While the adoption of responsibility and discipline in one’s life may appear to be beneficial to the individual, which it surely is, there exists a limit to which such virtues no longer are optimal. Many people say the limit here is spreading oneself too thin, or adopting more responsibility than one can handle, but in these cases, we are no longer successfully adopting responsibility. Here I want to assume that the responsibilities, and discipline we apply to being industrious, or orderly, or in the duties we voluntary undertake, are all physically and mentally possible in a successful manner. Given this framework, I propose, there is still a limit to the usefulness and beneficiality of further adoption of responsibility, and that limit has to do with the effect that our actions have on other people.Once a given adoption of responsibility effectively and unjustly removes the opportunity of others to accept responsibility, in effect, once there is no longer the possibility of others being able to voluntarily accept responsibility in a manner that is detrimental to their wellbeing, then you may question whether the limit of your actions in terms of duty has been overstepped. In this case, you may gain the personal character advantage in being able to hold a heavier burden, thus sharpening individual discipline and intellect in ordering chaos, but, you do so at the price of compassion for the growth available to others. This limit, like most golden means, requires experiential and contemplative wisdom in discerning, but that it exists, cannot be doubted.
In addition to limiting the ability for others to adopt responsibility, the excessive undertaking of additional duties in one’s life may lead one to resent others for whom he is effectively removing obstacles from. While your time, energy, and mental effort is spent in carrying out excessive duties, you may notice a growing resentment towards those who could’ve, and perhaps should have, done the task, that is, had you not been the one expending all the resources in undertaking it. This may be personally rationalized by a self-reflective justification by the appearance of acting virtuously, and doing the right thing. If this excessive responsibility limit has been crossed, then the individual may feel contempt for those who have not opted for a similar path. Far too often this type of personality trait is represented in the more orderly and disciplined types, in trait conscientiousness, as they are restless in pursuing careers, and dedicated towards a cause. Those high in trait conscientiousness often will continue working and are unsatisfied with things being undone, and thus will be the first to alleviate problems, the only problem is, they often cross the line in removing the opportunity for others to do so, hindering their growth. They often oversee the fact that they effectively are removing potentiality for others, and see themselves as doing the right thing. From a virtue ethicists standpoint, they surely are being virtuous, they are growing in responsibility, and are better able to organize chaos, yet they are blind to the implications of their actions on other people, which is truly missing the mark of greatness, which is quantified as morally bad in the utilitarian system, as they remove the wellbeing which could be potentially afforded to others had they had the chance to adopt the responsibility themselves.
There is a fine line between licentiousness, proper fulfilling of duty, and over excessive adoption of responsibility, and the management and correct view in regards to this aspect of life can be life altering in its optimization. Often times we need to look outside ourselves, not only at what we can do to make things better, but what we ought not to do to make things better, for ourselves, and our expanding circle of influence. The bigger the circle of influence we wish to effect positively, the less focus we need to place on the actual individual action we undertake, and more upon the effect of the action upon the people whom we are including in the moral analysis. The greater the circle of influence, the greater the introspection, analysis, contemplation, and weighing our actions ought to require, and for this, we must look towards the wellbeing not only of ourselves, but of those we care about, for the benefit not only of others, but, paradoxically, for our own benefit and optimization of life experience as well.
The persona is that which we present through the embodiment of an underlying archetypal pattern of Being when we want someone to like us, it is the state of Being which posits the expression of what we believe would be appealing in the other person’s eyes. We should be wary in this projection, or once we realize that our mode of being in relation to someone is characterized by the will to be appreciated, liked, respected, or lusted after. The mindfulness in recognizing the personas emergence is the first step towards an authentic resolution, or modification, which can be consciously directed. From this mode of being, that of the persona’s dominance, it is easy for us to embellish who we are, or spin things in an appealing manner, effectively applying a mask to our true nature in the revelation of who we are, the act of doing such, is the persona embodied. If we can be mindful of entering into this mode of being, we can acknowledge our intent from which it has an end of producing, and seek to modify it, in either of two directions. We can either embellish the mask, and continue towards deception, or we can seek to be as honest as possible. Our inclination towards either one of the poles, whether it be honesty or deception, is determined by a number of factors. The amount of pride and confidence we have in who we truly are, how appealing our true nature is, how virtuous, or full of vice, we may happen to be, and our learned habits. The natural biological inclination tends towards deception, I’d say, on the average, while there is an evolutionary benefit in honesty and trust, the choice depends on our temperament, acquired character trait, and circumstantial navigation. Whether or not our true nature is appealing or not, I argue, we should lean towards the side of honesty in any moment on which the persona is noticed as dominating the psyche, for multiple reasons.
