What You Can Change _. And What You Can't - Martin E. Seligman [9]
The reality may fall short, but that is the ideal that Americans profess.
This is more than empty rhetoric. There is an enormous, and profitable, self-improvement industry that plays to your desire to achieve. Adult Americans spend billions of dollars and pass tens of billions of hours taking courses in
• Selling • Overcoming Fear of • Becoming Richer
• Dieting Flying Spiritually
• Memory • Interpreting Your • Becoming Richer
• Meditation Dreams Materially
• Time Management • Asserting Yourself • Buying
• Stress Management • Diplomacy • Loving Better
• Charm • Etiquette • Falling out of Love
• Controlling Anger • Becoming Funny • Writing
• Martial Arts • Becoming Less • Controlling Your
• Negotiation Feminine Family
• Exercise • Becoming More • Becoming Less
• Life Extension Feminine Type A
• Relaxation • Overcoming • Being On Time
• Snagging a Mate Homosexuality • Getting Elected
• Small Talk • Overcoming • Public Speaking
• Reading Speed Homophobia • Music Appreciation
• Giving Up Alcohol • Increasing • Performing Music
• Appreciating Intelligence Test • Fighting Depression
Wine Scores • Letting Go
• Giving Up Drugs • Learning Optimism • Opening Up
• Giving Up On • Drawing with the • Picking Up Women
People Who Take Right Hemisphere • Picking Up Men
Drugs • Taking Other • Math Phobia
• Talking to Children People’s Perspectives • Teaching
• Talking on the • Winning Friends • Learning
Phone • Positive Thinking • Listening
• Loving Yourself • Realistic Thinking
This does little more than scratch the surface of what courses are available. But what all these share is the simple premise that we can change, improve, and advance. Is this so obvious as to not need saying? Its very obviousness, how deeply we all accept it, is just the point—because most of humankind over most of history has not believed anything remotely like this.
Traditionally, most people in the West have believed that human character is fixed and unalterable, that people do not and cannot improve, advance, or perfect themselves. The change from a deep belief in the unchangeability of character to an equally deep belief in the capacity to improve is recent, and it represents one of the most fundamental and important revolutions in modern thought. Strangely, this is a history that has gone unwritten.
How did Americans come to believe so strongly in human plasticity? Where did the belief in psychotherapy come from? From where did our faith in self-improvement emanate?
The Seder and the Road to Damascus
How do we hear and retell the great acts of courage of the Judeo-Christian tradition? Let’s examine two of them: the Exodus from Egypt and the conversion of Saul. Do you think that the Israelites, hard oppressed by Pharaoh, screwed up their courage, decided they must have freedom, and bravely gathered themselves up and fled? This is what I thought until I listened more closely to the readings at a recent Seder. Here is the story of the Passover as told in the Haggadah. Listen for who did what to whom.
And he went down into Egypt, compelled by the word of God, and sojourned there. . . . And the children of Israel were fruitful, increased abundantly, multiplied, and became exceedingly mighty. . . . “I have caused thee to multiply like the growth of the field.”
And the Egyptians ill-treated us, afflicted us, and laid heavy bondage upon us.
And we cried unto the Eternal. . . . And the Eternal heard our voice. . . . And the Eternal brought us forth from Egypt, with a strong hand and with an outstretched arm, with great terror, and with signs and wonders.1
God is the actor, and the Israelites (and, to a lesser extent, the Egyptians) are the acted-upon. There is almost nothing that the Israelites do that is not caused or commanded by God. Their only act without God’s command is to complain. This paradigmatic act of liberation is not portrayed as the act of a brave people resolved on freedom. It is not even commanded by a daring general. Moses,