#7: How can I flourish in an unjust world?
No amount of coaching is going to turn a sexist, racist, ableist society into a just and fair one. So, there's no point in even trying to flourish, right? Wrong, actually. Flourishing is a marathon - an unfair one - in which some of us are carrying heavier burdens than others. You can't make the competition fair, but you can lighten your load.
Click here for the Wheel of Life exercise mentioned in this episode.
Read Ephrat Livni's Quartz article, 'All career advice for women is a form of gaslighting', here.
The research mentioned in the episode is Rigoni, D., Kühn, S., Sartori, G., and Brass, M. 2011: 'Inducing disbelief in free will alters brain correlates of preconscious motor preparation', Psychological Science 22/5: 613–18.
Reaching for the stars is great if you live in a just, fair world that's set up to help you succeed. But what if you don't?
You’re listening to The Academic Imperfectionist. I’m Dr Rebecca Roache. I’m a coach and a philosopher at the University of London, and week by week I’ll be drawing on philosophical analysis and coaching insights to help you dump perfectionism and flourish on your own terms.
Hello, everyone. This is the seventh episode of this podcast, and I think it's about time we dealt with an elephant in the room. Do you ever listen to me or anyone else banging on about flourishing and living your dreams and roll your eyes and think: What planet are you on? Haven't you noticed that flourishing is easier for some people than others? Are you completely oblivious to sexism, racism, ableism, homophobia, and other injustices? Did you ever stop to think that some people have more money, time, education, and support than others? How is it possible to flourish when the odds are stacked against you? Who are you talking to in these podcasts? Is it just the privileged? My answer to that is I'm talking to all of you. But I want to pause in this episode to give some thought to how my advice fits into our unjust world. In 2018, the writer, lawyer, and political reporter Ephrat Livni wrote an article in Quartz entitled, All career advice for women is a form of gaslighting. And that received quite a bit of attention on social media and quite a bit of discussion, especially including among people that I hang out with. And in that article, Livni argued that not only is it false to tell women that we can succeed if only we have the right attitude, the right tone of voice, the right appearance, and so on. But it's also harmful. Here's a quotation from near the start of the article. She says: 'The obstacles that come with working in a sexist culture are beyond any individual's control, and so advocating a do it yourself approach to on the job equality may actually be a kind of gaslighting, just one more way for institutions to deflect blame and make women question themselves and doubt their sanity. It's the society we operate in that needs fixing, not how we asked for money, the tone of our voices or our outfits'. Livni points out that there's a risk that telling women that we have the power to succeed encourages the view that it's women's responsibility to ensure that we succeed and our fault when we don't. The lesson from Livni's article is more general. What goes for women also goes for other oppressed groups, people of colour, disabled people, LGBTQ people, and so on. And what goes for career advice also goes for general advice about how to flourish, that there's something the matter with giving individuals the impression that they have the power to live the lives they want to be living, as if the injustices in our society that hold some people back more than others don't even exist. Now I talk quite a bit about flourishing in this podcast. So let me just start by saying a few words about it here. Philosophers will recognise the term flourishing as a common translation of the ancient Greek eudaimonia, which is a term associated with Aristotle. It's linked to the idea of living well, or a deep sense of happiness. Now, I'm not wedded to an Aristotelian conception of flourishing, but I think it's a useful term. As I'm understanding it, and using it on these podcast episodes, you're flourishing if your life is going well, whatever going well means for you, and your life is going well overall, if the individual aspects of your life are going well, and you can use the Wheel of Life exercise to assess how you're doing here, and how you can improve. I talked about the Wheel of Life exercise a bit in the 'Bitch, do you even dream episode of this podcast', and I'll put another link to it in the show notes for this episode. And in that wheel of life exercise, I list the main areas of life as friends, family, romance, health, career, finance, finances, fun, and spirituality. And that's just a guide, you can add or remove areas before you do the exercise, depending on what the overall landscape of your life looks like and what you value. Now, when we try to flourish, injustice, places obstacles in our path, so things like discrimination, poverty, not having the right connections, difficulty accessing education, these can all stand in the way of getting the life we want. And to paraphrase Ephrat Livni, the obstacles to flourishing in our unjust world are often beyond any individual's control. So what can we do? I think the first step is to avoid black and white all or nothing type thinking about flourishing. There's a tendency sometimes to view access to what you want in life as something that you either have or you don't, as if the things that you want are locked behind a door and you either have the key or you don't. So if you're a rich, white, abled, expensively educated, heterosexual cis man living in the West, you have all the keys to the door. And if you're not one of those, you don't have the keys. And there's nothing you can do about that, the world needs to change before you get access to the things you need to be living the life you want. And I'm going to call this view of flourishing the locked door view. And it's over simplistic and unhelpful for at least two reasons. The first is that it gives ammunition to the sort of people that want to deny that society is unjust. Those sorts of people often point to successful women, people of colour, disabled people, and so on and say, Look at them, their success proves that sexism, racism and ableism aren't problems. I mean, you've probably heard people say things like, 'my aunt just got promoted. So maybe those women who complain about sexism just aren't as good as the competition'. Or, 'I'm white, but my friend from school is Black, and he earns more than me and lives in a bigger house. So obviously, racism doesn't hold anyone back'. A second problem with the locked door view of flourishing is that it encourages people, especially those from underprivileged groups, to believe that it's not within their power to flourish. And that's a big problem. Because believing ourselves to be powerless to bring about certain changes in our lives is self fulfilling. There's a 2011 study in the journal Psychological