One reason why honesty is optimal as a corrective course to the personas emergence is that, if we do otherwise, if we continue down the path of being deceptive and putting on the mask of the persona, we not only deceive the other, but run the risk of deceiving ourselves by doing so, we contain the possibility of believing the deception, thus leading to a heightened sense of ego, and altogether, creating further dissonance between who we are and who we think we are. In addition, if we are honest in the presentation of our Being, especially in situations where we desire to be admired, the result can be beneficial to us, on an individual level, regardless of the other person’s respect or admiration, as either result can tell us something about ourselves and the other person. This honesty or authenticity in modifying the persona, doesn’t necessarily call for a radical truth telling, or admission of more than would be optimal for the solution. It merely points to not allowing us to be dominated by the psyche’s desire to be attractive. While it isn’t inherently a negative thing to be admired, or to will to be attractive to someone, we should want to do this through an authentic representation of ourselves. Oftentimes an authentic representation of ourselves does mean the compassionate navigation of truth claims, that is, not bluntly stating things, but wisely omitting unnecessary or hurtful content with the intention of the best long term result for the other person. If we truly want the best for someone, we should act so as to manifest what we believe to be the best content to display in order to aide them. The truthful authentic representation of ourselves doesn’t always mean telling the truth, it means not pretending to be someone we’re not, not stating falsehoods, or falsely representing our beliefs. This can be optimally navigated not through radical honesty, but through temperance and restriction, through openness to expression of who we truly are.
Here we have four cases in the authentic representation of ourselves. If we present our Being honestly (to the degree that we can) and the person for whom we seek admiration responds positively, we succeed and everyone is happy and we learn that who we truly are is actually in alignment with the values of the other person. If we seek admiration from someone, it is out of desire or admiration we have for the other person, which implies that our success in gaining their admiration tells us the things we aim at are conducive the type of person we wish to attract. If an honest approach to correcting for the personas emergence works out in our favor, we learn that the person we authentically are is in alignment with what we value, as we judge the other person to be someone who contains, to a degree, traits which we value.
Stemming from the same framework above, if the other person is perceived as truly someone who we respect or contains virtues or traits which we value, and our persona becomes modified by a conscious intention of honesty and authentic representation of our Being, yet we are received negatively, or are rejected, it appears we have lost. But we have gained something through this knowledge, of which a critical, honest, self-examination will determine the nature of. Perhaps there truly is something wrong with us, to which, further inquiry could enlighten us, and we could improve. On the other hand, in the case our authentic self is not desired by other person, perhaps we misjudged their values, perhaps the things they value truly are not the things in which we do, in which case, we no longer will desire their admiration. In either case, individually, we can grow and navigate existence, except, we are doing it from a place of authenticity.
If we recognize the persona and continue under its influence, free from conscious modification in the direction of authenticity, and we are well received by the person we seek admiration from, it appears we have won, but as far as I can see, this is a loss. The persona which is accepted, and valued, is not an authentic representation of ourselves, and therefore, we can take no pride in admiration from the other person. We merely have succeeded in deception, which, as time will show, we will pay for, as there is truly nothing which goes unaccounted for. As we struggle to maintain the persona, we may fall into self-aggrandizing, in delusions of grandeur, and believe ourselves to be someone we are not, leading to psychological confusion, and further distancing from psychological individualization. The fracturing of the psyche, and the domination of any given archetype, in this situation, the persona, will result in dissonance, suffering, and, on a practical note, given the relationship produced by such actions, it will inevitably fall apart as soon as the other person comes to their senses and takes a peek under the mask at our true nature. Dante denoted the innermost circle of Hell as consisting in those who partake in deception, and that is exactly what our experience will contain of once we walk down the path of self-deception. On the other hand, the person we have successfully fooled, will suffer the pain of wasting time, of losing trust in another human, in effectively being deceived. The truth always comes out, and the suffering it will cause the deceived is no arbitrary thing, it won’t be good, that’s for sure, and the resentment and bitterness that results from such experiences, will add insult to injury to the suffering we are already undergoing as a result of such pursuits. So we should really be wary lest we fall down this path!
