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7. Personal and interpersonal fulfillment

The first part of our study has spoken in general of appreciation of values and of response to them, as main determining factors in the human fulfillment of each one. If our discourse tended to be somewhat abstract, it must now become more particular, for it is to values as they are presented (or can be discovered) in the concreteness of life that we need to respond. And life in the concrete is never more humanizing or dehumanizing than in its interpersonal aspects, that is, in the various ways in which we relate to others.

This would no doubt be questioned by the extreme individualist for whom self-sufficiency is the norm and goal of fulfillment. In the individualistic view, other people, like the rest of the surrounding world, are simply raw material to be instrumentalized for a person's own self-centered development. But is the totally self-sufficient person capable of true human fulfillment or real happiness?

Is it possible to achieve happiness without any commitment to or appreciation of others? It would seem not, at least if we accept that there can be no genuine happiness without love; for love requires the existence of others. Thus, Julián Marías holds that happiness "finds its principal source in other persons ... personal being is intrinsically pluripersonal. Unamuno was one of the first thinkers to give clear expression to this concept: 'An isolated person would no longer be a person: for whom would he love?'" [1]. Most people are made unhappy by isolation or loneliness (which is why solitary confinement is generally regarded as an intensified form of punishment) [2].

We have a radical need of others, not only to love or to be loved by them, but to learn from them. We are put to a particular test by values - accepting or rejecting them - when we meet them present in others, by whom they are both incarnated and personalized. "Incarnated" values: with the advantage of the concrete form this takes, and with the limitations that any particular human presentation of a value inevitably offers.

Responding to values in other people

In chapter three, we referred to the question of the adequate response to values, noticing that to know how to respond properly to each individual value is proof of criterion, maturity, and depth. We also noted the phenomenon of a frankly reduced or negative response to great and evident values even, and at times specially, in the case of a person well placed to appreciate all the wealth of that value. The phenomenon is curiously interesting and important enough to examine further.

Let us consider a work of art or a piece of music, with such clear and tangible beauty that it would seem impossible not to feel moved and elevated on seeing or hearing it. Nevertheless, in such a situation we at times meet intelligent and cultivated people with the tendency not to acknowledge the value: underestimating or ignoring it, and perhaps even completely rejecting it. We can go farther in these reflections.

First we note that such phenomena - of reduced or frankly negative responses to great and evident values - rarely occur when a work of Nature is involved. We find everyone more or less in agreement about the beauty not only of Niagara Falls, but also of an autumn landscape or of a flower as simple as a violet [3]. This leads to a point which seems valid and worth noticing: the element of partialness or imperfection almost inevitably present in every concrete value seldom gives rise to difficulty in its appreciation - except when the value itself has to be credited to a person.

Let us join the group of tourists enraptured before Niagara Falls. Curiously enough, the judgment about Niagara could become an object of controversy if someone looking at the falls were to remark: how beautiful are the works of God; praised be the Lord! To so trace Nature back to God can certainly be annoying to the professed atheist, but that is not the point which interests us here. Atheism apart, it is peculiar to find that the attribution of a work to a person seems to act as a factor modifying the judgment passed on the work itself, at times provoking an uncalled-for negative reaction.

This is odder still if we consider that a great part of man's dignity consists precisely in his capacity not only to shape values in works of his intelligence or his hands, so (as we have seen) incarnating them, but also to personalize them, so that they come alive according to his own peculiar way of being. This human capacity to embody and personalize values creates the climate and basis for interpersonal, social and cultural life. When a person finds in another some value "incarnated" with particular effectiveness, a favorable situation for dialogue is produced. If a person has the capacity to appreciate values in others (and if no other factor exists that can or should prevent a response), this fosters a situation of intellectual and spiritual participation or communion which easily becomes a communion of wills; thus mutual appreciation, friendship, solidarity, or love are born [4].

