Commentary
My wife and I recently finished watching “The Sopranos.” Over the years, I had caught episodes here and there, but I had never seen the series in its entirety. The show is brilliant, yet at times it made me feel … uneasy. Even dirty.
David Chase taps into the darker side of the human mind, and at the heart of “The Sopranos” are patterns we all recognize: self-deception, rationalizing bad behavior, and blaming others for problems we largely create ourselves.
These tendencies are explored largely through the lens of modern psychology. Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) visits his therapist, Dr. Jennifer Melfi (Lorraine Bracco), no fewer than 60 times. Yet Melfi cannot save Tony from his own deceitful heart, destructive behaviors, and nihilism.
Fortunately, philosophy offers a robust guide for saving ourselves from self-deception. Here are five of the most common ways we sabotage ourselves—and ancient wisdom on how to break the cycle.
1. Outsourcing Responsibility
As a parent of three, I’ve heard the phrase more times than I can count: “Well, he started it.”
True or false, the words serve a primary purpose: deflecting responsibility for one’s actions. Taking responsibility is difficult, psychotherapists admit, but it is also essential to growth and flourishing. Aristotle reminded us that we are ultimately accountable for all our choices.
“Where it is in our power to act, it is also in our power not to act,” he wrote in “Nicomachean Ethics.”
When we forget this truth, we hand over responsibility for our lives to others. Our choices and decisions become not our own responsibility but someone else’s. This is a form of self-deception and a path to stagnation and dysfunction. Don’t go down it. Instead, remember a fundamental principle of human action: All action is individual action. We have the power to control ourselves and are responsible for everything we do.
2. Confusing Appetite With Identity
There’s a tendency in modern philosophy to believe that the things that we feel define our character. David Hume famously stated that reason is a “slave of the passions,” but modern thinkers have gone further, arguing that what we feel defines us. If one feels lust, he is a lecher. If one desires power, she is an authoritarian in waiting. If one is constantly hungry, he is a glutton. The problem with such a philosophy is that it allows our appetites to define our character. Worse, appetite becomes self-justifying, because once desire is treated as identity, resisting it feels like self-betrayal.
Ancient philosophers saw things more clearly. They understood that desires are not just natural but manageable. Distinguishing healthy appetites from unhealthy ones—and exercising self-control over them—is essential, lest our cravings rule us. And rule us they will, the Stoics warned, if we fail to exercise control.
“Every want that springs not from any need, but from vice, is of a like character; however much you pile up for it will serve not to end but to advance desire,” the Stoic philosopher Seneca wrote in “Consolation to Helvia.” “He who keeps himself in natural limits will not feel poverty; he who exceeds them will be pursued by poverty even amid the greatest wealth.”
The message is clear. Our desires are not our identities. With discipline, we can rule them, so they do not rule us.
3. Forfeiting Agency to the Crowd
Hannah Arendt, reflecting on the “banality of evil” during Adolf Eichmann’s 1961 trial, observed a chilling truth: Most evil is carried out not by people who choose wickedness but by ordinary individuals who surrender their judgment. Conformity and obedience to authority are the mechanisms by which the worst evils spread, which is perhaps why the Bible counsels us not to conform to the world in Romans 12:2.
Most people, however, spend enormous energy trying to fit in. Stoic philosophers saw this tendency and warned against it.
“How much trouble he avoids by not looking to see what his neighbor does or thinks,” Marcus Aurelius wrote in “Meditations.” “The part of the good man is not to peer into the characters of others, but to run straight down the line without glancing to one side or the other.”
Many people will follow the herd by telling themselves they have no choice or by convincing themselves it’s the right thing to do. Don’t be one of them. True agency requires resisting the crowd and making judgments grounded in reason, not conformity.
4. Letting Our Emotions Rule Us
I occasionally get angry while driving. Of course, I only get angry when others are at fault: a slow driver in the left lane, someone who cuts me off, or a driver who slams on the brakes to make a last-second exit.
Like many people, I justify my anger by blaming it on others—another way of outsourcing responsibility for our actions (see No. 1). The philosopher Seneca saw the danger in this approach. He pointed out that if anger were a proper response to externalities, we would be constantly outraged. The world is full of injustice, and we personally experience wrongs every day. Yet we should not deceive ourselves into believing that injustices, slights, or reproaches justify losing control over our own reason and judgment.
“What is more unworthy of the wise man,” Seneca asked, “than that his emotions should depend on the wickedness of others?”
5. Succumbing to Despair
C.S. Lewis once called despair the worst of all sins because it “denies the very possibility of hope.” Unfortunately, we live in an era that is fertile ground for despair. Suicide rates are near historic highs, and the second leading cause of death for individuals between the ages of 10 and 34 (unintentional injury is No. 1).
There are many reasons for the rise of despair. The Stoics would say that it stems from a lack of virtue, while others point to a crisis of meaning. Modernity is increasingly defined by nihilism and purposelessness, which Lewis characterized as a gradual road to Hell, a gentle slope “soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”
The first step toward conquering despair is to reject the skepticism of postmodernism and embrace a moral vision rooted in truth, responsibility, and purpose. J.R.R. Tolkien, a friend of Lewis and a literary counterpart, understood that such virtues are the antidote to despair. In his masterpiece “The Lord of the Rings,” the hobbit Samwise Gamgee clings to hope in the pit of Mordor by acknowledging that goodness does, in fact, exist.
“There’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo,” Sam tells the Ringbearer, “and it’s worth fighting for.”
By simply recognizing that goodness and truth are objective virtues worth pursuing—and fighting for—we steel ourselves against the pessimism that afflicts our world today.
Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
