Growing up is being pressed into society’s mold is a proposition in the reflections on the self and suffering. It holds that what we usually take to be “growing up and getting stronger” is in fact being forced into a ready-made social mold; the so-called strength is merely a knack acquired inside that mold. Only after you strip away the present set of worldly values, and disenchant yourself of both people and standards, can you catch a glimpse of true freedom. The original formulation runs: “Growing up just crams you forcibly into this social mold, and what passes for being strong is only a knack picked up inside the mold. Strip away the present set of worldly values, and only then can you glimpse freedom.” The proposition redefines growth as a process of taming rather than the natural increase of ability, and it points to a path of liberation that runs in reverse: not packing yourself more tightly into the mold, but tearing the mold down.
The Mold and the Knack
The core distinction at the heart of the proposition is between “strength” and “the mold.” The proposition argues that society first casts a mold—a whole set of worldly values about success, respectability, and standards—and then crams people forcibly into it. The various capacities a person learns inside it look like the growth of personal ability, but in substance they are only the knacks required to fit the mold.
Growing up just crams you forcibly into this social mold, and what passes for being strong is only a knack picked up inside the mold. Strip away the present set of worldly values, and only then can you glimpse freedom. (original as written)
This judgment shares a root with The World Is One Vast Ramshackle Stage: Break the Rules and Don’t Take Mainstream Values at Face Value: since that external ranking of values was itself artificially erected and can be broken, becoming a virtuoso within it is not the same as the genuine growth of the self. The direction freedom is given here is not “acquire more” but “strip away”—it is the opposite motion to growing up that becomes the gateway to seeing freedom. The freedom glimpsed once worldly values are peeled off points to the same inner core as A Noble Soul Seeks No Worldly Approval: only by not begging the mold for approval do you escape being defined by it.
Disenchantment Is Self-Realized, Not Learned
If “stripping away the values” is the action, then “disenchantment” is where that action lands in cognition. It is placed at a specific juncture in life: around the age of thirty-five, one of the understandings you need to arrive at is that you have disenchanted yourself of a great many people.
Around the age of thirty-five, one of the things you need to grasp is that you have to disenchant yourself of a great many people… When I was small, my elders often told me to be neither servile nor arrogant; but this is not something you learn—you have to realize it for yourself. Because there are far too many variables in this world, most concepts are actually blurry and unclear, and standards are, at bottom, subjective. (original as written)
Here lies a crucial methodological turn: “neither servile nor arrogant” is not a social skill that can be taught, but a state one must realize for oneself—precisely the thing that cannot be acquired through the mold, because all the mold can impart is a knack. Disenchantment can only be self-realized because it demands that a person see through a fact firsthand: concepts are blurry and standards are subjective, and so the deified “people” and “authorities” lose the ground on which they were once looked up to. This is the inner and outer face of Raising Your Cognition Is the Only Shortcut: You Cannot Earn Money Beyond Your Cognition—raising one’s cognition is not accumulating more knowledge within the mold, but seeing through the mold itself. Once disenchantment happens, the way you look at people shifts from looking up or looking down to looking level—and that is the very substance of being “neither servile nor arrogant.”
Standards Are Subjective
What makes disenchantment hold up rests on a colder judgment still: standards are, at bottom, subjective. It is pointed out that the world has far too many variables, that many concepts are blurry to begin with, and that so-called objective standards are, at their foundation, subjective constructions. This is structurally identical, in epistemological terms, to Nothing Is 100%: The Purity of Belief, and Why Man Proposes but Heaven Disposes—since there is no measure in this world that is certain beyond doubt, to take some “ruler of standards” and use it to gauge your own high or low, noble or base, is itself to mistake the subjective for the objective.
This judgment is what backstops the first two sections: precisely because standards are subjective, “strength” is only a relative ranking inside the mold rather than an absolute value, and the disenchantment of “a great many people” has its grounds—what gets disenchanted is exactly those who appoint themselves, or are enshrined, as the setters of standards. And once the measuring ruler itself is falsified, freedom no longer needs to apply to any external authority. The deepest constraint of the social mold lies not in what it dictates, but in the way it leads people to mistake its dictates for something objective and unquestionable.
A Double Standard Between Fortune and Adversity
At the level of emotion, the proposition carries one further observation: in good times a person takes their good luck for granted, and the moment they meet adversity they feel they have been hard done by.
When things are going well, people always feel it is only their due; when they hit a rough patch, they feel they have been unlucky. Doesn’t anyone find this strange?
This common psychology is raised as a question, meaning to expose the asymmetry hidden inside it: one and the same person applies two completely opposite ways of accounting to fortune and adversity—the good is what I deserve, the bad is the world shortchanging me. This double standard is precisely the telltale symptom of having been “crammed into the mold”: the mold shapes not only behavior but also a self-centered way of keeping the books. To see through this asymmetry is an extension of disenchantment—it requires that both fortune and adversity be reduced to neutral circumstances, rather than rewards and punishments revolving around “me.” This perspective converges with Pleasure and Pain Are Relative: Another’s Suffering Is a Spectacle, and runs in one line with the stance in Cause and Effect Is Fairness: You Reap What You Sow that “circumstances have their own causes; there is no such thing as bad luck.” Drop the paired prejudices of “only my due” and “unlucky,” and a person is no longer led by the nose by fortune and adversity.
Sources
- Manuscript — “Growing up just crams you forcibly into this social mold… Strip away the present set of worldly values, and only then can you glimpse freedom”
- Manuscript —another record of the same proposition
- Manuscript —“Around the age of thirty-five… you have to disenchant yourself of a great many people… neither servile nor arrogant… is not something you learn—you have to realize it for yourself… standards are, at bottom, subjective”
- Manuscript —“When things are going well, people always feel it is only their due; when they hit a rough patch, they feel they have been unlucky. Doesn’t anyone find this strange?”
See also
- The World Is One Vast Ramshackle Stage: Break the Rules and Don’t Take Mainstream Values at Face Value
- A Noble Soul Seeks No Worldly Approval
- Raising Your Cognition Is the Only Shortcut: You Cannot Earn Money Beyond Your Cognition
- Nothing Is 100%: The Purity of Belief, and Why Man Proposes but Heaven Disposes
- Cause and Effect Is Fairness: You Reap What You Sow