In the last case, if we continue down the path of deception, in the personas will manifesting itself in an inauthentic representation of ourselves, and the other person rejects us, than we find ourselves in a situation where not only did we lack the confidence to be ourselves, but the person we thought the other would like still was not received, meaning, not only could we not authentically be someone who is attracted by the other person, but even when we pretend to be something we aren’t, we still couldn’t achieve positive evaluation from someone whose perspective we value. The suffering caused from lack of confidence, the pain of failing, even though vice, may provide the groundwork of negative reinforcement towards attempting authenticity, or another mode of Being. This may be the benefit in failure, in this case, that we learn that such a pursuit is not only successful, but that who we ought to be needs to change, our strategy didn’t work, and change is revealed as necessary, at least in how we present ourselves in the face of someone whose opinion we value. This leaves us in the position to assume that authenticity itself may be optimal, since this method surely didn’t work out for us.
We always can misjudge the character of someone, in which case we can determine by their rejection of values we contain or deem important. We also can learn if we are not the type of person who can be desired, in which case we should evaluate our flaws and set out to work. In either case, the perceived negative effect of rejection by tilting towards honesty in the projection of our persona, not only saves us from the perils of being admired as someone we are not, saves us from self-deception, but offers up the Being in which we should desire to be appreciated, admired, respected, or wanted, the Being of our authentic self, who we truly are.
What drives men to pursue philanthropy, men like Orwell, or Solzhenitsyn, or Viktor Frankl to expose the world’s travesties, to put human suffering on display and advise us on how to overcome it? Great men such as these were successfully able to utilize their talents and experiences to bring something meaningful into existence, each in their own way. Here we will explore their stories, and the archetypal structure which they all embodied, so we too can learn from great men, and attempt to embody the spirit of leaving humanity in a better place than we found it.
George Orwell, being of lower middle class upbringing, was employed as a young man in the British Police force, serving in colonial India in the 1920s. He saw the injustice caused by foreign dominion over people who didn’t desire their presence. Out of guilt, and repentance for the injustice he saw through becoming part of such a system, he endeavored to pursue a course of correction for the sins of his Being. He voluntarily undertook the challenge of subjugating himself to the lowest working class, emerged himself in their culture, studied their misfortune and the content of their lives. Being himself an intelligent writer, he sought to expose the many problems of the working class, to bring to the light of day their suffering, and their tragedies, the terrible working conditions, the housing crisis, the food and economic poverty. He published The Road to Wigan Pier, not only revealing to the upper classes the plight of the lower class, but offering criticism and advice to the Socialist party in how they should change their ways to better unite to face the difficulties of the suffering of the less fortunate.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn was a Russian soldier during the beginning of WW2. In a letter to a friend, he criticized Russia’s disorganization at the time of German redaction of a peace agreement between the two countries, and subsequent attack on Russia. Russia’s unpreparedness was obvious, and he spoke to this point in his letter. The apprehension of this letter led to his arrest and imprisonment within the Russian prison camp system, which was unjustly imprisoning and putting to work millions of its own members for any perceived criticism or rebellion against the Russian government, which, at this point was a perverted Marxist system, stimulated with totalitarianism. During his time in the Russian camps, he documented the terrible experience he underwent, and the stories he collected along the way. He wrote to the torture, malnourishment, excessive prolongation, the freezing climate, and the altogether hellish conditions within which some 40-60 million Russians died in. Once the Americans freed him from his final camp, he exposed the camps conditions, and what the government was propagating in his novel The Gulag Archipelago. He published this work first under an alias, as the continued totalitarian nature of the government would have condemned him once again had they uncovered his identity. He exposed the hidden Russian gulag system to western Europe and the rest of the world, for what it truly was, as the rest of the world was wholly ignorant of the details of what had happened there. In addition to such acts of bravery in the face of evil, he remarked as to what enabled himself and the prisoners to strive forward in the face of such calamities, the pursuance of meaning. Individual responsibility and the strength of the human will, he offered, in short, the antidote to chaos and suffering.
Viktor Frankl was a Jewish psychologist in Germany at the start of WW2, and was subsequently imprisoned at a variety of their prison labor camps, one of which was Auschwitz. He too, like Solzhenitsyn, wrote to the tragedy and cruelty of the oppressive governing state, and the affect it had on demoralizing and killing millions within its own borders. During his stay in the prison camps, Victor used his psychological knowledge to alleviate the suffering of his fellow countrymen, to help bring them through some of the worst conditions involuntarily forced upon human beings. After the war, he released Man’s Search for Meaning, a novel exposing the system in its first half, and in the second half, outlining his system of logotherapy, of a truthful pursuance of meaning to counterbalance the malevolence and misfortune found in the world. By providing a psychological system of meaning to alleviate illness, sickness, and misfortune, Viktor Frankl not only gave an anecdotal explanation to the value of such pursuit, but provided the means by which one can implement a similar strategy to one’s own life to alleviate suffering and provide wellbeing.
