selves.
I´m in a long-term relationship with someone who has a chronic mental illness. A therapist once implied, albeit subtly, that I might be happier alone -- and I might be! I could abandon my loved one in a burst of codependent-no-more affirmation, but would that be the best thing for him? Does he matter?
"Kindness often demands we restrain our authentic selves." - Definitely, and I love the idea of character as the highest value. I think there are just limits and thresholds...your partner matters as does your own, self-centered happiness...it's just kind of taking them all into account, which the blithe "you do you" does not. Thanks for your comment, as always.
"I once lived mostly alone, in a cabin in the woods, for two years."
Have you written about that period? I'm so curious, I'd love to read it.
Well, I tried writing a modern-day Walden, but didn't really pull it off. But I did get into Freud and Jung during that period, so my career at least came out of it. Anyway, thanks for your curiosity. I'm sure I'll come back to it in future writing.
Hm, well many commenters have also urged the opposite, for therapists to give more advice. They're tired of therapists remaining behind the veil.
I was trained the same way you were, but I don't agree with that training anymore. In many cases a) I am right, b) my correct advice improves the alliance with my client, and c) my client does listen. Other times, the opposite happens. So we devolve into psychotherapy's favorite answer: "It depends."
I think we so often say "it depends" for good reason, though. The proposition of a therapist curing someone's psychic distress or illness is kind of absurd. I mean, it's hard enough for a plumber to fix my radiators, and a radiator system is pretty simple. The system that outputs subjective experience is exceedingly complex. Therapists are supposed to become adept at this in 2-3 years?
My agenda is for therapists to at least work with correct information when we have it. In this case, an evolutionary view would at the very least frame the tension between individual and group interests as an inevitable, long-standing one. A shared understanding of that, or say the adaptive role of emotions, would cut down on the variety of responses client's receive. Not entirely, of course, but hopefully significantly.
Curious to hear your thoughts, and thank you for reading and responding.