Post #110: The Courage To Be Disliked

10 May 2024

“In short, freedom is being disliked by other people. When you are disliked by someone, it is proof that you are exercising your freedom and a sign that you are living in accordance with your own principles. What I am saying is, don’t be afraid of being disliked. I am not telling you to go so far as to live in a such a way that you will be disliked, and I am not saying engage in wrongdoing. Please do not misunderstand that. Not wanting to be disliked is probably your task, but whether or not so-and-so dislikes you is the other person’s task, not yours. So the courage to be happy also includes the courage to be disliked.”

—Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga, The Courage To Be Disliked*

     Unlike the protagonist of Kishimi and Koga’s lovely book (which I think of as a kind of Zen meditation on Adler’s individual psychology), I would not be comfortable calling myself a philosopher: it sounds too much as if I thought I had arrived at wisdom. Disavow the sentiment as much as you like, it changes little, and perhaps ends up sounding even more of a conceit.

     Let me pull back, instead, to something that Ichiro Kishimi reminds us of in the afterword: whatever wisdom this or that individual may (or may not) have attained to, philosophy is more in the pursuit more than in the result; more in thinking seriously about the question than arriving at this or that answer; more in the love of wisdom than in its possession; and more in the desire and determination to live by its lights (as per Thoreau’s definition that I cited in the previous post) than in any abstract insight into its nature. Such was the original ancient understanding of philosophy, never entirely displaced by other conceptions and still visible here and there in modern thinkers, but generally overshadowed in our day by a more technical set of skills and habits among academicians and professional members of the philosophers’ guilds.

     Only the other day, a full five years after first encountering Kishimi and Koga’s book, I found myself reminded, upon rereading, of how much I owe to the authors. Back when I originally read it, I was already familiar enough with Freud, whom I began studying in grad school, and with Jung, to a lesser extent. In my thirties, I had the good fortune of working for a few months with a wonderful therapist who told me, when asked, that her approach was mostly Adlerian (thank you Erica R.!). Yet, for some reason or other I never thought to pursue the lead then; that only happened thanks to K&K, who likewise report, incidentally, that they stumbled upon Adler more or less by chance (if synchronicity is not the better way to think of it). Thus it is only now, as I am revisiting K&K, that I am appreciating how good their book really is, even beside Adler’s own oeuvre. For what it’s worth, then, let this text stand as my tribute to the authors, alongside my homage to Freud and Adler (#43), whom I don’t see in quite such antithetical terms as many do.

     It gives off a strange odor (and not just in Japan), this notion that freedom should have anything to do with being disliked, perhaps to the point of coming as a shock to some. We tend to think of freedom, after all, as bringing us good things—or else why would we value it? (A dangerous misconception of what is really about, namely elbow room for making mistakes as much as for getting things right.) At a time when it seems to have become the prime aspiration for many to make themselves as inoffensive as possible, or at least to demand that others do so, the suggestion that freedom might mean rubbing others the wrong way may be received with incredulity, perhaps even disgust. What next, you beggar: will you tell us that freedom means license to give offense? How retrograde, irresponsible, and utterly un-Buddhist!

Such protests have an element of truth on their side: who would deny that to do harm willfully would go against the very grain of the Dhamma? But that’s not really what’s at issue here, but rather something more complicated: not the deliberate giving of gratuitous offense, but the question whether one should be overly concerned, in being true to one’s way of life, about the possibility that one might thereby annoy anybody at all, not because one wishes to, but because anything is likely to be taken amiss by somebody, especially when we make a point of setting our radars to below normally detectable levels. Truthfulness is as imperative a Buddhist commitment as the avoidance of harm, and we cannot evade the bitter fact that even the most undisputed truth not only can hurt, but that it very commonly does so, whenever it happens to clash with self-flattery, for example, or with protective life-lies, or even with cherished beliefs held on insecure grounds. In which case it usually hurts so badly not only in spite of being true, but precisely because of its truth, alas.

