Self-Love in Popular Culture
Among the many new-age, pop-psychological slogans that bug me, the top contenders for my contempt may be the ones that revolve around self-love. These self-love slogans do not irritate me because I’m a brute who believes that people are better off wallowing in self-hatred. To the contrary, I agree that such states often lead to helplessness and malaise (although I do think there can be value in certain levels of guilt, regret, and self-disappointment). Rather, what really gets on my nerves is that the shallow and simplistic advice to “practice self-love” masquerades as wisdom. It’s akin to urging someone to “just be happy!” I see it as a symptom of a self-obsessed, love-obsessed Western culture. It is a Hollywood concoction, where stars and starlets can boast about being “self-partnered”. It is not a therapeutic insight, and surely not a piece of perennial wisdom.
If you haven’t already clicked out of this article and stormed off in a fit of rage, I’ll try to lay the groundwork for my case in the pages to come. I hope to convince you that what Victor Frankl said about happiness—happiness cannot be pursued, it must ensue—applies to self-love as well. Or, in other words, self-love should be a side-effect rather than a direct treatment. Hopefully, I’ll entertain you along the way.
A Life Worth Saving is a Shoe Worth Sacrificing
Let’s begin with a classic thought experiment—with a twist. You’re walking home from school dejected and distraught. Your boyfriend just had the gall to break up with you for your hotter best friend. Vicious thoughts circle in your head. I’m ugly. I’m unlovable. I’d be better off dead. Your sole desire is to get home, lock yourself in your room, curl into a ball, and shut everything and everyone out.
As you walk alongside the lake, steeped in this toxic stew of self-hatred, you notice some movement in the periphery. Then, suddenly, you hear a shrill cry followed by frantic splashing. You run to the bank of the river and see a small boy drowning. Without stopping to remove your expensive shoes, you wade in, grab hold of the drowning boy, and paddle him back to safety.
Okay, end of thought experiment. Now, please play this scene in your head and really try to imagine our protagonist’s perspective. Put yourself in those sopping shoes. How would you feel? Would you bemoan the money you lost on your footwear? Would you slump straight back into your stew of self-hatred? If I were to guess, I would say no. You saved a life. You risked yourself to help someone else. You’re a venerable hero. That loser who broke up with you, well he wasn’t good enough for you anyway.
I know what you’re thinking, and it goes something like this: See, all our protagonist really needed to do was to love herself! She just didn’t have the proper tools. But, at the end of the day, once she discovered how to accept herself, self-love became the real hero of our little story.
I’ll grant you—you’re right in a way. Self-love and self-acceptance are crucial. I have nothing against these concepts in general. Rather, my problem is that people frame self-love as the actionable solution to the problem of self-loathing. The implication is that the way to deal with discomfort with, or disappointment in, oneself is to retreat further into the self. Once we’ve nestled deep into this cocoon of the self, we’ll magically figure out how to love ourselves. The point of my silly thought experiment, other than to have fun with some thinly veiled Peter Singer references, was to show that it was the shifting of attention from herself to the little boy (escape from rumination) and the action of saving the little boy (competent interaction with one’s environment) that bolstered our protagonist’s self-concept.
A Retreat into the Self
I disagree with much of what Georg Northoff writes in Neuro-Philosophy and the Healthy Mind regarding consciousness, but his description of depression is moving and illuminating. He quotes one especially resonant passage:
“She sat by the window, looking inward rather than looking out. Her thoughts were consumed with her sadness. She viewed her life as a broken one, and yet she could not place her finger on the exact moment it fell apart. ‘How did I get to feel this way?’ she repeatedly asked herself. By asking, she hopes to transcend her depressed state; through understanding, she hopes to repair it. Instead, her questions lead her deeper and deeper inside herself—further away from the path that would lead to her recovery.”
What this passage highlights is the tendency for rumination (a hallmark of major depression) to pull one further and further into the bleak, black hole of the self, rather than to lead one towards a brighter, hopeful path outside of the self. Northoff describes this as an “increased self-focus”. By this he does not mean a sophomoric self-concern, he means the inability to redirect one’s gaze from oneself to the outside world.
The neuroscientific findings seem to back up this insight. If you were to look at a scan of the depressed brain you would find increased resting-state activity in the medial regions (the inner regions associated with the self) and decreased resting-state activity in the lateral regions (the outer regions associated with the environment). Depression hijacks one’s brain and steers it further and further into a black tunnel, converting its victim into an unwitting hermit, no longer motivated to seek help, no longer interested in drinking in the wonders of the world. This increased self-focus mixed with a distorted self-concept can be a devastating, if not a lethal, brew.
So let me ask you—if depression is characterized by the inability to escape a negative self-image, a tunnel-vision turned inward, do you really think that advising someone to love themselves is a good strategy? Would our protagonists have benefited from a friend’s insistence that the panacea to her problems was self-love?
Let me be clear—this is not a polemic against psychotherapy or pharmacotherapy. I’m a big fan of psychotherapy and I believe in the (case-dependent) necessity of pharmacotherapy. But no competent therapist (perhaps with the dubious exception of psychoanalysts) would advise their depressed patients to double down on their self-focus. Rather they would try to break the ruminative cycle, instill hope, level-out distortions, reinforce positive behaviors, and gently guide their patients out of their black tunnels.
