Unconditional self-acceptance is impossible

Buddhism mogs new agers

A woman tells her boyfriend she’s uncomfortable with how close he is to a female friend. He replies that she’s “insecure” and insists they’re “just friends.” Regardless of who is right or wrong, his response implicitly invalidates her feelings about the relationship. While people might have their own opinions on the situation, most would agree that insecurity is bad in and of itself.

Because insecurity is maligned by contemporary society, “total self acceptance” has become the new thing in spirituality and self-help culture. If one searches for the term, they will find a bunch of psychologists and new-age type coaches explaining what it is and how to reach it. This idea has also gained some traction in the rationalist sphere due to the influence of a certain influencer who I will not name; I just want to emphasise that this is not just a normie pathology.

I define insecurity as the state of perceiving that one of our traits might not be in line with our values. ‘Might’, because someone certain they lack a trait cannot be insecure about it. This definition is important, as dictionaries often uncritically conflate insecurity with a lack of self-confidence or feelings of unworthiness. Simply not liking the fact that you are not talented isn’t insecurity – it’s either truth (if you don’t have talent) or delusion (if you do). This uncertainty can arise from four sources:

1. Lack of clarity: the individual might not be sure of what traits they possess, so value judgements cannot be given.

2. Lack of predictability: the individual attaches themselves to a trait that doesn’t change predictably.

3. Lack of implication: a lack of awareness of what a trait can be a means for, so an individual who doesn’t care for a trait in and of itself might still be insecure about it. An introvert may prefer to spend evenings alone, but might be insecure about whether that makes them miss out on business opportunities or relationships.

4. Misaligned values: the individual is not sure whether their values are actually valuable.

Starting with the first cause, it is impossible to be completely self-aware because humans aren’t omniscient. Which may sound obvious, but it also means that you will always be insecure about something. Beyond this, consciousness is also inherently recursive, a function that applies itself to itself, kind of like how Russian nesting dolls contain another doll. As such, there is always an unobserved layer of consciousness that cannot be processed as information.

Being insecure about your own values might seem silly. Sometimes it isn’t; values interact with each other, so the presence of a value can be objectively “bad” or “good” according to the relationships between the values that said value coexists with. Somebody who wants to bedrot all day might question whether they really want to do anything with their lives. And maybe they should, as they will have to choose between these values at some point.

There is a social taboo against having negative perceptions of yourself (that’s unconfident!) and having positive perceptions of yourself (that’s grandiosity!). There are nuances and degrees to this taboo, but I think they are diluted in the cultural telephone game, so the end result is many people being reluctant to evaluate themselves properly. Some people do this by engaging in outright self-delusion, and some try to do it by reframing their weaknesses to be strengths, or downplaying their strengths. I think this is a massive source of a lot of insecurity: if you are not willing to think of yourself in a negative or positive way, then you cannot think of yourself at all.

Insecurity being a symptom rather than an illness implies a radically different treatment: instead of burying insecurities under 500 layers of neural networks, one should face them. This involves figuring out what the cause of insecurity is (perception, instability, means, or values), and finding a solution to the cause or accepting that one does not exist.

Total self-acceptance sounds a lot like an enlightenment to people. I have no idea if “enlightenment” exists or if it resembles anything close to the platonic idea people have of it. But the idea that there is a secret truth out there that can raise people above the chained, unhappy, and ignorant masses into a new state of being is extremely compelling to… the masses. Some people realise that and build things: cults, religions, ideologies, or whatever to satisfy that gnostic yearning. Sometimes people think that the answer lies in money, sex, sports, status, science, or altruism. Most, if not all of these things don’t satisfy that inner gnosticism – either because they are false or impermanent.

I am a fan of the Buddhist doctrine of anattā (noself), the idea that the “self” is not permanent, causal, or coherent, and that identity is false perception. In the context of insecurity, you being insecure about how smart you are could be reframed to be this process: our observational faculties receive feedback that casts doubt on our intellectual faculties are as strong as they think they are, which gives rise to thoughts (“am I not as smart as I think I am?”) and negative feelings that accompany this realisation. During this process, the body can irrationally identify with facets of this process – probably the thoughts or the intellectual faculties that are in question – and experience an additional layer of suffering.

Noself can save somebody from the layer of suffering that occurs afterwards, but it cannot stop them from questioning themselves, or even from the negative emotions that spring from the questioning. During the process of insecurity, the negative emotions are communicating “you need to reevaluate what you are or what you value”, not “haha you suck dude”. There is no evolutionary spandrell at play here. This Buddhist doctrine also deconstructs the idea that there is even a “self” to accept in the first place.

Initially, I was very averse to Buddhism because I associated it with wanting nothing and being some ascetic monk on an island, which I didn’t like. I have been in denial about this until just recently, but I am a very ambitious person and I have almost always rejected anything that I saw as obstructing my goals.

From my admittedly limited understanding of Buddhism, I don’t think Buddhism actually teaches you to stop wanting things, but to stop irrationally craving them. It wants to save you from the unnecessary suffering that stems from a poor cognitive model of the universe: where you are a self that attaches itself to things that don’t actually give you any permanent value. Buddhists in fact have two separate words for want: chanda, which refers to a zeal or desire to act that comes from a clear conscience, and taṇhā, a deluded state of craving where one believes they will escape dissatisfaction by gaining a thing that will only give temporary satisfaction; a state that is actually responsible for dissatisfaction in the first place.

I now accept that anything I accomplish or obtain will never satisfy me permanently, that “I” don’t actually exist in the way my brain tricks me into thinking I do. But I continue to engage with life anyway, like any other person you see on the street. If that’s not Buddhism, then I reject Buddhism, and will call what I believe Buddhism 2.

The closest one can get to totally self-accepting is accepting insecurity and appropriately dealing with it, very different and far from total self-acceptance, but better than nothing.