self-deficient by nature

~ Jason Schwartz

declaration-of-interdependenceJag Bhalla shares a pretty mind-blowing observation:

You are by nature self-deficient. Your constitution guarantees it, initially, chronically, and inalienably. Biology defying individualistic ideas now hide these once self-evident truths.

What does this have to do with the subject of this blog? It speaks to a bias that is likely to turn up in a lot of scholarly work.

Many “professional” thinkers haven’t properly digested that initial self-deficiency, “you could read 2,500 years of philosophy and find almost nothing about children,” observes Alison Gopnik.

. . .

Too much “professional” thinking ignores that our only options have long been co-thriving or no thriving.

Does this explain the anti-AA bias among many professionals and experts? How about the the libertarian (individualistic) bias among many policy pundits?

 

Published by Jason Schwartz

I have been an addiction professional and social worker since 1994. I started blogging in 2005 as the Clinical Director at Dawn Farm. I no longer work at Dawn Farm and am now the Director of Behavioral Medicine at a community hospital, and a lecturer at Eastern Michigan University’s School of Social Work. Views expressed here are my own. Keep in mind that the field, the contexts in which the field operates, and my views have changed over time.

One thought on “self-deficient by nature”

  1. I think your’e on the money here. Maybe one of the reasons 12-step offends so many is that it undermines the hairy-chested, uber-he-man machismo of the Western myth of the autonomous, self-sufficient Individual – that the most noble human existence is one that is free of the need for other human beings ie. self-control, self-efficacy, self-will, self-this, self-that, self-yadda yadda. As the author points out, someone who dedicates their life to freeing themselves from needing other people risks becoming a person no-one needs.

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