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PHILOSOPHER: No, in every instance, you would find an abundance of evidence that she has been cheating on you.
PHILOSOPHER: Right now, you are only concerned about the times you were taken advantage of, and nothing else. You focus only on the pain from the wounds you sustained on such occasions. But if you are afraid to have confidence in others, in the long run, you will not be able to build deep relationships with anyone.
PHILOSOPHER: Of course, community feeling is not something that is attainable with just self-acceptance and confidence in others. It is at this point that the third key concept—contribution to others—becomes necessary.
Self-acceptance: accepting one’s irreplaceable ‘this me’ just as it is. Confidence in others: to place unconditional confidence at the base of one’s interpersonal relations, rather than seeding doubt.
PHILOSOPHER: Now, how come I have a feeling of contribution in that setting? I have it because I am able to think of the members of my family as comrades.
Contribution that is carried out while one is seeing other people as enemies may indeed lead to hypocrisy.
However, these three are linked as an indispensable whole, in a sort of circular structure.
PHILOSOPHER: It is even said that to truly understand Adlerian psychology and apply it to actually changing one’s way of living, one needs ‘half the number of years one has lived’.
Do not be dependent on vertical relationships or be afraid of being disliked, and just make your way forward freely.
PHILOSOPHER: In the teachings of Judaism, one finds the following anecdote: ‘If there are ten people, one will be someone who criticises you no matter what you do. This person will come to dislike you, and you will not learn to like him either. Then, there will be two others who accept everything about you and whom you accept too, and you will become close
friends with them. The remaining seven people will be neither of these types.’
PHILOSOPHER: Why is stammering hard to deal with? The view in Adlerian psychology is that people who suffer from stammering are concerned only about their own way of speaking, and they have feelings of inferiority and see their lives as unbearably hard. And they become too self-conscious as a result, and start tripping over their words more and more.
They probably try to justify that by saying, ‘It’s busy at work, so I don’t have enough time to think about my family.’ But this is a life-lie. They are simply trying to avoid their other responsibilities by using work as an excuse. One ought to concern oneself with everything, from household chores and childrearing, to one’s friendships and hobbies and so on; Adler does not recognise ways of living in which certain aspects are unusually dominant.
‘Those who hear my talk today can be happy right now, this very instant. But those who do not will never be able to be happy.’
PHILOSOPHER: For a human being, the greatest unhappiness is not being able to like oneself.
Namely, that the feeling of ‘I am beneficial to the community’ or ‘I am of use to someone’ is the only thing that can give one a true awareness that one has worth.
PHILOSOPHER: Do you see it now? In a word, happiness is the feeling of contribution. That is the definition of happiness.
PHILOSOPHER: Yes. Freedom as an institution may differ depending on the country, the times or the culture. But freedom in our interpersonal relations is universal.
‘I am of use to someone’, without needing to go out of one’s way to be acknowledged by others.
PHILOSOPHER: Whether they are trying to be especially good, or trying to be especially bad, the goal is the same: to attract the attention of other people, get out of the ‘normal’ condition and become a ‘special being’. That is their only goal.
In Adlerian psychology, this is referred to as the ‘pursuit of easy superiority’. Take, for example, the problem child who disrupts lessons by throwing erasers or speaking in a loud voice.
THE COURAGE TO BE NORMAL
PHILOSOPHER: What Adlerian psychology emphasises at this juncture are the words ‘the courage to be normal’.
PHILOSOPHER: Why is it necessary to be special?
One does not need to flaunt one’s superiority.
PHILOSOPHER: Adlerian psychology has a different standpoint. People who think of life as being like climbing a mountain are treating their own existences as lines.
PHILOSOPHER: Do not treat it as a line. Think of life as a series of dots. If you look through a magnifying glass at a solid line drawn with chalk, you will discover that what you thought was a line is actually a series of small dots. Seemingly linear existence is actually a series of dots; in other words, life is a series of moments.
LIVE LIKE YOU’RE DANCING
This is ‘energeial life’.
However, if the goal is mountain climbing itself, and not just getting to the top, one could say it is energeial. In this case, in the end it doesn’t matter whether one makes it to the mountaintop or not.
But if you’re under a bright spotlight, you won’t be able to make out even the front row. That’s exactly how it is with our lives. It’s because we cast a dim light on our entire lives that we are able to see the past and the future. Or, at least we imagine we can. But if one is shining a bright spotlight on here and now, one cannot see the past or the future anymore.
PHILOSOPHER: Not having objectives or the like is fine. Living earnestly here and now is itself a dance. One must not get too serious. Please do not confuse being earnest with being too serious.
PHILOSOPHER: The greatest life-lie of all is to not live here and now. It is to look at the past and the future, cast a dim light on one’s entire life, and believe that one has been able to see something.
‘Life in general has no meaning.’
PHILOSOPHER: You are lost in your life. Why are you lost? You are lost because you are trying to choose freedom; that is to say, a path on which you are not afraid of being disliked by others and you are not living others’ lives—a path that is yours alone.
PHILOSOPHER: When one attempts to choose freedom, it is only natural that one may lose one’s way. At this juncture, Adlerian psychology holds up a ‘guiding star’ as a grand compass pointing to a life of freedom.
PHILOSOPHER: It is contribution to others.
Ichiro Kishimi: it was Kishimi–Adler studies that I was seeking.
‘It is only in social contexts that a person becomes an individual’ is positively
One might say that what I am doing is giving a prescription for eyeglass lenses.
PHILOSOPHER: With religion, philosophy and science, too, the point of departure is the same. Where do we come from? Where are we? And how should we live?
Religion explains the world by means of stories.
By contrast, philosophy rejects stories.
the world by means of abstract concepts that have no protagonists.
PHILOSOPHER: That’s right. Philosophy is more of a living attitude than a field of study.
