Dialogue, dessert buffet, and book giftival Wednesday December 18 at Humainologie and a related book

Tomorrow (Wednesday December 18) we'll meet at 6 PM at Humainologie for our dialogue, dessert buffet, and Christmas book giftival. Here's a synopsis of Chapter Eight from Robert Greene's most recent book. It's particularly timely if you want to dialogue on the topic of self reliance, but you may find it useful in any case. After the event tomorrow we'll break for the holidays and the next dialogue will be Wednesday January 8.

Book Chapter: (Robert Greene) The Laws of Human Nature (2018), Chapter Eight

Because it has useful reference material for a dialogue on self-reliance, I’ll provide a synopsis of Chapter Eight from Robert Greene’s most recent book. An overview with synopsis of Chapter One and a synopsis of chapters 2, 3, and 4 have previously been circulated.

Chapter 8. Change Your Circumstances by Changing Your Attitude. The Law of Self-sabotage

“The greatest discovery of my generation is the fact that human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes of mind.” - William James (quoted by Robert Greene)

Ultimately it is our attitude, not the raw material of circumstances, that determines the extent to which we are confined or liberated. Anton Chekhov (1860-1904) emerged from a childhood of poverty and abuse, to become a physician, celebrated playwright, and innovative short story writer. His great escape from what could have destroyed him came as the result of a remarkable transformation in how he perceived the people in his life. It was this change in attitude that enriched his writing and conferred an astonishing capacity to survive – and even intentionally take on – very daunting challenges.

His grandfather had been a serf, emerged from that slavery but continuing its tyranny by beating his son, Anton’s father. Anton’s father continued the tradition with his children. Beatings were to teach humility before the Lord. This was ironic, in that Anton’s father professed Christianity while living a life of drunkenness and dishonesty in his small business which drove him into debt. Anton’s siblings tried to escape from this nightmare. Two brothers moved to Moscow to pursue careers in writing and art. It didn’t work; their parents, destitute, followed them and shared a marginal existence in a shabby neighborhood.

Anton remained in his hometown (Taganrog), living independently, reading, and hiring himself out as a tutor. Initially he often felt angry and bitter or depressed. At some point, however, he realized this anger and depression were costing him too much. He decided to become a doctor. “He had a scientific frame of mind, and doctors made a good living. To get into medical school he would have to study much harder. Frequenting the town library, the only place he could work in peace and quiet, he began to also browse the literature and philosophy sections, and soon he felt his mind soaring far beyond Taganrog. With books, he no longer felt so trapped. At night, he returned to his corner of a room to write stories and sleep.”

To letters from his brothers (who complained of their father’s behavior and sometimes mentioned their own lack of self-worth) Anton responded with encouragement and wisdom. This process led him to think more deeply about his father’s behavior, and gradually to reach a point of empathy. His father had had some talent in art and music. Without the means of pursuing that talent, and having been brutalized as a child, his father had been forced to open a small grocery store to survive; and still followed subservient patterns of interaction with wealthier people, a legacy of his family’s serfdom. “Pavel [Anton’s father] still bowed and kissed the hand of every local official and landowner. He remained a serf at heart.” Anton tried thinking of his father as a character in a story, and came to see him not as a tyrant but as helpless, and even began to feel love toward him. “With his mind emptied of rancor and obsessive thoughts of his lost childhood, it was as if a great weight had suddenly been lifted off him. …The answer to everything was work and love, work and love. He had to spread this message to his family and save them. He had to share it with mankind through his stories and plays.”

When he moved to Moscow in 1879 to attend medical school, he found his family in rapid decline, and decided to “move into the cramped room and become the catalyst for change.” His brother Alexander and his father had recently moved out. Anton managed to put three of his siblings back into school, found a better job for his father, and moved the entire family into a larger apartment. He chose books for his siblings to read and discuss. The family’s outlook and sense of well-being steadily improved.

In 1884, Anton realized he had the early signs of tuberculosis. His fame as a playwright and short story writer was growing. It sometimes elicited envy from other writers, and criticism for Chekhov’s refusal to join any revolutionary movement. In 1889, he decided to make a long journey across Russia to a notorious prison on Sakhalin Island. In his writing he had been interested in the most disadvantaged people, including thieves and murderers. On Sakhalin, he interviewed such miserables, witnessed directly the oppressive conditions to which they and their wives and children were subjected. “It reminded him of his family dynamic, on a much larger scale.”

All of us face some version of Anton Chekhov’s challenges – psychological trauma – and we seek relief from the pain, sometimes using alcohol or in other ways making our circumstances worse. “But this is not how it has to be. The freedom that Chekhov experienced came from a choice, a different way of looking at the world, a change in attitude. …This freedom essentially comes from adopting a generous spirit – toward others and toward ourselves.”

“Years later, in a letter to a friend, Chekhov tried to summarize his experience in Taganrog, referring to himself in the third person: ‘Write about how this young man squeezes the slave out of himself drop by drop and how one fine morning he awakes to find that the blood coursing through his veins is no longer the blood of a slave but that of a real human being.’”

“Understand: Each of us sees the world through a particular lens that colors and shapes our perceptions. Let us call this lens our attitude.” The Swiss psychologist Carl Jung had defined attitude as “a readiness of the psyche to act or react in a certain way.” Stimuli in our environment, neither good nor bad in their essence (clouds in the sky, crowds of people, whatever) will lead to psychological responses driven by how we are “wired.” “If we have a suspicious nature, we are more sensitive to facial expressions that display any kind of possible negativity and to exaggerate what we perceive.”

Greene then gives us our instructions for taking charge of all this: “Your task as a student of human nature is twofold: First you must become aware of your own attitude and how it slants your perceptions. …

“Second, you must not only be aware of the role of your attitude but also believe in its supreme power to alter your circumstances. You are not a pawn in a game controlled by others; you are an active player who can move the pieces at will and even rewrite the rules. …See your brain as a miraculous organ designed for continual learning and improvement, well into old age. …Do not be afraid to exaggerate the role of willpower. It is an exaggeration with a purpose. It leads to a positive self-fulfilling dynamic, and that is all you care about. See this shaping of your attitude as your most important creation in life, and never leave it to chance.”

More than a third of the chapter is devoted to Greene’s detailed description of “the constricted (negative) attitude” and “the expansive (positive) attitude” and how to deal with the one and achieve the other in our own lives. He describes five types of constricted (negative) attitude: hostile, anxious, avoidant, depressive, and resentful attitudes. Learn to recognize (and forgive) elements of these in others. Learn to recognize them in yourself, and if you discover them in yourself, Greene suggests strategies for dealing with them. For example, if you find elements of the “avoidant attitude” in your own behavior patterns, “a good strategy is to take on a project of even the smallest scale, taking it all the way to completion and embracing the prospect of failure. If you fail, you will have already cushioned the blow because you anticipated it… Your self-esteem will rise because you finally tried something and finished it. Once you diminish this fear, progress will be easy. You will want to try again.” In the section on the expansive (positive) attitude, Greene provides a “road map” for opening this aperture of your lens: How to view the world, how to view adversity, how to view yourself, how to view your energy and health, and how to view other people. “Finally,” he suggests, “think of the modern concept of attitude in terms of the ancient concept of the soul.” Your attitude, then, can be thought of as something spiritual.

Arthur