The Diluted Self
An Exploration into the Influence of Our Peers
“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”
At first glance, this quote seems wholesome; an optimistic call to surround yourself with people who uplift us. Or perhaps it shines a pessimistic view in which our lives are predetermined by our ingroup. Regardless of the interpretation, it suggests we are inherently plastic to those closest to us.
This line of thinking has a stranglehold on today's minds. It is regurgitated by most personal development literature, from “self-help” books to “motivational” podcasts. Whether it's packaged as advice on success, happiness, or personal growth, the notion that our closest relationships shape our identity echoes throughout. It prompts reflection on the nature of influence and the power of social dynamics.
“If you are the smartest person in the room, you are in the wrong room.”
“Show me your friends and I will show you your future.”
“Your network is your net worth.”
I want to approach this idea from another angle. But first, let's start with a few questions if you believe these quotes to be true:
Why am I so malleable to the influence of others?
Why have I become a diluted version of someone else?
If we are each a different color ink blot dropped into the same liquid container, why do we believe the default is a point of maximum entropy in which we blend into the same color?
The prevailing thought of today lies in Locke step with the idea that we are a tabula rasa in which we are inevitably in debt to the influence of others. We believe we have no free will as all causality leads us to this direct incarnation of time and space. We act as if we are the result of our experience and the senses' ability to lead to empirical decisions.
We believe we have piecemealed ourselves together. In this mode, we are nothing but the influences of experiences to our liking. To concede to another person’s system or ideas is to make them your god. You know this deeply. Anyone you look up to or emulate holds power over you as you have transferred all of the qualities you esteem onto them.
It is argued that as you amalgamate the attributes of your surrounding cohort of friends, family, and miscellaneous influences you will emerge as your unique brand. The problem with this is it leaves little room for an organic self. You henceforth are unoriginal. Factory made.
Often when one feels lost or unsure of their life’s trajectory, someone will ask you, “Well, who do you look up to?” As if there is a person you can emulate to provide an inner compass to aid you in the right direction. But this loses sight of our internal agency; the natural side of you. There is a part of you who knows exactly who you are outside of any objective payoff.
This is not to say you should not respect or have love for anyone. It suggests no person holds the reins on your existence. This is your work of art. Your frame. Your domain. Your existence. You are the inkblot that resists the energetic pull to become one with everyone around you.
To preserve our power, we must resist dilution of self. We must remain as unique as the lines imprinted on our fingerprints.
The social milieu is rife with eager influences. Our culture has even built a place for influencers as if this were a respectable job. We have swaths of young minds aspiring to induce others into a stupor of pre-selected value. It is a hivemind at work.
But we all have friends and family and must foster a love based on ends, not means. In some sense, you must protect yourself from those who can corrupt you. Corruption does not always come in the form of explicit or overt control. A loved one can corrupt you from a place they believe is love, but is their insecurity or instrumentation.
Have you ever found yourself avoiding someone at work, a friend, or even a family member? Do you find yourself dodging eye contact? Something about their demeanor, physiognomy, or actions does not sit right with you. I think deep within you inherently recognize these people as someone who should not grace your mind's inner workings. And so you are short with them. You provide simple, watered-down answers to their questions so as not to expose too much of your soul. I think many of us can intuit when someone’s inner faculties should not have a chance to corrupt or influence our own.
We all know of the parent who wants their child to be successful. They want what they think is best for their child. They might suggest the safe or prestigious route. Enter ‘the gifted child to lawyer pipeline.’ The proud parent uses their child as a proxy for their sense of fulfillment. Where the material comforts of the world grant a parent an assurance of their child's transient prosperity and well-being, it can not replace the inherent sense of self-love or value the child has for themselves.
“If nature has made you a bat, you shouldn't try and be an ostrich. You consider yourself odd at times, you accuse yourself of taking a road different from most people. You have to unlearn that! Gaze into the fire, and the clouds, and as soon as the inner voices begin to speak - surrender to them. Don't ask first whether it is permitted or would please your teachers or your father or some God. You will ruin yourself if you do that. That way you will become earth bound, a vegetable.”
