What is "social comparison theory" and how it makes people unhappy

Martha Beck, a PhD in sociology from Harvard University, wrote the book Picking Up the Pieces. It is aimed at those who find themselves in a dead end because of the eternal desire for success: confused, tired or burned out. With the permission of the AST publishing house, we publish a sharp but honest excerpt from the second chapter - about how we are ruined by false goals.

My friend Sonya has some very useful advice for men who would like to get better in bed. “Attention, hint,” she said. - If what you are doing does not lead to success, don't double your efforts».

This applies to all areas of life, but for some reason most of us do not understand this. Culture inspires us that if you redouble your efforts, if you exert yourself properly, you will find a way out of confusion into happiness. If you pump up the muscles of your hands and properly take on your own hair, you will definitely pull yourself out of the swamp of suffering into the most beautiful life in the world. Most of my clients, having admitted that something was wrong with their lives, tried to fix the situation by doing the same things as before, just harder. They tried to work better, look better,

it's better to loveeat better - in general to be better, Damn it!

It's like realizing that you have left the main road, get behind the wheel of a car and press the gas pedal. This way you can turn an unpleasant situation into a downright dangerous one. When we realize that we are off course, the best thing to do is to slow down or even stop. Then it will be possible to assess the situation and find a way to return to safe places. […]

If you've found any murky areas in your life, you've probably jumped to the conclusion that you need to try harder and get better. It almost certainly won't help.

Listen to me: the problem is not how hard you workbut that you are working on something that does not suit you.

Your goals and motives do not align with your deepest truth. They are generated not by your natural inclinations, but by two forces that push us all off the true path: trauma and socialization.

By trauma, I mean not only terrible tragedies like war or child abuse. I mean any painful experience that blinds us and prevents us from looking into the depths of the soul. trauma it could also be that parents or classmates constantly shamed us. And also - the financial crisis, a large-scale quarrel, the death of a dog. As a result of such events, our behavior changes, because we do not want a repetition of this experience. For example, having failed in love or disappointed in professionsWe promise ourselves never to fall in love or trust our own ambitious hopes again.

How we deal with trauma is determined by socialization.

When you don't know what to do, do what you know. We grit our teeth, or, on the contrary, throw a tantrum to attract the attention of relatives and friends, or darkly withdraw into ourselves. We repeat the same thing in a desperate pursuit of success, even if it does not make us one iota easier. That is, noticing that our actions do not lead to success, we simply double efforts.

Pitfalls of "success"

Dante, in The Divine Comedy, gives a very vivid metaphor for success.

Soon after the hero realizes that he is lost in a gloomy forest, he sees a mountain rising in the darkness and shining with morning light. She is so beautiful and dazzling that the poet calls her "illumined height." It would seem that an excellent way out of the gloomy forest, and Dante, despite his fatigue, begins to rise - but nothing works out for him: terrible animals attack from all sides, remember? They frighten our hero, make him sad and push him back into the darkness of the valley.

For me, this illuminated height is a symbol of all waysbecome betterthat we learn from the cultural context.

For most of us, that's money, a lot of money. Then, on this golden substrate, you can layer dazzling physical beauty, and a brilliant mind, and creative talents, and fabulous love, and all of the above at once. “This one, this one, this one for me, and this one too! we think. - Get a Nobel Prize! And all the Oscars in the world! Boil enough moonshine to insert six sets of dental implants for grandfather! That's when life will sparkle with bright colors!

However, all the heights of the illumined have one unpleasant feature: in any case, they are located on the territory of the gloomy forest, in which we are unhappy.

Trying to climb the mountain of "the best" almost always involves backbreaking work when we are already exhausted.

And, of course, we must also remember about terrible emotional states - anxiety, depression, anger, which overcome us every time we seem to have moved forward. They nullify all our efforts, undermine our resolve and send us back to the depths of the dark forest.

I myself several times climbed the foothills of the illuminated heights. But even when I managed to get to the intended base camp, I got better only for a few days.

As I already mentioned, among my clients there were people who, on the outside, lived at the very top of the illumined height, but none of them noted persistent satisfaction with life. Since we were taught from a young age that success is identical to happiness, it is worth dwelling on this in more detail.

One day I received a call at midnight from a famous businessman named Keith, who had just taken his company public. In a day he earned over two hundred million dollars. He called me from a banquet, ugly drunk on fifty-year-old Scotch and varnished it all with a handful of pills. Rock 'n' roll by a famous band blared in the background, so loud I could barely hear Keith.

- IMAGINE, THIS IS NOT ENOUGH FOR ME, DAMN IT! he yelled into the phone. I THOUGHT I WOULD HAVE ENOUGH, BUT NO! WHEN WILL IT BE ENOUGH FOR ME TO RAISE AND SLAP?!

