The Foundations of Personality - Abraham Myerson (best large ereader .txt) 📗

littleness with the rest of

the race acts to bring resignation, and after that has been

established, hope can reappear. For resignation is rarely a

prolonged state of mind; it is a doorway through which we reenter

into the vista-chambers of Hope.

 

[1] A humorous use of this fact is in the popular “Cheer up, the

worst is yet to come!” This acts as a rough tonic.

 

And one clearly sees the benefit of a belief, a faith in God.

“Gott in sein Mizpah ist gerecht,” cries the orthodox Jew when

his hope is shattered,—“God’s decree is just.” This is Hope

Eternal; “my purposes are blocked, but were they God’s purposes?

No. He would not then block them. I must seek God’s purposes.”

Faith is really a transcendent Hope, renewing the feeling of

energy.

 

3. The belief that one has the good opinion of others is a

powerful stimulus to energy and feeling. We have already

considered the effect of praise and blame. Some are so

constituted that they need the approval of others at all times;

they are at the mercy of any one who gives them a cold look or a

harsh word. Others cling to the need of their own self-approval;

they are aristocrats, firm and secure in their self-estimate. Let

their self-esteem crumble, and these proud and haughty ones are

humble, weak, inefficient. We fiercely resent criticism because

in it is a threat to our source of energy, our very feeling of

being alive.

 

One has shrewdly to examine his fellow men from this angle: “Does

he work up his own steam; are his boilers of energy heated by his

own enthusiasm and his own self-approval? Or does he borrow; can

he work only if others add their fire to his; does his light go

out if his neighbors turn away or are too busy to help him?” One

type of man may be as admirable as another in his gifts, but the

types need different treatment.

 

Self-valuation is to a large extent our opinion of the valuation

of others of ourselves.[1] We believe people like us, think we

are fine and able, or beautiful, and we react with energy to

difficulties. We may be wrong; they may call us a conceited ass

and laugh at us behind our backs, but so long as we do not find

it out, it doesn’t matter. There is, however, no blow quite so

severe as the sudden realization that we have mistaken the

opinion of others, we have been “fooled.” To be fooled is to be

lowered in one’s own self-esteem, and we like sincerity and hate

insincerity largely because our self-esteem stands on some solid

basis in the one case and on none whatever in the other. Most of

us would rather have people say bad things of us to our face than

run the risk of the ridicule and the foolish feeling that comes

with insincerity. There are some who are always suspicions that

people are insincere in praise or friendly words; they hate being

fooled, they know of no criterion of sincerity and such people

are in an adynamic state most of the time. The difference between

the trusting and the suspicious is that one responds with energy

and belief to the manifestations of friendliness in everybody,

and the other has no such inner response to guide his energy and

his actions. Trust in others is a releaser of energy; distrust

paralyzes it.

 

[1] To paraphrase Doctor Holmes the biggest factor in John’s

self-valuation is HIS idea of Jane’s idea of John.

 

4. Doubt and inability to choose may be contrasted with certitude

and clear choice in their effect on energy release. Of course,

one of the signs of lowered energy is doubt, as a sign of high

energy is certainty. Nevertheless, a situation of critical

importance, in which choice is difficult or digagreeable,

inhibits energy feeling[1] and discharge perhaps as much as any

other mental factor. Especially is this true when the inhibition

concerns a moral situation—“Ought I to do this or that”—and

where the fear of being wrong or doing wrong operates so that the

individual does nothing and develops an obsession of doubt. This

“to be or not to be” attitude is typical of many intelligent

people, yes, even intellectual people. They we so many angles to

a situation, they project so far into the future in their

thoughts, that a weary discouragement comes. To such as these,

the counsel of “action right or wrong but action anyway!” is

good, but the difficulty is to make them overcome their doubts.

Their cerebral oscillation makes them weary but they cannot seem

to stop it; their pendulum of choice never stops at action.

 

[1] See William James’ “Varieties of Religious Experiences,” for

beautiful examples. The Russian writers are often narrators of

this struggle.

 

If one wishes to destroy the energy of any one, the best way to

do it is to sow the seeds of doubt. “Your ideal is a fine one, my

friend, but—isn’t it a little sophomoric?” “A nice piece of

work, but—who wants it?” On the other hand, to one obsessed by

doubt it may happen that a whole-hearted endorsement, a

resolution of the doubt, brings with it first relief and then a

swing of energy into the channels of action.

 

5. Competition is a great factor in energy release. Every one has

seen a horse ambling along, apparently without sufficient energy

to go more than four miles an hour. Suddenly he cocks up his ears

as the sounds of the hoof beats of a rapidly traveling horse are

heard. He shakes his head and to the amazement or amusement of

his driver sets off in rivalry at a two-minute clip. Intensely

cooperative and gregarious as man is, he is as intensely

competitive, spurred on by his observations of the other fellow.

