Self-Addiction: A Trilogy (Part 3)

So my big problem is that I can only see the world through my own perspective, which becomes a huge problem because, like an addict, I cannot stop it. I seem to have no choice in this matter. The best thing I can do with this is to learn to value other people’s perspectives simply because they are perspectives and wonder that there is more than one way to look at something. I am one of many people, and I should treat my “self” through that perspective.

I’ve been putting this off. Like I said at the beginning of this trilogy, I’ve had these thoughts for quite some time, and, as a result, I’ve been able to articulate them for quite some time. My hesitancy and reluctance has nothing to do with my thoughts being terribly complex. I’ve been reluctant to write this third and final part because, of the trilogy, it is 1) the one I cannot talk about without bringing up Jesus and 2) the one that is most hypocritical for me to say. This is me saying what I think should be the case, but I also realize that I am woefully inadequate to point this out.

It’s because I’m a self-addict, and addicts are probably the last people who can say what a healthy life is. An alcoholic may be able to say that it is a good thing to be sober, but no alcoholic can tell you what it would be like to not have a craving for alcohol. I can say that my living for my sense of self has polluted me, but I cannot do anything but guess as to what it would be like to be so focused on what is good in life that it becomes my sole focus with no sense of “me” involved.

One piece of bad advice that I’ve gotten growing up is that you have to go through something to truly understand it. More often than not, I’ve used this as a justification to do worse and worse things. Luckily, because I was raised by virtuous parents, I’ve never really been confused that the bad things I’ve done were actually bad things.

Does that make sense? Let me try this example. I am a very good liar when I need to be, and I have been able to even justify lying, but I’ve never thought lying was a morally good thing. Lying is a bad thing that has to be justified. It is something that, thankfully, I’ve never really wanted in my life, but I’ve allowed as a necessary evil. Lying is, by its nature, something I don’t want, but, by circumstance, it is something I learned to tolerate.

But I would be quick to point out that this ability to see the nature of lying as something black and white (emphasis on nature) is not a virtue of mine, but other people’s virtues imparted to me. There are probably plenty of areas of my life where I am blind to the truth of things because I am only a man and have a finite perspective (a man who also tends to prefer his perspective to others).

So, when I say this next thing, please understand that I do not think that what I am going to say is because of any virtue that I claim to have.

Because I have never had a problem with viewing lying as evil, I think that puts me in a different place than the person who views (or viewed) lying as a great good. Because I have never had a problem with alcohol addiction, I think that puts me in a different place than the alcoholic. My lifestyle, because it was given to me by people greater than me, is something that not only discourages these vices, but it encourages the virtues associated with them. I have a freedom to love and pursue honesty easily because I have no craving to lie. I have a freedom to love and pursue sobriety because the drunkenness that leads to addiction is not something I crave.

Of course, if I look at the Bible, I find that what I think is honest and sober is really just a pale, if not completely flawed, perspective of Truth and Purity, because these virtues are out of reach of any man. All have sinned in all these areas.

But my point with saying all of it is to say that because all people have different struggles, some people who have not struggled with one thing have a unique perspective from the person who struggles with it. To put it bluntly, they have the perspective of a struggleless person (be it from strength or luck). An honest man comes at lying differently than a liar. A pure man comes at drinking different than an addict.

Christian truth (or what I understand of it) is that no man is truly honest, and no man is truly pure. We all have fallen in all areas, but, for the sake of this discussion, I think I can say that some struggle more strongly in some areas than others. Maybe no man is honest, but some people struggle less with lying. Maybe no man is pure, but some people struggle less with addiction.

So, the ironic thing is that all I can do is tell you my opinion about the matter, but that’s the very thing I do NOT want to be doing right now. It’s like a liar trying to talk about all the beauties of honesty, or a drunk trying to talk about the wonders of being sober. If you are a liar, how can you know that what you’re saying is not just another self-deception or a subconscious attempt to deceive someone else? If you’re drunk, how can your drunken slurs and intoxicated logic ever provide anyone with a clear image of why sobriety is good? At best, I can probably convince you that self-addiction is bad because of my inability to escape it, but I can only take guesses as to what true selflessness looks like, because I am an outsider trying to look into a club that I shut myself out of.

