‘Know thyself’, the ancient greek adage propounded by none other than Socrates adorn many walls and frames. But knowledge of the self is a double-edged sword. As with everything, there’s a fine line between having too much knowledge and too little. Aristotle’s concept of Middle Path is resonant here. Too much self-awareness can lead one into a spiral of doom-thinking and depression. As we unpack more and more of ourselves, we are likely to imbue our deeper thoughts, unresolved feelings and unhealed wounds with negativity and create a grand narrative that may seem to explain everything that’s wrong in our life. I’m reminded of a very pertinent Shakespearan line, “there’s nothing good nor bad, but thinking makes it so.” And that is the larger truth here.
The part of the brain that makes us self-aware or self-conscious is the default mode network. In people with depression, this network is overly active. One constantly finds themselves ruminating their problems and thinking the worst of themselves. C.S. Lewis is his classic ‘The Problem of Pain’ says “the doors of hell are locked on the inside.” How we perceive life shapes our experience of it. If one chooses a doomsday version of everything, they shall reap the same. Self-enslavement is one dangerous offshoot of development in modern society. We live in an age where egoistic fulfilments reign supreme. They are celebrated and are seen as markers of success. Simon Weil foresaw a future riddled with narcissism and emphasised the need to contemplate the world.
Philosophers of various stripes have for centuries beseeched the common folk to turn inwards. But we have reached an uglier form of inward speculation, where self-introspection has been replaced by self-obsession. Not everyone is guilty of indulging in it. But when a majority sets spark to a way of doing things, “culture” the unfortunate few who are unable co-opt or actively resist initially fall out after a while. The societal narrative pushes out those that don’t fit it. Now we can see one of the reasons why Darwin’s theory of natural selection is much misinterpreted, twisted by natives and fools, embraced by liberals and fascists alike. The strong-weak dichotomy prevails, giving the supposed stronger majority a handy tool to eliminate the “less capable”, and worse, justify their position.
“Hell is other people” is one of those frequently misinterpreted quotes. It appears as the final line in the play ‘No Exit’. The author of the play, the famous French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre was himself an avid socialite, with many friends and lovers. It would be more appropriate if misanthropes quoted Schopenhauer who haughtily averred, “a high degree of intellect tends to make a man unsocial.” He embraced quietism and had a resignationist attitude to life. It is hard to testify this blunt aphorism. You know it’s bad philosophy when even Nietzsche (another known aphorism-machine) gives it a second thought.
A study published by Nature Medicine, a journal has some unsurprisingly interesting results. Broadly, people with some form of social contact with regular physical exercise tend to live longer, the study concluded. While we can’t establish a causative relationship between the two because of the nature of the survey that rely on people’s experiences, the evidence in favour is telling. In fact, social contact, such as living with a partner, seems to have a more positive impact on positive well-being than exercising. Social isolation breeds loneliness. Lonely people also tend to eat poorly and move less, thus setting up a vicious cycle where the bad lifestyle aspects reinforce each other.
We live in a world where hard-core egocentrism has peaked (or has it?). An egomaniacal president reigns supreme over the most powerful country in the world. Autocrats in other countries have dutifully imitated. Nativism is alive and flourishing. Asylum-seekers, especially those from ethnicities that don’t match the natives’, can be left to perish, the thinking goes. As with all social and cultural phenomenon, we may see the disorienting impact of ego-centrism, at the level of the personal and world, ebb soon. The fear is whether technology has made that reverse course (and hope) impossible.
The Unsaturated Reader 
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