Are you seriously suggesting that people recognize the ability of others to use the same principles they aspouse when it is not rhetorically convenient? Sir/madam, I'm going to have to ask you to leave.
It isn't simply that therapy culture taken to its extreme problematizes the concept of doing anything that might vaguely be construed as uncomfortable or done for the benefit of someone else; there's also the inevitable observation that the people most likely to shout self-care and putting your needs first are also the ones most likely to call, politically, socially, or otherwise, for the need for *other people* to change in order to make society less toxic, less bigoted, less bad.
It's one thing to be so deep into the pool of self-affirmation that accepting the possibility of self-work might feel like oppression, but I think Freddie realizes that this dynamic can't credibly co-exist with the kind of politics that claims that we all need to make sacrifices and Do The Work to overturn all the prejudices, structural failings, and -isms in the world. (Moreover, as Freddie has pointed out in the past, politics- organizing, outreach, trying to win hearts and minds- *is* hard work, and the act of trying to convince a skeptical voter why they should switch to your team inherently butts up against the therapy mandate to never breach the boundaries of one's own comfort zone.)
Everyone is entitled to their own petty hypocrisies, and of course you can't force anyone to forgive anyone else, but this particular hypocrisy is one that renders a significant part of the entire leftist project ripe for dismissal. And I get the sense Freddie recognizes this more than all the self-affirming Christina Carons of the world.
In other words: People rarely take the advice that they need.
I think there are people that need the advice that they aren't obligated to please everyone and forgive everything. I think those people are rarely the people that are making Instagram posts about not forgiving people.
Agreed, and I'll add this: Sometimes we do things we hate because that's part of being in a goddamn community. I may not have warm fuzzy feelings towards everyone on my Ultimate Frisbee squad, but we've been together for years and that means that if one of them loses a family member, I go to the funeral. Sure, funerals remind me of my own losses and maybe even freak me out a little, but I go anyway. My desire to avoid a painful situation is less important than helping a member of my community when needed. It just is.
I've known so many fair-weather friends, and had a few myself -- "Oh, no, I don't do hospitals. I don't do funerals. I can't stand to be around sickness and death." Welp, you're just a piece of shit then, right? "Mourn with them that mourn" may be an explicitly Christian commandment, but it sure feels like a basic condition of being an OK human being. But so many people have excused themselves from all that, and places like the NYT seem to exist now to make them feel good about it.
Funerals are to allow the living to have some closure. In the past, I sometimes didn't need that, and therefore felt no compunction to attend them all.
Yet since COVID, I've attended some funerals specifically for the opportunity to see some folks I haven't seen in a while.
In short, funerals are quite personal. Attendance is not a measure of friendship.
I would argue that a better measure of friendship is individual attention and time spent in support. When tragedy strikes, some friends disappear, others lean in.
Attending funerals/life events is such a good example of a habit that was likely cultivated by Christianity and now is slowly becoming less common or more of a conscious effort. As a member of a church, expectations were shared and people may have been judged negatively if they skipped a congregant's family member's funeral for a more enjoyable activity. But it's likely less stressful for an individual raised as a child that "this is what you do" than have to make that decision over and over as an adult while swimming in a culture that encourages people to look out for themselves.
I hope this doesn't come across as too negative.... there are many wonderful people out there (including you) who show up when asked. I would just hate to see this sense of obligation to community disappear even further from our society.
I agree. And I see so many lonely older people who eschewed attending or sponsoring these life events, like funerals, birthday parties, Christmas parties, and now find they have few close friends. It takes work, and a little effort to maintain relationships, and they did not do the work.
We live in a society that will ask you for 110%...and then happily take it from you until you drop. And offer meaningless self-help glurge when you do drop. I think some of the "no one has a right to demand ANYTHING from me, not even humanity" is in response to getting taken advantage of. Everywhere, there's someone who could a little more from you...will you give?
That Simpsons with the "I... do... what I feel like" guy really bodies about half of our modern day culture.
In the last month or so I noticed the Guardian had about two or three articles of this nature arguing that it's important for people to get angry, and that it's unhealthy not to let out your anger, and that rage is good for us etc.
And fine if it's just saying what you think or whatever, but the reality is there is now a self-help article or meme to exonerate any form of behaviour whatsoever. The entire culture exists to suggest personal responsibility, the agency of others, their feelings, the messy work of interpersonal relationships, should all just be burnt at the altar of never do anything that makes you feel bad.
It's completely pathetic and it's wrapped in a language that suggests this will empower you rather than just make you terrified of everything and permanently victimised, even by normal day to day setbacks.
The challenge of emotional life is to be both sensitive and resilient, to stand up for yourself and to be aware when you're in the wrong or hurting others. It's obviously hard and there aren't really any short cuts.
There's so many different cases. There are definitely people who need to push their own boundaries out, but they're outnumbered by all the people who are trying to push theirs further. The people who need the advice lack the chutzpah to put it into practice, and the people who just want to be catered to never lack for catering.
Forgiveness is the one great edict of Judeo-Christian religions, isn't it? Luke 23:34: "Forgive them Father for they know not what they do."
Within that context, I suspect therapy's emphasis on selfishness is a type of differentiation strategy since you could say religion & psychology are competitors for the human mind, no? The goal is to gain a competitive advantage—"Selfishness! A superior product to forgiveness!"—and clearly, it's working since interest in religion is wayyyyy down.
I think actual therapy is concerned with that, but the weird drift of therapy speak from treatment with an actual therapist to broadsheet newspaper articles, academia, and memes, seems to shed any sense of the need to work or do anything difficult yourself, presumably because you can't sell that in the form of something people can read in three minutes while eating their lunch.
As someone who's personally seen "forgiveness" used as a cudgel to try and pack down a sex abuse scandal, I've lost a lot of respect for the concept. Manily because there's too much compacted in it. There's a letting go for the forgiver (which they need) and for the recipient (which they don't always deserve), so you wind up trying to acknowledge one and not the other.
