Should You Keep a Stiff Upper Lip Or Go With Your Gut?

We all get a little carried away when we start expounding on the great moral principles that guide our lives. We go on about justice and equality ad nauseam . And we happily tell anyone who will listen that we always let our conscience be our guide.

And yet, when everyday problems and dilemmas arise, we often fall back on precepts that we have learned in the form of slogans.

Along with customs and mores, table manners and dress codes, etiquette and decorum... these precepts are promulgated and accepted as rules to live by. We follow them, consciously or unconsciously, because they make us members in good standing of our communities.

These precepts are far less lofty than Platonic ideals. They are usually promoted by very successful people, by people everyone respects, as the secret to their success. And yet, since very few of these people became successful by articulating ethical precepts, they are often misleading, lending themselves to misinterpretation.

Whatever Joseph Campbell meant when he told everyone to follow their bliss, it is not hard to imagine someone using this principle it to abandon his responsibilities to his family or his company,and going off to and seek ecstasy by living in a cave or by taking drugs.

Nothing about the concept of following your bliss will tell him otherwise. Which is what is wrong with the principle.

Try another piece of advice, one that seems to have originated in early 19th century America, but that became a staple of British cultural values: Keep a stiff upper lip. Link here. Simply put, it means that you should control your emotions, and not display them in public.

Surely, it is more concrete than Campbell's precept, and it is more other-directed than a more recent precept: go with your gut. But Campbell's idea is also more closely attuned with the value system of Continental Europe.

In my view modern psychotherapy originated in the 19th century as a front in the culture wars between Continental Europe and the Anglosphere. Thus, between France, Germany, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, on the one side, and Great Britain and America on the other.

The therapy culture wants you to follow a principle that will alienate you from traditional Anglo-American culture. It tries to induce you to follow the dictates of your heart, your mind, your intestinal tract, or your genitalia. Anything but the stiff upper life that would direct your attention to the question of how others see you.

A culture that values a stiff upper lip teaches you to curb your enthusiasm, to be stoic about pain, to keep your emotions mostly to yourself, and to maintain a dignified and decorous appearance.

Also, I suspect that maintaining a stiff upper lip is also a good way to control emotion. If you are prone to overt displays of emotion, the aftershock of embarrassment will ruin whatever catharsis you receive from blurting it all out.

When you are wondering about what a culture values, what the kind of rules and precepts it offers, you can note that in today's America, thanks largely to the dominance of the therapy culture, the proverbial stiff upper lip is not only not respected, it has become something of a joke.

Some members of our culture are still off following their bliss, but the more common and respected alternative to the stiff upper lip is the injunction to go with your gut.

I have offered by reflections on this topic in a couple of older posts ... here and here.

I started rethinking the question when I read an article by Kiri Blakeley called: "Don't Trust Your Gut." Link here. In her article Blakeley summarizes a new book by psychologists Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons, called: The Invisible Gorilla, and Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us.

Chabris and Simons have done yeoman's work on the topic; their analysis is deeper and more sophisticated than mine, so I am happy to recommend the book.

As Blakeley explains, the authors note that Oprah Winfrey has been one of the leading purveyors of this precept. For quite some time she has been telling the world that she owes her success to her willingness to listen to her gut. She has told everyone that she has built her empire because she goes with her gut.

If you ask how certain cultural precepts become rules to live by, you must see that most people want to get ahead by following the same rules as very successful people.

I would also highlight the influence of legendary CEO Jack Welch and of legendary investor Warren Buffett. Both men have told the world, in no uncertain terms, that they owe their success to the instructions that they are receiving from their gut.

And yet, as Blakeley points out, thousands of American Idol hopefuls follow their gut instincts to the audition hall because their gut is telling them that they are great singers. After all, if you feel like a great singer, or if you feel great while you are singing, then you must be a great singer.

More often than not these wanna-be Idols cannot carry a tune. Even when they hear the opinion of expert judges they are still so completely in thrall to the lies their gut is telling them that they cannot let go of their belief that they are great singers.

People who have achieved great worldly success are often far less talented when it comes to explaining their success. They are less talented still at articulating principles that will help others to achieve the same success.

Oprah has an tremendous talent at marketing and showmanship. She did not get it just by following her gut. I would venture that Oprah, like Jack Welch and Warren Buffett, worked long and hard to achieve what she achieved. I would not want to say that Oprah does not follow what she thinks of as intuition, but if you have toiled over a problem or worked very hard to improve your show and one day you have a moment of inspiration that offers you a solution to the problem, I would not say you are follow your gut. I would say that you are affirming the value of hard work.

As the old saying goes, success is 90% perspiration and 10% inspiration. Perhaps people have warmer feelings about the moment of inspiration, but if you do not put in the work, your inspirations will not be reliable.