Ordinary Fatalism
The hidden cost of conformity and the starting point of authentic belonging.
Chapter I: Ordinary Fatalism
Introduction
Before you can belong with others, you must know the person who wants to belong. This creates a paradox.
Social acceptance does not actually begin with others. It does not even start with socially appropriate choices! We all decide for ourselves who to accept and reject. The wisest decisions depend on truly knowing yourself.
How do you stop sleepwalking through life and guarantee that the person showing up in the world is truly you?
The Journey of the Six Dilemmas goes from the inside out. The first step is not to fret about your current situation. You are just you. Here. Now. Nothing else.
Self-connection happens in the moments when you experience yourself as a distinct, autonomous being. You have and use personal agency when you act independently, influence your environment, or make choices that lead to personal accomplishments. You must understand it to use it wisely.
The ancient Greek philosopher Socrates disagreed that belonging began with the judgments of others. Most people are potentially distinct, whole, self-aware individuals. But they fall into an existential trap that reduces them to dependent, disposable, performers with little, if any, originality.
The vast majority of people adopt the beliefs and values of their communities without critically examining them. The result is a collective dumbing-down.
Socrates offered a remedy. Collective irrationality is countered by accurate self-knowledge. Individuals need to examine their own lives to be rational.
The Examined Life
In line 38a of The Apology, Socrates famously declared that “the unexamined life is not worth living.” The core of his critique was aimed at the pervasive intellectual and moral complacency he witnessed among his fellow citizens. All rational beings, he argued, regardless of personal desires or outcomes, must follow certain universal principles.
The Socratic Imperative, “know thyself,” is one of those principles. It is a mandate for self-possession and the starting point of a life worth living.
Most people outsource a lot of their thinking. They live a kind of vicarious existence where their opinions, desires, and moral reasoning are simply adopted from the “mob” or a perceived consensus. Individual liberation necessarily begins with an internal audit. One must willingly strip away adopted beliefs to safely uncover one’s authentic core.
Freedom is not a passive pursuit; it is the active observation and ongoing reconstruction of a true and distinct self.
To have dignity in any group of people, any community, one must enter as a free agent. This ability is contingent on self-knowledge, the foundation of a free agent’s confidence. Without it, an individual enters the social space not as an equal participant but as a dependent follower. This person is easily swayed and incapable of contributing a unique, self-generated perspective.
Socrates pointed out that the ability to act intentionally, to make your own choices and exert control over your own life, begins with a ruthless internal audit. You must strip away the opinions of the crowd to find your true nature. Before you can safely join a group or enter a community as a free agent rather than a dependent follower, you must have unassailable self-knowledge.
Sleepwalkers
Somnambulism, the medical condition better known as sleepwalking, happens when the process of waking up is incomplete and gets stuck. Sleepwalkers almost always have their eyes open, but with a blank or glassy expression on their faces. They are not fully aware of their surroundings. Yet they somehow manage to get dressed, eat, and occasionally even drive!
Socrates’ dependent follower is a metaphorical somnambulist. This person is unaware of the external origins of their tastes and opinions. They lack the unassailable self-knowledge necessary to enter relationships on equal ground. Group membership becomes an unconscious masquerade where the metaphorical somnambulist mindlessly expresses popular norms and beliefs, but is unknowingly dangerous to themselves and others.
How can anyone truly know themselves, unless they strip away all the ideas and beliefs they got from others and examine whatever remains?
From 1914 to 1930, the psychologist Carl Jung hand-crafted a book of art and calligraphy about his own Socratic Journey of self-discovery. He died in 1961, before it could be released. It wouldn’t be found, restored, and published until 2009. Although few people saw it while he was alive, he personally considered the Red Book: Liber Novis to be his most important work.
Jung described a process he called “individuation” that begins with the Socratic Imperative, and happens over the course of one’s life: As children we are dependent on others for care and wisdom. We adopt their patterns of choice and longing, as well as their psychological complexes.
We grow up mirroring others, borrowing bits of their identities to win their welcome. These desires and aspirations may come from family or society, but they are superficial and produce a lack of inner clarity.
If we refuse to consciously confront these hidden, repressed, or dark parts of ourselves, we remain trapped in the shallow existence of a borrowed identity. The true self remains unconscious. Mimicked perceptions and behaviors stay mentally buried in what Jung called our shadows.
This makes life unstable. One risks mental decay. Jung wrote that “the sleepwalking life” can only come to an end if you make the unconscious conscious. He regarded this as a necessary endeavor, as would Socrates.
