Deep Mirror

I remember walking home from school, when I was about 10 years old, counting how many high and low grades I got. That was my measure of success. That was what determined whether I had a good day.

In Deschooling Society, Ivan Illich wrote that school eminently suited to be the World Church of the consumerist culture, the sustainer of social myth thanks to its structure as a ritual game of graded promotions. Introduction into this gambling ritual is more important than how or what is taught. 

School is a ritual of initiation, Illich wrote. It introduces the neophyte to the sacred race of progressive consumption and "expectation of kingdom". It also implies castigation of those who are "baptized" but "don't go to church", guilty of their undercomsumption of schooling.

"Our attempt to withdraw from the concept of school will reveal the resistance we find in ourselves when we try to renounce limitless consumption and the pervasive presumption that others can be manipulated for their own good".

Collecting grades that set us apart from our classmates is a form of consumerist initiation and its key component is internalizing comparison. A grade or any other primitive quotient of success only makes sense when used as a ranking instrument. In this sense, conventional schools are ranking institutions. 

As British clinical psychologist Naomi Fisher has brilliantly worded it, 

“A system which works for all children has to be as variable as they are. There is no way they can all succeed in the current system, because success is measured by comparison”. In other words, success is measured by where you stand on that bell curve.

The original theory of social comparison emerged in mid 1950s, at the height of the industrial consumerist culture. In oversimplified terms, it stated that determining where you stand on the curve equaled getting to know yourself. 

Even if we keep our standards for social comparison to ourselves, and don’t act on any emotions spurred by comparison-making, what happens is that we start using comparison as our driving factor, our motivation. Instead of exploring ourselves at a deeper level and being motivated by what we truly enjoy and want to be doing, we move in the direction other “successful” individuals move, to measure up with them. Often we aren’t even fully aware of it.

In reality, your position on the curve says very little about you. You are a multidimensional being and the quotient on the curve is showing one isolated measurement of you, completely out of context and unrelated to what you are truly passionate about. It’s what my son Simon calls a “glorified dimensionality reduction”. 

By comparing yourself to someone else you are reducing both your own and that individual’s multidimensionality and dynamism, imagining both of you as static numbers. Or maybe you are comparing yourself to the mythical average individual who, surprise-surprise, doesn’t exist. All there exists is a diversity of individuals. For every one of them, success is a very individual thing, or rather a set of very subjective, individual criteria that give that person the sensation of individual fulfillment. 

There are possibly millions of tiny factors that have contributed to what you experience as fulfillment. That’s why the dynamic systems approach (as opposed to old-day statistics) is the new, more accurate way to do the math in development studies. Single-causal models are deficient in exploring multidimensional dynamic systems, smart scientists applying the math of dynamic systems write. Watch, observe, explore and analyze your own data, and you will see your own unique patterns.

I cringe every time someone blames social media for the phenomenon of social comparison, while our schooling and the whole consumerist culture is deeply rooted in comparison-based model of success. In my view, the new tech simply makes this more apparent, holding a mirror to our stupid face. Instead of never looking in the mirror again, let’s apply it as a practical household tool!

How can the new tech help us get to know ourselves instead of perpetuate the consumerist model of success? Isn’t FOMO just another form of social comparison?

The main way to liberate yourself from the social comparison you may have internalized is by realizing that you no longer have to follow a standard path with standard milestones or go through a selection process. A formal education no longer guarantees “the desirable outcome”, because you no longer know what that outcome is for you personally. It’s too fluid, too variable, and most importantly, it’s not linear. 

The world is moving at sick speeds and the most predictable functions will become automated. The most desirable outcome is that you get to know your unique self.  It’s thanks to the new tech that you can follow your own individual path, a path so rare there is no need or even possibility to make any comparisons.

I am talking about affordable à la carte education, blockchain credentials, incidental/perpetual learning via your growing community on the web, opportunities to make a living in a very niche area by being able to reach out to a tailored audience. 

Success is no longer a zero-sum game and it’s definitely no longer based on winning a competition. I watch my unschooled kids naturally engage in game dev collabs without any intention to compete or compare themselves to anyone. They are seeking opportunities to cooperate and engage with the diverse community, they believe asking someone’s age is rude, they work on projects because it’s fun and they never care about formal rankings. To me, they are a glimpse of what the future is all about.

Myself, I am still struggling with social comparison. Marta Obiols Llistar, my wonderful co-host on the UnschoolingFuture spaces, advised I mentally “isolate” myself, isolate my case from any other case, because no one is like me. 

Theodore Roosevelt called comparison “the thief of joy”. I can focus on what gives me joy on a very personal level. I can recall what gave me pure joy as a small child, before external motivators kicked in. If I look hard, I can still see that child in the mirror. She loved walking the streets pretending she spoke a foreign language. She loved composing short stories. But most of all, she loved drawing. Why did she love all those things? What were the little nuances about drawing that made her feel happy? I mean I know she really liked wet paint textures and even secretly ate her white zinc paint sometimes, straight from the big jar!

You can ask yourself this question, too, about your child in the mirror. Walk into the unknown in micro-steps and discover your very own micro-motives.

The good news is that individual pattern you will discover can never become automated, can never be taken away from you.