In the Rose Garden / Who are your "audiences?"

zevrem · Back to Top

This post draws inspiration from #6 of Bertrand Russell's Ten Commandments, the commandment "[not to] attempt to live without vanity, since this is impossible, but [to] choose the right audience from which to seek admiration."

The specific thought that that "commandment" inspired was that much of our psychology can be formulated in terms of which audiences we choose to play to, consciously or unconsciously. This seems useful to me, because it seems like a very simple yet powerful way to structure change in one's own psychology, helping one seek out the right audiences, and perhaps more importantly, abandon the wrong audiences.

So much of our psyches are polluted by an unconscious desire to please people we have no reason to want to please beyond basic questions of courtesy/morality/etc. I personally have been far too preoccupied with the culture of "youth," of the underclass, the "middle class," liberals, conservatives, international finance, and many, many other groups that in reality have almost nothing to offer me, tangible or intangible. As for groups that I WOULD like to play to, that will take some more thought.

In case you were wondering, part of the purpose of this thread is a vague hope that the good people of this forum will come to do some of this thinking for me by commenting, negatively or positively, on the above. emot-biggrin

Last edited by zevrem (12-30-2014 10:15:51 PM)

satyreyes · Back to Top

New Year's Eve seems like a good time to reflect on this question. emot-smile

I wonder why Russell would think that it's impossible to live without vanity but possible to decide what audience you'll direct your vanity at. Surely most of us have wished that we didn't care what someone thought of us, but cared anyway. Eleanor Roosevelt famously said that no one can make you feel inferior without your consent: really? Book of Mormon lyrics notwithstanding, turning off an emotion isn't an easy thing to do, even when the emotion hurts us, even for no good reason. Maybe Eleanor Roosevelt and Bertrand Russell had ironclad control over their feelings, but I don't.

Leaving that aside, though, I find I still have trouble answering the question. Maybe I don't have a clearly defined sense of what vanity is. Is it nothing more than the desire for others' admiration, as Russell seems to imply? That's not how we usually use the word. Vanity can include being self-centered or admiring oneself. We say Narcissus was vain in staring at his own reflection. You're so vain you probably think this post is about you. Maybe the self is one of the audiences whose admiration we might seek. That's reasonable, right? We should seek to have admirable qualities and to acknowledge them (with all due humility); that's what self-esteem is, isn't it?

So if I'm choosing audiences to seek admiration from, fundamentally I want my own -- though I'm a tough audience when it comes to my own performance. I want the admiration of my friends; if I didn't think their admiration was worth something, they probably wouldn't be my friends. I want the admiration of people who aren't my friends but could be -- people who share my values, people I myself admire. And to a lesser extent, I want the admiration of people whose interests I share, along the dimension on which we share interests. There might be other categories, but I can't think of them. I'm not immune to wanting to please people for no good reason, but I'm not convinced that's a question of vanity.

zevrem · Back to Top

I wonder why Russell would think that it's impossible to live without vanity but possible to decide what audience you'll direct your vanity at. Surely most of us have wished that we didn't care what someone thought of us, but cared anyway. Eleanor Roosevelt famously said that no one can make you feel inferior without your consent: really? Book of Mormon lyrics notwithstanding, turning off an emotion isn't an easy thing to do, even when the emotion hurts us, even for no good reason. Maybe Eleanor Roosevelt and Bertrand Russell had ironclad control over their feelings, but I don't.

Perhaps it's something like hunger. You're less capable of resisting food when your stomach's empty, and maybe the desire to be admired is something similar. If you have a strong social support net or a sympathetic audience, you're less likely to go searching about desperately for one, to try to "dissolve into the crowd," so to speak. That would explain the feelings of Bertrand Russell and Roosevelt on this issue. BF Skinner, in his fiction novel Walden Two, theorized that people consolidate in large crowds because they are unfulfilled in their private lives, and his protagonist, the leader of a small commune organized along behaviorist principles, uses this idea as a means of preventing the citizens of his communes from wanting to congregate.

Last edited by zevrem (12-31-2014 02:48:13 PM)

zevrem · Back to Top

Some other groups that I've for various reasons felt as if I "owed" something to even though that's dumb:

Children. I don't hate kids, but I don't like feeling as if I'm responsible for children in general in a social sense.

"The people." Who are these "people?" Would't I be one of these "people?"

Popular culture, and show business in general. I think that part of the purpose of TV is to make people feel as if they're always being watched.

Political and economic elites.

Anyone who proudly and self-righteously glamorizes poverty.

Whenever I learn something, I unconsciously wonder how I would explain it to someone who wasn't very smart. This is a terrible habit.

Last edited by zevrem (01-26-2015 06:59:21 PM)

#1 | Back to Top12-30-2014 10:09:36 PM

Who are your "audiences?"

#2 | Back to Top12-31-2014 12:11:16 PM

Re: Who are your "audiences?"

#3 | Back to Top12-31-2014 02:43:53 PM

Re: Who are your "audiences?"

#4 | Back to Top01-07-2015 04:04:33 PM

Re: Who are your "audiences?"

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