The logical reaction before any value, either in a work or in a person, should be one of admiration. As we are seeing, however, it is not infrequently easier for us to admire a value when we can prescind from the person. It often happens that, although rather easily satisfied at the great or small beauties of nature, we adopt a more severe and demanding judgment when the activities of people are concerned (an artistic work, a professional success, an athletic triumph, etc.); and it even seems that our judgment becomes more critical precisely because it is the action of another person that is in question. When admiration involves a tribute to a person, envy seems to enter, threatening to upset the judgment.

In the same line of curious things, and as a phenomenon not difficult to verify, a critical reaction is likely to be more intense if the person is living rather than dead, if he or she belongs to our own generation rather than to one past; and more so still if he or she is an acquaintance, someone we know personally, rather than a stranger.

Envy or admiration

Envy is connected with admiration. In fact, it seems unlikely that someone not capable of envy would be capable of admiration. There is a positive envy which, properly channelled, can be a stimulant to a person's development. And there is a negative envy which rather marks the degeneration of admiration, and shuts a person within his own limits. Envy accompanied by admiration can provoke emulation, i. e. the desire to acquire some good quality possessed by another or to measure up to his actions. It opens new horizons of personal challenge and becomes a source of purpose and joy, as long as the person is prepared to rise to the challenge and seek that higher level of competence or performance.

When we admire someone for a quality, the quality attracts us to the person; our mind is centered on both the quality and the person. When we (negatively) envy someone for a quality, the quality is appreciated but not the person; the quality serves rather to separate us from him. Over-concerned at our own lack, we are tempted to reject or dislike the person, as if his possession of the quality drew attention to our deficiency. Sensing that we cannot be better than we are, we would be happier if he was not as good as he is; happier to live in a poorer world so that we could feel less humbled.

Envy without admiration can stifle emulation and paralyze personal growth. It is a mean disposition which finds a cause of sadness in the talents of others and would happily be convinced that they are not so talented, so as to be able to rest in self-satisfaction without challenge or disturbance. There should be little difficulty - so one feels - in extending (even in increased measure) the appreciation, surprise, or enthusiasm provoked by a work of value to the person responsible for the work; a reaction that, as we have mentioned, can begin or strengthen a well-grounded interpersonal relationship and perhaps a close friendship. "I want to know not just the work of art but also the artist; so as to offer my congratulations". However it is not always so; the personalized aspect of the value, instead of generating an enthusiastic rapprochement of people, can provoke disturbance, separation, and distance.

Of course, this negative reaction does not always take place. Yet it happens so frequently as to suggest a certain law of appreciation: "To admire, without paying attention to the artist or creator, is not difficult; but to recognize a creator often poses a challenge". The difficulty in responding to a value when this involves the acknowledgment of a creator or author is indeed curious. Why should the presence of the artist produce a negative effect? His presence seems even to lessen the appreciation to be made, and so is a disturbing factor that upsets the discernment of the value itself [5]. Why? Is it that we all would like to be unique as creators? Whatever the reason, the fact is when the "I" finds itself faced with a "you", admiration - even when it is fully merited - is not always easily given. The positive and enriching reaction of admiration does not always prove stronger than the negative and impoverishing reaction of envy.

To judge others is dangerous, though at times necessary. When it is necessary, then one must judge humbly, with the conviction that there is much in each one that escapes my personal and limited appreciation. One must judge positively, seeking to learn without dwelling unnecessarily on what seems negative. One must judge actions and not intentions, for we can seldom grasp intentions. An action may be good, although the intention is bad; an action may be bad, despite a good intention. And one must judge with discernment, distinguishing in my contact with another what is good for him and/or for me, from what may be bad for him, or for me.

Appreciating others

We would all like to be unique, and to be appreciated and admired by others for our uniqueness. But if we are not capable of admiring the uniqueness of others, such an aspiration is not reasonable. It is not by striving to be unique that we will be unique, it is by striving to be ourselves. And - revealing paradox - it is by striving to appreciate the uniqueness of others and forgetting ourselves, that we realize our own unique potential and become ourselves.