What I've mostly learned to do with people I cannot exactly forgive (because they haven't changed their behavior or apologized or because what they did was just too much) is....put them out of my mind, unless they re-enter my life. I live far away from most of these people, so that's easy enough. What isn't easy for me are situations when there's been someone trying to push for "can't we all just get along?????" and therefore dismissing my wishes to be left alone by the other person.
My guess is they care about you. Human beings are deeply flawed. I don't withhold forgiveness as I am not so special.
Humans have been hurting one another, consciously and unconsciously, since the beginning of time. Learning to live with flawed people grows us as people. It builds inner sturdiness and the capacity to speak up for ourselves and others when the worst side of someone comes out. (Do you have a worst side? Do you want forgiveness when it causes pain in someone you care about?)
A part of my father could be a bully. Another part was generous and sweet. I stood up to him when I needed to, walked out if he was dysregulated and took his calls when he cooled down. He was brought up in another time and didn't have the inner and outer resources that we have now. My actions in standing up for myself served both of us. I also had to look at my part as I'm not so pure that I didn't have a role too. He's gone now and I'm so glad I never estranged from him.
Dealing with my difficult Dad built my capacity to handle difficult situations and deal with adversity. This is life and I am both stronger and more tender because of it.
I'm glad you have found a way of approaching this that suits you.
There are many people who I have forgiven for many things, some of them quite terrible, because they have shown they are actually remorseful and they are trying to change. I am surrounded by (other) flawed people every day and I am well aware of the importance of working with such people.
The ones who I cannot forgive (yet?) are those who who in the immediate aftermath will brush off their cruel behavior, pretend it never happened or wasn't that bad, and insist that I also pretend it never happened without actually working through things. Do/did they care about me? I don't know. They don't/didn't care enough to meet me in a place of humanity.
I've been thinking about this it got me to thinking of someone close to me who's experienced something similar. It wasn't a family member so they moved on and hoped the perp would recover some of their humanity. Life tends to take care of those who've lost touch with the their soul. My person forgave the perp (they know not what they do) and walked far away in the other direction. It still is hard to run into the perp as it was so damn upsetting, but they learned a lot about vetting for integrity and seeing a charlatan for who they are.
It's one thing to forgive if "they know not what they do." It's completely different if they knew damn well what they were doing. I believe the Christian god only forgives the intentional sinner if he/she has repented and asked for forgiveness.
Most clear articulation of something you've circled for a while, I think! Thank you.
A lot of people feel they need talking cure therapy that just affirms their self-beliefs, whereas some may need therapy like, say, exposure-response, which is by its very nature difficult and uncomfortable.
I know it's a bit old fashioned, but I do wonder if a lot of the people who are not in any meaningful sense mentally ill but still go to therapy would be best off in some form of psychoanalysis. It certainly worked for me...
To be fair, "there are so many more wankers out there than when I was young" has been, for at least a century or two, one of the primary utterances of every generation once they reach a certain age. Maybe one can argue that we've been moving gradually in the direction of Freddy's conception of therapy culture for many decades and that the age of online memes has just more overtly pushed it over the top? Still, I'm not so sure I even agree with the premise implying that people are more selfish now than they were -- it may be more a matter of the rhetoric in our collective discourse about righteous behavior getting a lot cloudier so that now it can be wielded in a manner that justifies or condemns anything.
More likely, there are more wankers among the young, and when we're young, we notice it less, because in most cases we weren't all that much more mature or wise at that age; most of us were probably wankers in ways we didn't realize.
Century or two? Try a couple of millennia. Aristotle bitched about the kids these days. One of the earliest tablets with writing on has sections complaining about young people these days.
It's a scheming, quiet wankery, a diseased relationship to other people that requires a lot of two-facery to keep up. My impression of the 80's and 90's (which I did not witness) is that there was less of that wankery and a lot more people throwing eggs.
Used to be it took some work to get onto a platform and get an audience. Kids these days...all we had was yelling insults at random cars, and we LIKED it.
I know there's not an obvious "quick fix" for something as deeply embedded as this, but one idea comes to mind, because you've written about it a bit before. Do you think that it might help to push more people towards group therapy, where they will be forced to confront the immediate reactions of people other than their therapist in real time?
It's a tempting thought, but it would have to be led by a therapist skilled at gently pushing people because I suspect the kinds of people who could benefit from unvarnished group reactions are also the people least likely to seek them out.
That was the question I came here to ask – is group therapy just not a thing any more? I've been seeing a therapist for quite a long time now, and one of the early things he enforced on me was the importantance of attending group. There we all have to spend time listening to other people and sidelining our own issues, at least for a while. I hate it, but will very (very) grudgingly admit the value.
Since therapy only works when everyone's on the same page, group therapy can be a crap shoot. Maybe you'll all connect, maybe this week we won't. And that assumes everyone is there for the same reason; if I'm there to repair my marriage and my spouse is there to rationalize their divorce, well, the only help we're getting is a quick end.
Group therapy used to be really big. There's a book by Irv Yalom that was the seminal book on group therapy. He has written a lot of beautiful books on his therapy practice and often pushed clients to group work.
I have facilitated groups for a long time and have been in groups. We get to work on our reactivity to people who push our buttons and see ourselves mirrored back to us. It cut through some of the things Freddie is talking about.
This was excellent, Freddie. It's such a huge topic -- selfishness/selflessness, culture, obligations to our fellow man -- that it's hard to write intelligently about it, but you certainly pulled it off. I find myself frequently thinking about our changing cultural mores especially as I'm trying to inoculate my kids against those mores until they have built up some immunity.
Maybe at some point people will burn out on social media and rediscover that a less self-centered life is vastly more satisfying.... that is my hope, at least.
That article was bizarre. It uses the most extreme examples of abuse and neglect to frame the issue. She should've at least consulted her Times colleague, Kwame Anthony Appiah.
I think a lot of people would feel less of a need for hyper-individualized therapy if they felt connected to a group/community that gives space for the more difficult aspects of life to be shared and navigated together. I have been burdened by an inability to forgive/get over something for quite a while (for example) - my sweeping sense that the prior generation (those With means) failed in the basic task of upholding a society with a higher vision than just “nice car/big house” - but I’ve started to see the absurdity of that point of view, to see the situation less as a failure that I should walk around miserably judging and more as a situation of limited awareness that it does no good to Monday-morning quarterback from the vantage of what we know now .
