Being earnest is uncool. Cool people are detached, sometimes in a satirical way, sometimes in a jaded and cynical way. Most people learn very early that the healthiest relationships and the best friend groups are formed by people willing to be genuine with one another. By contrast the least-healthy relationships and the least-healthy friend groups are characterized by cynicism, fake attachment, and a casual disregard for honesty or loyalty.
It is quite possible to be cool, and yet to be genuine about (some of) the things that matter. I’ve met many ironic people who nonetheless weren’t ironic at all about their friendships. They genuinely cared about their friends as individuals, and while they could joke about their friendship, when the chips were down, they didn’t desert their friends.
But despite that obvious example, many people never shed the lingering sense that there is something gauche about being earnest. That’s something for simple people. Not for clever people. In part, this is due to our natural association of an overabundance of eagerness with naivete. And it is true that inexperience is often linked with overenthusiasm. But there is a difference between overenthusiasm and “being real” about the things that matter. And there is a difference between intelligence and cleverness.
And the reverse of earnestness – the lack of care, the affectation of sophistication,1 the ironic demeanor towards all of life, the “well, I don’t really believe all that” attitude2 – leads only to ruin. The prevailing view today is that it’s harmless to be the antihero. But it isn’t.
Uncool:
This association of earnestness with being uncool explains the dislike some people have for the band U2, despite their worldwide success. Bono tries too hard.3
It explains why a majority of young Americans, if asked which Hogwarts house they would prefer to join, won’t say Gryffindor.4 Gryffindor, after all, is the house associated with courage, with heroism, and worst of all with being the good guys. The cool kids are edgy, dangerous,5 bad. They definitely don’t try too hard to be good.
There isn’t anything wrong with preferring hardworking Hufflepuff, or bookish Ravenclaw, to brave Gryffindor. But I do think there is something wrong with preferring Slytherin to Gryffindor out of a desire not to come across as uncool, or as an inchoate form of protest against the simplistic narrative that separates the good guys and the bad guys into two different houses.
Trying hard to be the good guys is commonly viewed as unsophisticated, or even unintelligent. Good people mean well, but they aren’t clever.6 Narratives about good and evil, about nobility and chivalry and standards of conduct, about genuine heroism, are simple. Many clever people feel they really couldn’t believe in such things deep down in their hearts. And, of course, it would be gauche for them to try really hard to make themselves believe.
I think that’s deeply sad. If a person feels too embarrassed or uncomfortable with right and wrong, or good and evil, that is tragic. Moreover, it isn’t even very clever. Faux sophistication sees that which is overly elegant (simple) as somehow less – less than the full story, less intelligent, less explanatory. It confuses the complicated with the complex, and the simple with the simplistic.
But much that is simple is very complex, and much that is complicated is meaningless – the extra layers of obfuscation doing nothing more than to create an appearance of complexity. Our physical laws simplify to surprisingly simple equations. Many of the most complex gym exercises are the ones that look very simple. Despite our pretense of technological sophistication and our “late” era,7 Occam’s Razor and Hanlon’s Razor still explain more about the world than naively complicated conspiracy theories.
Many people feel it is uncool to want to be the good guys because good and evil are simple concepts, and we have “moved beyond” them.8 But we haven’t done anything of the sort. The dangerousness associated with being cool is an affectation, but the truly dangerous (and deeply naïve) thing is the belief that evil isn’t real, or that there could be no harm in pretending to be bad. The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist. You don’t have to believe in the Christian God, or the devil, or heaven and hell, to understand that statement. All you have to know is that human beings are easily tempted, and that each of us is capable of doing terrible things.
There is a silly narrative that “good guys” have some psychological block that prevents them from doing the wrong thing, and that daring people are the ones who can do the wrong thing. Admittedly, usually the “wrong thing” in this context is something like using illicit drugs or having unsafe sex with multiple partners, rather than something like murder or bank robbery or embezzlement, which says much about the naivete of bragging about doing the wrong thing.
