Paradoxically, personal agency works better when it’s not about you. If you look at the things you do as a reflection of yourself / as inputs to your self-esteem, that’s a filter that gets in the way of seeing the world in full color, and so it also gets in the way of acting effectively. I run into this in parenting, where decisions I ma…
Paradoxically, personal agency works better when it’s not about you. If you look at the things you do as a reflection of yourself / as inputs to your self-esteem, that’s a filter that gets in the way of seeing the world in full color, and so it also gets in the way of acting effectively. I run into this in parenting, where decisions I make because they make me feel like a gold star parent tend to be less in tune with the situation and actually kinda stupid, and I’ve heard that the same thing on a larger scale can be a problem for charity. If people invest in the fantasy of themselves as good and generous and so feel motivated to find evidence for their own goodness, then it makes it harder for them to really see the people they want to help. So they tend to “other” the people they’re helping, and it can make them mad if a recipient of their charity doesn’t correctly perform the role of humble and deserving or has other desires of their own. Oops.
Sasha, similar to your experience of feeling uncomfortable being called wise, but coming from the perspective of pagan practice: I had a trance where I caught a glimpse of myself as a creature who spoke the words of recordings I’d been given—kind of like a human tape deck—and then the same people who gave me the recordings heaped lavish praise on me and gave me lots of stuff because they liked what I was saying so much. It helped me see how weird and circular doing things for praise is, and how the praise I’ve been given isn’t exactly about me or something I want to take credit for. I'll join you in feeling uncomfortable with it.
Paradoxically, personal agency works better when it’s not about you. If you look at the things you do as a reflection of yourself / as inputs to your self-esteem, that’s a filter that gets in the way of seeing the world in full color, and so it also gets in the way of acting effectively. I run into this in parenting, where decisions I make because they make me feel like a gold star parent tend to be less in tune with the situation and actually kinda stupid, and I’ve heard that the same thing on a larger scale can be a problem for charity. If people invest in the fantasy of themselves as good and generous and so feel motivated to find evidence for their own goodness, then it makes it harder for them to really see the people they want to help. So they tend to “other” the people they’re helping, and it can make them mad if a recipient of their charity doesn’t correctly perform the role of humble and deserving or has other desires of their own. Oops.
Sasha, similar to your experience of feeling uncomfortable being called wise, but coming from the perspective of pagan practice: I had a trance where I caught a glimpse of myself as a creature who spoke the words of recordings I’d been given—kind of like a human tape deck—and then the same people who gave me the recordings heaped lavish praise on me and gave me lots of stuff because they liked what I was saying so much. It helped me see how weird and circular doing things for praise is, and how the praise I’ve been given isn’t exactly about me or something I want to take credit for. I'll join you in feeling uncomfortable with it.