I know this isn’t direct trauma (though I certainly carry some of that - as Freddie said, we all do), but it was enormously burdensome to me. Most spiritual paths distinguish between our “divine selves” and our flawed, mortal selves which are always limited in information. When we can see both in ourselves in each other, we can relax a bit from the iron grip of “non forgiveness” and see each other more as the nervous gophers we really are, digging and scuttering around this weird world.
I think the take described in this article leads, when taken to its logical conclusion, to a lot of loneliness.
Most of what a therapist provides can be provided by any friend who's close enough to be honest with you and put up with "some" of your bullshit. For those of us who never had any friends like that, therapy is the only place where we can talk in anything but the most general terms, cause none of my casual friends want to talk about my trauma history.
I completely agree and understand. I definitely do not mean to suggest that this is easily accomplished, or that therapy isn’t profoundly important. Only that our society is in dire need of social renewal and perhaps a path to remembering the inestimable value of real friendship. I’m so glad you have found a place to process your life experiences.
I have been the "advice friend" for so many people, including a guy I dated for a few months who unloaded a whole bunch of family trauma while he was dumping me (!!!).
I am happy to listen and empathize, and hope that talking through stuff makes my friends feel better, it's not uncommon that they share challenges that are well beyond my level of expertise to truly help with.
It can also create a weird dynamic if your friend becomes a therapist. Or conversely, if you try to treat a therapist like a friend -- I find it uncomfortable and almost a bit rude to only be talking about me, so I've tried to ask therapists about themselves and they've had to shut me down.
But I think there is a higher vision, all around us. The media though keeps telling us that we are selfish and uncaring. My friend from the UK chose to stay and live in the US because of our amazing tradition of charity, as she termed it. That doesn't exist in the UK or Europe, as my German friend said too. A nice car/big house does not necessarily stand in the way of the other.
I totally agree - this comment by no means captures the totality of the spirit of this country (on behalf of which I work quite hard, in my own small corners, out of love and care and belief in all it stands for — because I do believe in this ongoing project of a country, as do SO MANY). I also completely agree that nice car/big house doesn't stand in the way of anything; if anything, I just had the sense that, civically speaking, there was much that was being neglected. I fully recognize and honor the incredible philanthropic work that is done in/from communities like this; I saw it often! Unfortunately, that work hasn't necessarily translated (as we're seeing) into a healthy social fabric in general and the informed, engaged citizenry to maintain it. My main point was that I was frustrated by the judgment I had (in many ways, unfairly) rendered, and was carrying it around with me, pointlessly, for quite a long time. "Forgiveness" might not be the word, but just recognizing the situation for what it was and letting go of the burden of holding onto any resentment for the shit show we've inherited. I'm exhausted so I'm not sure that's fully addressing the point, but I didn't want this to get lost in the shuffle! I COMPLETELY agree with you that there is SO MUCH GOODNESS that never gets covered, for obvious reasons, by the media. It's a skewed and distorted portrait for sure, and I don't think it has to be this way. Alas.
Religion doesn't own the copyright on forgiveness, it's a universal human value. Religions just know how to market it better: you say a thing long enough, like 2 millennia, people just assume you've always owned it.
Religion doesn't own the copyright, but for me it clarifies the concept. Because when I ask god to forgive me, I am asking for renewed friendship, support, trust, and help. This gives me a definition of what it would mean if I actually forgave somebody.
Fair enough, but it's a necessary component of the thing we call Christianity - you cannot be a Christian if you reject the idea of forgiveness and grace - while it is not a necessary component of the thing we call being a human.
It's a necessary component of being a good human being though, right? And what is religion if not a higher calling for being a good human being.
Besides, I've known plenty of Christians (or any other religion for that matter) who fail miserably at the forgiveness and grace aspect of it. I mean, there are bad Christians around, just like anything else. And I could probably count the number of apostates I've ever heard about on one hand, if leaving the church for that reason alone.
You're not quite getting what I'm saying. Let me try again.
Please set aside the old "well I know some bad Christians; bet you didn't think of that smart guy!!" because it doesn't say what you think it says and it's lame. Yes, you absolutely do know some bad Christians. We're all bad Christians. We know that. Thank you for pointing out what we all know and accept as integral to our faith system.
The actual point is that for anyone to SELF-IDENTIFY as a Christian, an acceptance of the system of forgiveness and grace is required. Please understand the difference between "I agree with and endorse this concept" and "My behavior and choices reflect this agreement 100% of the time."
Someone can agree with, espouse, and even commit to, say, vegetarianism and still sometimes fall off the wagon and eat a bowl of Grandma's chicken soup. They're not proud of it, it's against their sincerely held beliefs, and yet they did it. Behavior does not match principles perfectly all the time. "Gentle parents" lose their tempers and yell at their kids. Loving spouses have one too many drinks at a conference and accept an invitation to someone's hotel room. Contractors having a bad year add phony line items to government invoices they know will be paid without scrutiny. All of those people would say they actually believe in speaking gently to their kids, marital fidelity and honest billing. But they make bad choices and betray what they believe in because they are human and they screw up. That doesn't mean they don't believe in their principles in the first place. Christians are no different.
It is, however, entirely possible and frankly fairly common for people who are members of the human race to not believe in forgiveness and grace even a little bit. Plenty of people reject the concept entirely or situationally, as Freddie points out. That's their right. But being a Christian, by definition, means you can't. Lots of non-Christian humans do believe in it, you're right about that, but you're missing the point that anyone who chooses to be a Christian can't reject forgiveness while non-Christians can take it or leave it.
The post is partially about the virtue of forgiveness in therapy circles. Someone else posits Christianity as a helpful tool for that, since forgiveness is central to the Christian faith (which it is). I claim it's a basic human feature, and not owned by Christians. You claim that's not the point because it's a requirement. And back and forth.
