Self-Deception in Self-Improvement

[Blogger's Note: I just reread this post and corrected several grammatical errors and other typos along the way. Now it should be easier to get past my writing flaws in order to consider the ideas I set forth. Though I use myself as an illustration of what I am describing, my primary aim is to articulate something the reader can identify in her or his own life experience. 1/27/2008]

Problem #1: Everyone has something they want to change about themselves that they spend too much time worrying about or trying to correct.

Problem #2: Everyone has something they should change about themselves that they spend too little time worrying about and trying to correct.

If I've understood the human condition accurately, not only are these two statements true, but it is also the case that it is our consistent inability to categorize our personal attributes properly that produces our failure to direct our attention and energy towards their most appropriate object. In other words, those of us concerned with becoming "better people," struggle to identify those aspects of our personality or behavior that we should change if we are to accomplish our goal of being less selfish, more sensitive to others, more likeable or however you chose to define "better" in your own situation. Speaking for myself, my failures of self-assessment nearly always find their source in one of two dispositions: need for approval or denial.

My need for approval typically generates Problem #1. Whether I have a specific person in mind, a group of people, or some vague sense of society in general, I believe that I would be regarded as "better person" if I changed certain aspects of my character or appearance. I feel pressure to change myself in a way I would not if it were simply "up to me," even if the immediate consequences prove more harmful than beneficial. For example, the reason I have permanent scar tissue on my left shoulder is because I suffered a severe sunburn while trying to become more tan. Because to be tan in our present culture makes one more attractive and thereby "better." I put myself in a situation that conventional wisdom tells us to avoid (exposing fair skin to direct sunlight for several hours) because I convinced myself that something I wanted to do was really something I should do and thus convinced myself that what I "had" to do was worth the potential risks.

My denial typically generates Problem #2. During rare moments of completely honest self-assessment, I will recognize deeply rooted behaviors and attitudes that I must deal with if I am to embody my own level-headed definition of a "better person." Most often, however, denial trumps realization. These revelations are either rationalized into being lesser concerns or they are just willfully repressed. For example, there is an inherent hypocrisy in the fact that I am devoting my professional life to the study of theology and yet I have spent the bulk of my adult life being chronically unchurched. When I am being honest, I know I am continually putting myself at risk of turning my religious commitments into purely academic pursuits as I continually sharpen my intellectual skills but allow my spiritual sensitivities to dull. Whatever connection one might draw between church involvement and spritual sensitivity, the fact remains that Dave Scott is big on theological education but small on personal piety. Yet, what I often tell myself, is that this is not something I should change but it is something I want to change because my evangelical upbringing has conditioned me to believe that church attendence and spiritual authenticity are inseparable. My interior pangs of conscience are reinterpreted as exterior pressures.

But where my true angst arises, where the enormity of the combined power of Problems 1 & 2 is profoundly sensed, is when I feel the urge to change something about myself but I cannot decide how to classify that personal aspect and hence cannot conclude whether I should commit myself to change. My existential anxiety mounts when I consider the serious consequences that a faulty judgment would create. To want to change solely for the approval of others drives one into inauthentic existence or, even worse, dehumanization. To deny change that would truly make one better drives one into egotistic existence or, even worse, spiritual cancer.

I am seeking to identify the proper resources for assessing some of my own urges toward change. Complicating things further is my intuition that these resources are not uniform from person to person nor are they constant for any particular person. The urgency of addressing these matters arises from my growing sense that there might be something fundamentally awry in myself. I need to know if it is truly something about myself that should change if I am to be a better person or if I only want it to change because I feel some deep-seated pressure from unidentified others to conform to their (as yet) unarticulated expectations.

Perhaps in a subsequent post I'll share some specifics on what I'm referring to in this last paragraph. For the moment, however, I'm curious to see what kind of reactions I may get concerning the anthropological/psychological framework I've just articulated. In short, I've attempted a sort of "phenomenology of self-improvement."

Just food for thought.

NFC Championship Fun

I just encountered this article on the NFL homepage. Quite entertaining irrespective of your level of appreciation for professional football.

http://www.nfl.com/news/story?id=09000d5d80614a1d&template=with-video&confirm=true

More Revisionist History...and a Couch!

So let's get the bad news out of the way. The Colts lost their first playoff game at home Sunday. They didn't look awful but they certainly looked far from good and they lost to the Chargers for the second time this season. No AFC Championship rematch with the Patriots, no opportunity to repeat as Super Bowl champions. Nada. 'Nuff Said.