Science, which showed that when people's belief in their own free will is undermined, they stop even trying. And that happens even at a neurological level. So the brain activity that usually precedes voluntary action is reduced when people cease to believe that they have free will. And in that case, if you're powerless to bring about the sort of life that you want to be living, flourishing is a matter of just waiting around for the world to change. Because even if you get involved in the sort of activism that's focused on bringing about the sorts of changes that need to happen, it's not a problem that you can solve single handedly. Now, I want to suggest to you that the truth about flourishing is more nuanced than the locked door view of flourishing implies. People from underprivileged groups can flourish, it's just harder. And while you can't remove all obstacles to your flourishing single handedly, you can remove some. And a really important point is that the obstacles that you can remove single handedly are the sort of obstacles that disproportionately affect people from underprivileged groups. So things like perfectionism, self criticism, imposter syndrome, and the thought that this life isn't for people like me, those are all things that affect women, people of colour, and so on more than people who aren't in those groups. And that means that not only am I not overlooking people from underprivileged groups, in the advice I'm giving in this podcast, that advice is especially relevant to those people. Now, I want to present an alternative to the locked door view of flourishing, and I'm going to call this the marathon view. So think of trying to flourish in our imperfect, unjust world as comparable to competing in a marathon while you're carrying a backpack. And what you have in the backpack depends on who you are. Some people carry heavier loads than others and that makes the marathon harder work for them. So women carry heavier loads than men. People of colour carry heavier loads than white people. People who are guided by the voice of their inner critic carry heavier loads than people who believe that they can succeed. Perfectionists carry heavier loads than people who aren't perfectionists. It's not just what's in the backpack that affects how you do in the marathon. Some people have been able to afford skilled training to prepare for the competition. Some people have had more time to train, better nutrition. Some people have supportive people standing on the sidelines, cheering them on. Some people have grown up hearing that people like them never do well in marathons, or that nobody will like them if they compete or do well. Some people have a guide to the course, some people have been tipped off about shortcuts. Some people have bribed the officials to pretend not to notice while they drive the course or even get driven. And some people were never taught the terminology that's used on all the signs along the course showing you where to go and where to stop for water. And the result is that although the marathon isn't impossible for anyone to complete, it's much easier for some than for others. And if all you know about two of the competitors is that they completed the course successfully, you can't conclude that the competition is fair, because you don't know what happened along the way and what they had to overcome to get there. So completing the course with a guide and a light backpack after intensive training and a good night's sleep is a different matter to lugging a heavy load, having no idea where you're going and starting out exhausted, having come straight from work. And that's why your aunt being promoted, or your black friend having done well in life, don't show that sexism and racism aren't problems, the fact is, their success would have come easier if they'd been male and white. Now, on the marathon view of flourishing, there is some good news. And that's, even after you've started the course, you can dump some of the weight that you're carrying. Not all but some. And you can also do other things to help you like pick up a guide to the course, rally some supporters to cheer you on and maybe find some energy drinks. In other words, there are obstacles in the way of living the life you want to be living. But not all of them are equal and to flourish without exhausting yourself, you need to know where and how to focus your efforts. And that means when we're considering the obstacles that stand in the way of our flourishing, it's really important to ask, Is this an obstacle that it's within the individuals power to overcome? And often the answer is no. As will be the case for things like racism, misogyny, widespread poverty, and social inequality. Those are things that result from a society that makes it easier for some people and others to succeed. And when it comes to those obstacles that the individual alone can't remove, it is really important to distinguish between two similar questions that have very different answers. The first is, who does this obstacle disadvantage? So that might be for example, women, or people with disabilities. And the second question is, whose responsibility is it for removing this obstacle? And the answer to that is: everyone. If there's an obstacle in the way of the flourishing of a certain type of person, and it's the sort of obstacle that the individual alone can't fix, it's up to society as a whole to fix it. This is a social problem. It's not a 'your problem, you sort it out' problem. Now when it comes to the sort of obstacles that individuals are able to remove, or at least overcome, we can take a different approach. So those obstacles are things like perfectionism, the voice of the inner critic, feelings of inadequacy, feelings that certain good things in life aren't for people like us. Those are the obstacles I'm talking about in this podcast. Those are the ones that I want to help you remove from your path. So although the advice that I'm giving you in these episodes is never going to iron out inequality and injustice in society, there are still things you can do. Your flourishing doesn't lie behind a locked door. It's at the end of a marathon that you're having to run while carrying various burdens, and I'm trying to help you lighten your load. Thanks for listening. See you next time.
I’m Dr Rebecca Roache, and you’ve been listening to The Academic Imperfectionist. If you enjoyed the episode, please subscribe on whatever podcast app you like to use, and please consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts and sharing the podcast with any friends who you think might find it useful - you can take a screenshot on your phone and send it over to them. For more information and updates about me, the podcast, and my coaching, or just to get in touch and say hi, please visit the website - academicimperfectionist.com - or follow me on Twitter @AcademicImp or on Facebook @AcademicImperfectionist. Thank you for listening, and see you next time!
Enjoy the show?
Please leave a review in Apple Podcasts.
Don’t miss an episode - subscribe using the links below!