To be capable of appreciating our own talents and experiences but not those of others, reveals a narcissistic trait that has an immensely reducing effect on life. "To be able to enjoy life in a process involving a growing identification with other people's happiness and achievements is tragically beyond the capacity of narcissistic personalities" [6].

In any case, if the only good things I am able to rejoice in are those I can credit to myself, it should be obvious that the number of good things I'll meet in life is going to be woefully reduced.

So, to achieve greater self-esteem - to esteem oneself more - is dubious evidence of real personal development. To be esteemed more by others might seem to offer greater confirmation, but remains ambiguous. To grow in esteem for others is the more genuine test.

There have been in the course of history, and there are today, people of quite extraordinary human calibre, with rare gifts of mind and heart, of understanding and openness, of courage and nobility, inspired by the highest ideals and living up to them through their lives. Among those who have known such exceptional personalities, probably not all possessed the capacity to recognize their calibre fully, and fewer still the receptive openness to draw full enrichment from the acquaintanceship.

To come to know and to be able to benefit from one single person in whom practically all human qualities are embodied, remains an unlikely eventuality for most of us. The challenge is rather to discover and appreciate the whole range of human qualities and values, as they are spread out in partial embodiments in the many different people we do meet.

It is therefore a serious limitation if a person is so unresponsive, so closed on self, as not to be able to appreciate and be enriched by a value not only in nature or in art, but particularly in the people around him. It is a limitation of a different order if a person is in fact capable of appreciating a value, but refuses to do so because he would then be led on to the acknowledgment of the special merit or power of someone else, the artist or creator behind it. How many people live next to inspiration and yet are not inspired!

Therefore the contemplation-acceptance of "ideal" values, of values "in the abstract", is not sufficient in order to develop as a person. We could withdraw into a life of pure contemplation of Being; but it is not the normal or adequate way for the majority. Man is not only spirit - mind and will - ; he is also body. It is not, we repeat, in a world of abstractions that we develop our life, but rather in the concrete world of animate and inanimate objects and beings. Exceptional values, present in a very pure form, exist in some of these, and to discover or respond to them should not be difficult. In others, values are diminished or hidden; and nevertheless it is important to learn to discover and appreciate them. In others still values are disfigured or perverted. In this case there is special need for a reaction of deep discernment, so as to reach the healthy nucleus which is probably still there, a prior stage for any possible attempt at redeeming or rehabilitating the value itself and the person who exhibits it, both of which are in a process of dissolution.

The discovery of values - openness and receptivity toward them - takes place in the surrounding world: values in material things, in (good or bad) events, in art, and especially in interpersonal relations with other people [7]. To a large extent, it is a capacity of admiration for others which most makes a person develop. There is a real potential for development in the person who feels "small" beside someone "great", but does so without jealousy or a sense of frustration or self-pity, being rather inspired to grow himself. There is truth in the statement that "no sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men" [8]. Admiration offers a way of escape from that dungeon of self-induced conceit which we all tend to build for ourselves, and from which moments of truer self-awareness make us turn in abhorrence. "No one can live without admiration. A spirit dwells within us that feels horror at ourselves" [9].

This of course lies in direct contradiction with the central tenet of modern popular psychology, a tenet that is gospel to the "I-generation": self-realization means self-contentment. Self-esteem or self-confidence may have a legitimate basis; but that does not take from the fact that they are characteristics which easily lead people astray in both judgment and action. The importance psychologists attach to them may indeed encourage the shortcut to "maturity" parodied in one of Virginia Woolf's works: the quickest way to acquire "the invaluable quality of self-confidence" is to think that "other people are inferior to oneself" [10]. In the Forsyte Saga series, John Galsworthy only slightly attenuates this cynicism as his "modern young things" express their contempt for Victorian class snobbery: "No one nowadays takes anyone else as better than themselves" [11]. Is it not the eternal return of what T. S. Eliot describes [12]: "people who want to feel important ... Absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves"? [13]