But quite often, the easiest choice for humans to make is the wrong one. Doing the right thing can be very hard. It usually comes with negative consequences and requires some sort of sacrifice. It isn’t psychologically difficult for anyone to do the wrong thing (human beings may not want to believe that anything they are doing is wrong, but the human mind is extraordinarily capable at justifying whatever is expedient and convincing us that we aren’t doing anything wrong). Whereas refusing to do the wrong thing often costs people.
And that is why it is so important for people, perhaps especially for very cunning and intelligent people (who know their mind could justify anything if they let it), to try very hard to be good. If one doesn’t try to do the right thing when it doesn’t matter all that much, someday when it really does matter one won’t.
Irony:
It isn’t just the big things in life (doing the right thing) that suffer from an aversion to genuineness. While there is something to be said for not taking life too seriously, there are times when one does need to take life seriously, or at least the parts of life related to one’s work and family. Too much irony can begin to erode that ability to take the important things seriously, to the point where one struggles to express genuine emotions – genuine admiration, affection, remorse, sadness, joy, etc. Over time, a constant need for sarcasm begins to warp the soul. One feels the need to make a joke about everything, even the things one doesn’t want to joke about. One’s emotional reactions become shallower, even as one might wish otherwise.
There is a place for irony, of course. I don’t mean to suggest that we should aspire to seriousness at all times. We need humor and we need the ability to laugh at ourselves, and at life. But one can be satirical while also being real and earnest. The novelist Terry Pratchett was a master at this. He could show you the foolish side of a subject while at the same time conveying his own keen interest in it. In one of my favorite novels, Soul Music, he lampoons rock and roll for all its self-seriousness and theatricalities. And yet upon finishing it, one can’t help but come to the conclusion that Pratchett genuinely loves rock and roll. And he is so comfortable in his own skin as a writer that he is able to put that love out there into the cold, cruel world of the reading public.
Commonly, irony is the defense of those who feel uncomfortable or ashamed or embarrassed admitting their true feelings, because doing so creates vulnerability. With sincerity comes vulnerability (i.e., one can explain how much one cares about something and someone can turn around and criticize it), but those who are most comfortable in their own skin are able to handle that.9
The Limits of Sincerity:
Now we come to an interesting turn in the story. I have argued that it is important for one to be earnest, at least about the big things. One should be invested in one’s life because that is the right posture to have. Anything that is worth doing is worth doing well. There is no point in living a halfhearted life.
But I think we should be clear about something. Trying hard is good for its own sake, but not because it guarantees one good outcomes. To be sure, it makes success more likely.10 But no outcomes in life are guaranteed. And there are many problems in life for which “just trying harder” won’t get one any closer to a solution. It doesn’t matter how earnest one feels about trying to hold your breath for ten hours. It is impossible.
Commitment – especially in institutional life – should be valued for its own sake. If one expects that commitment will inevitably lead to the success of one’s organization, one may be disappointed. It might. But it might not. There are other factors in play, and many of those are outside of one’s control. If one’s only reason for being committed to an organization or a cause was that one believed one’s commitment would have instrumental value (i.e., that it would result in certain outcomes), one might abandon it as soon as times get tough. Only if one genuinely holds the belief that earnest effort is intrinsically valuable will one follow that belief even when circumstance makes it hard.
All of which is building me up to say that one can’t change the world simply by caring enough, by being passionate about one’s cause, by being committed to social change (especially if the desired change is actually impossible). Despite what you may have heard, not all things become possible if you just believe hard enough. All things may be possible for God, but not for the likes of you and me. There are some circumstances for which one’s level of caring won’t make even the slightest material difference. There are some problems for which one’s passion will prove inconsequential. There are some solutions that will never exist, no matter how hard one tries to believe in them.
Why, then, should we care about things? Why should we be genuine, sincere, earnest, committed?