The question was rhetorical. Even if I tried to answer, Keith wouldn't hear a thing because of the deafening music and cultural messages in his head. We talked again and again about what he personally happiness bring small things - for example, a walk in nature. But Keith was genuinely convinced that if he walked less in nature and focused on getting even richer, in the end he would be good enough. I hope he succeeded in the end. But to be honest, I doubt it.

What have we been taught to want

The main reason for the desire to climb to the top of the illumined heights is the so-called theory of social comparisonsas psychologists call it. This means that we tend to measure our well-being not by how we feel, but by how our life looks compared to the lives of other people. An almost universal misconception among the inhabitants of the dark forest is the belief that happiness awaits us when we find ourselves higher others on some socially defined scale. And since this scale is set not by nature, but by culture, we climb into the heights illuminated by the most insane ways.

For example, in traditional China, in order for a woman to climb the social ladder, she had to have tiny feet. Girls and women have bandaged and mutilated their feet for generations, mutilated them to make better. In Victorian England, women wore clothes made from fabrics dyed with arsenic. These dyes corroded the skin and flashed from the slightest spark, but fashionistas spared nothing, just to look better than their rivals! In our society, many are ready to kill themselves, just to be better: it is most luxurious to decorate a cake, bring out the most purebred of all purebred poodles, drive a small ball into a small hole with an ingenious club.

You will not find wild animals doing such nonsense, they will not waste their strength on them. Some living things compete for food, territory, marriage partners. Many people like to play and seem to enjoy toy victories. But they won't tear their fur and feathers unless they can accumulate a billion times more seeds or dead rabbits than another sparrow or coyote. The illumined height is built on a purely human tendency to appreciate anything as an "achievement". This is culture, not nature.

On the contrary, your true self is pure nature. He doesn’t give a damn from a tall cherry, what sits on someone better and in general who wears what. Olympic medals and Pulitzer Prizes interest him only because they shine beautifully.

Your true nature loves everything that can give sincere delight - here and now.

She loves fun, friends, skin-to-skin contact, sun, water, laughter, the scent of leaves, the sweetness and stillness of sound sleep. Here is a little mental exercise that will help you feel the difference between the impulses that come from culture and from nature.

Exercise "Culture or nature"

First of all, remember when was the last time you saw advertisingthat you truly love. It can be anything: a TV commercial, a social media ad, a poster in a store window. Perhaps when this advertisement caught your eye, you had a strong desire to purchase the advertised product. You suddenly wanted—really wanted—to get the latest smartphone, a fancy new car, a jacket more fashionable than any of yours. Write down what it was. […]

Now imagine that you have it. Pay attention to what sensations arise in the body with this thought. Perhaps you really crave this product. Perhaps you felt a surge of vivacity and hope, or, on the contrary, were upset, because you are convinced that you will never have this amazing thing. Describe as accurately as you can the feeling you get when you allow yourself to want this product. How do you feel physically and emotionallywhen thinking about getting it?

When I imagine that I have a thing that an advertisement made me want, I get the following sensations:

• physical;
• emotional.

Now shake it off. Literally. Shake your head, your arms, your whole body like an animal when it comes out of the water. This will help clear your mind and feelings. Let go of the image inspired by advertising. Notice if this is difficult for you, if you have almost decided to go and buy this New Thing, or at least take another look at its image. When you can finally shake off that desire enough to focus on the present, answer the next question.

When you're alone in silence, let's say lie without sleep at night, what do you crave? Not just wanting, but passionately. Write the first thing that comes to mind. […]

Let the feeling of longing for it grow and expand. Vividly imagine that you have it. How does this image affect your body and feelings? List your feelings.

When I imagine that I have received what I long for, when I am calm, I have the following sensations:

• physical;
• emotional.

See the difference? Everyone has their own unique experience, but, as a rule, the sensations caused by advertising, and the sensations that arise from spontaneous desires, are completely different for us.

And here is the point: if you are separated from your true self, you will find that your desire and passion are directed towards different things.

When culture does not distract us, we go directly to the satisfaction of our spiritual aspirations.

When we crave something that we have been taught to crave, we completely lose touch with our inner beings. motives and risk devoting our lives to pursuing rewards that will never bring us satisfaction.

I have done these exercises with many clients. Their desires differed as much as the social conditions in which they found themselves - as their clothes, housing, impressions, relationships. But they felt a passion for only a few things, and the list of them all was surprisingly similar, even for people from different cultures: peace, freedom, Love, comfort, complicity.

Here's what I noticed: if you strive all your life for the goals set by the culture (climbing to the heights illumined), then, in principle, you can even get what you want, but you can hardly get what you are passionate about strive. So how to descend from the illuminated height? And here's how: do not participate in the divorce.