People who fail to individuate continually face the Problem of Fate. By neglecting their inner depths, they allow themselves to believe life events are due to forces they cannot control, such as luck or tragedy. This establishes a pattern of misperceiving and behaving in ways that often lead to predictable consequences. Their outcomes are not the result of freewill, but of unexamined copies of choices, desires, or mental complexes.
Individuating requires a willingness to unplug from people so that you can be a distinct, whole being unto yourself - with your own intact psyche. This requires embracing both optimism and freewill. You must willingly leave familiar relationships, places, patterns, and choices behind. You must be open to friendship, and intentional when it comes to foes and challenges.
The imposter “feeling” is a signal that something about your self-knowledge is incomplete. You get stuck when a challenge is unclear, and may affect others’ judgements of you. Given your circumstances, it suggests you are dependent on something and not confidently distinct. You are borrowing identity.
Automaton Conformists
In 1991, 16.9% of young adults aged 25-29 in Canada still lived with their parents. By 2021, the number of late twenty-somethings who were still living at home had nearly doubled to 31.0%.
We live in a time when a growing number of young adults are finding it overwhelming to take responsibility for their personal freedom.
Adults surrender their autonomy when they think and feel what their communities expect of their generation. It is easier today to become a collectively-defined pseudo self than it is to forge an individual identity.
In his 1994 book, Escape from Freedom, the psychoanalyst Eric Fromm called the process that sustains this false self “pseudo-thinking.” Human beings are inclined to assume our opinions come from our own, “anonymous authority.” Most people convince themselves that they are immune to the influences of mass media, social groups, and institutions.
Fromm coined the term “Automaton Conformist” to refer to people who mindlessly adopt norms and beliefs. They may appear to belong because they are socially involved, but they actually present a façade: A carefully curated reflection of others’ expectations, intended to ensure acceptance at the expense of authentic connection.
Today’s young adults are creating curated selves in record numbers. This can leave them with no genuine self available to enter relationships. By escaping the demanding and often anxiety-inducing responsibility of forging mature, individual identities, they sacrifice the possibility of authentic belonging.
In 2016, 28% of Canadian households were one-person. This was the most common type of household - and the largest percentage in the entire 150 year history of the National Census. Living alone is fairly normal today.
The hard work of individuation, of living an examined life, necessitates the restoration of your genuine self. This may seem potentially overwhelming, but the tragic alternatives are failing to launch and domestic isolation.
Character Awareness
It may seem like you’re going in the wrong direction, but true belonging starts with the choice to withdraw, before you engage with people. Figuring yourself out is not navel-gazing. It is actively using the power of observation. It is healthy self-care for developing wise character.
Living an unexamined, inauthentic existence has turned countless people into metaphorical somnambulists who automatically conform. Yet, they often feel alone in a crowd. If you live or work in a city, you are likely to see people who feel this way in your day-to-day life.
By obsessively copying other people’s thoughts and behaviors in a never-ending quest to be welcome, they find themselves incapable of genuine connection because they do not truly know themselves.
The examined life is not just about seeking truth; it is about developing personal solidity. The person who confronts their own shadow, and strips away all the unwarranted attitudes and opinions learned from society, gains the stability necessary to withstand pressures to conform. This is not blind resistance, it is seeing the complexity and choosing not to get lost in it.
Authentic belonging is not mainly about fitting in; it is about finding places where the complete you, as unique, broken, odd, or imperfect as you are, is welcomed. This is almost impossible until you know the whole, authentic self who is searching. Self-knowledge is the foundation.
The indispensable first step towards being truly welcome is self-connection.
By rigorously getting to know who we are and what we need; what our values, our boundaries, our shadows, and unique voices are; we gain information crucial for understanding our experiences, relationships, and communities.
The quest for self-knowledge involves recognizing the difference between part and whole. You are not the whole world, you are a tiny moving part of it.
The aim is to discover what mutually fits with you, so that your choices can better align with your well-being. The uncomfortable imposter feeling is due to a tentative or difficult fit between people in a group. It contains a sense of powerlessness over one’s outcomes, but fades as people discover how they can feasibly fit together.
Self-connection makes it possible to discover compatibilities with other people. You can be a distinct presence, without pretending to be something you are not. An accurate, strong foundation of self-knowledge transforms an individual from a passive dependent into a free agent.
By knowing who we are and what we need, we can sort through experiences to find what truly fits with us. We mutually discover if we are compatible.
Next:
Part II ~ The Dilemma of Non-Conformity
> Chapter II ~ Integrating Authenticity