Because while it may not make a material difference in the world, it can make a material difference in us. I don’t mean us as society, I mean us as individuals. The posture that an individual has towards life will affect what he or she does and how he or she feels about it. To the extent that what you do can affect the quality of your life,11 your posture towards the world can affect the quality of your life by leading you towards or away from certain actions.
But even in our own lives, we need to reckon with the limits of passion and sincerity. If you’ll indulge me for a moment in one more example, I’ll explain.
I’m a distance runner, and one of the questions in running is, “How much can desire to win, coupled with willingness to endure suffering, improve performance?” The answer is, “Some, but not an infinite amount.” There are those who refuse to acknowledge that will plays any role, and there are those who refuse to acknowledge that there is such a thing as physical limitation on human performance, but most people will readily see that the truth lies somewhere in the middle. My favorite analogy (which I have used many times) is that of hard stops and soft stops on machines. A hard stop is when the mechanical arm slams into the wall. A soft stop is when the control software puts the brake on the mechanical arm just before it runs into the wall. Our mental limits are our soft stops and our physical limits are our hard stops. When a runner literally runs out of glycogen that is a physical limit (i.e., immediate hospitalization and risk of death). When a runner experiences otherworldly fatigue, pain, despair, and weakness (which marathoners refer to as “The Wall”) indicating that glycogen is getting dangerously low, that is a soft stop.
Will to win (commitment, drive, desire, passion, sincerity, earnestness, etc.) can allow an individual runner to push the soft stops closer to the hard stops, but it can’t do anything about the hard stops. No matter how bad one wants to win, one can’t overcome the laws of physics and biology.
Sincerity can play a role in life – within institutions and society. But its effect is small and it has the greatest effect at the smallest scale – at the level of the individual. That is where it is truly possible to make a difference.
Trying for the Sake of Trying:
The reason many earnest people “try too hard” is that they believe in trying for the sake of trying. They believe that the point of many activities is the activity itself. The outcome which may arise from the activity is desirable, but it is not the end goal.
Some ironic people have a hard time understanding how unironic people could actually believe that. The reason they struggle to understand that is that they are still focused on the desired outcomes. They see no point to “trying too hard,” to being earnest, to doing an activity which might not ever get them anything.
This struggle of theirs can cause much unhappiness, and perhaps if more of them understood this asymmetry, they’d be able to live more genuinely and it would have a positive impact on their lives. Perhaps some of them think they are too far gone and don’t believe they can be more genuine and less ironic.
There may be many impossible things in this world, but, luckily, that probably isn’t one of them.
Interestingly, it takes quite a bit of work to authentically affect disinterestedness. In other words, one has to try very hard not to come off as a “try hard.”
In every culture and regime and religion, you will find people who either don’t believe in the ideology (or theology) they profess, or pretend not to believe in it. You will also find those who do believe in it, whether “it” refers to fascism, communism, liberalism, Islam, Christianity, the mission of the Taliban, the mission of a corporation, the mission of a charity, etc. “Not really believing in it” might give one a sense of superiority, but if one didn’t really believe in the mission or the message, why not leave?
For the record, I don’t think that’s a bad thing.
If you’ve never heard about this, ask a Millennial.
A cursory reading of the Harry Potter books would indicate that many members of House Gryffindor are also dangerous, but just not in a way that is edgy (with the exception of Sirius Black).
Unless, of course, they are clever enough to pass themselves off as less clever than they are in order to ensure people underestimate them, such as Claudius in Robert Graves I, Claudius.
“Late era” being a rather silly term to indicate we feel as though we are at the end of something, merely because every moment of our lives is later than everything that has ever happened in the past.
Lord Voldemort, echoing Nietzsche, said something quite similar.
Grace comes from accepting that sometimes people will criticize something one cares about immediately after one expresses admiration for it, and recognizing that criticism or dislike doesn’t really hurt one in any tangible way.
Or, rather, slacking off, never caring about anything, and refusing to take important things seriously makes failure more likely.
We may be limited in our ability to determine everything about our lives, but there is quite a lot that we can do either to wreck or to improve our lives, and we shouldn’t lose sight of that.