Read It In Books:The Courage To Be Disliked.

One of the few birthday presents I got this year, courtesy of my lovely and much loved friend Michelle, was a book. The Courage To Be Disliked (subtitle:How to free yourself, change your life and achieve real happiness) by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga. Its cover proudly claims "OVER THREE MILLION COPIES SOLD WORLDWIDE" and on the back it boasts that "reading this book could change your life".

I trust, and value, Michelle's recommendations as she's got great taste in music, comedy, art, and even food but I've always been a bit wary of 'self-help' books. Even if last year's read of Irvin D. Yalom's Creatures of a Day proved to be both enjoyable and beneficial. Could Kishimi and Koga's advice, using the theories of Alfred Adler, Sigmund Freud, and Carl Jung, prove equally, or even more, useful? Could it really change my life?

It certainly needs changing. Or at least tweaking. I'd never heard of Kishimi or Koga (although I had, at least, heard of Adler, Freud, and Jung). Kyoto born Kishimi lectures on, and has written about, Adlerian psychology while also providing counselling for youths in psychiatric clinics and the younger Koga has won awards for his writing and marries his own studies of Adler to the classical 'dialogue format' method of Greek philosophy.

That's the style they've used for their book. One that imagines a conversation between a philosopher and a young, curious, and questing man. It's suggested in a brief author's note that I might very well discover 'simple and straightforward answers to the philosophical question:how can one be happy?'. It sounds like a big boast and one, for me, that's hampered by the fact I'm not particularly unhappy.

I'm anxious, I'm not satisfied with how my life has panned out, and I worry about the future all the time but, for the most part - and if I don't drink too much - and I don't get rejected too often (both far from certainties) - I'm pretty happy most of the time. I love my friends, love my family, love writing, love walking, love music, and love art. If Boris Johnson, Donald Trump, and Nigel Farage would fuck off for good I'd be even happier.

But sometimes my anxiety edges very close to depression, not least because at the moment (for the last five or ten years in fact) my confidence is low, and it's at those times I have a tendency to catastrophise and have even flirted with suicidal ideation if not suicide itself. It's not a nice place to be and I know, deep down, that I will eventually negotiate myself out of that state. But it'd still be useful to have an emotional skill set that enabled me to do so without hurting myself and worrying those around me. I think I'm a reasonably intelligent and talented bloke. Nothing brilliant, but if I wasn't so beset by anxiety I'm sure I'd have made more of my life. I fucking hope so.

The Courage To Be Disliked is broken down into five sections, each of which imagines a conversation taking place across the course of an evening and thus these sections are simply named The First Night, The Second Night, The Third Night, and so on. Each 'night' is broken down even further into smaller sections with titles often as beguiling as 'Trauma does not exist', 'Why you dislike yourself', 'Cut the Gordian knot', 'Exist in the present', and 'Give meaning to seemingly meaningless life'.

While maintaining a tiny, and hopefully healthy, morsel of skepticism (not cynicism - that's different, that's destructive), I was eager to dig in and find out what these answers were. Kishimi and Kogi had certainly got me curious even if it didn't seem necessary for me to need to imagine that the philosopher lived 'on the outskirts of a thousand year old city'. If he lived in the middle of a housing estate in Milton Keynes would his words be any less sagacious?

I digress. Back to the book where we're introduced to the second of our key protagonists. A young man who finds the world 'a chaotic mass of contradictions' and felt, that in such a place, 'any notion of happiness was completely absurd'. I'm neither young nor do I believe happiness is impossible to achieve (though I do accept that it is not possible to live in perpetual happiness - the sunshine always feels better after the rain) but the world we've created, and the way people behave in it, certainly does seem like that chaotic mass of contradictions.

The first question the youth asks the philosopher (they're not given names, choose your own) is "do you believe that the world is, in all ways, a simple place?" but it's followed by the youth speculating on how idyllic childhood is (no taxes, no work, protected by parents, and free to image an eternal future) and how the 'grim reality' of adulthood will replace that 'romantic view' with a 'cruel realism' and a life of anxiety, doubt, and worries about inequality, discrimination, and war.

The philosopher, using as examples things like sunglasses and the temperature of water, explains that how we see the world is subjective, not objective. There are objective things in the world, sure, but our view of those things is subjective. He goes on to suggest that to see the world in a more positive light the key is to have the courage to do so.

Courage!? I wasn't convinced. But, like the youth, I came to see that when the philosopher spoke of courage he meant the courage to allow yourself to be disliked, the courage to accept being hurt by others, and the courage to hurt others. To enter into any meaningful interpersonal relationship these things are, ultimately, inevitable. They may even be necessary. The mental protection we build for ourselves can easily end up caging us in.

How courage and freedom are bundled up together was a fairly easy concept to get my head around but I was concerned that the book also included a denial of the existence of trauma. Adler's theory, very divergent from Freud's, was that "no experience is in itself a cause of our success or failure. We do not suffer from the shock of our experiences but instead we make out of them whatever suits our purposes" before even going on to suggest that people fabricate anger and unhappiness!

The youth opines that people can't control anger, the red mist descends too quickly, but the philosopher counters that if you stabbed someone in anger that defence wouldn't stand up in court. The youth counters that the circumstance of your birth and the nature of your parents could have a very strong affect on your happiness but the philosopher attests that unhappiness is a choice. I agreed with the philosopher, up to a point, but I was with the youth when he asked, quite outraged, why on Earth anyone would choose to be unhappy!