Without the capacity for admiration of others in their worth or merit there can be no real personal growth and little true social bonding. Yet one not infrequently comes across calls for a "new consciousness" that "rejects the whole concept of excellence and comparative merit ... [It] refuses to evaluate people by general standards, it refuses to classify people, or analyze them. Each person has his own individuality, not to be compared to that of anyone else. Someone may be a brilliant thinker, but he is not "better" at thinking than anyone else, he simply possesses his own excellence. A person who thinks very poorly is still excellent in his own way. Therefore people are in no hurry to find out another person's background, schools, achievements, as a means of knowing him; they regard all of that as secondary, preferring to know him unadorned. Because there are no governing standards, no one is rejected. Everyone is entitled to pride in himself, and no one should act in a way that is servile, or feel inferior, or allow himself to be treated as if he were inferior" [14].

Is individual "pride in self" which is not based on some objective worth likely to make a person more "accepted" by others? Should I never feel or admit that someone else is "superior" to me in this or that quality? Does the acknowledgment of another's superiority necessarily prove that I have a "servile" outlook, or could it not show that I am enthused at discovering someone to admire and find myself personally motivated by having a higher model to emulate? [15]

We hold by the point made in the last chapter: unqualified self-esteem - the happy self-contentment of the modern age - paralyzes personal growth. Moreover it is an attitude which may indeed impede conscious admiration of others, but can seldom stave off eventual self-disgust.

For each one's genuine development, therefore, a response to impersonal values is not enough. It is necessary (and indeed critical and definitive) to recognize, discover, and respond to personalized values, also as they are found in others. Indeed, the very fact that values connected with people are so often more difficult to recognize or admire than those which prescind from people, suggests that the acknowledgment of person-related values indicates or induces greater self-realization.

Let us look further into these peculiar difficulties which tend to appear whenever the response to values is placed in an interpersonal context.

Learning from imperfect persons

Perfect people do not exist. I am an imperfect person, and I am surrounded by imperfect people. Each of us finds it hard not to play down our personal imperfections and limitations, and just as hard not to exaggerate the imperfections of others. Yet people will manage to get along only if they establish their relations on objectivity and truth. Indeed, it seems no exaggeration to say that the greatest obstacle to harmonious social or interpersonal life - and to each one's personal enrichment through social life - is a critical spirit which is over-ready to recognize the defects of others and to remain closed to the values they possess (even, I repeat, if these values are present in a defective form). This interpersonal relationship - with other people endowed with values but also with limitations or defects - is necessary so that social communion can lead to the person's development, openness, and fulfillment. And in this process an effort of discernment or understanding is necessary; as is a struggle against the self-centeredness of envy, ultimately rooted in pride.

We said earlier that man cannot grow and come to be truly great except in the conscious presence of what is greater than him. Hence the difficulty in growing humanly which is experienced by a person whose attitude is that he will not admire anything, or - worse - will not admire anybody. Such "self-protective" jealousy blocks growth and diminishes the person.

There is a view among economists that "wars and economic depressions or recessions have historically resulted in increases in protectionism, while peace and prosperity have tended to encourage free trade" [16]. Be this as it may, social and personal peace are certainly favored by free trade in values, something which naturally develops when the protective barriers of jealousy are lowered. This is not a matter for governments, but for the free response of individuals. Each one who makes this response raises the standards of civilized living.

The possibility that the enrichment we can receive from others may be nullified by a pathetic envy points of course to what is the ultimate hindrance to personal development: the pride of wanting to be not just a unique self, an unrepeatable self, but a higher self: the absolute Number One [17]. It is the pride of not being prepared to rise to values, to be enriched by them and appropriate them at their level, but wanting to situate ourselves "above" them, by considering them "below" or "beneath" us.