Once an addict, always an addict.

Let me be truly honest and blunt for one moment. All I have within me to offer you is my opinion, and when I am alone and trapped with nothing but my self, it is a very lonely place to be. I doubt that I am the only person trapped inside with his self, but I do not have the authority to claim that you are suffering from the same thing as me. I can only see me, and, because of that, I have no right to say that what I see is truth. I can only say it is true for me, but what I desperately long to say to you and to see clearly is something that is true for everything.

Jesus claims to be the Way, the Truth, and the Life, and I believe Him.

In those brief moments that I have been able to not be self centered or self oriented, I have tried to cling to other selves that are not mine, only to find that, in doing so, I’ve either grasped to something just as self oriented as I am or I have begun to weigh down the other person by having grasped them to begin with. Either I steamroll them with my personality, or I am too clingy and try their patience (rightly so. Clinginess is bad). The problem is that neither situation does anything to clear me of my self centeredness, it just shifts it to something else. I am an addict who can be sober but never stop being an addict. I cannot be a pure man, only a sober addict. I cannot be pure BECAUSE I have to focus so hard on being sober. Sobriety is all I can focus on because, when I don’t, I fall back into addiction.

Constant vigilance is the price of safety, but, ironically, when you are safe, you want to relax, yet if you relax, you lose the safety.

I cannot be good, I can only be a self centered person not being bad. My energy goes so much into not being bad that I cannot simply be good, but to be good means that goodness must come simply.

I believe in Jesus because He is simply Good. Goodness, Purity, Truth, Beauty, and Life are His natures, not something He learned to do. It means nothing to me for Jesus to just be a good man, because a good man is just a man who copies what is good. It means everything for Him to be God and to be Good,  because I need Goodness to be a real thing, not just a concept. I need it to exist outside of my own head or outside of anyone’s head because it will just be a product of the self otherwise. And I’m tired with living with only my self. I’m tired of living with only selves. I want to see what it means to be selfless, and this needs to come from outside of me.

Because as I said, once an addict, always an addict. The only way I know that people can legitimately stop being addicts is by becoming sober people, and the only way a person can become legitimately sober (as if they were never addicts to begin with) is by listening someone to was never an addict. Only non-addicts will have the clarity to know the difference. Anyone who has lied might be self-deceived. Anyone who has been an addict, in a weird way, may be addicted to sobriety. Think of someone who goes to AA and yells and curses at people who don’t, who have to ignore their wife and families to keep going. For me, it is how a self centered man can listen to others out of his self centeredness. He can even adopt other people’s perspectives out of his self centeredness and not realize that he is still self centered.

When I mentioned the difference between living through the flesh and living through the Spirit in the first part of the trilogy, I was talking about something similar to this. I’ve learned how I can be in a place where it is more likely for people to love me, but I cannot make anyone love me, at least I cannot do it and it be real love. But I keep trying. I think I am doing the right thing, but the problem is that it is the “I” doing the thinking, and my self is biased. My flesh is me. It is this thing that filters the world around me, but the Spirit comes from outside of me. It is something that is not the self and is not concerned with the self. The flesh leads to death, the Spirit leads to life, and Jesus is the Life. It fits; I need to be pointed to something outside of me, and Jesus is outside of me, because in me is my self, my flesh, and my deadness.

I think this is where that other verse comes in handy from Romans, the one I said I would explain later. Here it is again:

"Because, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved." 10:9 – 10

A while ago, I wrote a blog called “10 Finger Prayer” where I talk about the prayer “Lord Jesus Christ (confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord), have mercy on me, a miserable sinner (believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead).” In it, I mentioned that, typically, we focus on the fact that we are sinners and ignore the first part, the part that says Jesus is Lord. Jesus being Lord is something to rejoice over.

I need something outside of my self that is the Good, and I believe Jesus is that. For so long, I’d thought that me being a Christian meant that I was trying to adopt Jesus’ views as my own, and that this would be the way to being selfless and being good, but I was wrong. To adopt Jesus’ perspectives would mean making them my own, and then following what I now believe. It is practicing self centeredness again, because I am still just following my own perspective, but am just shifting it to something else. But these verses are not about adopting Jesus’ perspective, it is about submitting to it. It is about receiving it.