A second matter: I HAVE A COUCH!!! I bought it on Thursday and it was delivered on Friday morning. I've already had friends over three times since I purchased it, and I'm relieved that I can now invite people over to my place without hesitation. Next up: A new bed!

Finally, I wanted to share a few more items from Non Campus Mentis: World History according to College Students. In the book's conclusion, Prof. Anders Henriksson states that, "It is probably safe to assume that every American college freshman knows the following:

1) At some point in the distant past the United States fought a war of independence against a major European or Asian power. An extraordinary Tea Party was a factor.

2) George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, John Kennedy, and Richard Nixon served as presidents of the United States. Washington was the first president and Lincoln also served a long time ago, while the latter two were in the twentieth century. Ronald Reagan and George Bush the First were more recent occupants of the Oval Office. (Jimmy Carter is already off the radar screen for more than a few young scholars of the 2000s.)

3) The United States still suffers from the horrors of its slaveholding past, whenever that was. The Civil War, which took place some time between 1750 and 1930, was mixed up with this.

4) Adolf Hitler (a foreigner of some kind) was a very bad man.

5) There was at least one World War, but absolutely not more than three."

Here's a comment about 20th Century Asia:

"Dim El Sum ruled as 'Head Coucho' of North Korea. China had so many Chinese that forced birth patrol became required. This is where people are allowed to reproduce no more than one half of themselves. Manifest Destiny is China yarning to embrace Thai Won as a kind of imperialist forplay."

And, to conclude, here are some reflections on the Civil Rights movement to get you ready for MLK Day:

"The Civil Rights movement in the USA turned around the corner with Martin Luther Junior's famous 'If I Had a Hammer' speech. Martian Luther King's four steps to direct action included self purification, when you allow yourself to be eaten to a pulp. The wealing and dealing of President Lynda B. Johnson was another important factor."

Bob Sanders: NFL Defensive Player of the Year

Congratulations to the human missile! It's nice to see the man receive some national recognition for all those hard hits. Like I've been saying nearly all season, "Bob Sanders will smack you in the mouth!"

http://www.nfl.com/news/story?id=09000d5d805cea17&template=with-video&confirm=true

Don't lose sight of this accomplishment in the midst of all the Patriots love goin' on these days. Also remember that Reggie Wayne, not Randy Moss, won the receiving crown this year. Go Horse!

Refashioning the Dave

As my regular readers likely know already, I am back in Denver. I'm beginning my second term here at U. of Denver/Iliff SOT, and I've found that the extended winter break oxidized significant portions of my brain. Though I read three books while back home in Indiana, they were all read for entertainment. Now that I've begun an extended period of reading nothing but Plato and Kant (or writings about those two legendary thinkers) I'm realizing how badly my brain has fallen out of shape in 5-6 weeks of lowered intellectual strain.

That makes me real nervous about how 2-months of nearly unopposed atrophy has impacted my muscles, heart, lungs, and so forth. I had set relatively high fitness goals for myself last term and failed miserably to meet a couple of them. My weightlifting was as complete as it's been in years, but I failed to target my midsection as I'd originally intended AND I went yet another year without incorporating any cardio into my weekly routine.

This term things will change. Not drastically, but significantly nonetheless. It's not a New Year's resolution, but more like a new school year resolution that got put off for 4 months. I'm not crazy enough to try to go from undersized offensive lineman to iron man participant in a few weeks. I do, however, need to improve my overall fitness and body composition for my own health and my own sanity.

I'll be 26 years old soon and I'm already having minor pain in my load-bearing joints. I inherited my mother's bad knees and my father's considerable girth. Hurting my right knee two years ago only added to this problematic equation. After years of compensating for bad knees I have conditioned to bear my weight only sporadically during my adult life, my hips are finally feeling the strain and my ankles aren't doing much better. Dropping my weight by 20 or more pounds is practically a necessity at this stage and cardio is the best way to make that drop happen.

Then there's the ever-present social pressure. Every 2 or 3 years, I am strikingly reminded of how important physical appearance is in our culture and social networking. Your body is usually your foremost piece of currency, and while it's psychologically unhealthy to want to look like a movie star or a professional athlete, it's unwise to let your body become an emulation of John Goodman instead. For the last 18 months, I've been leaning substantially more towards the Goodman side of things than the Brad Pitt/Bob Sanders side. In 2004, I realized this and spent the next 8 months getting into the best shape I'd been in since I was in high school. I got new clothes and shoes and started wearing cologne on a regular basis. Increased female interest, kisses, and even a steady relationship soon followed.