My point is that by both laying out that Christianity can be a cure for a selfish culture, or that forgiveness is inherent to the faith itself (which, again, is true), you and sjellic2 are sort of implying that the existence of Christianity is inherently better to the human race than it not existing. In other words it sort of gets to enjoy this elevated moral high ground right out of the gate, without having to justify it.
I mean, just saying something like "I'm a Christian" doesn't automatically make one a better person, or a more moral person. I'm sure it may feel that way to the Christian, my own 12 years of Catholic schooling certainly tried to make us feel like we were gods gift to the world. But religion doesn't get to hold the moral conch just because it's a religion. In the real world, the world of multiple faiths and no faiths and everything in between, everyone starts off from the same moral starting line. No one gets an automatic 'goodness' boost because they claim to be religious.
Fair enough points and thank you for the reply. I think the original person saying more or less “maybe Christianity’s influence is more valuable than many moderns give credit for” hits home. Part of the reason for the culturally ascendant aggressive and obsessive focus on the self, in a very short-sighted and incurious way, is two or three generations of people abandoning Christian systems of thought which teach at a very basic level “the world and others do not revolve around you, and the purpose of your life is not to feel good and get your way all the time, it is to serve others and glorify God.” Anyone who has been reared in that message will at least have the ability to pause and consider ideas like “putting yourself first means disappointing others and doing so is a good and noble and healthy thing.” Anyone not reared in those ideas, particularly those who aren’t particularly bright or reflective or whose brains have been hollowed out by influencer culture, has no reason to even stop and consider what the ultimate outcome of “me first” is whether they are told it by therapy or TikTok or Sex in the City reruns.
P.S. I'm sorry you had the world's worst Catholic schooling. Seems there are many such cases. I have conversed with many on Substack who have completely back-asswards ideas about Christian thought and practice who evidently were raised in the church and/or attended Christian schools; these failures kill me. The Catholic church does not in any way believe or teach that humans or Catholics are "God's gift to the world." Your school sucked if that is what you took away from it; no offense. If someone is properly exposed to Jesus Christ and and his church and does not choose him, I can respect that process even if it grieves me. It's exposure to a shitty facsimile that breaks my heart. I see it all the time.
Without forgiveness, we cannot have a society at all. We are all flawed creatures, some deeply. There is no possible way we could cohere without forgiveness. It's not a feature of a religion; it's a feature of humanity and religious happen to all be founded by and for humans.
I love, love how Freddie the Godless Marxist consistently exemplifies far higher moral values than not only (of course) the bottomlessly corrupt and self-righteous right wing, but also the vapid and self-absorbed do-gooder left. Where'd you get these ideas, buddy? If our nation does not get some of your religion and soon, we're screwed whichever side triumphs politically.
Sadly, self-righteousness pays for gurus. Telling people they're actually the morally superior side, whether that be the Chosen Ones or the Helpless Victims, never fails for subscribers.
Whenever you write one of these articles (and there's quite a few), I get angry. Not at you, not even at this culture's practitioners, just at the state of things: How this notion of customer service has wormed its way into every single facet of our beings where we just assume that in every single god damn sphere of social existence that we be treated as paying customers.
Some problems do get better: Identity/social justice/"woke" politics has lessened its chokehold on the nominal left in recent years as more and more people seem to have tacitly realized that it was all just language games that weren't accomplishing anything beyond temporary status in one of the least loyal political coalitions of all time.
But problems like this only get worse and worse, year by year. "Selfishness is a virtue" is omnipresent in 21st century America and I'm not sure there's any safe bastion from it anymore. Maybe there never was here in America.
What church are we talking about exactly? Because I can say from personal experience that I can't just walk into any run of the mill non-denominational Christian church here in middle America and find a sermon unaffected by America's oldest doctrine.
But more to point, as a Left-oriented American agnostic that is interested in convincing other American agnostics and atheists that life's inherent meaninglessness does not absolve one of being a selfish prick, what credible source can I turn to in this country?
Because it isn't on the nationalist MAGA right. It isn't on the self-care/therapy obsessed left. It isn't in any profit-minded institution that has realized that selling their own industry appropriate form of customer service will get them more of said profit (i.e. basically every institution in America, including the schools)
The closest I've ever found are those weird LARPer communist cults that still think debating the merits of Trotsky's writings is a worthwhile use of their time. At least they seem to recognize there is some Greater Good beyond self-satisfaction. A step in the right direction to be sure, but my previous description of them should tip my hand as to how useful I consider them to be.
So I am legitimately asking: Where can I turn to? Or has politics just become a manner of self-care, to assure oneself that even as the whole world goes to hell, at least you were One of the Good Ones?
As much as everyone rolls their eyes at the constant use of "expert" in The NY Times, this has to be the best yet. The problem with Jesus Christ was that he didn't do p-hacked, easily falsified, publish-or-perish studies to determine whether we should forgive our brother 490 times
This. People usually bring up egregious examples when it comes to non-forgiveness. But not forgiving has become a norm as Freddie says. The narcissism is pretty obvious. (as if any of us, if we had a shred of self honest, haven't done things that cause hurt).
The more we can avoid actual encounters through technology, the more we aren't faced with having to have hard conversations or deal with peoples foibles. Nor, do we have to face someone telling us something hard about ourselves. We can righteously assume we are the victims.
So if I am entitled to hold on to everything ever done to me until the end of time, are others not entitled to do the same to me?
Are you seriously suggesting that people recognize the ability of others to use the same principles they aspouse when it is not rhetorically convenient? Sir/madam, I'm going to have to ask you to leave.
Sorry 'bout that....
Only if you're a designated Victim Class. Otherwise, you're a filthy oppressor stealing others' well-deserved martyrdom.
Gonna guess everyone secretly believes it'll only go one way (in their favour).
"Me culture" taken to its logical extreme.
It isn't simply that therapy culture taken to its extreme problematizes the concept of doing anything that might vaguely be construed as uncomfortable or done for the benefit of someone else; there's also the inevitable observation that the people most likely to shout self-care and putting your needs first are also the ones most likely to call, politically, socially, or otherwise, for the need for *other people* to change in order to make society less toxic, less bigoted, less bad.