In all three cases, these great men encountered malevolence, and tragedy, discovered a way to overcome it, and using the powers they contained, brought back something valuable to the people. This was their way of pursuing meaning in the world, and the amount of virtue they displayed in doing so, makes them all heroes in their own right. They went through hell, discovered how to survive, made it back to Earth, and revealed the optimal pathway through the shadow of death.
Those that carry the biggest burden, who take the most responsibility, are the ones we still talk about, are the ones which have provided mankind with the greatest boon. As Jesus Christ carried the biggest responsibility (archetypally / metaphorically), that of suffering for the sins of all mankind, we thus still revel in his virtue, and his story is known by all. Regardless of the supernatural claims, the archetypal nature of his story is that which inspires the great men of history, and whether they know it or not, his story lives on in the actions of the philanthropist, in the words of the philosopher, in the lives of the great men of history. It is to him who takes the most responsibility, who carries his cross for the sake of repaying the debt he owes to the world, and by doing so, saves others, who finds the highest purpose, and to him we owe a debt of gratitude for the current state of the world we find ourselves in. We think the world we find ourselves in is free, and it is free, to a degree, more so now than it ever has been, but it was forged to be so at a high cost, the cost of error, of miscalculation, of injustice, of evil, of malevolence and inhumanity, and the rebellion against such forces, through the suffering, the deaths, the struggle and the perseverance of millions before our time. The cost was paid in effort, time, suffering, poverty, war and blood far before our time. It is the result of thousands of years of sacrifice, and to call this freedom free is to be naive to those people over millions who have laid down their lives in pursuit of a greater future. Sacrifice is a bargain with the future, it is the payment of the present, for a result in the future. This negotiation was carried out by our forefathers and generations past who fought for rights, for knowledge, for truth, for peace, for freedom, and their fight costed millions their lives, many their physical and psychological wellbeing, many endured great sufferings in the negation of injustice, so that now, we can see the fruits of their bargain.
We yield the fruit of that future, and bear the burden of honoring those sacrifices by pursuing what is meaningful in our lives. We hold the responsibility of providing a better future for our children and generations to come, we owe it to them, as we are in debt to those who come before us, to leave the world a better place than we found it. We ought to make a similar sacrifice, a similar negotiation with existence, so that we can provide the ground for a better future for those who come after us, just as we were afforded the luxury of the world we find ourselves in today (in comparison to how things were for those who came before us). It is great men like Orwell who provided the brave counter narrative that spurred the legislative aid that brought millions out of poverty. Orwell went to the slums of Wigan, and Sheffield, went to the coal mines and was able to expose the conditions of millions who lived in an altogether horrendous lower class, in an altogether different world than that of the bourgeois and upper class. It was through his elicit stories that an awareness of the profound suffering was detailed, and provisions could be made for their alleviation. It was his voluntary sacrifice of time and wellbeing, to dive to the depths of humanity, that led to him to be able to bring to civilization the stories of the underworld, so collectively, we could solve the problems which we didn’t know existed. Since the problems of the poverty of the lower class were brought into the spotlight in the early thirties, much effort has been done to alleviate the conditions of the poor and working classes, so now, their baseline, the average member of the lower class, is a king in comparison to those who lived just 70 years before. The change, the improvement, didn’t come for free, it came at the sacrifice of many people, in the face of adversity, it took courage and it took people navigating their lives towards a cause that superseded their existence, it took sacrifice of the present for the gain of the future.
It is in the pursuit of meaning, of doing something that has implications beyond ourselves, that we prove to be worthy of the lives we should be grateful for having, and it is in this pursuit that united men such as Orwell, Solzhenitsyn, and Frankl. They all saw the potential they contained to do more than they had to, to do something good, and right, and it was never easy. It is in this adoption of responsibility and in the creation of something valuable that we repay the debt with which we are charged. We all have different abilities, different potential, different manifestations of the divine, yet the objective potential for pursuing a higher value, is something inherent in all of us. As Jesus is the archetypal son, God is the father, the Holy Spirit is in each of us, the potential to align ourselves with the greater good, a higher ideal, lies within every man and woman’s very Being. Jesus was the greatest articulation of what the manifestation of God himself should embody at the time, and in being the greatest manifestation of the highest good he was charged the highest responsibility, and the highest suffering, that of taking up his cross, taking the suffering of the world upon his shoulders, and paying the ultimate price for the sin of mankind. As God is the highest representational symbol of “the highest ideal”, Jesus the highest manifestation of that ideal, and us, being intricately interwoven with the potential of alignment with that ideal through the holy spirit, we too hold the potentiality of manifesting it, each in a different form, in a way conducive to our situation and competencies.
Seek Truth 