If jealous envy is let grow, it develops into hatred; and while hatred may seldom go so far as to actually kill the other, it will only cease with his death [18]. Jealousy at the higher way another person incarnates a value reflects an implicit desire to be rid of the other whose existence, as a constant reminder of my deficiency, is an irritant and a source of unhappiness to me. Even if I possess that value in part, the discovery that someone else possesses it more fully can make my own possession or expression of the value seem hollow in the presence of his or hers, and destroy the satisfaction I hitherto drew from it.

Peculiarly, nothing would be solved even if the other disappeared from the scene, for once I have met him, it is already too late. The experience has driven home my limits and dispelled my illusions about my own value. Even the elimination of the other would not make me grow, nor raise me one inch towards the new level of possibilities he has opened up to me but which remain beyond my reach. The negative reaction towards the other, as if he had in some way offended me by his possession of the value, is in effect a rejection of the very value he expresses [19].

To want to give without receiving is generally a sign of lack of self-knowledge and perhaps of self-deception, both rooted in pride. For we need others. We need to give to them and to receive what they have to give: to give to them disinterestedly and to receive from them gratefully. Some persons constantly seek the esteem and admiration of others: a sad vanity which creates an artificial dependence and limits true interior growth. At the opposite extreme, some cultivate an absolute indifference towards others; neither wanting their esteem nor esteeming them, as if either disposition showed an immature personality. Nevertheless, we all stand in need in relation to others, though perhaps this should be considered from a different angle. It may not matter if one enjoys little or no popular esteem, for one can be a mature and fulfilled person without being liked by others. But one cannot achieve any true human fullness without liking them; i.e. without the capacity to appreciate the values they embody, however imperfectly.

There are very few people in life from whom we have nothing to learn. Pride often makes us look down on someone who appears inferior to our superficial eyes, yet carries inside a value, a point of knowledge or experience, that would enrich us if only we were prepared to receive it. In short, it is necessary to open one's channels of communication, to learn to appreciate, to admire, to listen; to learn to converse.

Children at school are often too lazy, but seldom too proud, to learn. They naturally look up to their teacher, and have no trouble in realizing that he or she has much to teach them. No doubt the same can be said of university students, always allowing for the presence in them of a more developed critical capacity.

It can be very different with people who are in what should be the full maturity of life. So often there is a resistance to learning from our equals (and even more so from those we perhaps consider our inferiors) which would seem to have nothing to do with true critical discernment. We admire - or envy - the tennis technique of a colleague. But instead of asking him or her for tips about how to acquire the same technique, we prefer going to a coach or to a teach-yourself manual. Life offers a lot for the asking; but not to those who are too proud or complicated to ask.

Our grasp of values is enriched through our contact with others. We appreciate a work of art, we discuss it with another, and perhaps we discover in his appreciation aspects which ours had missed; and vice versa [20].

To "respond" to a value in the work or life of another is to communicate with that other. This "communion in values" unites people over the ages. We can see it, for instance, in how enthusiasts of a particular composer or a musical group feel at one in a concert. Why, then, must I see others as rival possessors, and not as "co-communicators", of values?

It is important therefore to recognize and resist the over-critical attitude we so easily adopt toward others and which in the end isolates us. There is a whole social trend today not to believe in others, to regard them in a negative light, without finding any real aspect of value in them. This lack of positive appreciation produces increasing unhappiness. As La Rochefoucauld remarked, "A person whom nobody pleases is much more unhappy than one who pleases nobody" [21]. It is difficult for such a person not to become "a gossip", that is, a social propagator of small-mindedness.

Interpersonality thus begins to appear as an essential factor in human development. Society must be built on some sense of common values which are necessary to sustain people in the efforts to live and work together, and to appreciate and learn from each other. Without these efforts there will be neither cohesion to society nor growth in individuals. Few people can develop adequately in a life of isolation. Social living, with its interactions and challenges, is the normal setting for personal growth.