Accepting it.

I tried to make it my own, but I needed to let it stay outside of myself. It cannot be mine, because I am, after all, an addict and should not be trusted with it. I would ruin it. In order for me not to ruin it, I need to become a follower and servant, instead of being a cheap imitation.

To me, He is the pure man teaching me what it would be like to live completely without my addiction. He is my Lord. And I believe that He is raised beyond this dead thing that I call my flesh; I believe He is better than me. And even though I often find myself struggling with my addiction, I know that the only way I can get out of this is by trusting not some other self, because that just leads me to my self, but what is Good.

That’s the difference between being self centered and good. A person who is focused on the self needs to appease the self by constantly looking for something to fulfill it, but goodness constantly satisfies goodness. What is good does not need to ask “what do I want” because it already has it. Constantly, I have to think about what I want, because I am missing something. I am an addict, and I am missing what it means to not be an addict. That needs to be given to me. Until then, I need to keep figuring out what I want. Everyone is trying to figure out what they want. I’m very sick of constantly wanting things.

As an addict, I cannot imagine what it would mean to not want something. To not want more. What’s weird is me wanting things gets in the way of me ever enjoying them. Because I always want my self, I can never really just sit and enjoy my self. Imagine if you always had a craving for donuts; you crave them so much that you crave them even if you’re eating them. That’s what my addiction for self is like. I want to not be an addict. I want to not want.

Heaven is supposed to be the place where we “want no more”. Imagine that.

Self-Addiction: A Trilogy (Part 2)

To reiterate: the problem that I have been running into is that I cannot really look at the world through any lens that isn’t mine. My “self” is something that I naturally submit to; it is what I follow when I approach things uncritically, and what I am fighting against when I try to live objectively. This problem is more of something that hurts me, first and foremost, but it also hurts other people.

I said I would, in this blog, talk about how this self-addiction causes problems in someone’s life and how to overcome them. First, I wanted to spend some time narrowing down what I mean by self-addiction.

When I first started to think about this, I was struck by how what I was saying could easily be a kind of social communism which, if you were to take a bit further, could turn into advocating a hive-mind. As I understand communism, it is supporting the needs of the community over the needs of the self.  Science fiction has shown me that a hive-mind is when you destroy the self for the community; all people become one mind.

Then I thought of what I considered to be the opposite of communism: Ayn Rand and self-worship. I’ve only ever read Anthem once (when I was a senior in high school), so I don’t pretend to know a lot about her philosophy. However, I’ve played a lot of Bioshock, which is based on her philosophy. From what I can understand, the highest good for Ayn Rand (at least the highest good in Bioshock) is whatever I want or desire.

I’m against both of these philosophies because both of them are right only some of the time. On one level, Ayn Rand is right because the problem with destroying the self and becoming a hive-mind is that individuals become liable to be abused. People try and serve the community, but someone always ends up at the bottom. On the other hand, I’m definitely not advocating self-worship because then you end up with the Bioshock city of Rapture, a Utopia gone completely wrong over unrestricted selves.  Ironically, self-worship also ends with someone being trampled over.

So here are two things that I believe hold true: 1) Other people are important 2) I am important.

The next thought that I had was that what would be best to do is to balance between my “self” and others’ “selves”, but this didn’t work.  The main reason that I think this kind of balance is the wrong answer is because it falls into one of the holes that I mentioned in part 1: it still focuses on the self.

Suppose your spouse wants you to spend 60% of your time with her, your boss thinks you need to spend 60% of your time at work, your kids need you to shuttle them around 60% of the time, and you personally want to spend about 60% of your time doing whatever it is you want to do. So, mathematically speaking, you can make 1 out of 4 people happy, or you could be fair and give everyone 25% of your time, making no 

one happy. I don’t think I’m exaggerating either. Selves contradict.

Don’t forget this example. I find it to be important.

