Doing as One Likes

from Orage's "Psychological Exercises and Essays," pp. 109-112

There is no higher aim than to do as we like, provided that we first know what we like and, secondly, can actually do it. But these are the difficulties: we do not know what we like, and, when we find out, we too often discover we cannot, in fact, do it--and not because people or circumstances forcibly restrain us, but for the lack of sufficient will or power or knowledge.

This is not to be wondered at, considering what we are and how we have come to be it. There are two people, so to say, in each of us--one derived by heredity from our parents and the other composed of all the influences we have received from the society in which we happen to have been born. By heredity we may be one sort of person; by training and education we may be quite another.

Consider any particular example, one's own or another's. Your parents belong to a stock that for hundreds of years has been rural; but owing to accidental circumstances over which certainly you have had no control, you yourself have been brought up all your life in a city and trained for a city occupation. All your heredity calls for a robust physical life with all its correspondent needs and wishes; but all your training disposes you to sedentary pursuits and the needs and wishes that accompany them. The problem is to find yourself between these two conflicting sides. Which is the real you, the you of heredity or the you of environment? Which are your own likes and dislikes? And which of the two halves in you will do what you like?

We cannot say off hand which is the strongest, since individual cases vary. In some instances, environment has a less effect than heredity, or, as we say, blood tells. Sometimes it happens that a man or woman will suddenly throw up the career thrust upon them by education and revert to their hereditary inclinations. In other cases the forces of environment are too strong for the heredity; and the mould of society remains unbroken. Thousands of people, born men and women, die business men or society ladies, only because their education has been too much for their heredity. Sociology may be said in such instances to have got the better of biology. What nature intended society has frustrated.

Is it always, however, a matter for regret? Suppose that by heredity a man is of criminal propensities, the victory of society may be said to be for the best. It is only, in fact, when the hereditary tendencies are of a higher value than the tendencies due to training that there is any real loss.

But how shall we discover what our hereditary tendencies are? Since they certainly precede our superimposed social training, they may certainly be said to be more natural to us, that is to say, more nearly ourselves. But by the time we begin consciously to think about ourselves at all, the voice of heredity is already confused in the babble of voices due to environment. Our hereditary tendencies may be bad or they may be good; but if we have never had the chance of distinguishing them, we do not know which they are. And if we do not know which they are, we have no freedom of choice in indulging or restraining them. The struggle between our biology and our sociology goes on unconsciously. We are not masters in our own house, but servants, and victims.

As a first step towards discriminating between our native and our acquired likes and tendencies, it is best to begin with small things. Usually when people first become aware of the double strain in themselves, they are inclined to kick over the traces. Suddenly realizing the bondage of their nature to their environment, they burst out into a riotous rebellion. Nearly all 'modern' literature, beginning with Ibsen's Doll's House, is only a manifestation of the reactions following the discovery that each of us is two, one by nature and heredity, and another by nurture and sociology. And all the consequent 'revolts' are no more than attempts to undo or mitigate or control the effects of society upon the given heredity. The attempts usually fail for the reason that they are too ambitious. It is not possible all at once to be sure what your hereditary as distinct from your acquired wishes really are; and even given the knowledge, the will-power to discard the latter in favour of the former is not always present on demand.

Everything suggests, in fact, that we begin modestly and in small things. If we learn to distinguish between the two voices in ourselves in regard to small things and where, in any event, nothing serious is involved, we shall afterwards be able to discriminate in more important matters. Moreover, by developing power in small things we may acquire the power to deal effectively with greater things. Our big 'revolt', if ever we should have to make it, will not be riotous and destructive, but a constitutional revolution.

Every day and almost every moment of the day provides ample material for exercise. To begin with, we wish to discover what it is we really like; not what habit or education has persuaded us we like; not what our own idleness prompts us to pretend we like; not what calculation, even, makes us say we like--but the things, the actions, the persons, the occupations, the circumstances we not merely fancy we like or might like, but actually do like.

Whether we shall act on the likes and dislikes we discover in ourselves is another matter altogether. It may be if our reason agrees, we shall--if we can. But it may equally prove to be reasonable that we should not, or should not at once or with our present power. First things first; and the first thing is discover what are our real, i.e., our native hereditary likes and tendencies.

You wake in the morning and propose to get up. Ask yourself whether you really wish to get up. And be candid about it. You take a bath--is it really because you like it or would dodge it if you could? You eat your breakfast--is it exactly the breakfast you like--in kind and quantity? Is it just your breakfast you eat, or simply breakfast as defined by society? Do you, in fact, wish to eat at all? You go to your office, or being a woman, you set about domestic and social duties of the day--are they your native tastes? Would you of your own free choice be where you are and do what you do? Assuming that, for the present, you accept the general situation, are you in detail doing what you like? Do you speak as it pleases you to this, that or the other persons? Do you really like or only pretend to like them? (Remember that it is not a question yet of acting on your likes and dislikes but only of discovering what they are really). You pass the day, every phase offering a new opportunity for self-questioning--do I really like this or not? The evening arrives with leisure--what would you really like to do? What truly amuses you, theatre or movies, conversation, reading, music, games, and exactly which? It cannot be repeated too often that the doing of what you like comes later. In fact, it can be left to take care of itself. The important thing is to know what you like.

The method here suggested may seem trivial to those accustomed to the extravagances of the 'literature of revolt' but we undertake to say that a week of it would convince everybody of its magical efficiency.