09 Dec Intelligent people cooperate whereas silly people compete (KISHIMI ICHIRO & KOGA FUMITAKE) | Part B’
YOUTH: All right. The points of conflict are clear. You are saying that it is not a problem of the individual, but of the whole classroom—the principle of competition permeating the classroom is the root of all evil. I, on the other hand, focus on the individual. Why is that? Well, to borrow your word, it’s respect. Each and every student, with his unique personality, ex- ists as a splendid human being. There are all kinds of students: some quiet and well-behaved, some noisy and bright, some serious and some with fiery temperaments. They are not a gathering without individual traits.
PHILOSOPHER: Of course, that’s true.
YOUTH: But you, even as you talk about democracy, are trying not to look at each of the children individually and instead view them only as a group. More- over, you are preaching, ‘Everything will change if we change the system.’ That’s more communist than anything else!
My view is different. It doesn’t matter to me what the system is, democratic or communist or whatever. I deal with the pneumonia of each individual, not the pneumonia of the entire classroom.
PHILOSOPHER: Because that is what you have always done.
YOUTH: So, concretely speaking, how do you treat their pneumonia? This is an- other point of conflict. My answer is with approval. By fulfilling their need for approval.
PHILOSOPHER: Hmm.
YOUTH: I get it. I really get your denial of the need for approval. But I actively accept it. This conclusion is one I have arrived at based on firsthand expe- rience, so it is not something I will concede easily. In their search for approval, these children are sick in the lungs and numb with cold.
PHILOSOPHER: Could you explain the reasoning behind your conclusion?
YOUTH: In Adlerian psychology, you deny the need for approval. Why is that? It is because as a result of his hopes of being accepted by another, a person
under the sway of the need for approval will, before he knows it, be living a life that conforms to that other person’s wishes. In other words, he will be living another person’s life. But a person does not live to fulfil someone else’s expectations. Whether that person is one’s parent or one’s teacher or someone else, one must not choose a way of living that fulfils that person’s expectations. Do I have it right?
PHILOSOPHER: Yes.
YOUTH: Being constantly concerned about how one is judged by others, one can no longer live one’s own life. It becomes a way of living that is no longer free. We have to be free. And if one hopes to find freedom, one must not seek approval . . . This understanding is not mistaken, is it?
PHILOSOPHER: No, it is not mistaken.
YOUTH: It’s a wonderful, truly courageous story. But you know, we can’t be tough enough, unfortunately. Even you, if you were to observe the real everyday situation with the students, you’d understand. They put everything they’ve got into acting tough, but inside they’re terribly insecure. They just don’t seem to be able to get any confidence in themselves, and they suffer feelings of inferi- ority. They need approval from other people.
PHILOSOPHER: It’s exactly as you say.
YOUTH: Don’t agree so flippantly, you outdated Socrates! Look, the kind of people you’re talking about are all just David statues!
PHILOSOPHER: David statues?
YOUTH: Yes, you know Michelangelo’s statue of David, right? It’s the ideal rep- resentation of the human body, all perfectly proportioned and muscular, with- out an ounce of flab to be found. But it’s a supreme ideal image that is devoid of flesh and blood, not a human being that exists in reality. Real live people get stomach-aches and bleed. You are always talking about people as if they’re that statue of David ideal!
PHILOSOPHER: Haha, that’s an interesting way of putting it.
YOUTH: What I am focusing on, however, is actual living people. I’m talking
about sensitive, highly individualistic children who are awkward and thin- skinned in every way! I have to fulfil that need for approval for each one of them individually and in a more healthy manner. In a word, I have to praise them. If I don’t, they won’t be able to regain the courage they’ve lost! You wear the mask of a man of virtue, but you keep the weak at arm’s length. You’ve got idealistic theories of the heroic and the lionhearted, but nothing for real people!
PHILOSOPHER: I see. Though my words may have sounded like impractical, idealistic theories, that was not my intention. Philosophy must be an inquiry that is firmly grounded, with the consciousness that the ideals we pursue are just this: ideals. Let us take another angle to consider the reasons that Adlerian psychology does not accept the need for approval.
YOUTH: Huh. Trying to justify everything, just like Socrates!
