Thursday, June 10, 2010

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.



8 comments:

  1. 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.

    I don't believe that for an instant. It's pure dumb luck. The world needed an "Oprah" and it happened to be that fat, horrible harpy. Harpy backwards is Yprah....

    I realized this watching a History Channel on Napolean. The world needed a "Napolean"; a strong man; an Emperor of Europe and it got that sawed-off French nitwit.

    The same, obviously, with Obama.

    I am not a subscriber to the "Great Man" theory of history.

    The world: society, economics, demographics, politics, market, technology, creates a great groundswell for a thing and (typically), some enormous ass finds themselves atop it.

    We only remember them 'cuz they rode the wave the farthest, but they did not create the wave. cf. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs....

    --Gray

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  2. I would argue that some people's gut instincts are better than others in certain areas. Buffet's gut instinct in markets is a function of years of watching the market move. It's an intuition based on the idea that the mind processes patterns that are too complex to consciously analyze. It just tells you, I've see something like this before and this is how you should act. He would not be good at using his gut to do other things.

    Oprah appears to have a great instinct for what other people want to hear, I don't watch her so I don't know for sure.

    In response to the part about American Idol: Too many people confuse listening to your gut with listening to your hopes and dreams and deluding yourself. I bet a lot of American Idol hopefuls secretly know that they don't have what it takes, but would never ever admit it and continue to hope because this is what they've staked their identity on.

    By the way... get a little more bitter at the world, Gray. Your comment was so full of vitriol and hate I had trouble finishing reading it.


    -Jesse

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  3. By the way... get a little more bitter at the world, Gray. Your comment was so full of vitriol and hate I had trouble finishing reading it.

    If that is all you got out of it, you shouldn't have bothered to finish reading it.

    I stand by every word and I enjoyed writing that comment. I'v sorry it hurt your feelings.

    --Gray

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  4. I believe we are trying to make a transition to a society in which more people have vocations than jobs. That is 'love what you do, and you'll never work a day in your life'.

    The ideal end state of this is where people are working very hard and very enthusiastically on projects useful to everyone else and that has the craftsman well compensated for his labor.

    However, we're not there yet. As Macchiavelli said...nothing so hard as going from one system to another. Right now, we're in the doldrums of the Napa Valley and in the waiting line of American Idol.

    Winemakers in the Napa Valley and writers of fiction get paid poorly because everyone wants that job. In the waiting line are a lot of people who probably shouldn't be exactly there...they should be trying to find their vocation elsewhere.

    We have people on the Right (who want people to go back to being normal instead of being virtuous and free), and people on the Left (who want to shut down the economy and draw up the ladder behind themselves) who don't know how to cope with this coming tidal wave of change. Its an economy of a far bigger size, and it requires a bigger vision, and lots of guts. Its easier to say 'No' than try to show leadership.

    And no one really has a clue what to do about this except for the people who say 'get the gov't out of the way'.

    As to Gray...interesting idea. I think Rush might agree. He's said he spoke what everyone else was thinking. He gave a voice to many. I was one of those.

    That said...What if George Bush Jr. had won in 1980 rather than Ronald Reagan? Voodoo economics? Would Bush have been able to push the Sovs as hard as the more charismatic and visionary Reagan did?

    A lot of times history at a moment of crisis is a multiple choice question. Which of the choices maded leads to a completely different set of questions.

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  5. We have people on the Right (who want people to go back to being normal instead of being virtuous and free), and people on the Left (who want to shut down the economy and draw up the ladder behind themselves) who don't know how to cope with this coming tidal wave of change.

    Now that is an interesting take.

    I think you nailed the Left, but I hadn't considered that view of the Right.....

    I think that being 'normal' in America: trading your labor for money and filling your belly and garage is virtue and freedom.

    --Unless by 'virtue', you mean believing in Global warming by and 'Free', you mean over-sharing and being a pest.

    I dunno.... Find the next big wave and be the enormous ass on top of it; ride it as long as you can. That's what I'm trying to do.

    --Gray

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  6. As a stiff upper lip kind of guy, I am always asking myself, "Why?" Strip away the cliche that it is for the best in the long run and I still come up with, still not only "Why?" but "When does the long run pan out?" In the last third of my life things haven't panned out and my lip has a cramp. So does my gut.
    Going with your gut guarantees nothing. Stiff lips guarantee nothing. Going with your guy leaves one without regrets. Stiff upper lips leaves you with a mouth full of them.

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  7. Thanks so much for this article, quite useful piece of writing.

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  8. Quite useful info, much thanks for the post.

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