Cultural razvodilovo

The illumined height appears in the gloomy forest only when a group of people shares common values. Say, if you mutilate your daughter's foot to make a ten-centimeter "lotus bud" (as they called it in China), it will not help. rise to the top rung of the social hierarchy in modern America - except that you find yourself in the first place on the list of wanted by the maternity protection service and childhood. And if you start dressing up in flammable clothes dyed with arsenic, it is unlikely to add likes to you on Facebook *.

Your cultural group must agree that your achievements there are candles in the illuminated heights, because in reality, including in the reality of your own true nature, they mean nothing. People are so attuned to cultural values ​​that as soon as we start striving for the heights of the illumined heights, we run the risk of completely forgetting our own true desires.

We cannot lose our true nature, as it is written in our DNA, but we can separate from it in order to become better at various cultural games.

My friend Raya, who has been a homeless drug addict for many years, called it "participating in a scam". She's been doing this for decades to get drugs or drug money. And then, when many years had passed after she got rid of the addiction, she said: “I can enter the room and from the threshold understand who is involved in what scam. After all, almost everyone is swindling someone into something.”

She used the word hustle, which, according to online dictionaries, has in modern English language many interesting meanings. I will cite a few of them. I will not retell them in my own words, but will give exact quotations from dictionary entries.

Hustle Meanings:

1. With courage, confidence, self-confidence and determination, go out into the big world and work until you achieve everything you want in life.
2. To force (someone) to hurriedly move in a given direction.
3. To force or persuade someone to do or choose something.
4. Prostitute.
5. Get something as a result of illegal actions; cheat; deceive.

In one word - a real portrait of modern Western culture. Our social definition success is built on this very hustle - mainly on its meaning, which Raya rested on. We must rise above others, and for this we must: (1) be the embodiment of confidence and determination, (2) move very fast, (3) pressure others to do what we want, (4) sell out, and (5) lie And cheat. Here, my friends, what is this illumined height of yours in fact.

This way of moving through life helps a lot. accumulate good: territory, gold, food, real estate. So beautiful that those who believe in it have colonized our entire planet to keep them empty. In the process, they (we) instilled the idea of ​​the value of razvodilov in almost everyone who could not be simply killed. Therefore, your social learning, at least the lion's share of it, is based on this cultural tradition. You probably learned at a deep, pre-verbal level that if you want to climb up and get to where life is happier, you will have to do the breeding, like everyone else: there is no alternative.

Anything you do just to influence others instead of expressing your true nature is a scam.

be polite to receive OK, - divorcing. Flirting with people to make them feel special attention is a scam. Sitting seriously in church, consciously exuding piety, is a scam. Pretending to be a fool so that others relax is a scam. Giving pompous speeches to impress is a scam. Dressing a certain way because you want to look professional, sexy, bohemian, rich, appear taller, humbler, or more independent is scam, scam, scam.

Please note that just because you are a breeder does not mean you are bad person. This means that you are doing well with socialization and you have established excellent cooperation with the culture. But it also means that you have moved away from your true nature. In millions of little things and in something important, you close your eyes to what you passionately strive for, because that this is your nature, and you continue to breed in order to get what you have been taught want. Let's do a little mental exercise to make the picture clearer.

Exercise "Feel the difference"

Think back to three or four of your sessions in the last week. It could be nothing (you brushed your teeth) or something colossal (you robbed a bank) and anything in between (you cooked breakfast, you played with parrot). Choose an activity that, from your current point of view, seems relatively enjoyable to you.

Now allow yourself to recall vividly and in detail how you felt when you did this. Did you look forward to it with joy and enthusiasm? Did you get genuine pleasure when you got down to business? Were you happy with the whole process when you finished? Write down the answer.

Now think about something you did last week that didn't excite you. How did you feel, physically and emotionally, when you started the task? How did you feel while doing it? What did you feel - sadness, fatigue, bewilderment, annoyance, distraction? Describe your feelings.

Try to switch between these two sensations several times. Pay attention to the difference, even if it is quite small. It's the difference between what you do because integrity requires it, and what you do to indulge in cultural swindle like everyone else.

What are we taught to ignore?

When you do this exercise and reflect on the two things you did last week, note that you did something unpleasant for one simple reason: at some level you considered This owes hisness. Maybe you did it out of fear, afraid of what would happen if you didn't. Maybe someone tried please. Maybe you have a whole set of cultural rules that are so deeply ingrained in your brain that it never occurred to you that you can, it turns out, not do a hateful thing.

I am not at all saying that all social arrangements are evil. I don't think living in integrity is tantamount to rejecting all cultural norms, running around naked, stealing food, and raping pretty strangers and strangers. I just want you to clearly and clearly understand the difference between the behavior of your real self and your false self, between joyful and swindling.

This is the second step on the path to wholeness, a prelude to aligning your thoughts and actions with your truth.

It does not require anything from you - only to distinguish when you are doing something because the culture requires it, and when - at the call of your own true nature.