-Hermann Hesse
To take on pragmatic work is not problematic on the surface. It serves direct, tangible results. That is why it is encouraged by most. It is safe. Where it is an issue is when it detracts from one’s inner sense of purpose. When the gravitational pull of expectations deter us from what we intuit about the world.
But as Nietzsche noted, we should wish hardship on those we love because, through this process of digging ourselves out of the mud, we encounter who we are and what we are made of. The person who never has taken time to discover for themselves the constituents of their values has never had to reflect on its bearing on meaning.
Even those closest to us can inadvertently steer us away from ourselves. Take the marriage/relationship built on a series of boxes that have to be checked. Every action henceforth becomes about balancing the ledger. A cold war exists in this relationship. Each transgression by the spouse elicits a mark in the ledger. And to be sure the ledger remains balanced towards our desires, we attempt to corrupt our loved ones into our bidding. This is a marriage not based on any sense of love, but one based on our own needs.
A spouse who sees their significant other as an instrument to achieve their own goals, however subtle they may be enacts a tyranny upon the agency and true individuality of a human. When love is based on outside objectives, it dissolves into an arms race. Where each partner stock piles missiles as a mechanism to detract the other from enacting their agency.
What We Already Know
If we are tasked with lives that provide no inherent meaning built out of our intuition, we are destined to feel unease. We will feel bored, dumb, insulted, anxious, and depressed. This is often where escapism comes in as it provides a means to run from ourselves or another’s covert control; a temporary band-aid of inner conflict is resolved through an escape. To escape is to lie to ourselves.
When you read something and it deeply resonates with you, this is something you already know. You did not need to read it to know this. The words are just drumming up a truism deep inside you. Here we find an alignment with ourselves. You could have written this yourself. You just need the courage and time to formulate organic, undistracted thought.
I believe one major reason why people are drugging and distracting themselves to death is an alignment problem. The dilution of self into others has formulated a giant monoculture. The unease everyone is feeling is a reaction to the discordance between our inner sense-making tools and our outward projections. If most are living a life in discordance with our inherent values, we are going to experience a somatic error. And thus to quell the inner turmoil we cover it up with tools of escape.
You must guard yourself from the profane. Only divine genius can explore your inner world. Your true self is given birth through organic thinking. This is a skill for some and an indelible genius for others. One that must be crafted and delicately tended to. One of the rare forms of existence.
“The characteristic sign of all first-rate minds is the directness of all their judgments and opinions. All that they express and assert is the result of their original thinking and everywhere proclaims itself as such even by the style of delivery. Accordingly, like princes, they have an imperial immediacy in the realm of the mind; the rest are all mediatized, as is already seen from their style which has no stamp of originality.
Therefore every genuine and original thinker is to this extent like a monarch; he is immediate and perceives no one who as his superior. Like the decrees of a monarch, his judgments spring from his supreme power and come directly from himself. For he no more accepts authorities than does the monarch take orders; on the contrary, he admits nothing but what he has confirmed. On the other hand, minds of the common ruck who labor under all kinds of current opinions, authorities, and prejudices, are like the crowd which silently obeys laws and orders.”
-Arthur Schopenhauer
It is imperative to discern between those that seek to mold us and those that resonate with our true essence. Amidst the cacophony, to stand on your virtues becomes a chance to claim the reins of our own. Yet, it is in the quiet spaces of genuine connection that we find solace, where the echoes of our true selves resonate undisturbed by the clamor of influence.
To remain steadfast amongst the oncotic pull of those around us, is tricky business. A tightrope to walk to be sure. Where we can not just leave the doors to our psyche wide open for any vagrant to wander into. But also not to build a moat around ourselves and shut ourselves off completely.
I hope you find someone who can safely explore your inner world. One who does not wish to rearrange the furniture. One who does not want to change the layout. One who will leave that painting up, just the way you like it.