The book continues in this manner. The youth landing verbals blows on the philosopher only to have them bounced back by the older man's glacial and reasonable arguments. Cause and effect, determinism, the idea we shouldn't think about 'past' cause but instead think about 'present' goals, the pursuit of superiority, the inferiority complex, teleology (which I have trouble understanding), and the difference between teleology and aetiology, are all touched on and there's a lovely and gentle dismantling of spurious doctrines that suppose there are such things as innate human goodness and innate human evil. They're written about in such layman's terms that it's easy for anybody to understand and you never suspect the authors of using sophistry to push through points they may not be able to argue coherently enough.

They're too committed to their theory for that. I liked the stuff about focusing on improving yourself in recognition of your own goals and what you consider to be truly important rather than trying to assert superiority over others, play by societal rules (keeping up with, or ahead of, the Joneses), or, worst of all, trying to pull people down when they're up (crabs in a bucket theory) so that, in theory if not reality, you'll look not so bad.

Elsewhere in the book the youth speaks about salvation no longer being an option as "there is no real belief in God", we touch on Dostoevsky's supposed assertion that money 'coins' freedom, and, this one I found particularly interesting, the book looks at how praise should be viewed as a form of manipulation that can be used to create hierarchical structures.

If I tell a child they're 'good' for doing something I want them to do, they'll feel happy about that and want to do more things to receive more praise. While it seems necessary to impose some sort of authority on children for their own safety and well being, these ideas transferred into the work place (appraisals) or adult life in general may be less useful.

Harmful even. They form what the book calls 'vertical', rather than horizontal, relationships and create something of a master/servant dynamic. The book suggests one must neither praise nor rebuke others as they are both forms of judgement and enforce a hierarchical structure of personal relationships. It's not something I can go along with as I like to both dish out, and receive compliments and I think when people say kind things to each other it makes everyone feel better, makes the world a slightly better place.

I also accept that there are times when a harsh word is necessary. In my life I've needed to hear those words far more than I've needed to say them but I'm old and ugly enough to know the difference between someone putting me to rights because I've behaved, or acted, wrongly and someone trying to manipulate me in to doing their bidding for them.

Experience has taught me. It's been a long and painful lesson and it's one I'm still learning. The book goes on to talk about Kant's idea of 'inclination', the very human desire to not be disliked, and, here, also, I find myself both agreeing and disagreeing. It seems beneficial to all if we try to build friendships, human beings became a global success primarily due to our social nature, but that doesn't mean we build friendships at all costs. We accept that our friends sometimes don't do what we want them to, they sometimes say things that upset us, and they sometimes hold opinions that are uncomfortable for us to accept.

At the same time we need to be sure to move on from truly toxic relationships. I experienced a former friend becoming so poisonous, violent, and threatening that, after years of trying to help him (or, far worse, indulging him), I had to move on. I wasn't helping him at all, he was getting worse and worse, and the situation was starting to destroy me nearly as quickly as it was him. I had to accept that I didn't have the power to change him. I hope one day he finds somebody that does but I know, now, it wasn't me. It still saddens me but I hope, and think, I did the right thing.

Kishimi and Koga propose that the greatest life-lie of all is to not live in the here and now but to live in the past and the future and that we are the only ones who can assign meaning to our own lives. Life is essentially meaningless and anything anyone can do to give it a sense of meaning we should applaud. Should it be trying to improves the lives of others less fortunate than us, trying to keep our children safe and happy, or even something seemingly as dumb as devoting our life to the company we work for, a football team, a musical movement, or, and it really pains me to write this, a religious movement.

We don't have to play for that team, we don't have to manage them. We don't need to become a priest, an imam, or a rabbi. We don't have to be the best parent or most charitable person that ever lived. We just need to decide what we care about and work towards it whilst trying our best not to hurt anyone else.

We just need the courage to be 'normal' as opposed to 'special'. It sounds, as the book claims, quite simple really. But simple doesn't mean easy. There's something within us that strives to be the best. Maybe not at everything, but at least at something. The acceptance of one's inherent mediocrity, kowtowing to the strictures of society, class, and circumstances, or simply accepting, after a while, that one will never be Gandhi, Socrates, Einstein, Martin Luther King, or even, and this was an odd name for the authors to use, Napoleon (wonder if they considered Hitler!) is the key to finding an inner happiness and, for me more difficult to achieve, an inner satisfaction.

It's frustrating, and unfair, that many of us cannot rise as high in life as we'd like to. That frustration can only be compounded when we see the criminals, liars, and frauds that often do. But it's worth remembering that good people are still in the majority and it's worth remembering that finding joy and pleasure in the small things can bring immense happiness. Maintaining good friendships, looking forward to a nice cup of tea or a tasty dinner, or going for a lovely walk in the countryside. These things can have an immeasurable affect on one's mood and we should always strive to remember that for many on the planet those things are not guaranteed.

Most of these thoughts didn't come directly from the book but were spinning around in my head anyway. The book forced me to focus on them, get them down in words, capture a feeling at a specific moment in time. It wasn't necessary (but it was certainly interesting) for me to know how the authors found belief in the works of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle and, even more so of course, in the writings of Alfred Adler.

But did I enjoy the book? Was it helpful? The dialogue style of presentation made it very easy to read but the way the two protagonists spoke didn't come across as the way people really speak conversationally or professionally. It felt a bit 'forced'. Understandably, as getting the point across was the reason for the book!

I started to write this piece a few months ago so that I could read the book slowly, trying to take it all in. I look back at my opening paragraphs now and I see a less content version of my self than the one I feel I am now. So, something seems to have changed while reading the book. It could be the book, of course, but that could also be more correlation than causation. Possibly, it's a change of circumstances. More likely still, it's looking at those same circumstances with a different, more positive, angle. Which would be in keeping with the book's message. Perhaps, most of all, it's knowing I have someone out there who cares enough about me to send me a book on my birthday when I'm seriously down. That can only have helped lay the foundations for this new, and still fragile, positivity. Thanks Michelle. I owe you one.