The Ingredients for Meaning
To many people the concept of meaning, as in to live a meaningful life, is, well, a meaningless one. I disagree. I believe that what we value above all else is to live a meaningful life. Even after all of our evolutionary imperatives have been checked off, all our physiological needs satisfied, we may still feel an aching desire for something more. An answer to the nagging question—what is the point of this all? Leo Tolstoy’s A Confession is a spellbinding testament to the persistence of these concerns despite a backdrop of undeniable success.
I won’t pretend that I have all the answers to such existential questions, but I can try my best to elucidate the concept of meaning. Below I’ll detail my pet theory of meaning, which, like all theories, simplifies the concept tremendously, but hopefully informs it as well.
The two secret ingredients for meaningful moments are self-transcendence and self-expansion:
- Self-transcendence occurs when you get so wrapped up in something that your self-concept, your worries, your disappointments, momentarily drop away. It’s often observed in natural encounters (transcendentalism), demanding activities (flow-states), meditative activities (meditation), hallucinogenic states (LSD), and communal gatherings (dances, marches, matches).
- Self-expansion occurs when your self is enlarged beyond the borders of your physical body. This can happen with fame (celebrities), social interactions (conversations), artwork (music), and general invention (entrepreneurs).
Rather than explore these concepts in depth, I’m going to describe how they illuminate our meaning-rich social worlds.
The social world is an ideal arena for self-transcendence and self-expansion to thrive. A social interaction almost inevitably results in self-expansion. Whether you like it or not, some of your neural and mental real estate will now be dedicated to that person you just spoke with. Of course, this can become pathological, as can be seen in the case of the narcissist who is obsessed with fame and power. But usually, this is a positive, mutually gratifying experience.
In contrast, self-transcendence is often blocked in social interactions. My favorite example of this is that of a speed date. I doubt there are many environments less conducive to self-transcendence. While your “date” rushes to describe herself in the allotted time, you frantically rehearse your script in your head. Finally she finishes her schpiel and and you go on to blurt out your life-story. All the while, she considers how she could have worded her’s better. This kind of discussion will never result in a meaningful interaction, because self-transcendence is stymied.
To summarize, there are few things as rewarding as a meaningful social interaction and few things as disheartening as a stultifying one. The concepts of self-transcendence and self-expansion help illuminate why.
One more quick example is that of parenting. Parenting, when done right, is the quintessential case of self-expansion and self-transcendence. Of course your child is an expansion of yourself, but she is also a separate human being, one whom you love unconditionally and sacrifice a great deal for. A self-absorbed parent will be a disappointment of a parent. So while there may be an evolutionary imperative to reproduce, there is also a psychological imperative to transcend oneself in the service of one’s children. Parents and children are both boosted by such self-transcendence.
What does this all have to do with self-love? Well, it turns out that self-transcendence is a whole lot more conducive to meaningful relationships. And meaningful relationships happen to be one of the most reliable sources of self-love. It is true that self-hatred can lead to parasitic relationships and that self-esteem is a critical foundation for balanced relationships. As I said before, self-love is important. But a retreat into the self is not the way to get there.
The Elephants in the Room
I promise I’ll end very soon, but first I feel the need to address the elephants in the room. They go by the names of Andrew Solomon and Oliver Sacks. I admire both men greatly. Both are intellectual giants that have provided intellectual and emotional nourishment to untold numbers of people.
So why are they the elephants in the room? Well, they represent the main unaddressed aspect of my argument. Both men happened to have been gay in times and places that were hostile to homosexuals, to say the least. And both men have expressed spending a large portion of their lives crippled by a sense of inwardly-directed homophobia. Much of the time, self-love was nowhere to be found. Even I must admit that self-love is the only route to overcoming such inner demons. Right?
I do admit, in cases where a large part of one’s identity—such as one’s sexual orientation—is feared or despised, it is probably necessary to address one’s self-concept directly. But the road to self-acceptance and self-love is a long and tortuous one, one that will be navigated more smoothly with the help of meaningful interactions with others and the outside world. A retreat into the self would more likely result in destructive bouts of rumination than empowering epiphanies of self-acceptance.
In Defense of the Self
I’ll end with a short defense of the self. Unlike those who argue that the self is an illusion, a misunderstanding, or some other form of evolutionary baggage, and that it should therefore be disposed of, I believe the self is a psychological reality that should be embraced. Our minds create narratives and associations around the self, whether we like it or not. These are important, and rather than deny them, we should work on crafting positive, ennobling stories of our own. If we can craft the right story, and at the same time recognize that, yes, this is simply a story; if we can act in the world to reinforce, reshape, and retell this story, then self-love will eventually arise on its own. And it won’t be the fragile product of a silly celebrity catchphrase that captured our attention on Buzzfeed, but a hard-earned, ironclad, foundational truth. The truth that, whatever our perceived flaws and foibles, each one of us is unique and indispensable.
Jeremy Koloski 