Divided, we stand united

Just be yourself. Natural is in right now. How often have we heard the pleas not to change your body or your personality to fit others’ expectations? Yet there are still definite trends in our expectations of these things, and definite pressures to conform to those trends. What are we missing?

First, I want to talk about body shape. Women certainly suffer from the pressure to look a certain way (only a lunatic would deny that). But what’s particularly crazy is the changing fashions in what we are pressured to look like. Not just in terms of clothing, hairstyle, having or not having a tan, etc., but in terms of much less transitory things. Relatively recently, we've undergone the shift from skinny straight-up-and-down, to curvy hour-glass. This is insane. Your weight might be under voluntary control to some extent, but your body shape – short of surgery – is not. For this reason among many others it is just not the sort of thing that should be subject to fashions.

Men haven’t got away scot free on this one either. There has been a shift in ideal from lean muscular to more beefy bulked-up muscular, and that is just as damaging and ridiculous as the corresponding shift for women.

It’s not that there’s anything wrong with having ideals. It’s just that any person’s body ideal should only ever be the healthiest version of themselves, not a picture of someone else entirely unlike them.

What is perhaps even more disturbing is that personality suffers from the same fashion trends. In the modern Western world, it is said that a slight hint of mania does you some favours (see e.g. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/19/business/19entre.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0), and that many successful people score a little higher than average on the scales used to test for psychopathy (see e.g. http://fortune.com/2012/10/26/do-psychopaths-make-good-ceos/). There has also been a little flurry recently over how under-rated introverts have become (http://www.ted.com/talks/susan_cain_the_power_of_introverts), and this seems in danger of descending into a competition over whether introversion or extraversion is “better”.

As with body type, the traits at issue here are often not really under an individual’s control. One argument is that it is useful to know that extraverts are more successful in a particular situation, so introverts could to better by “faking” extraversion. That might be useful advice in the short term, but really, why should anybody have to fake anything? We can all benefit from a little pretence at times, for example feigning sympathy rather than admitting we don’t really care about an acquaintance’s misfortunes. But pretending to be someone else is taking this to a whole new, and worrying, level.

What happens to you if you’re not a curvy extravert, or a mildly psychopathic beefcake? You can either fake it (with the help of surgery or drugs if necessary), you can bemoan your own inferiority and spiral into depression and self-loathing, or…you could try a little self-acceptance. This is really hard, given the social pressure to take one of the first two routes, but it is surely obviously better. And the main thing that makes self-acceptance easier is if we all practice a bit of other-acceptance too. People are different. Get over it.

We have been led to expect people to behave in certain ways, and to deride them for not doing so. We want everyone to be confident (by which people usually mean loud), brim full of energy, and at least making an effort to look how you’re supposed to look (control pants, chicken fillets, fake tan, etc.) But why do we think these ways of being are better than others? They might be better on average in certain types of situations, but they are definitely worse in others.

The really tragic thing here is our total inability to celebrate and respect diversity. Our diversity is our great strength as a society. In evolutionary terms, groups that are too uniform don’t last long. This is because organisms that all have the same weakness are vulnerable to entire populations being wiped out at a stroke. There are plenty of evolutionary facts that don’t translate up to the social level, but I think this one does. Any group that has variety of skills, interests, etc. is much more robust than one where everyone is the same. And it’s so much less boring.

When it comes to physical attractiveness, not only is it ok to be attracted to a look that isn't currently the fashionable one, it’s ok (in fact I think the healthiest thing) to not have a “type” at all.

What is interesting about a new person when you meet them is what makes them unique. That can be both physically and in terms of personality (depending on the context of meeting). So take the time to find out who people are, and don’t do this with a check-list of fashionable attributes that you think they ought to have.

There are many ways of dealing with a problem. There are many ways of being attractive. There are many ways of being good company. There are many ways of showing you care. There are many ways of being in charge. There are many ways of being a useful member of a team. Next time someone does one of these things in a non-standard way, look at whether it actually works, not at whether you have always been told that this is the way to do that thing. Practice other-acceptance. And next time you do one of those things in a non-standard way, think similarly. Practice self-acceptance. By accepting and even accentuating our diversity, we can stand together as a more robust, better functioning, and happier society.

I'm just, like, a really spiritual person?

We've all heard people talk like this, weird question-like inflection included. About how spiritual/enlightened they are, how in line with the universe, or deeply connected to nature or whatever. And we've all heard them slammed by the uber-rationalist types who think it’s all hocus pocus, and damaging hocus pocus at that. Who is right? Is there a middle way?

