The Inferiority Radar

Girl at the Mirror, courtesy of Ken Worley

Better is the enemy of good

Voltaire

We all strive to be better. We are continuously encouraged to improve, and sometimes even pressured to do so against our will. We've embraced the idea of lifelong enhancement as an unquestionable aspect of what it means to be human. And why shouldn't we? It seems noble enough, and largely preferable to the alternative, for a person that quits this struggle for betterment is peppered with negative adjectives such as lazy, unambitious, useless, good for nothing, etc. If we read between the lines however, we encounter a surprising paradox.

Accepting the proposal that we should improve ourselves necessarily implies a disturbing suggestion: we are not good enough as we are. Taking it one step further, if we always pursue self-improvement, it implies that we are never good enough as we are. If a book, for example, is in good shape - meaning the pages aren't torn and the text is legible - there is no need to improve it; not as long as it fulfills its communicative function. For some reason, we, humans in modern society, live as if our pages were always torn and our text always smeared.

Social hierarchies (e.g. lower/middle/upper classes), along with visible indicators of value (material goods, money, job title, physical looks, etc.) activate either our perceived need to improve or our perceived inferiority, or both. The higher the value a society places on social status and material goods, the greater our desire to attain them, but sadly, - the more dissatisfaction we experience with our current selves. Like an incessant voice telling us, "you don't have this" or "you're not like this, but you should be." When we see a person with something we value that we don't have, it triggers our "inferiority radar".

"In advertising, it is important to portray the desired end-states.  Focusing on the large motor will do less good than portraying a successful person driving the car."  

- professor, Psychology of Marketing

I believe this to be a larger and more important psychological problem than we can fathom. Tying it in to the broader concept of happiness, the effect may be as follows: the more we engage in (and promote) social comparisons as a society, the more dissatisfied we become as individuals. Therefore, by this definition, a society that promotes social comparison cannot develop the happiest or most fulfilled individuals. This would explain the question of why happiness in the United States has not increased in the last 60 years given the dramatically rising incomes.

We have more "stuff", but that "stuff" leads us to make more comparisons.

The main point is that the desire to constantly improve ourselves leads to unhappiness, and therefore acceptance of ourselves as we are (and not striving) leads to happiness. Buddhist meditators have realized this. Furthermore, environments and conditions that lead to a constant perceived need to improve lead to unhappiness, and those that lead to acceptance of ourselves lead to happiness.

We are all fine the way we are, but years and years of being told that we must improve have weakened our ability to accept ourselves. In the end, it's important to remember that we don't have to be perfect, we just have to be good.