Nietzsche’s solution was for us to just make the world the way that you want it to be. It’s impossible to be fair, but fairness does not really exist. Fairness is a construct that people came up with.  So…redefine fairness. I can make fairness mean whatever I want it to. This kind of makes sense because I can come up with many reasons to justify putting my spouse, kids, job, or self first. I could just choose one and stick to it.

Like before, I’m against both of these because they’re both somewhat right. Balancing selves is not what needs to happen because, ultimately, nothing really gets accomplished, yet Nietzsche is right on some level because at least you get something accomplished. However, I hate Nietzsche; he’s an asshole. I think Nietzsche is saying that whatever you do is “good” (of course Nietzsche himself is above such abstract constructs as good and evil). You get positive movement with his view because any movement is positive. From Nietzsche’s standpoint, I could decide to just pick up a gun, shoot all the people, and then shoot myself, and that would be fine because I decided. Obviously, that doesn’t work either, because there is something to be said for objectivity and happiness.

So here are another two things that I find true: 3) Doing something that actually improves things is important 4) Feelings are important.

A kind of balance is, I believe, the right answer, but it won’t be a balance that can be come up with by thinking from a “self” perspective. Because, like I said, if you look at it from that perspective, you have to end with someone being unhappy. Someone always loses.

I got into an argument with my friend because he likes to win. All the time. We both love competition because we both love testing our skills, seeing our hard work rewarded, and learning to be better. As a result, I think you can be happy to lose if you tried your best, because then you can learn to be better and, heck, you at least got to play. I also think that if outside circumstances cause you to lose, you don’t need to be upset with that. My example to him was that if you’re playing in the Super bowl and your quarterback gets sick the day of the game and that causes you to lose, you don’t need to be upset. He says that it’s human to be upset with that; we’re naturally upset when circumstances beyond our control ruin all our hard work. And I agree with that.

However, if losing the Super bowl was GENUINELY unavoidable because of something completely outside of your control, it seems like you have two options: 1) Be upset at having lost, then get over it because it was outside of your control 2) Be pissed off forever because you cannot change the thing that was outside of your control. 

What’s important about football? Is it the game, or winning the game? If it’s the game, then being good and winning becomes important because it’s dedication and loyalty to the game. If winning is important, things like good sportsmanship, kindness to the other team, rules, and improvement are all secondary to the win. If you care about the game, you’ll always try to get better. If you care about winning and believe you’re the best, you’ll never get any better.

Arguably, it can be said part of being the best is constantly getting better so no one will ever beat you. Suppose you were unbeatable in football. Not because you CANNOT get any better as a player; you just have some kind of luck that secures wins. You always win, no matter what. If all you care about is winning, you will not spend any time getting better unless you care about the game. That’s why you can have successful assholes, because success and attitude do not have to match.

5) “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Here are the other points that I’ve made:

1) Other people are important.
2) I am important.
3) Doing something that actually improves things is important.
4) People’s feelings are also important.

Now I’m going to do a really cool play on words to show how these seemingly contradictory points can all work together without developing a kind of freak balance.

My personhood (humanness) is important; my “self” is not as important.

I’m totally giddy about this.

This is what I’ve noticed: there is something inside me that puts my desires in front of others, in more and more insidious ways. This thing that is inside me that simply states “Hey, don’t forget what you want/think” is what I am calling my “self”.  It’s the part of me that is simply saying to put my own wants, thoughts, dreams, imaginations, and desires first (all of which are very human things). And it’s something that I’ve caught more and more.

I was visiting with an old friend of mine and we were talking about the things that were going on in her life. She told me about the difficulties that one of her friends is facing and my mind began grasping for the times in my life where I faced a similar difficulty. When I responded to her, I said something like “Yeah, when I was dealing with blah, I remember feeling like blah because blah blah blah.” I was a bit surprised with my response (not because of the blahs). When I told her what I thought , I don’t think I made a bad observation (I rarely do). But the observation I made was centered on my self. The way I….offered insight was by looking at it through my perspective (which isn’t even really wrong because sometimes multiple perspectives come in handy). However, in this instance, my response was very sel oriented; I took her friend’s problem and then focused on it through my own self (or, you could even say I took her friend’s problem and made it into my own).

