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.