It's one thing to be so deep into the pool of self-affirmation that accepting the possibility of self-work might feel like oppression, but I think Freddie realizes that this dynamic can't credibly co-exist with the kind of politics that claims that we all need to make sacrifices and Do The Work to overturn all the prejudices, structural failings, and -isms in the world. (Moreover, as Freddie has pointed out in the past, politics- organizing, outreach, trying to win hearts and minds- *is* hard work, and the act of trying to convince a skeptical voter why they should switch to your team inherently butts up against the therapy mandate to never breach the boundaries of one's own comfort zone.)
Everyone is entitled to their own petty hypocrisies, and of course you can't force anyone to forgive anyone else, but this particular hypocrisy is one that renders a significant part of the entire leftist project ripe for dismissal. And I get the sense Freddie recognizes this more than all the self-affirming Christina Carons of the world.
In other words: People rarely take the advice that they need.
I think there are people that need the advice that they aren't obligated to please everyone and forgive everything. I think those people are rarely the people that are making Instagram posts about not forgiving people.
Agreed, and I'll add this: Sometimes we do things we hate because that's part of being in a goddamn community. I may not have warm fuzzy feelings towards everyone on my Ultimate Frisbee squad, but we've been together for years and that means that if one of them loses a family member, I go to the funeral. Sure, funerals remind me of my own losses and maybe even freak me out a little, but I go anyway. My desire to avoid a painful situation is less important than helping a member of my community when needed. It just is.
I've known so many fair-weather friends, and had a few myself -- "Oh, no, I don't do hospitals. I don't do funerals. I can't stand to be around sickness and death." Welp, you're just a piece of shit then, right? "Mourn with them that mourn" may be an explicitly Christian commandment, but it sure feels like a basic condition of being an OK human being. But so many people have excused themselves from all that, and places like the NYT seem to exist now to make them feel good about it.
Funerals are to allow the living to have some closure. In the past, I sometimes didn't need that, and therefore felt no compunction to attend them all.
Yet since COVID, I've attended some funerals specifically for the opportunity to see some folks I haven't seen in a while.
In short, funerals are quite personal. Attendance is not a measure of friendship.
I would argue that a better measure of friendship is individual attention and time spent in support. When tragedy strikes, some friends disappear, others lean in.
Attending funerals/life events is such a good example of a habit that was likely cultivated by Christianity and now is slowly becoming less common or more of a conscious effort. As a member of a church, expectations were shared and people may have been judged negatively if they skipped a congregant's family member's funeral for a more enjoyable activity. But it's likely less stressful for an individual raised as a child that "this is what you do" than have to make that decision over and over as an adult while swimming in a culture that encourages people to look out for themselves.
I hope this doesn't come across as too negative.... there are many wonderful people out there (including you) who show up when asked. I would just hate to see this sense of obligation to community disappear even further from our society.
I agree. And I see so many lonely older people who eschewed attending or sponsoring these life events, like funerals, birthday parties, Christmas parties, and now find they have few close friends. It takes work, and a little effort to maintain relationships, and they did not do the work.
We live in a society that will ask you for 110%...and then happily take it from you until you drop. And offer meaningless self-help glurge when you do drop. I think some of the "no one has a right to demand ANYTHING from me, not even humanity" is in response to getting taken advantage of. Everywhere, there's someone who could a little more from you...will you give?
Brilliant piece.
That Simpsons with the "I... do... what I feel like" guy really bodies about half of our modern day culture.
In the last month or so I noticed the Guardian had about two or three articles of this nature arguing that it's important for people to get angry, and that it's unhealthy not to let out your anger, and that rage is good for us etc.
And fine if it's just saying what you think or whatever, but the reality is there is now a self-help article or meme to exonerate any form of behaviour whatsoever. The entire culture exists to suggest personal responsibility, the agency of others, their feelings, the messy work of interpersonal relationships, should all just be burnt at the altar of never do anything that makes you feel bad.
It's completely pathetic and it's wrapped in a language that suggests this will empower you rather than just make you terrified of everything and permanently victimised, even by normal day to day setbacks.
The challenge of emotional life is to be both sensitive and resilient, to stand up for yourself and to be aware when you're in the wrong or hurting others. It's obviously hard and there aren't really any short cuts.
"We can all learn a lot from this young man here, this.. this.."
"Rudiger."
"Rudiger. And if we can all be more like little Rudiger.."
There's so many different cases. There are definitely people who need to push their own boundaries out, but they're outnumbered by all the people who are trying to push theirs further. The people who need the advice lack the chutzpah to put it into practice, and the people who just want to be catered to never lack for catering.
Forgiveness is the one great edict of Judeo-Christian religions, isn't it? Luke 23:34: "Forgive them Father for they know not what they do."
Within that context, I suspect therapy's emphasis on selfishness is a type of differentiation strategy since you could say religion & psychology are competitors for the human mind, no? The goal is to gain a competitive advantage—"Selfishness! A superior product to forgiveness!"—and clearly, it's working since interest in religion is wayyyyy down.
I think actual therapy is concerned with that, but the weird drift of therapy speak from treatment with an actual therapist to broadsheet newspaper articles, academia, and memes, seems to shed any sense of the need to work or do anything difficult yourself, presumably because you can't sell that in the form of something people can read in three minutes while eating their lunch.
As someone who's personally seen "forgiveness" used as a cudgel to try and pack down a sex abuse scandal, I've lost a lot of respect for the concept. Manily because there's too much compacted in it. There's a letting go for the forgiver (which they need) and for the recipient (which they don't always deserve), so you wind up trying to acknowledge one and not the other.
What I've mostly learned to do with people I cannot exactly forgive (because they haven't changed their behavior or apologized or because what they did was just too much) is....put them out of my mind, unless they re-enter my life. I live far away from most of these people, so that's easy enough. What isn't easy for me are situations when there's been someone trying to push for "can't we all just get along?????" and therefore dismissing my wishes to be left alone by the other person.
And that's where the drive for individualism comes from. Some people simply can't get left alone to process things, so they push everything away.
My guess is they care about you. Human beings are deeply flawed. I don't withhold forgiveness as I am not so special.
