In yesterday’s post, I defended the study of philosophy by non-philosophers for the value its analytic tools give us.
Philosophy is the discipline and set of tools through which we live our lives in accordance with values that set premises we hold. We can use these tools to guide ourselves through disagreements between ourselves and others and for deciding between different decisions in a set. But philosophy goes even deeper than that and is integral to a strong sense of self-worth.
Self-Worth and Integrity
Our self-worth is directly connected to the view that we hold of ourselves. This view is largely determined by the strength of the integrity that we believe we deserve. A person of strong integrity likely views themselves in a positive light. A person of weak integrity likely views themselves in a negative light.
This doesn’t mean that the person of strong integrity is arrogant and the person of weak integrity is pitiful and ashamed of themselves. The contrary is true. A person of strong integrity is sure of their strength and does not feel the need to project it. A person of weak integrity is more likely to project what they perceive as “strong integrity” into the world through a sense of arrogance and haughtiness.
It’s easy enough to say that self-worth and integrity are directly connected to each other, but how is this actually the case? What is a strong sense of integrity and what is strong self-worth?
Integrity is the individual’s own view of how they relate to their desired internal state. A person with strong integrity acts in accordance with what they want for themselves as an individual. A person with weak integrity often compromises and weakens this stance — oftentimes in pursuit of appeasing others.
So, integrity is not a status-oriented state determined by the opinions of others. It is derived entirely from the individual’s opinion of their own ability to stay true to those things which they value.
Self-worth is directly connected to integrity. While not integrity itself, self-worth is the individual’s relationship to his own integrity. An individual of weak integrity will view themselves as having little self-worth. Consider the individual who has weak integrity — they have such because they either lack an understanding of their own values or what they want for themselves or because they understand these things but constantly compromise in action. Compromising in action is the abrogation of upholding one’s own future for himself. It is the act of letting oneself down.
If you’ve ever felt disappointment in yourself for having done something that you knew wasn’t entirely what you wanted or what you should have done, that is the feeling of compromise.
If you don’t know what you value or don’t know how to act in accordance with what you value, you will find yourself compromising by taking up the demands and actions of others and living them as if they were your own. You begin to live life second-hand — determining your own integrity and self-worth by what others want and desire.
How Philosophy Helps Integrity and Self-Worth
We can see some kind of connection between integrity and self-worth. Integrity is the state of the relationship between our actions and what we want for ourselves, while self-worth is the attitude we hold in relation to our state of integrity.
Obviously stronger integrity is better than weaker integrity. Obviously higher self-worth is better than lower-self worth.
If integrity is directly connected to our relationship with what we value, then there should be a high personal value placed on knowing what we value and aligning our actions with what we value. If you don’t know what you value, you drift through life with little plan to achieve what you want. At worst, you live the lives of others, pursuing what they pursue because it sounds nice and because it’s what others strive to achieve (i.e., you become a conformist because competition has driven you to it). At best, you don’t really live out a life consciously, just pursuing what sounds good in the moment, with no plan or end-goal to which you strive.
Recall the analytic tools with which philosophy can equip a student. These tools can help us work out kinks in our belief systems, help us better understand disagreements, and can help us root out any contradictions. But they can also provide a set of tools with which we can live lives of strong integrity.
If you know what your values are, you can use these tools — like conceptual analysis — to analyze a set of choices you have to make in the future to execute on your values. If you value living a healthy life and are given the choice to shop for lots of cheap, unhealthy food at a lower price or to shop for expensive, healthier food at a higher price, which option should you take? What if you can use the leftover money from the cheap food to get a gym membership? Do you value nutrition or do you value exercise? Will you carry-through on the exercise if you compromise on nutrition? If nutrition is a major factor of healthiness, then you ought to go and spend the money on the healthier, more nutritious food than to spend it on the cheaper food.
Similarly, if you value your personal autonomy to build things, should you pursue an elite education that will set you on path-dependency but give you high status later in life, or should you pursue building something risky in your youth that may have high payoff? If you don’t know what you value, then the choice is obvious — you should go with the elite education that comes with status. If you know that you value your own autonomy to build something and are willing to take on the risk involved in building a new venture, then you should take the latter choice.
Check Your Premises
Contradictions do not exist.
If you find yourself with a contradiction of fact, your premise is wrong and needs to be realigned with the facts of reality.
Example:
“I desire a life of status and wealth, but I now have status and wealth and am incredibly unfulfilled.”
Assuming that the second half of the statement (“…but I now have status and wealth and am incredibly unfulfilled.”) is true, then the premise that “I desire a life of status and wealth” is incorrect. You may think that this is what you desired, but achieving it did not lead to fulfilled desires, showing that it wasn’t what you actually wanted to pursue.
I am not saying that there is an inaccessible “good” that each individual “really” wants if only they knew that they wanted it. Rather, I am saying that it is possible that we delude ourselves into thinking what we want is something other than that which our personal values drive us towards.
For example, I know people who pursued an elite education because they desired autonomy and freedom. They thought that the status and respect that came with an elite education would provide them with this freedom. After going through the elite schooling system, they found that they were driven towards money and status — though few knew exactly why they were pursuing this.* They compromised on their initial values and are now pursuing a contradiction. For some, it may be that they were originally deluding themselves about freedom and autonomy and that they always really wanted status and wealth, but for a good many others, they started living a life in contradiction with their initial values.
Philosophy allows us to break down actions and ask ourselves which actions logically follow from a set of premises. If we value autonomy and freedom, then maybe pursuing an elite education is appropriate, but it is not appropriate to then pursue a 80-90 hr/wk job that we hate that comes with golden handcuffs and starts a pace up the hedonic treadmill. Maybe it makes more sense to throw off that path entirely and life a different path that is less secure.
Only by breaking down the set of options and looking at which actions logically follow from which values and vice versa can a person keep themselves on the path of their values. Only from looking at what they enjoy and dislike and working backwards can an individual derive their values. Philosophy helps us do this.
* For more on how competition destroys individuality, check out “You are Not a Lottery Ticket” from Peter Thiel’s Zero to One.