At this stage, no further action is required.

There is no absolute truth

Here's what I did after my catastrophic breakdown at the age of eighteen. As soon as I realized that all my troubles, apparently, due to the fact that I don’t know where the truth is and where it’s not, I began to look for the answer to the question “What is true? with the zeal of a hungry tiger on the hunt. Still lying in bed, I read several of the great works of Western philosophers, beginning with the pre-Socratics and moving on in chronological order - it was a series of incredibly boring books. […]

A few months later, I finally got to Immanuel Kant's inhumanly boring masterpiece Critique of Pure Reason. He turned my whole soul inside out and changed my life forever. Kant believed that all our experience, including space and time, is generated by the mind. Perhaps there is some kind of reality, but we are able to see it only through the prism of subjective perception, and from this it follows that no one will ever know what is absolute truth.

Kant's logic seemed to me amazingly correct and, at the same time, so paradoxical that it simply exploded in my brain: the absolute truth is that nothing is absolutely true. does not existincluding this statement.

For me it was like getting out of a cold dark cave. After all, it turned out that I could accommodate all cultural beliefs.

Mormons can be both right and wrong in their concept of the universe. My good friends at Harvard may be right or wrong in their version of reality, which is quite different. Who knows for sure? Certainly not me. Wow! What a relief! Since others invent anything on the go, I can be like everyone else, but absolutely no one needs trust.

It turned out that this is just an outstanding strategy to climb into the illumined heights. I married another Mormon who also went to Harvard. Together we have earned every degree we can get our hands on while continuing to pose as model Latter-day Saints. I gave birth to my first child in the middle of my dissertation, just like a woman from the first settlers who gives birth to her offspring right in the field in the midst of plowing.

I managed to scam everyone, including myself. But the symptoms of the dark forest have not gone away. I felt empty, I suffered from anxiety, I became pathological workaholic. Insomnia, pain and malaise did not give strength to an already exhausted body. I managed to reveal a little of my true nature, which really adored learning and loved her husband and children. But the vast majority of my actions were in response to cultural demands. I had already reached half of the illuminated height and quickly climbed up, where there was nothing that would give me a sincere joy.

Exercise "Who and what do you breed"

If you find that some of your daily activities are dictated by culture and not by your genuine nature, then you are defrauding yourself to climb your version of heights illuminated. Are you ready for a completely frank conversation with yourself? If so, ask yourself the following questions, pausing each time until you feel the real answer.

Again, no action is required from you, except for an internal recognition of the real state of affairs.

Notice the difference between what you truly love to do and what you do for other reasons.

• Do you happen to spend time with people whose company you do not enjoy? Who is this?
• Do you constantly have to force yourself to do something (perhaps many different things) that you do not want to do? Make a list.
• Do you do something just because you are afraid that if you don't do it, someone will be upset or your value will decrease in their eyes? What is this?
• Are there periods in your daily life when you constantly have to pretend that you are happier and more interesting than you really are? In what areas do you tend to do this (relations with loved ones, work, certain places)?
• Do you happen to speak a deliberate lie or pretend? In what?

Reread everything you've written in the spaces provided for this, and you'll see a bunch of situations in which you give up your own integrity for the sake of cultural swindle. You have done nothing wrong, and no action is yet to be taken.

Just pay attention to how much life you are wasting on scamming.

My clients, when I offer them this exercise, sometimes lose some ground under their feet. It turns out that all the unpleasant things that they force themselves to do, all the areas where they lie about their feelings, all the cases when they are led by shame or are afraid of punishment are those very aspects of their behavior that they considered the most valuable and correct. If you are a non-working mother who really doesn't like to constantly mess around with children, a firefighter who dreams of quiet mental work, a military man who abhors a rigid routine, you probably pride yourself on forcing yourself to go against your own nature and do what your culture. And now I tell you that these admirable efforts violate the integrity of your personality.

What can I do?!

Take a breath. I'm not saying that trying to conform to cultural standards is bad. Against. You are doing a tremendous job in order to live up to the standards that you truly believe are right and good. I deeply admire this.

It takes incredible self-discipline to go against your nature.

If I scolded you for these efforts, I would simply inject you with another dose of aggressive socialization. I don't blame you for anything. I just want you to pay attention to one thing: every time you go against your nature for the sake of culture, you get sick of it.

Remember, this does not mean that you need to actively change something. Not yet. I invite you to live your former life, just as you have lived until now. Keep doing breeding. As much as you like. The only change that is required of you at this stage of the path of wholeness is to admit (only to yourself) that some of your actions are designed to produce impression other people or meet their expectations. […]

The book "Putting the Pieces" consists of theory and practical exercises. The guide will help you understand how to stop being led by modern culture, stop living someone else's life and start your own - interesting and authentic.

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