Source: Douai, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 711, fol. 24r.
Illustration from De natura animalium, ca. 175–235 AD.
I always had a problem with setting goals. Especially in the workplace. The boss would set “your” goal, which always had to be more challenging than last year’s. But how can you be better than doing the best job you can every year? Not all jobs operate the same as sales jobs.
Today’s featured thinker, David Zahl, director of Mockingbird Ministries and editor-in-chief of Mockingbird, launches into a bit of a tirade about the self-help goals many of us are slave to today. He references the New Testament a lot, but I think people of other faiths will be as amused as I was. See what you think.
Zahl writes, “I spend as much time troubleshooting the various homework programs on my sons’ computers, updating the software, and filling out endless two-factor authentications as I do helping them with their homework. It is a crazy-making experience that leaves everyone frustrated, tired, and not remotely in the mood for learning.
“The experience is emblematic of the tyranny of optimization. Peruse the internet or talk to peers at a party, and you’ll hear a dozen new ways to consolidate your energy, maximize your efficiency, organize your priorities, and make life more manageable. …
“French sociologist Jacques Ellul uses the term technique to describe our obsession with streamlining everything under the sun. In The Technological Society, he defines it as ‘the totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency (for a given stage of development) in every field of human activity.’ Technique aims to bring efficiency to everything in life. …
“There’s nothing wrong with conserving our time and resources or with wanting our lives to run more smoothly. What’s wrong, Ellul argues, is that technique doesn’t accomplish these goals. … Each new technique we adopt for the sake of greater control creates problems for which we instinctively look for another technique to allay, and so on. If you want to view your child’s grade on the homework, you’ll need to set up an account with Drumblekick. … Optimization promises to cure headaches, but then it gives them.
“I have another, deeper reason optimization almost inspires me to polemics. The lingo of optimization sneaks the idea that we are machines into our common language and self-understanding. This should go without saying but it bears repeating: you and I are human beings, not machines. … We risk enshrining productivity as the be all and end all of human existence.
Before long, the same parents fumbling with Kracklezam are reluctant to enroll their kids in any afterschool activities that don’t produce measurable growth in their child’s development.
“Fun, play, friendships, faith – also known as the most important parts of childhood – these things soon take a back seat to activities that promise a quantifiable outcome. …
“ ‘Self-optimization’ has become a go-to euphemism for what used to be known as self-help. The word’s evolution foregrounds the perfectionism that was always inherent in more rigorous forms of self-help while deftly leveraging the therapeutic element of self-care, thereby lending the whole operation a moral sheen.
“According to the school of self-optimization there exists an ideal version of you, and your main assignment in life, as an adult of substance and value, is to enflesh that apparition by whatever means necessary. It is time, in other words, to become the person you were always meant to be. …
“The church of self-optimization imprisons us in our skull-sized kingdoms when what we need most is connection. It advocates a very narrow form of self-care, which is really not care for oneself (or others) at all. Vox reporter Allie Volpe laid out the cycle in vivid terms:
” ‘Companies market skin care products, for example, to prevent the formation of fine lines, supposedly a consequence of a stressful life. … Once the anxiety, the exhaustion, and the insufficiency creeps in again, as it inevitably does, the routine begins anew. … Because buying things does not solve existential dread, we are then flooded with guilt for being unable to adequately tend to our minds and bodies. We just have to self-care harder.’ …
“I find one last damning piece of evidence in my case against self-optimization: the despair it instills in those who internalize its goals most deeply. The entire pursuit of optimization implies that our graphs of personal metrics will slope endlessly upward. Therein lies its cruelest delusion. Every one of our life-logging charts will eventually trail off. Age will rob us of our faculties. No matter how many supplements we chug, retreats we attend, or lifestyle coaches we hire, our bodies will break down. Self-optimization is a law without any possible fulfillment, and therefore a recipe for despair. It pits us in a battle against time that no one can win.”
More at Plough, here.
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