There is a communication technique that has you reiterate what you just heard the other person say, and I’ve always thought it was a stupid technique. “I’m having a bad day.” “What I hear you saying is that you’re having a bad day.” Redundant. I feel like I’m treating the other person like a child whenever I do it, and I feel like the other person is treating me like a child if they do it to me. I’d much rather a person understand me just from what I’m saying. And yet….

I like to think that I’m a decent writer and that I kick ass when it comes to public speaking (I should be, I like to soapbox a lot). However, these skills do not transfer when it comes to my ability to hold a conversation.  Part of the problem is that I make many assumptions based on little information. The positive side of this is I can sometimes know what someone is trying to say when they’re struggling to find the words for it. The terrible side is that I’m very bad at listening to someone uncritically; I form opinions without asking very many questions.

My BFF is helping me get over this. He constantly reminds me that the only way to really understand someone else is by stepping out of our own head and listening to other people. I like playing mental and emotional games with people; it’s like conversational foreplay to me. Words and thoughts are fun and I enjoy experimenting with them. However, since I already have a difficult time in conversations, making them a game where I’m trying to figure the other person out with as little information as possible is definitely not helpful. Yet I don’t think I’m the only person who does this.  Watch as I rephrase it:

I find that I only listen to people long enough to understand them in my own head. I come to a point where 

they make sense to me, and then I stop listening.  My goal was to “win” and I’ve won at that point.

And that is what I was trying to do with my old friend. The problem was not what I said or even the fact that I wanted insight, as both are good things. The problem was that my desire to be helpful and insightful was more important to me than ACTUALLY being helpful and insightful. I wanted to be helpful my way; I didn’t even bother ask if my way was the right way. When it comes down to it, who is the person who has the most to lose in that situation? Probably me. Even if my advice works, I never understood my friend; I only saw her as the friend I thought she was. I was left with the image of my friend but not my friend. The problem with wanting to be the person with all the answers is that you become alone with your answers.

For what good is it if you inherit the whole world, yet you’re alone when you get it?

My BFF and I came to this conclusion that the best teachers and leaders are the people who were first the best students and followers. Think about it. What people are you most likely to listen to or follow? The people who you think understand you, what is going on, and knows what needs to be done. The people who understand you are the ones who listen to you. Good teachers are, in a way, students to their students; they need to understand what their students are going through to benefit them instead of thinking that “Because I am their teacher, I know what is best.” The best parents are those who listen to their children instead of saying “I know that you need this.” The best lovers are those who listen to their beloved instead of saying “You were never like this before.”

As the old proverb goes, be quick to listen and slow to speak.

That silly and redundant communication technique I mentioned before is far more helpful than I imagined. Anyone who can “understand” me without bothering to get to know me does not really know me, and when I strive to do that with other people, I don’t know them either. In these instances, my self is what is getting in the way. I pursue the way I want to be understood, but that’s not the way people actually understand each other. The way to understand someone is to think what they think. Because if you’re having a bad day, I think it’s more important to understand what you think is bad instead of assuming that your bad means the same as mine. There are definitely different types of bad days.

And here is why I think all this is important to personhood/humanity verses the self. Humans can have bad days. Humans can have likes, dislikes, hopes, dreams, imaginations, thoughts, reasons, and perspectives. Each of these things is great in-and-of themselves, but they all become huge problems when they isolate us. When my dreams are more important than yours, I ignore your dreams. When I treat your dreams as more important than mine, my dreams become ignored. What’s true in both situations is that people need to dream, and preventing anyone, myself or someone else, from dreaming isolates them. It kills humanity in favor of the self.  

I think that 60% problem I mentioned earlier is better approached from this perspective: listen and understand why others need your time and why you need to take care of yourself, and then deal with it. What’s fascinating to me is how what I want and what I need fall rarely fall in line. I never have time to do everything I want to do or everything everyone else wants me to do, but I almost always have time to do what needs to be done. Even though I can easily figure out on my own what I want and what other people want, I can only figure out what people need by listening to them and understanding the world by adopting their perspective. I have to be able to move outside of my self to find out my own needs in relation to the needs of others and the world around me so that harmony can be reached.

After all, it takes two to tango.