In a previous post, I said that half of us want to live the unexamined life, assimilating into the culture, and half of us want to write our own marching orders. It’s not so easy, though, to be an original, to bring to bear the autonomy of self-command. How we have already been determined and shaped by the cultural impress resists our efforts to be other than the relentlessly acquisitive-of-stuff individuals by which the metaphorical Scoreboard now grades us. Its end-all and be-all: to rank our merit based on its evaluation of the worth of the money we have and the stuff we buy.
But let me digress for a moment. What it takes to become economically secure has changed considerably. It was once (often) true that we could work hard, save, invest and expect to live out our lives in a meaningful and comfortable way. But in these times, neither job nor investment is predictably secure. A bubble undermined our economic viability. The bubble burst when our too radically programmed drive to be relentlessly acquisitive was over-leveraged by imprudent credit risks, when the worth of that being sold was based on grossly inflated value, when government oversight was incompetent if not corrupt and when the behavior of some in key positions was outright criminal.
This means that wanting to accumulate greater wealth, as a hedge against the uncertainties of these times, seems to me a prudent choice. Such a hedge is not the Scoreboard-driven, relentlessly acquisitive individualism that I am discussing in this post. I hope your hard work and due diligence are paying off economically.
Back now to a shift in focus. We can’t really escape the cultural impress. We’ll always have to wrestle with its contestable and contested truths and with what it says (arguably) constitutes meaning and merit. But our intelligence and education make it possible for us to hold opposing meaning and value. We need not be limited to the cultural imprint. We can create a life of our own design and bring into existence a new substantive dimension of resource—of mind, will and identity that is no longer at the mercy of Scoreboard.
But it is also true that we must discover, invent and hold this possibility, not only in its design stage, but forever. This is because timeliness is critical to addressing the moments of each day as they call for decision, for action, or for a radical shift in focus. Let me tell you what I mean.
Much evidence (witness the implosion of the stock market a few years back) indicates that, by and large, we aren’t necessarily who we think we are—free, rational political agents who manage ourselves by our own lights. The desire to know our own mind and to build the transcendent will that self-command requires is easily repurposed by Scoreboard’s point of view and lifeblood. So to give ourselves the breathing space to create a life of our own design, we must shift our focus to the autonomy of self-command and away from the authority of Scoreboard. The value of the willpower that is gained from such a shift in focus is often underestimated, and the transformation it requires is easier said than done.
Scoreboard has become an almighty force that authoritatively and convincingly defines, manages and ranks our individuality by assessing the stuff we’ve acquired. With the best media-savvy in the world behind its program of acquisitive individualism, Scoreboard can march us to its tune.
Scoreboard has the upper, stronger hand because its play is based on the exploitation of the rivalrous impulse—the ancient biological drive for keeping the animal alive. Without self-command as our timely and practiced focus, this instinct, inherent in our DNA, is easily manipulated.
Does Scoreboard transform this brute impulse into the civilizing energy of self-command? No. Scoreboard has us use our juice to flaunt our superior stuff and choices, and show an overt or covert contempt for those beneath us in the pecking order. By these means, our (so-called) breeding is displayed. (See my post, Scoreboarding—it almost took us down.)
Although this pattern of one-upsmanship is practically universal, it affects us uniquely. It can show up as an ongoing anxiety or troubling discontent or as an insatiable want, want, want.
If it weren’t for Scoreboard’s harsh and manipulative conventions, most of us—with access to the right information and a transcendent discipline—would be made capable of possessing a satisfying self-command. We’d find a place where we could work and find intellectual and emotional reward in our efforts to lead a substantive, contributory life. But, as I said, Scoreboard’s flagrant or insidious ranked comparisons throw us off purpose.
If we’re not worried about competing with the neighbors or peer group about the quality and mass of our stuff, then we’re dreading the contempt evident in their eyes if not in their words or actions. To be treated cheaply hurts even if we know it is a mistake to be embarrassed and dispirited by the cold acts of remote-from-substance Scoreboard players. We know it’s a mistake to think that show-off taste, style and stuff are more important than self-command. But, as I said, we’re born into Scoreboard’s domineering focus, and we stay there unless we can make the shift.
Admittedly, a shift in focus—from the relentlessly acquisitive individualism touted by the Scoreboard to self-command—is not easy, but then enlarging the frontiers of human possibility has always been a challenge. The effort to wrest ourselves from Scoreboard’s controlling grip by acquiring the autonomy of self-command will always be contested by the many emissaries of Scoreboard who try to demean our effort. To really make a shift in focus, we must be able to see through the “obvious” worth of a time and attention-consuming rivalrous one-upsmanship and think for ourselves when Scoreboard tries to monopolize our focus.
But this is only half of what makes up self-command. We must also be able to muster the heart and nerve needed to create a timely momentum on behalf of our convictions. We’ll be living, working, playing and rearing our children in environments that may put little emphasis (except lip service) on the ability to think for oneself. In other words, in a Scoreboard-driven contentious environment that gives no points for a substance it can’t see, we must be able to declare what’s valuable and then live, timely choice by choice, timely act by act, according to these lights.
In short, when we no longer underestimate the value of a shift in focus to the autonomy of self-command, we’ll be able to use its power to our advantage anytime we need it. No matter what sting, disappointment, obstacle or curve ball that life serves up, we don’t really have time to suffer over it. We’ve serious work to do, not to mention trees to climb, electronic gadgets to charge and sync and exciting new possibilities for intellectual happiness and contribution to explore. So we don’t let Scoreboard’s stultifying values dominate or out-maneuver us for long. We shift our focus and put our attention on what we want (and need) to put it on.