Three Things #22: June 19, 2022
Avoiding antisocial patterns of behavior, or, How not to be a prick
We tend to feel as if we’re in the driver’s seat of our own minds. The reality is much more nuanced. The jury’s still out on brain science, but, whereas we may imagine that we are the king or queen of our cognitive palace, a better metaphor is that we’re a press secretary who doesn’t make decisions but rather is responsible for justifying decisions that have already been made. Often, we’re justifying those decisions not only to ourselves but also to the people around us, because as much as we’d like to pretend otherwise, we care a lot about what other people think about us. Sometimes, ironically, this leads to our unintentionally adopting antisocial patterns of behavior. Here are three of my least favorite of these along with some advice on how to avoid them.
Thing #1: Selfishness
Values including compassion, empathy, and loving-kindness matter so much because, as I’ve written about many times, the problems we face as a society are increasingly collective action problems. The most complex, interesting problems that we face can’t be solved without considering others and their needs. I don’t expect you to share all of my values, but I do expect you to at least make an effort to understand where other people are coming from, and to consider the needs of others when you make decisions. Your life will be better if you do this, and the world will be a better place.
If I help a selfish person, I’m helping one person (who may not even notice, be grateful, or return the favor). If I help a considerate, compassionate, selfless person, I’m actually helping many people because that help will be multiplied and paid forward. That’s why I’m more willing to help selfless people.
It’s also about trust, the foundation of human society. Someone who gives selflessly is trusting you to repay the favor, or to pay it forward. They’re offering to establish trust, and making themselves vulnerable in the process. Someone who only takes is not offering trust.
Giving and being selfless aren’t just good for others, they’re good for you, too. The most successful people are the most giving, and the most giving people are the most successful. If you put yourself out there, and create value for other people, that value will be repaid in manifold ways. Ironically, the best strategy to get what you want is to put others first. We used to think that biology was always selfish; now we know better.
Selfishness tends to arise insidiously, even among people who try to be aware of it and avoid it. It arises when you think to yourself, “I have the long term interests of others at heart, but I need to look out for myself first, just for a little while.” Just like feeling that you need just a little more money—but too much is never enough—the same is true of selfishness. Even a little bit isn’t okay, and it’s a slippery slope.
For more: The antidote for selfishness is, of course, generosity. Do one nice thing for someone else every day, ideally someone you don’t know, in a purely selfless way. You might be surprised how you feel. Read Give and Take to understand why generosity is so good for you.
Thing #2: Cockiness
Cockiness is another pattern of behavior that tends to sneak up on you. Like selfishness, it often arises with the best intentions. Confidence is a key ingredient in progress and success. If you feel that you’ve discovered a key insight, or that you’re just bolder than average in pursuit of something good and valuable, it’s easy to justify confidence in service of that good. But confidence too often bleeds into overconfidence, arrogance, cockiness, even hubris. It’s not always a bright line—it’s a slippery slope. Which is why it’s important to be extra careful about taking confidence too far.
Confident people tell you what they think, then listen to what you think; cocky people don’t listen to what anyone else thinks, because they believe they already have all the answers. Confident people are willing to update their priors, perhaps reluctantly, when faced with contradictory evidence; cocky people refuse to accept truth, update information, or change their minds even in the face of overwhelming evidence that they’re wrong. Confident people are not necessarily selfish or egocentric; cocky people tend to take advantage of other people (so there’s some overlap with the first category).
I think I fundamentally struggle with cockiness and overconfidence because I value open mindedness and humility so highly. And I know that it’s possible to be confident, open minded, and modest—these are by no means incompatible. I fundamentally believe in a pluralistic marketplace of ideas; cocky people have no interest in participating in or contributing to such a marketplace because they feel they know better.
Confidence can be extremely helpful, but it can only get you so far. “Fake it ‘til you make it” works, but only up to a point. Beyond that point, you need to start demonstrating progress, competence, and value, or the whole house of cards falls apart. Smart, cocky people tend to do well for a while even without creating value, coasting on the combination of confidence and competence. But it’s a risky strategy because success makes you even cockier, which can lead to a downward spiral. We need look no further than Elizabeth Holmes and Adam Neumann for examples of how this can go tragically wrong when taken too far.
When cocky people fall, no one is there to catch them. And when they succeed, no one (other than sycophants) is there to celebrate their success because they’re so full of themselves. Don’t be cocky.
For more: The antidote for cockiness is humility. There are some great meditations that help with humility, like maraṇasati and metta. Other things that help are spending time in nature, doing things that awe and scare you, and surrounding yourself with good people who will keep you honest and confront you with the truth.
Thing #3: Hypocrisy
Of these three antisocial patterns of behavior, hypocrisy is my least favorite and the one that bothers me the most. One reason is that integrity is one of my most important values. Another is that, in a complex world where there aren’t many moral or behavioral absolutes, one of the few things we can realistically expect of one another is internal consistency and decency—the opposite of hypocrisy.
While all forms of lying and disingenuousness bother me, there’s something especially insidious and frustrating about hypocrisy. It combines ineptitude (it’s always better to be honest), laziness (the most common cause of hypocrisy), and a lack of internal consistency. Hypocrisy is almost by definition a form of conceit since you feel that the rules, even the rules you yourself espouse, somehow don’t apply to you.
We’ve come to expect incessant hypocrisy on the part of politicians, companies and institutions. We haven’t, yet, come to expect it from one another, which is another problem with hypocrisy: it causes a breakdown of trust, when trust is all we’ve got holding society together. Hypocrisy is even more destructive to trust than selfishness is.
While deceiving others through hypocrisy, general intellectual dishonesty, and disingenuousness is bad enough, what’s even more common, and scarier, is deceiving oneself. Literally the only way to escape this “post-truth era” and the frightening breakdown of coherence is honesty, integrity, and consistency with one another and with ourselves. We cannot let our biases or politics interfere with the pursuit of truth. We must be willing to admit when we’re wrong, and change our minds, privately and publicly.
For more: Spend some time reflecting on your biases—those tiny, persistent patterns of thought that get in the way of pursuing simple truth. Reflect on whether and to what extent you’re honest with yourself. Is there anything you might be lying to yourself about, perhaps without realizing? Can you think of any examples where your desire or expectation continually fails to match reality?