Double lives

It seems to me that all over the planet people are forced to live a variety of double lives. The lives vary by country, culture and region, but it seems a fixture of human life to have such lives. We have a range of double lives from  evangelical pastors who use prostitutes to people who have affairs while married to people who use illegal drugs to people who are closet smokers to people that have secret hobbies and those who pinch every penny but also escape to casinos from time to time.

What is the root of this behavior? On the surface, it seems like it would be best to be able to live fully integrated lives. Is it unavoidable? Is it good or bad? 

Every culture has its taboos, those things that are socially unacceptable, as well as those things it praises and holds up as ideals. And it is certainly good to have limits on some behaviors (the most obvious being things like murder). And it also seems like a great idea to have aspirations and ideals that inspire us to be our best selves. Because the reality is that humans are imperfect. Fundamentally we are animals, prone to the influences of our "monkey" and "reptile" brains above our better judgment from time to time. Ideals remind us to keep these more base impulses under control as much as possible. 

But on the other hand, if we turn ideals into notions of rigid right and wrong, where some things are totally forbidden despite evidence that they are strongly imbedded in human nature, it seems like we are setting the stage for failure, double lives and repression that can erupt into massive social dysfunction if held down too long. 

It seems like we could benefit from a gentler relationship to these ideals, that acknowledges them to be just that, and that they are something to strive for and some times miss. In that environment, people would be more inclined to discuss their "shadow side" more openly, and that discussion can be the source of solutions, comfort and a renewed commitment to keep trying. 

And if we find that many people are struggling in the same ways, we can make a conscious choice to either not aim so high because it is causing undue stress, or to restructure the ideals to more intelligently take into consideration our human natures, or to identify certain subsets of people that need special attention. The bad news is that we don't have a good history of this kind of compassion for others and human failings. But I think we can strive to do better. 

First off, I would throw out the notions of "right" and "wrong" as too rigid and prone to creating problems. I might replace it with the idea of "what works for us" to keep a focus on functional behavior without the punative aspects. And perhaps elevate the notions of "aspiration" and "compassion" to allow for the ideal to exist in a flexible way that inspires more people to keep trying rather than give up. A tricky thing in this plan is that there will be a continuum of how easy attaining these aspirations will be for people. If we could look at these things openly rather than covertly, we might be able to determine the relative distributions in the population, craft appropriate strategies and target differing interventions for different people. The goal would be to create an appropriate stretch for each individual.

In this new scheme, I think we would slowly start to see these double lives disappear and integrated people and culture start to emerge that balanced the tensions between ideals and our human frailty more. The dialectic between our cultural norms and our realized humanity would move in a positive reinforcing spiral.

I think the key aspects of making this transition are moving away from the notions of right and wrong, as well as nuance our understanding of reality and fantasy. This is a topic I would like to write about more in the future. We get into trouble when we relate to fantasy as if it were reality, or vice versa. (Just think of those dejected bridezillas after the letdown of coming home from a marriage or honeymoon.) Ideals are a form of fantasy, but we need to be realistic about them. When reality and fantasy are too far removed from each other a stress is created that is too difficult for most people to bear and they "break" one way or another. Socially, we could benefit from being more realistic about our fantasy and being more fantastical about our reality. :)