PHILOSOPHER: The term you just brought up, feelings of inferiority, is key.
YOUTH: Hmm. You want to talk about feelings of inferiority? Okay. I’m an
expert on feelings of inferiority, you know?
PHILOSOPHER: First of all, during childhood, all humans without exception live with feelings of inferiority. This is a major premise of Adlerian psychology.
YOUTH: Without exception?
PHILOSOPHER: That’s right. The human being is probably the only living thing with a body that takes longer to grow than the mind. While with other crea- tures, mind and body develop at the same speed, only in humans does devel- opment of the mind happen first while that of the body lags behind. In a sense, we are creatures who live bound hand and foot. Because though our minds are free, our bodies are not.
YOUTH: Hmm, that’s an interesting viewpoint.
PHILOSOPHER: As a result, human children have to struggle with the gap be- tween the ‘what I want to do’ mental aspects and the ‘what I can do’ physical aspects. There are things that the adults around them can do, but they cannot. That shelf where the adults put things is out of reach to them. Those stones
the adults can carry, they cannot. And the subjects of the adults’ conversations are not things they can talk about. Children experience this sense of power- lessness, or one might say incompleteness of self, and, as a rule, cannot help but have feelings of inferiority.
YOUTH: So, they start their lives as incomplete beings?
PHILOSOPHER: Yes. Of course, children are not incomplete as people. It is only that the growth of their bodies has not caught up with that of their minds. But then the adults look only at their physical needs and start to baby them. They do not try to look at the children’s minds. So, it is only natural that the children suffer feelings of inferiority. Because even though their minds are no different from the adults’ minds, their human worth is not being recognised.
YOUTH: All people start out as incomplete beings, so everyone experiences feelings of inferiority. That’s a pretty pessimistic point of view.
PHILOSOPHER: It is not all bad. This feeling of inferiority, rather than being a handicap, has always been a stimulant of effort and growth.
YOUTH: Hmm, how so?
PHILOSOPHER: If human legs were as fast as horses’, the horse-drawn carriage would never have been invented and probably not the motor vehicle, either. If we could fly like birds, the aeroplane would never have been invented. If we had fur like a polar bear, winter clothing would never have been invented, and if we could swim like dolphins, there would never have been a need for boats or marine compasses, either. Civilisation is a product of the need to compensate for the biological weak- ness of the human being, and the history of the human race is the history of its triumphing over its inferiority.
YOUTH: It’s because we humans were weak that we were able to build up such a civilisation?
PHILOSOPHER: That’s right. And to extrapolate further, it is due to that weak- ness that humans create communities and live in relationships of cooperation. Ever since the hunter-gatherer age, we have lived in groups and cooperated with our comrades in hunting animals and raising children. It isn’t that we wanted to cooperate with each other. It is that we were weak, so desperately weak, that we could not live separately.
YOUTH: It is due to that weakness that humans formed groups and built soci- ety. So, our power and our civilisation are the fruits of our weakness.
PHILOSOPHER: Put the other way around, nothing is scarier to humans than isolation. Isolated people have not only their physical security threatened, but their mental security as well. Because, instinctively, we are well aware that we cannot live alone. As a consequence, we are always longing for a strong con- nection with other people. Do you understand what this fact means?
YOUTH: No, what does it mean?
PHILOSOPHER: All people have community feeling inside them inherently. And it is something that is deeply linked to human identity.
YOUTH: Oh!
PHILOSOPHER: Just as one would not imagine a turtle without its shell, or a
giraffe with a short neck, there is no such thing as a human being who is com- pletely cut off from other people. Community feeling is not something that is attained, but something that one digs up from within oneself, which is why it can be shared as a feeling. As Adler elucidates, ‘Community feeling is always a reflection of the weakness of the body, and one from which we cannot be sepa- rate.’
YOUTH: A community feeling resulting from human weakness . . .
PHILOSOPHER: Human beings are physically weak. But the human mind is sec- ond to none, much stronger than that of any other animal. I am sure you know well enough the degree to which spending one’s days in competition with one’s comrades is against the principles of nature. Community feeling is not some head-in-the-clouds ideal. It is a fundamental principle of life that resides within us humans.
The courage to be happy
KISHIMI ICHIRO & KOGA FUMITAKE