Introduce a definite system of rivalry into a school or an

office, and you release energies never manifested before. There

are some to whom this is the main releaser of energy; struggle,

competition and victory over another is their stimulus. They can

play no game unless there is competition, and the solitary

pleasures and satisfactions, like reading, exploring, a row on

the river or a walk in the woods, cannot arouse them. Others

dislike rivalry or competition; they are too sympathetic to wish

victory over another and also they dread to lose. They prefer

team play and cooperation. The world will always seem different

to these two types. This may be said now that for most of us, who

are somewhat of a blend in this matter, rivalry is pleasant and

stimulating when there is a show of success, but we prefer

cooperation when we foresee failure.

 

This brings up the interesting phase of precedent in energy

release. Early success, unless it brings too high a

self-valuation, which is its great danger, is remarkably valuable

in releasing energy, and failure establishes a precedent that may

bring doubt, fear and the attendant inhibition of energy. Of

course, failure may bring with it caution and a recasting of

plans and thus constitute the most valuable of experiences. But

if it is too great, or if there is lacking a certain fortitude,

it may act as a paralyzer of energy thenceforth. In the prize

ring this is often noted; the spirit of a man goes with a defeat

and he never again has self-confidence; thereafter his energy is

constantly inhibited.

 

Emotions have long been studied in their effects on energy. In

fact, every animal that bristles and snarls as it faces a foe is,

unconsciously, attempting to paralyze with fear its opponent, to

render it helpless through the inhibition of action. So with the

lurking tiger; it waits in silence for the prey and seeks the

fascination of surprise as a factor in victory. On the other

hand, the emotion of fear may be a releaser of energy for the

prospective victim; it may release the energies of flight and add

to the power of the animal. In this, there is a unique and

neglected phase of emotion, i.e., if you shake your fist at your

enemy and he runs away or knocks you down, then your

manifestation of anger has been unsuccessful for you but his

reaction has been successful for him. If he becomes so paralyzed

with fear that you can work your will with him, then your anger

is successful while his fear is not. Most of the psychologists

have neglected this phase of emotion. Thus it is hard to

understand the use fainting from terror has to the victim. The

answer is it is useful to him who has caused the victim to faint.

 

6. For the individual, the emotion of fear has as its function a

preparation for a danger that is foreseen to be too powerful to

be met with effective resistance. Fear says, “It’s no use to

fight, fly or hide.” Therefore, normally there is a heightening

of energy feeling and action in these two directions. There are

plenty of recorded incidents where fear has enabled men to run

distances utterly impossible to them otherwise. In the fear

states of mental disease, the resistance a frail woman will offer

to her attendants is such that the utmost strength of several

people is required to restrain her. Under these circumstances

fear acts as an energizer, causing physical reactions not

ordinarily within the will of the person. “Fear lends wings,” is

the time-honored way of expressing this. The trapped animal makes

“frantic” efforts to escape.

 

Fear is extraordinarily contagious, perhaps because as herd

members the cry of fear sets us all racing for safety. This is

the grimmest danger from fires in public places or the presence

of a coward in a military unit. Panic occurs with its blind

unreasoning flight, and the result is disastrous. I emphasize

again that emotions are poorly adapted to the welfare of the

individual. Business panics are in large measure the result of

the contagiousness of fear; timidity spreads like wildfire,

distrust and suspicion are aroused and stagnation results without

a “real” basis. In President Wilson’s phrase, the panic is

“purely psychological.”

 

Intellectualized, fear becomes one of the driving forces of life,

as Hobbes[1] pointed out. Fear of punishment undoubtedly deters

from crime, though it is not in itself sufficient, and the kind

of punishment becomes important. Fear of hunger has brought

prudence, caution, agriculture into the world. Life insurance has

its root in fear for others, who are really part of one’s self;

the fear of the rainy day is back of most of the thrift, though

the acquisitive feeling and duty may also operate powerfully.

Fear of venereal disease impels many a man to continence who

otherwise would follow his desire. And fear of the bad opinion of

others is the most powerful deterrent force in the world. “What

will people say” is, at bottom, fear that they will say bad

things, and though it keeps men from the “bad” conduct, it

inhibits the finer nobler actions as well. There is a great deal

of unconventional untrammeled belief in the world that never

finds expression because of fear.

 

How deeply the fear of death modifies the life of people it is

impossible to state. To every one there comes the awful

reflection that he, that warmly pulsating being, in love with the

world and with living, “center of the universe,” HE himself must

die, must be cold and still and have no will, no power, no

feeling; be buried in the ground. Most of the essential

melancholy of the world is due to this realization, and most of

the feeling of pessimism and futility thus has its origin. Mortal

man—a worm of the earth—a brief flower doomed to perish—and

all of it finds final expression in Gray’s marvelous words:

 

“The boast of heraldry,