The crude old distinction between physical harm on the one hand and “mere words” on the other was always a tenuous one, given how much both can pain us and how patently unconvincing it would be to claim that physical hurt is always worse than what can be inflicted by a cruelly well-aimed word. At the extreme, what we say to each other can kill and incite murder; even in more ordinary circumstances, it can end friendships and start lifelong feuds. That said, there are good reasons for drawing our boundary lines around the body, not around our sentiments, because once you make felt pain the measure of all things, you will not only create an incentive for making oneself more sensitive to it, as a simple matter of leverage and power, you will also leave truth and reason at the mercy of every plaintive whim, every arbitrary gust of feeling and fancy, because no charge can be dismissed as plainly groundless anymore when you can no longer refer it to some shared standard of what is demonstrable and broadly reasonable.

     Needless to say, neither the Buddhists nor K&K, nor any other human being possessed of adequate social and emotional intelligence has ever recommended riding roughshod over the feelings of others for no good reason. Admitting as much still leaves entirely open, however, the much more vexed question of whether offense can always be avoided even by the most careful, though still free, conduct of any integrity whatsoever. For my own part, I would be delighted if it were never necessary, in the pursuit of one’s legitimate ends, to make oneself disliked in the world. I used to imagine, when I was younger, that I didn’t mind the antipathy of others; but I must not have looked at myself closely enough, because I now find that I was very much mistaken in my earlier diagnosis. Even so, what is at issue here are not the endless troubles we must no doubt take, if we would walk mindfully in the Dhamma, to cultivate tact and thoughtfulness in our dealings with others—aspects of skillful means that are urgently demanded of anyone on the Buddhist Path. The trouble goes deeper yet, namely to whether it is possible for anyone, no matter how good and wise, to avoid being disliked altogether.

     Even the Buddha himself, we are told (Cullavagga 7.3.6–9), had determined detractors who once sicced a drunk elephant on him (trained in the charming art of trampling convicts to death by way of executing their sentences) and who loosened boulders uphill in hopes of crushing the Awakened One below (he tamed the elephant and escaped the errant boulder with an injured foot). An all-too familiar Athenian sage, known for his virtuous behavior and earnest quest for wisdom, was sentenced to death for impiety and corrupting the young, of all things, and the very savior of the world, it is said, met a slave’s death by torture as the lowliest of provincial troublemakers. The nuances of these cases could be endlessly debated with a view to what might, perhaps, have been done to soften the edges of disapprobation by more politic conduct. Turn them any way you like, however, and they still suggest with great force the inevitability, even for the best of men, of arousing the suspicion, bitter enmity, and sometimes murderous hatred of some of their contemporaries.

     Among the Eight Vicissitudes that beset human beings as a matter of course (#16), we find not only the agonies of pain and loss, but the often even more unbearable ones of underserved blame and ill-repute. As the Bard proclaimed for the ages in Hamlet (V, 2), “Let Hercules himself do what he may, the cat will mew, and dog will have his day.” Ironically and tragically, the very attempt to avoid blame by putting the sensitivities of others above everything else tends to come at an ever-escalating price: for it serves mostly to encourage the bullies of complaint and accusation, and what begins with a regard for others all-too often ends with disregarding what one holds dearest, as every compromise one makes calls for another one. Even polite lies have long legs (as the Germans say) and once we get started we may soon find ourselves so entangled in them that we do not even recognize them for what they are anymore. The threat to our public life that inheres in losing the courage to say what we truly think and live by what we truly believe, should be evident enough—as per the dramatic call that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn issued to his countrymen, in February 1974, to “Live Not By Lies.” Alas, untruths are no less potent and pernicious in our private lives, to the point of putting our very souls in jeopardy, as Solzhenitsyn also warned.

