The most interesting thing single fact I learned from Jordan Peterson’s 12 Rules of Life was about how a common form of failure for a transferred organ is due to the recipient failing to consistently take anti-rejection medicine. The extreme example hides a simple truth that most people expect others to take better care of themselves than they do in practice. Another way to think of this observation is that most people will take better care of others than they do themselves. Peterson includes a more lighthearted example that hammers home this point – some people are better at taking their pet to the vet than they are at taking themselves to the doctor, a fact that isn’t even good for the pet!
It seems that most people hesitate to treat themselves to the small acts of care they give others without hesitation. Peterson provides some explanations with which I do not fully agree. One such thought was that most people know so much about themselves that they cannot help but hold themselves in contempt. I think there might be some observational truth there but for me the explanation is far simpler – self-care is a skill that we must learn because it goes against our natural instincts. We eat sugar until it threatens our health, we soak up the sun’s life-giving rays until our skin blisters and burns, or we root for Manchester United until we become bitter, broken old men.
The key to building the self-care skill, I believe, is to develop a capacity for sharing. Sharing is the first form of trade. It grows from a belief that the first exchange initiates an ongoing series of mutually beneficial transactions. It reverses what might be a natural instinct to fear that everything we give away will bring us no return. Sharing challenges the wisdom of immediately consuming everything in sight. It encourages saving for later and in the process creates a conceptualization of the future self. This conceptualization serves as an ever-present trade partner with which each of our ‘consume or save’ decisions becomes an opportunity to share with the future self. If I choose to save $100 for retirement instead of buying some pointless gizmo, it’s as close as I’ll ever get to handing my grizzled elderly self a living allowance for his golden years. It is perhaps this ability to imagine a future vulnerability for our self that is the most important development from a social perspective because once we consider our own vulnerabilities, we become capable of seeing the same challenges faced by others.
The sharing muscle can be flexed beyond the simple exchange of goods, favors, or money. Peterson observes that shared belief systems are vital because they introduce predictability among strangers and foster vital social functions such as cooperation, organization, and companionship. Belief systems help us make friends because good friends are those whose lives improve when your life improves – this result, though not impossible, is much more challenging among those with opposing views. The importance of being able to share in the success of others might explain why people tend to be social within their group and anti-social outside of it. In addition to the safety, security, and companionship that comes with group membership, it also rejects those who seek prestige or status, two markers that tend to have no relationship whatsoever with sharing in the success of fellow group members.