Well I think certain sorts of “spiritual” talk are dangerous but seductive nonsense (which is the worst kind of nonsense). However, I also think that there is a really important role for the language of spirituality to play, and that losing that would be almost as dangerous. I’ll try to explain this a bit more, but first I’ll quickly give some arguments on both sides that I think are both popular and strong.

First the spiritual person: This person sometimes argues that we are too “scientific” these days. Well that doesn't entirely make sense, but the point seems to be something like our having lost touch with nature, with our emotional selves, and with others as emotional beings too. This, I have a lot of time for. It can be phrased in ways that are patronising, weird, or just plain dumb, but the basic idea is that the 21^st century doesn't have time for people (and indeed plants and animals) other than as means to an end in a bullet-pointed life plan. And this rings totally true.

Blaming science isn't fair, but it’s understandable because they are faced with the caricature voice of modern science in the person of the uber-rationalist. More on them later. But this blaming of science is where it can get dangerous. There’s a certain type of spiritual person who thinks modern medicine shouldn't be trusted, and we’d be better off praying, or eating special herbs while muttering magic words, or drinking water (homeopathy). People die from this. They refuse their meds when they’re really ill, and they die. Then there are the anti-vaxxers – people who refuse vaccinations. This is a risk to all of us because, without high immunity in the population, infectious diseases can run riot and kill many, including those who were medically unsuitable for vaccination for whatever reason. The most vulnerable in society die first, and the rest of us follow. How spiritual. Well, there’s lots of praying, anyway.

Another danger is when spirituality comes in almost cult-like guises that appeal to the psychologically and emotionally vulnerable. This can be positive, when it’s a case of a community taking in someone lonely and giving them friendship and new purpose. However, it can result in brainwashing. People encouraged to cut off other support networks, to engage in potentially dangerous practices like fasting and drug taking. These are the kind of spiritual people we should fear. Their spirituality is a mask for control of others.

So, unsurprisingly, there is good-spiritual and bad-spiritual.

Now on to the uber-rationalist: This person tends to argue that science has everything almost all figured out. We should listen to what science tells us, and that’s that. When this is a counter-argument to the homeopath or the anti-vaxxer, I applaud it. And I love science. It’s amazingly good at what it does. But it was never supposed to do everything. It doesn't tell us how to be kind to others, and how and when and whether to be kind to yourself at others’ expense. It doesn't tell you how to feel part of a relationship, or of a community, and how to love your role within that unit. Only being with people can teach you these things.

And this uber-rationalism is dangerous too. People feel that it leaves something out. They are told that science can tell them everything, and when it can’t tell them how to live a good life that makes them happy (the main thing everyone really wants to know) they are disillusioned and turn away from it. As people turn away, they become mistrustful of science, and they look for answers to all their problems elsewhere. Then they become the kind of people who turn down their medication in favour of special water, and who refuse to vaccinate their children.

So, of course, there’s good and bad rationalist/pro-science too.

We need a balance where science is viewed for what it is, and praised for what it can do, without being held up as something that can solve all problems. But then does spiritualism fill the gaps left by science? I don’t think it does, really. Most of the things I mentioned above are the realm of philosophy, politics, and the humanities disciplines. Spiritual answers to the big questions – “Why am I here?”, “How can I face death without fear?”, “What is wrong with me that makes me feel this way?” etc. – all tend to be false. But that doesn't mean they aren't important, because we don’t have any true answers.

And this is the key place I think spiritual language is essential; it allows us to talk about the big questions. And we need to talk. We are natural story-tellers; our lives are narrative. We need to be able to talk out and make sense of everything that happens to us, and how we feel about it, even if it’s only talking to ourselves. Nameless, wordless struggles are the hardest. They can’t be resolved until we have words to rationalise them, and some struggles are too big to do this with conventional language. What we say might be strictly false, and we might be well aware of that, but if it can give us that sense of resolution, it can allow us to move on with our lives.

There’s a positive side to this too of course. Positive experiences can be just as ineffable, from the beauty of a sunset, to an intense shared orgasm, to a lucky coincidence that averts the disaster you've been dreading, to a piece of music that just fits with everything for you. We can still have these joys without words, but sometimes words can help us to enrich our experience of them, or to share them with others.

It might be that one day we will have words for all of the big things that don’t have a hint of the spiritual about them, and maybe then the spiritual will have had its day. But that day won’t be coming any time soon, if ever. In the meantime, we need the language of the spiritual to help us describe the indescribable; to fit the really big things into our relatively small minds so that we can cope. That can enrich our lives in ways that I don’t have words for, other than to say that it’s somehow…spiritual.