Why ‘Be Yourself’ Is The Worst Advice Anyone Could Give You
It’s hard to browse the internet without running into some variation of this advice. It comes in the form of ‘celebrating your truth,’ or implying that ‘yourself’ and your vulnerability and authenticity are all you need as you engage in a difficult world. (It especially excludes the fact that not all people are kind, and these not kind people will not react kindly against an easy target.)
It’s advice that’s embedded in popular culture, and seems so pervasive that for many people it passes as an ultimate profundity. But it’s horrible, terrible advice that any wise person would steer clear of. Why? Simple.
To begin, it assumes that you’re sufficiently adequate as you are, which we know is a false assumption. The false assumption is built into the reason why people say the phrase to begin with. When people feel as though they aren’t living up to what they could be or they’re struggling — often in the interpersonal world, through their ‘brand’ online, or some other aspect of life— they’re told to ‘be themselves.’ But the reason they’re struggling is because their self as constructed isn’t good enough. So the faulty logic thus implies, if you aren’t good enough as is — which is yourself — then your fix is easy, just be yourself! The fix actually just reiterates the problem as a suggestion. That’s horrible logic. Never take advice based on bad logic.
Second, and along the lines of ‘living your truth’, it’s obvious that our personal truths aren’t so great. Take the truth of a child. A child can’t understand the importance of a future good over a present pleasure, so left to their own devices, the child engages in damaging behavior that pleases now and has no benefit later on. This is one of the prime functions of a parent, to teach a kid how to have discipline, avoid temptation, and forego instant gratification so that they’ll be equipped with the tools they need to succeed in the world later on. The child’s truth as presently constructed is by no means sufficient. If we have humility, which we should, what separates us from the child? Which one of us hasn’t spoken to a person older than us by decades only to realize that given the proper context, we are all always in our lives some form of a child? The relationship between playing the role of child and learning from older wisdom never goes away.
Third, again along the lines of ‘living in truth,’ the phrase assumes that we have a sufficient grasp of what ‘true’ means. If in point two we’ve realized that our truths as constructed at any given time aren’t exactly correct, then we have to assume that we can’t ever ‘live in truth,’ since truth is something that we’re constantly uncovering. Along the lines of this thinking, there are certain truths that are greater than others. Despite the subjectivity implied in the ‘live your truth’ argument, there are transcendent principles that wise societies that are centuries older than us have discovered and written about. If your ‘truth’ is simply a deconstructionist attempt to get rid of those transcendent principles, not even replacing them with anything, then that’s no truth at all. That’s just deconstructionist philosophy. Again, the same thing a kid can do — because we all know it’s easier to destroy a construction of Legos than it is to build one, or defend it.
Fourth, is that the story of our individuality isn’t the only one. One of the beauties of the western world is the idea of the sovereignty of the individual (this being the idea of classical liberal thought, like that of Thomas Jefferson and Adam Smith), but our individuality isn’t the whole picture, because we discover our individuality as a result of our interactions with others. Our individuality is something that emerges as a response to the world, and it isn’t something that we could get if we were entirely alone. In order to be a person who can engage with others in the pursuit of discovering yourself, you have to be properly adjusted in a way that others will allow you to be around them. If you haven’t developed yourself according to that principle, others will turn away. Part of winning their approval is through behaving properly and accommodating to the way of being that they’re presenting to you. That way of being will usually directly contradict ‘being yourself’ or ‘living your truth,’ but it’s the reality of how we abide by social engagements and customs in polite society.
And fifth, and final, to state again in a different way, it’s obvious that our ‘truths’ usually aren’t so great. When I’m in a boring meeting at work, my ‘truth’ is to lack engagement. When I’m stuck in traffic, my ‘truth’ is to be annoyed. When I’m angry at my lack of forward movement in my life, my ‘truth’ is to be resentful. When I don’t think I’ve been given what I deserve, my ‘truth’ is ungratefulness. None of these are truths at all. These are all negative emotions that don’t aim toward the transcendent good, and they lack any practical utility. As with the other points on this list, aiming ‘toward our truth’ and ‘being ourselves’ is no match for aiming toward the virtuous, permanent, and eternal. These aims don’t allow us to use catchy and modern self-help phrases to feel better about our shortcomings and improper behavior when we know that that behavior is exactly what’s keeping us from improving our lives.