Humans have been hurting one another, consciously and unconsciously, since the beginning of time. Learning to live with flawed people grows us as people. It builds inner sturdiness and the capacity to speak up for ourselves and others when the worst side of someone comes out. (Do you have a worst side? Do you want forgiveness when it causes pain in someone you care about?)
A part of my father could be a bully. Another part was generous and sweet. I stood up to him when I needed to, walked out if he was dysregulated and took his calls when he cooled down. He was brought up in another time and didn't have the inner and outer resources that we have now. My actions in standing up for myself served both of us. I also had to look at my part as I'm not so pure that I didn't have a role too. He's gone now and I'm so glad I never estranged from him.
Dealing with my difficult Dad built my capacity to handle difficult situations and deal with adversity. This is life and I am both stronger and more tender because of it.
I'm glad you have found a way of approaching this that suits you.
There are many people who I have forgiven for many things, some of them quite terrible, because they have shown they are actually remorseful and they are trying to change. I am surrounded by (other) flawed people every day and I am well aware of the importance of working with such people.
The ones who I cannot forgive (yet?) are those who who in the immediate aftermath will brush off their cruel behavior, pretend it never happened or wasn't that bad, and insist that I also pretend it never happened without actually working through things. Do/did they care about me? I don't know. They don't/didn't care enough to meet me in a place of humanity.
That sucks and I'm sorry. I overreached.
I've been thinking about this it got me to thinking of someone close to me who's experienced something similar. It wasn't a family member so they moved on and hoped the perp would recover some of their humanity. Life tends to take care of those who've lost touch with the their soul. My person forgave the perp (they know not what they do) and walked far away in the other direction. It still is hard to run into the perp as it was so damn upsetting, but they learned a lot about vetting for integrity and seeing a charlatan for who they are.
It's one thing to forgive if "they know not what they do." It's completely different if they knew damn well what they were doing. I believe the Christian god only forgives the intentional sinner if he/she has repented and asked for forgiveness.
Most clear articulation of something you've circled for a while, I think! Thank you.
A lot of people feel they need talking cure therapy that just affirms their self-beliefs, whereas some may need therapy like, say, exposure-response, which is by its very nature difficult and uncomfortable.
I know it's a bit old fashioned, but I do wonder if a lot of the people who are not in any meaningful sense mentally ill but still go to therapy would be best off in some form of psychoanalysis. It certainly worked for me...
I think Freddy gives a pretty good explanation of why it seems there are so many more wankers out there than when I was young.
To be fair, "there are so many more wankers out there than when I was young" has been, for at least a century or two, one of the primary utterances of every generation once they reach a certain age. Maybe one can argue that we've been moving gradually in the direction of Freddy's conception of therapy culture for many decades and that the age of online memes has just more overtly pushed it over the top? Still, I'm not so sure I even agree with the premise implying that people are more selfish now than they were -- it may be more a matter of the rhetoric in our collective discourse about righteous behavior getting a lot cloudier so that now it can be wielded in a manner that justifies or condemns anything.
I would change "for at least a century or two" to "since the dawn of time". 😀
More likely, there are more wankers among the young, and when we're young, we notice it less, because in most cases we weren't all that much more mature or wise at that age; most of us were probably wankers in ways we didn't realize.
Century or two? Try a couple of millennia. Aristotle bitched about the kids these days. One of the earliest tablets with writing on has sections complaining about young people these days.
It's a scheming, quiet wankery, a diseased relationship to other people that requires a lot of two-facery to keep up. My impression of the 80's and 90's (which I did not witness) is that there was less of that wankery and a lot more people throwing eggs.
Used to be it took some work to get onto a platform and get an audience. Kids these days...all we had was yelling insults at random cars, and we LIKED it.
I know there's not an obvious "quick fix" for something as deeply embedded as this, but one idea comes to mind, because you've written about it a bit before. Do you think that it might help to push more people towards group therapy, where they will be forced to confront the immediate reactions of people other than their therapist in real time?
It's a tempting thought, but it would have to be led by a therapist skilled at gently pushing people because I suspect the kinds of people who could benefit from unvarnished group reactions are also the people least likely to seek them out.
it tends to be cheaper than individual therapy, so at least it has that incentive going for it
That was the question I came here to ask – is group therapy just not a thing any more? I've been seeing a therapist for quite a long time now, and one of the early things he enforced on me was the importantance of attending group. There we all have to spend time listening to other people and sidelining our own issues, at least for a while. I hate it, but will very (very) grudgingly admit the value.
Since therapy only works when everyone's on the same page, group therapy can be a crap shoot. Maybe you'll all connect, maybe this week we won't. And that assumes everyone is there for the same reason; if I'm there to repair my marriage and my spouse is there to rationalize their divorce, well, the only help we're getting is a quick end.
Group therapy used to be really big. There's a book by Irv Yalom that was the seminal book on group therapy. He has written a lot of beautiful books on his therapy practice and often pushed clients to group work.
I have facilitated groups for a long time and have been in groups. We get to work on our reactivity to people who push our buttons and see ourselves mirrored back to us. It cut through some of the things Freddie is talking about.
This was excellent, Freddie. It's such a huge topic -- selfishness/selflessness, culture, obligations to our fellow man -- that it's hard to write intelligently about it, but you certainly pulled it off. I find myself frequently thinking about our changing cultural mores especially as I'm trying to inoculate my kids against those mores until they have built up some immunity.
Maybe at some point people will burn out on social media and rediscover that a less self-centered life is vastly more satisfying.... that is my hope, at least.
Thank you for this.
That article was bizarre. It uses the most extreme examples of abuse and neglect to frame the issue. She should've at least consulted her Times colleague, Kwame Anthony Appiah.
I think a lot of people would feel less of a need for hyper-individualized therapy if they felt connected to a group/community that gives space for the more difficult aspects of life to be shared and navigated together. I have been burdened by an inability to forgive/get over something for quite a while (for example) - my sweeping sense that the prior generation (those With means) failed in the basic task of upholding a society with a higher vision than just “nice car/big house” - but I’ve started to see the absurdity of that point of view, to see the situation less as a failure that I should walk around miserably judging and more as a situation of limited awareness that it does no good to Monday-morning quarterback from the vantage of what we know now .