     The lies that Soviet citizens faced in the 1970s were so blatant that they cannot, perhaps, be compared directly with the disinformation we face in societies that do, despite all their failings, have regular elections, free presses, and independent judicial systems that are as far from dysfunction as they are from perfection.** (If you are inclined to dispute this point, go spend a few months in Cuba or Venezuela, or better yet, North Korea.) Sad to say, the private lies we tell ourselves, or the ones we go along with to get along, are no less dangerous for being usually more subtle than state propaganda. For therein lies perhaps the greatest peril: precisely because our concessions to half-truth are not usually as extreme as those demanded by totalitarian regimes, we may have more trouble noticing the lies lying in wait not far behind. Indeed the false notes may appear to us as no more than reasonable accommodations to others, or compromises we make to keep the peace. And so they may be, sometimes; no life and no society ever runs on truth alone, and peace is often maintained, we should admit, as much (or more) by what we don’t say than by what we do. (“The fruit of peace grows on the tree of silence,” Schopenhauer declared, and he knew a thing or two about never holding back much, and paying the price.)

     Like so much else, the decision what to say when, or whether perhaps to leave something unsaid (no matter how germane) when it’s just not the right time or place for it to be heard, is so complex as to allow for no easy rules. No one in possession of a truly loose tongue will imagine for a second that he could ever live in a world in which he could say anything that comes to mind; those who think otherwise do so because they have tamed themselves sufficiently, not because they are so unconditionally freedom-minded. On the other hand, it would border on moral insanity if we really ever were to get serious about limiting the scope of our commitment to truth, reason, and freedom to saying what gives no offense to anyone. We negotiate this delicate terrain all the time, in an intuitive balancing act that reasonably well-socialized human beings take so much for granted that they may not even recognize when they are engaging in it. Yet, behind the need for such everyday accommodations, there is always the troubling question of just how much mutual complaisance the truth can stand, and whether a peace that is only possible by shielding things from view can be either real or lasting.

     Much is gained, certainly, when adversaries do not come to blows or draw knives on each other and when hostilities do not spill over into mayhem and bloodshed. Still the nagging doubt remains whether living with each other on sustainable articles of peace does not require a little more than the temporary suspension of overt violence. Conflict-avoidance does have something to be said for it—who would deny it? Better passive aggression, hideous as it can be, than war; except inasmuch as the latter might be best thought of as consisting not in the act of fighting only, as Thomas Hobbes pointed out in his Leviathan, but in the known disposition to battle things out, at all times when there is no reliable assurance to the contrary.

     When we make our strategic compromises at the expense of what we believe to be true, we may do so with the best of intentions, meaning only to protect ourselves and others, and prevent harm; but it might make us uneasy to consider that Soviet propaganda too sought to protect something, as does every individual or organization that resorts to lies as a last line of defense. It is not, for me at least, a question of denouncing human weakness or imagining undue pusillanimity lurking everywhere—a question of tone and temperance on which I rather disagree with the preachy Solzhenitsyn, brave soul though he was. (The Americans were thrilled with him when they thought he was on their side; a lot less so when he had the audacity to start lecturing them too.) We are all capable of courage and cowardice alike (the line runs, like that between good and evil, through the heart in every one of us, there I agree with the lecturer again); none of us are great exemplars all the time, nor consistently bad. But the question still stands whether living untruthfully becomes any worthier because we do it to avoid clashing with others. It always seems to be productive of some kind of good, or we would not be so consistently tempted by it; but appearances can deceive, and not all is gold that glitters with a specious luster.

     The connection with the Stoics does not get made explicit in K&K’s book, but we might note that the Adlerian insistence on making a strict “separation of tasks,” that is to say, drawing a clear and determined distinction between what is your business and what is not (K&K 122–32), runs largely parallel to Epictetus’s line separating what is within your control from what is not (#93). It is your task to do what you can with what you’ve got, where you are—to do what is right and good within the limits of any given situation.*** Whether your actions will be “crowned by success,” as we so aptly say, is not up to you, not your responsibility, not your task. Leave to monomaniacs like Napoleon the reaching for usurped crowns to place on their own heads; the bill always comes due, sooner or later, and millions will pay it in blood. How much better to let go the fruits of your actions, as I’ve said plenty of times with the Bhagavad Gita (#19, #47, etc.), to leave success and failure to providence after you have done what you could, and to treat as none of your business (in Epictetus’s inimitable style) whether others will respect or disdain you for doing the right thing to the best of your ability.†

