By Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga
This book is the sequel of The Courage to be Disliked, and an interpretation of Alfred Adler’s psychology (one of the Viennese schools of psychotherapy, see notes on 📖 Man’s search for meaning for another school):
Â
The background
- Humans are physically inferior, therefore social connections are crucial for survival
- due to the importance of social connections, for humans all problems are essentially interpersonal relationship problems, and all joy also rely on interpersonal relationship. We can’t escape from relationships.
- Human kids can’t survive on their own and are very dependent. So all kids started with being self centered, and necessarily so. Weakness can be a powerful weapon, which leads to a dictatorship-like childhood lifestyle
- The main goal of education is to help kids to be self reliant. Becoming self reliant is also freeing oneself from self-centeredness
The problem
- One common way people deal with inferiority is attempting to become superior than other people. This leads to the mindset of competition and “other people are my enemies”
- Problem behaviors start from demand for admiration
The solution
- The better way is to develop community feeling, which means empathy and respect to other people, and the mindset of “other people are my comrades”. With this mindset, happiness comes from the feeling of contribution to the community, instead of other people’s approval
- First, people need to separate one’s own tasks and other people’s tasks, e.g. other people’s judgement is other people’s task. People must face their own 3 tasks of life: work, friendship, and love:
- Work task is based on division of labor. Everyone works for their self interest and collectively benefits the whole society. Work relationship relies on trust that is based on some contingencies
- Friendship task is based on unconditional confidence or believing in the other person, which is like giving. Educators should see relationship with children as friendship, because people with higher power status should offer respect first to start a healthy relationship. Then this helps the children to regain the courage to be themselves, and eventually become self reliant.
- More on education
- Educators should not rebuke since it is a form of authoritarianism and coercion. It creates an environment where respect doesn’t exist and people follow orders only because of power differentials. Also not an effective way of communication.
- Educators should also not praise because (1) it creates competition and the mindset of that other people are my enemies, and (2) it doesn’t help students to be self-reliant, which also includes not relying on other people’s judgements or approval.
- Love is the task of two people, unlike friendship task which is about unconditional giving of respect and “your happiness”, it’s about the happiness of “us”. Love is more like a decision rather than waiting for the destiny or the right person to appear. Only through love can a person break away from self-centeredness formed from childhood and become self-reliant, and become happy
- To love helps breaking away from the childhood lifestyle of to be loved (by parents)
- The tasks don’t rely on big moments or special days, but rather the ordinary days we are living through right now. Focus on the current moment, the person closest to you, is the way to accomplish the tasks
- The past doesn’t determine now, but now determines how we interpret the past
- Focus on “What should I do from now on?”
Â
All Notes:
Made with Bullet