I know this isn’t direct trauma (though I certainly carry some of that - as Freddie said, we all do), but it was enormously burdensome to me. Most spiritual paths distinguish between our “divine selves” and our flawed, mortal selves which are always limited in information. When we can see both in ourselves in each other, we can relax a bit from the iron grip of “non forgiveness” and see each other more as the nervous gophers we really are, digging and scuttering around this weird world.
I think the take described in this article leads, when taken to its logical conclusion, to a lot of loneliness.
Edited because my opening line said the opposite of what I meant to say :)
Most of what a therapist provides can be provided by any friend who's close enough to be honest with you and put up with "some" of your bullshit. For those of us who never had any friends like that, therapy is the only place where we can talk in anything but the most general terms, cause none of my casual friends want to talk about my trauma history.
I completely agree and understand. I definitely do not mean to suggest that this is easily accomplished, or that therapy isn’t profoundly important. Only that our society is in dire need of social renewal and perhaps a path to remembering the inestimable value of real friendship. I’m so glad you have found a place to process your life experiences.
I have been the "advice friend" for so many people, including a guy I dated for a few months who unloaded a whole bunch of family trauma while he was dumping me (!!!).
I am happy to listen and empathize, and hope that talking through stuff makes my friends feel better, it's not uncommon that they share challenges that are well beyond my level of expertise to truly help with.
It can also create a weird dynamic if your friend becomes a therapist. Or conversely, if you try to treat a therapist like a friend -- I find it uncomfortable and almost a bit rude to only be talking about me, so I've tried to ask therapists about themselves and they've had to shut me down.
That, too. Winding up as the "advice friend" while not having your own boundaries respected would be horrible.
Just saw this! All such great points and so true.
Community seems pretty hard to find these days.
It is. I think it’s a national emergency
But I think there is a higher vision, all around us. The media though keeps telling us that we are selfish and uncaring. My friend from the UK chose to stay and live in the US because of our amazing tradition of charity, as she termed it. That doesn't exist in the UK or Europe, as my German friend said too. A nice car/big house does not necessarily stand in the way of the other.
Sadly, charity does exist in the UK and Europe.
Sadly?
I totally agree - this comment by no means captures the totality of the spirit of this country (on behalf of which I work quite hard, in my own small corners, out of love and care and belief in all it stands for — because I do believe in this ongoing project of a country, as do SO MANY). I also completely agree that nice car/big house doesn't stand in the way of anything; if anything, I just had the sense that, civically speaking, there was much that was being neglected. I fully recognize and honor the incredible philanthropic work that is done in/from communities like this; I saw it often! Unfortunately, that work hasn't necessarily translated (as we're seeing) into a healthy social fabric in general and the informed, engaged citizenry to maintain it. My main point was that I was frustrated by the judgment I had (in many ways, unfairly) rendered, and was carrying it around with me, pointlessly, for quite a long time. "Forgiveness" might not be the word, but just recognizing the situation for what it was and letting go of the burden of holding onto any resentment for the shit show we've inherited. I'm exhausted so I'm not sure that's fully addressing the point, but I didn't want this to get lost in the shuffle! I COMPLETELY agree with you that there is SO MUCH GOODNESS that never gets covered, for obvious reasons, by the media. It's a skewed and distorted portrait for sure, and I don't think it has to be this way. Alas.
Christianity is increasingly underrated.
Religion doesn't own the copyright on forgiveness, it's a universal human value. Religions just know how to market it better: you say a thing long enough, like 2 millennia, people just assume you've always owned it.
Religion doesn't own the copyright, but for me it clarifies the concept. Because when I ask god to forgive me, I am asking for renewed friendship, support, trust, and help. This gives me a definition of what it would mean if I actually forgave somebody.
Fair enough, but it's a necessary component of the thing we call Christianity - you cannot be a Christian if you reject the idea of forgiveness and grace - while it is not a necessary component of the thing we call being a human.
It's a necessary component of being a good human being though, right? And what is religion if not a higher calling for being a good human being.
Besides, I've known plenty of Christians (or any other religion for that matter) who fail miserably at the forgiveness and grace aspect of it. I mean, there are bad Christians around, just like anything else. And I could probably count the number of apostates I've ever heard about on one hand, if leaving the church for that reason alone.
You're not quite getting what I'm saying. Let me try again.
Please set aside the old "well I know some bad Christians; bet you didn't think of that smart guy!!" because it doesn't say what you think it says and it's lame. Yes, you absolutely do know some bad Christians. We're all bad Christians. We know that. Thank you for pointing out what we all know and accept as integral to our faith system.
The actual point is that for anyone to SELF-IDENTIFY as a Christian, an acceptance of the system of forgiveness and grace is required. Please understand the difference between "I agree with and endorse this concept" and "My behavior and choices reflect this agreement 100% of the time."
Someone can agree with, espouse, and even commit to, say, vegetarianism and still sometimes fall off the wagon and eat a bowl of Grandma's chicken soup. They're not proud of it, it's against their sincerely held beliefs, and yet they did it. Behavior does not match principles perfectly all the time. "Gentle parents" lose their tempers and yell at their kids. Loving spouses have one too many drinks at a conference and accept an invitation to someone's hotel room. Contractors having a bad year add phony line items to government invoices they know will be paid without scrutiny. All of those people would say they actually believe in speaking gently to their kids, marital fidelity and honest billing. But they make bad choices and betray what they believe in because they are human and they screw up. That doesn't mean they don't believe in their principles in the first place. Christians are no different.
It is, however, entirely possible and frankly fairly common for people who are members of the human race to not believe in forgiveness and grace even a little bit. Plenty of people reject the concept entirely or situationally, as Freddie points out. That's their right. But being a Christian, by definition, means you can't. Lots of non-Christian humans do believe in it, you're right about that, but you're missing the point that anyone who chooses to be a Christian can't reject forgiveness while non-Christians can take it or leave it.
