Mental Traps_ The Overthinker's Guide to a Happier Life - Andre Kukla [44]
Sometimes we formulate enduring traits for ourselves such as Social Ineptitude, Excitability, or an abiding Aversion to Vegetables. These descriptions too are quickly transformed into their prescriptive counterparts. But in this case the obligations incurred are lifelong. Having committed ourselves to the view that we’re “the sort of person who” hates vegetables, we’re called upon again and again to sustain the truth of our self-description. We can’t make ourselves constitutionally Averse to Vegetables or Socially Inept in one fell swoop. The feat requires a disciplined adherence to the formula-turned-regulation we have adopted. We must perpetually resist the stream of impulses from within and invitations from without to act in new ways. Self-definition is self-mutilation on a heroic scale.
This isn’t to say that we lack all consistency of personality. Even if we cease to formulate our character, an external observer will be able to detect recurring patterns in our choices and reactions. But we can’t formulate the results of such observations for ourselves without producing certain drastic effects. The opinion that one is excitable or socially inept is itself a major cause of excitability or social ineptitude. Beliefs about the self are self-fulfilling prophecies, and the fulfillment of the prophecy in turn welds us ever more strongly to the belief that engendered it. Our formulas for ourselves are at once true and profoundly misleading. The Man Who Never Eats Vegetables is quite correct—he never eats vegetables. But if he didn’t hold this view of himself, he might actually indulge in an occasional carrot.
It’s impossible for us to give an objective account of ourselves. The situation is reminiscent of the uncertainties of observation encountered in contemporary physics. We can never determine the exact location and speed of a subatomic particle because these quantities are altered by the very act of trying to observe them. And we can never describe ourselves as we really are because we are changed by the very act of description. We can only be who we are. This is very difficult for some people to accept.
Why do mere descriptions turn so quickly into prescriptions without good cause? Once again, our unhappy relationship with impulse is to blame. The impulse to leave the peas and carrots on our plate fully accounts for our not eating them. There’s no problem here. But unless we’re able to deduce our behavior from a rule, we feel that we’re acting “unreasonably.” We are intimidated by demands for rational explanations: why didn’t we eat our vegetables? Our difficulty is that most of what we do in the course of a day can be neither justified nor condemned by an appeal to general principles. There’s nothing in the Bible or in secular law that dictates an attitude toward vegetables. Then where will the pertinent prescription come from? Living a purely prescriptive life is like lifting oneself by one’s bootstraps. The description of what we’re doing provides a convenient handle or, more aptly, a life jacket to a drowning man. If we’re the “sort of person” who doesn’t eat vegetables, then we can explain everything!
Premise 1: I’m the sort of person who doesn’t eat vegetables.
Premise 2: These peas and carrots are vegetables.
Conclusion: Therefore, I do not eat them.
Now our reason is satisfied: we haven’t acted haphazardly. But there is a price. When an unexpected attraction to zucchini stirs faintly in our breast, we will deny it in the name of consistency and we’ll miss a tasty dish.
We can avoid most mental traps simply by fixing our attention on the present task. While we’re washing the dishes or walking to the store, there’s no need to think about what will happen next or what has happened before. There’s only this dirty spoon, this street scene before us. Every departure from the here and now is a trap. If our thoughts fly away to the future, we are fixating or anticipating. If we go back to the past, we revert