     Such wise unconcern (not disregard for others) cannot, needless to say, be easy for human beings to arrive at, as it would have to be based not on cold indifference, but to the contrary, on a profound care for community that sees the separation of tasks, together with the courageous pursuits of truth and freedom, as the only way to establish a respectful rapport on a horizontal level, as Adler put it. It is not because the Adlerian does not care that he refuses to interfere in the tasks of others, nor for simple reasons of quid-pro-quo (you leave me alone, I leave you alone), but because there is human dignity in being left to your own tasks, with help on offer of course, but no patronizing, manipulative, or coercive impositions in the name of caring—not even on children, in the Adlerian scheme, and this not in a spirit of anything goes, but as part of a subtle ethic of freedom and responsibility that cannot be inculcated early enough (K&K 178–86).

     A certain narrowing of focus that comes with a proper devotion to one’s tasks requires not a willful blindness to what lies beyond, but a recognition that the realm of what is within our power must necessarily be limited, and that proper attention to our own tasks requires a sustained vigilance such as we could not give it if we roamed too far afield. Overstepping our proper lines may often look as if it might be helpful to others, but that is a mirage. When we heed the call to mind our own business (as Socrates too liked to say), it is not a denial of human connection and interdependence, but its proper affirmation because implied within it is a recognition of how much we can change the world by changing ourselves, and how unfruitful our grand designs must become when they are insufficiently grounded in the work that we all need to do on ourselves first and foremost.

     Making one’s proper contribution becomes not less, but more vital on a clear-eyed estimation of one’s true tasks in life. Indeed keeping one’s sights on such contributions above all else was deemed, by Adler, to be nothing less than looking to the most reliable stars to navigate by in life—indispensable not only for society’s welfare, but for one’s own well-being as well: “As long as you do not lose sight of the guiding star—‘I contribute to others’—you will not lose your way, and you can do whatever you like. Whether you’re disliked or not, pay it no mind and live in freedom.” (K&K 261) At the same time, there is a world of difference between making one’s contribution in an Adlerian sense and spirit, on the one hand, and allowing oneself, on the other, to get preoccupied, nay obsessed, in the usual manner with personal recognition and reward—perhaps a more crucial issue for our times than ever, and something I shall return to in my next post.

*Atria International (Simon & Schuster) 2018 paperback edition, pp. 144–46 (“What Real Freedom Is”).

**Just when I had finished writing this piece, I picked up the latest issue of the Economist and found truth, lies, and the science of disinformation staring back at my from its cover. I was in no way influenced by it, unless you believe in effects preceding their causes, but it goes to show how much the topic seems to be on everyone’s mind.

***As Theodore Roosevelt put it in his Autobiography, chapter IX, though his own contribution in the passage was saying that “the greatest happiness is the happiness that comes as a by-product of striving to do what must be done, even though sorrow is met in the doing,” while the more famous phrase is introduced as merely “a bit of homely philosophy” attributed to a certain “Squire Bill Widener, of Widener's Valley, Virginia,” who was himself quoting it as a piece of conventional wisdom.

†It would be neither prudent nor wise simply to ignore criticism; but fearing it unduly or dwelling on it needlessly is no better. Since disapproval affects us all on some level, though to different degrees depending on temperament and occasion, and self-awareness too, it does require processing. To help move things along, always expect some measure of fault-finding and keep it in perspective. In any group of ten, Jewish wisdom counsels (K&K 228), you must be prepared to meet with at least one determined detractor who will disapprove of you no matter what. If two or three others appreciate you properly in the same group, and you can bring the rest along more or less, then you are doing well. Ask yourself next where the critical perspective is coming from: if it springs from an orientation or outlook very different from yours, how could you possibly avoid or satisfy it without abandoning your own way? (Precisely what K&K are warning against.) If any aspect of what is said against you, however hard to hear, is nonetheless valid, then learn from it what you can and make whatever amends are necessary or appropriate; if not, make a mental note of the incident and file it away under unavoidable frictions in life, or the cost of doing life’s business. Then meditate or pray on the whole thing, close the books, and move on.