In a brief study it is not possible to consider all of the areas of interpersonal and social relationships, or to do more than touch on the main issues they involve. In the next chapter we will briefly consider some major topics connected with social life: education, work, politics, justice and law, the common good, human rights. Sexuality, marriage, and the family play such an important role in the relationship between people that separate chapters are devoted to them.

Notes
[1] La Felicità Umana: un impossibile necessario, p. 302.
[2] Jean-Paul Sartre pushed the contrary thesis to the limit, seeing the presence of others and the futile endeavor to "communicate" with them as the essence of unhappiness and frustration. Hence his well-known phrase, "L'enfer, c'est les autres": "hell is other people" (Huis Clos, Sc. 5). The person who sees others so - unable to stand them, finding nothing good in them, nothing to appreciate or to rejoice at - indeed lives in a sort of hell.
[3] A quibbler might object: but a violet cannot compare with a rose; a rose is much more beautiful. Agreed: but the contrast does not take from the fact that both are beautiful! Would we be richer if we only had roses?
[4] Karol Wojtyla writes: "The distinctive characteristic of the personalistic approach is the conviction that to be a person means to be capable of participation" (The Acting Person, p. 275); "I conceive participation in The Acting Person as a positive relation to the humanity of others ..." (Person and Community: Selected Essays, p. 237).
[5] On the level of intellectual discourse, perhaps we can perceive something of this in Pascal's remark: "One is normally more convinced by arguments one has thought out for oneself, than by those coming from the minds of other people".
[6] Christopher Lasch: The Culture of Narcissism: American Life in an Age of Diminishing Expectations, p. 41.
[7] The process intensifies in regard to the daily actions of people around us: employees, superiors, rivals. Very often, the closer the relationship, the more critical the reactions. Moreover, the positive appreciation of what is good seldom keeps abreast of a negative reaction to what is, or seems to us to be, defective.
[8] Thomas Carlyle: On Heroes and Hero Worship.
[9] Paul Claudel: Le Soulier de Satin, I, Sc. 7.
[10] A Room of One's Own, ch. 2.
[11] The Silver Spoon, Part III, ch. 10.
[12] The Cocktail Party. Act 2.
[13] The power struggle of politics is especially intense. Perhaps that is why vindictiveness seems so strong at times among politicians. Along with Thomas More, Abraham Lincoln is a notable exception: cf. William L. Miller: Lincoln's Virtues: an Ethical Biography, pp. 406-426.
[14] The Greening of America, p. 243.
[15] Individualism does not take kindly to the notion of having or needing a "model" to emulate. The Encyclopaedia Britannica, in an article on "Self-analysis" in art, thus describes the canons proposed by the 19th-century Romantics: "Forget the 'model', for there is no such thing; avoid conformity; discover your true self, the buried child; be authentic and sincere". Since then, it notes, there has been no lessening of the tendency to seek our "originality" from within, and adds a comment worth pondering: "Introspection naturally implies an inner life worth looking into".
[16] Encyclopaedia Britannica: under "Protectionism".
[17] In pathological terms this is classified by the American Psychiatric Association as "Narcissistic Personality Disorder". Narcissistic persons, it notes, "are preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance ... and with chronic feelings of envy for those whom they perceive as being more successful than they are" (DSM-III-R, p. 350).
[18] Self-centeredness and ambition combine here. The more self-centered ambition is, the more calculating and meaner it becomes. If one cannot beat one's rivals, the temptation is to see how to incapacitate or eliminate them.
[19] cf. J. de Finance: L'Affrontement de l'autre, p. 164.
[20] Some film actors, it is said, spend their old age viewing their great films of times past; but are no longer capable of admiring good acting - better acting - in someone else. If so, it is a sterile feeding off what they have been. Their vanity may be thereby sustained or grow; they will not grow.
[21] "Un homme à qui personne ne plaît est bien plus malheureux que celui qui ne plaît à personne": Maximes.