Candler Spring Banquet 2005. 2.5 years and 25 pounds ago.

In 2008, I'm wising up again. For Christmas, I received mostly new clothes I hand-picked myself. I plan to get new footwear by the end of the month and, once I've lost a few pounds, I'm going to restock my deteriorating jeans collection. To state my thought process in a nutshell, I want to take control over those less conventionally attractive aspects of my appearance that can be taken control of. The melanin-free skin is a problem I've learned the hard way (on several occasions) that I can't fix. My teeth are naturally crooked and genetically a bit yellow. And I can't alter the fact that I have a large head or that I walk like Shrek. But I can do a hell of a lot more to improve my general appeal by trimming much of the extra baggage and occasionally draping myself in something more stylish than a Slayer T-shirt.



I know I'm not an ugly man. Field tests have shown that women Dave Scott finds attractive can indeed find him to be handsome in return, yea even sexy. However, I'm presently interested in increasing the likelihood of that happening again. I want that little extra sumpin', sumpin' that might push the potential patron from ambivalence over into full-blown interest. The recent pain in my legs and disappointment in my heart are pushing me into my next phase of self-improvement, of refashioning myself into an upgraded version of who I already am. My laugh, my brains, and my sympathetic nature will still be what keeps 'em hanging around but getting 'em to hang around requires drawing 'em in first.

Time to beef up the magnetism, Mr. Scott.

The Interpreted Past

One item I received for Christmas this year was Non Campus Mentis: World History According to College Students. In this book, Professor Anders Henriksson draws together some of the most entertaining and absurd test answers and paper excerpts he (and a few of his colleagues) has collected over several decades of teaching undergraduate history courses. Each section of the book pertains to a major period in Western history. I'm not finished with it yet but here is a primo selection of the humorous offerings I have read thus far:

*Plato invented reality. He was teacher to Harris Tottle, author of The Republicans. Lust was a must for the Epicureans. Others were the Vegetarians and the Synthetics, who said, "If you can't play with it, why bother?"

*Christianity finally became official after the Emperor Constantine's famous Decree of Consternation. Constantine became a Christian himself after being persued by a neon cross on the battlefield. The entire city of Constantinople rose up with a tremendous ejaculation every time the emperor came.

*Medieval people were violent. Murder during this period was nothing. Everybody killed someone.

*The crusades enlarged opportunities for travel. These were a series of military expaditions made by Christians seeking to free the holy land (the "Home Town" of Christ).

*Finally, Europe caught the Black Death. The bubonic plague is a social disease in the sense that it can be transmitted by intercourse and other etceteras.

-It was spread from port to port by inflected rats.

-It was then passed around by midgets.

-Victims of the Black Death grew boobs on their necks.

-Death rates exceeded one hundred percent in some towns.

*This was the beginning of Empire when Europeans felt the need to reach out and smack someone.

*Columbus came to America to install rule by dead white males over the native peoples.

*John Calvin Klein translated the Bible into American so the people of Geneva could read it.

*Deism was the belief that God made the world and then stepped on it. In Deism God has no direct influence on daily life, but just watches like a movie, eating his candy and munching his popcorn.

*[Concering the Industrial Revolution] The social structure was Upper Class, Middle Class, Working Class, and Lowest Poor Scum.

*Sigmund Freud was a shrink who came up with sex reasoning. He said that if the mind says not to have sex and the will will not listen, then the mind will go crazy. Leaders of the women's movement included Florence Nightengail, Susan B. Anthony, and Crystal Pancake. German feminists furthered the whatnot of women. Sufferance was the major goal.

-Feminists argued that sex outside the family would make you go blind or lose your memory.

*Liberals insisted on a lily fair economy where it was hands off the lily.

*The major cause of the Civil War is when slavery spread its ugly testicles across the West.

*Picasso was the famous artist who painted the Mona Lisa. Benito Mussolini was an artist who became overly famous.

*Oscar Wilde, the author of Doreen Gray, was probably the riskiest personage in England at this time.

*Friedrich Nietzsche was a German movie producer who wrote Triumph of the Will and Superman.