Well no, that's not really what I'm getting at.
The post is partially about the virtue of forgiveness in therapy circles. Someone else posits Christianity as a helpful tool for that, since forgiveness is central to the Christian faith (which it is). I claim it's a basic human feature, and not owned by Christians. You claim that's not the point because it's a requirement. And back and forth.
My point is that by both laying out that Christianity can be a cure for a selfish culture, or that forgiveness is inherent to the faith itself (which, again, is true), you and sjellic2 are sort of implying that the existence of Christianity is inherently better to the human race than it not existing. In other words it sort of gets to enjoy this elevated moral high ground right out of the gate, without having to justify it.
I mean, just saying something like "I'm a Christian" doesn't automatically make one a better person, or a more moral person. I'm sure it may feel that way to the Christian, my own 12 years of Catholic schooling certainly tried to make us feel like we were gods gift to the world. But religion doesn't get to hold the moral conch just because it's a religion. In the real world, the world of multiple faiths and no faiths and everything in between, everyone starts off from the same moral starting line. No one gets an automatic 'goodness' boost because they claim to be religious.
Fair enough points and thank you for the reply. I think the original person saying more or less “maybe Christianity’s influence is more valuable than many moderns give credit for” hits home. Part of the reason for the culturally ascendant aggressive and obsessive focus on the self, in a very short-sighted and incurious way, is two or three generations of people abandoning Christian systems of thought which teach at a very basic level “the world and others do not revolve around you, and the purpose of your life is not to feel good and get your way all the time, it is to serve others and glorify God.” Anyone who has been reared in that message will at least have the ability to pause and consider ideas like “putting yourself first means disappointing others and doing so is a good and noble and healthy thing.” Anyone not reared in those ideas, particularly those who aren’t particularly bright or reflective or whose brains have been hollowed out by influencer culture, has no reason to even stop and consider what the ultimate outcome of “me first” is whether they are told it by therapy or TikTok or Sex in the City reruns.
P.S. I'm sorry you had the world's worst Catholic schooling. Seems there are many such cases. I have conversed with many on Substack who have completely back-asswards ideas about Christian thought and practice who evidently were raised in the church and/or attended Christian schools; these failures kill me. The Catholic church does not in any way believe or teach that humans or Catholics are "God's gift to the world." Your school sucked if that is what you took away from it; no offense. If someone is properly exposed to Jesus Christ and and his church and does not choose him, I can respect that process even if it grieves me. It's exposure to a shitty facsimile that breaks my heart. I see it all the time.
Without forgiveness, we cannot have a society at all. We are all flawed creatures, some deeply. There is no possible way we could cohere without forgiveness. It's not a feature of a religion; it's a feature of humanity and religious happen to all be founded by and for humans.
Christianity is increasingly corrupt, lazy, and stupid. Nothing in the decline of Christianity that wasn't their own fault.
I love, love how Freddie the Godless Marxist consistently exemplifies far higher moral values than not only (of course) the bottomlessly corrupt and self-righteous right wing, but also the vapid and self-absorbed do-gooder left. Where'd you get these ideas, buddy? If our nation does not get some of your religion and soon, we're screwed whichever side triumphs politically.
Extra credit for “Freddie the Godless Marxist!” That’s a bumper sticker.
Or a Festivus carol.
Sadly, self-righteousness pays for gurus. Telling people they're actually the morally superior side, whether that be the Chosen Ones or the Helpless Victims, never fails for subscribers.
Whenever you write one of these articles (and there's quite a few), I get angry. Not at you, not even at this culture's practitioners, just at the state of things: How this notion of customer service has wormed its way into every single facet of our beings where we just assume that in every single god damn sphere of social existence that we be treated as paying customers.
Some problems do get better: Identity/social justice/"woke" politics has lessened its chokehold on the nominal left in recent years as more and more people seem to have tacitly realized that it was all just language games that weren't accomplishing anything beyond temporary status in one of the least loyal political coalitions of all time.
But problems like this only get worse and worse, year by year. "Selfishness is a virtue" is omnipresent in 21st century America and I'm not sure there's any safe bastion from it anymore. Maybe there never was here in America.
The church.
What church are we talking about exactly? Because I can say from personal experience that I can't just walk into any run of the mill non-denominational Christian church here in middle America and find a sermon unaffected by America's oldest doctrine.
But more to point, as a Left-oriented American agnostic that is interested in convincing other American agnostics and atheists that life's inherent meaninglessness does not absolve one of being a selfish prick, what credible source can I turn to in this country?
Because it isn't on the nationalist MAGA right. It isn't on the self-care/therapy obsessed left. It isn't in any profit-minded institution that has realized that selling their own industry appropriate form of customer service will get them more of said profit (i.e. basically every institution in America, including the schools)
The closest I've ever found are those weird LARPer communist cults that still think debating the merits of Trotsky's writings is a worthwhile use of their time. At least they seem to recognize there is some Greater Good beyond self-satisfaction. A step in the right direction to be sure, but my previous description of them should tip my hand as to how useful I consider them to be.
So I am legitimately asking: Where can I turn to? Or has politics just become a manner of self-care, to assure oneself that even as the whole world goes to hell, at least you were One of the Good Ones?
As much as everyone rolls their eyes at the constant use of "expert" in The NY Times, this has to be the best yet. The problem with Jesus Christ was that he didn't do p-hacked, easily falsified, publish-or-perish studies to determine whether we should forgive our brother 490 times
All of Jesus' studies were unfalsifiable. ;-)
My experience has been that forgiveness is a result, not an action. And when I’ve reached it, it feels blissful.
I’d encourage people to not get caught up by the little pleasures that come from holding grudges and pitying oneself.
This. People usually bring up egregious examples when it comes to non-forgiveness. But not forgiving has become a norm as Freddie says. The narcissism is pretty obvious. (as if any of us, if we had a shred of self honest, haven't done things that cause hurt).
The more we can avoid actual encounters through technology, the more we aren't faced with having to have hard conversations or deal with peoples foibles. Nor, do we have to face someone telling us something hard about ourselves. We can righteously assume we are the victims.