Most Personal Problems Are Human Problems: Avoid Excessive Self-Blame and Self-Attack, and Embrace Your Dark Side

I. Personal Challenges Are Often Not Individual Problems, but Social and Human Problems

Personal challenges are often not individual problems (or responsibilities).

For an ordinary Afghan girl, a Black person in an American slum, or a Vietnamese worker, their top 100 problems—poverty, insecurity, survival, violence, pornography, gambling, drugs, hunger, feelings of inferiority, repression, despair, a lack of positive social interaction, and so on—are all social problems, rather than her or his “personal problems.” For an ordinary white person in Europe or the United States, their top 100 problems—family, social relationships, career planning, challenges at work, psychological problems, existential crises, and so on—are all human problems, rather than her or his “personal problems.”

A child does not get enough rest, loses focus in class, and cannot keep up academically no matter what. Their teachers dislike them or have done everything they can but cannot help; their parents hit and scold them or have “done everything they can” but cannot change anything. The child secretly plays video games and, at such a young age, feels lost and hopeless about life. This is the most typical kind of “personal” problem, yet it is clearly not an individual problem. A disabled person’s distress over their disability is a human challenge, not an individual problem.

II. Human Problems Fall into Three Categories:

a. Problems that have already been solved on an overall level (such as fire and language); b. Problems that have been partially solved (such as famine, running water, and electricity); c. Problems that remain unsolved (private ownership, feudalism, capitalism, bureaucracy, alienation, humanitarian crises, existential crises, and technological evolution).

The second category describes the current state of human industry and commerce. Sectors with excess production capacity sell solutions to people in parts of the world where those things are scarce. Examples include exports of food, industrial goods, electricity, and technology. Constrained by private ownership and capitalism, humanity can often already see the possibility of solving these problems on an overall level, yet cannot do so. For example, there is already enough food to feed everyone in the world, yet half the world’s population is still threatened by hunger. These hungry poor people are capitalism’s reserve army of labor, a rich source of cheap labor. And yet these social problems are individualized so that these individuals can be psychologically manipulated.

Many problems are often “resolved completely,” moving from the second category into the first. The obsolescence of old industries often represents a qualitative improvement in humanity’s solutions: cars replacing horse-drawn carriages, synthetic fibers replacing cotton textiles, running water replacing water carriers, or the eradication of many infectious diseases in New China.

III. Individualizing Social Problems

“Take a look at your own problems, okay?”

Individualizing social problems is a form of torture that society inflicts on individuals. It exploits humanity’s mechanism of “self-blame—inferiority—conceit,” and people’s ignorance, to deceive them. It exploits people’s tendency to attack themselves to guide them into self-attack. It is like exploiting an animal’s susceptibility to “castration” in order to castrate it. “Toxic shame” is a very common root of all kinds of harm. The fact that complaining about society is useless does not mean you should complain about yourself.

Ordinary people are required to become superhuman; the weak are “required” to become strong, or else “accept their fate of being enslaved and oppressed” (the real objective). Everyone fantasizing about getting rich overnight and becoming powerful enough to solve their personal problems is society’s demonization of people. That is, everyone strives to escape being eaten by the lion by running faster than their companions or tripping them up: the battle royale of capitalist involution (Engels: the war of all against all).

To say that a person “has a problem” means that, in accordance with their “freedom,” they could originally have made the “right choice,” but instead made the “wrong choice,” and must therefore bear “such-and-such” consequences. This is not philosophical inquiry; it is often psychological manipulation, a corrupt official passing judgment, or extracting a confession under duress. I once had freedom, once had the right choice available to me, once had a beautiful destiny; I did not know it, missed it, and can never recover it. Is this reasoning with someone, or bullying and cursing them?

Meanwhile, when facing humanity’s difficulties and their own personal challenges, individuals—the proletarians who make up most of humanity—often show the brilliance of human nature. Most people have never owed society a debt, never wronged society or humanity.

IV. What Responsibility Must People Bear for Their Own “Problems”?

“Freedom and responsibility” is one of the four elements of existentialism: things that torment the human soul. Responsibility depends on where a person is free. This is a central philosophical question, and it is difficult to answer simply.

As far as I have learned, the first stage of freedom is “non-unfreedom,” “non-non-free.” That is, freedom is difficult to define, but “unfreedom” is relatively possible to define.

Freedom has two dimensions: freedom of thought and freedom of action (and responsibility). People have the freedom to recognize and leave “unfreedom.” For “non-unfreedom” of thought, what matters most is awareness: removing and breaking through various forms of “unfreedom,” discipline, alienation, and fixation. Marx and Zhuangzi both do this. Freedom of action (responsibility),

In the dimension of action, “responsibility” involves “cause and effect,” and cause and effect involve other external factors, not just oneself: “doing harm with good intentions,” “judging intentions rather than outcomes,” “judging outcomes rather than intentions.” Its freedom is therefore even harder to define. Put simply, “non-unfreedom” in the dimension of action means not doing wrong, not doing harm, and not committing crimes—in other words, not harming yourself, and wisely protecting yourself.

That is, people cannot freely determine “outcomes” or their lives; they can only “go along with circumstances.” Freedom of action lies in not falling into “unfreedom.” Do not casually assume you are at fault and attack yourself, nor casually praise yourself and become conceited. Do not rejoice over external things or grieve over yourself. Doing something right is an expression of a person’s innate wholeness, no cause for rejoicing. Doing something wrong is a person’s misfortune.

What responsibility do criminals bear? This is a very important question in law, sociology, and philosophy. Marx, Engels, and Zhuangzi all discussed it, and I do not want to discuss it further. But first of all, I am an ordinary person, not a criminal. Yet under private ownership, proletarians and ordinary people must stand trial, while the “successful” do not.

V. Self-Blame Often Means Not Taking Responsibility, but the Ego’s “Conceit—Self-Hatred”

You must not take on responsibility that is not yours to bear; otherwise, you invite needless suffering and can derail your whole life. As for responsibility that is yours to bear, no one can escape the harm they do themselves or cause and effect: you are already “taking responsibility.” Put the two together, and you are “taking excessive responsibility.”

What people fall into is not “self-blame,” but “conceit”: omnipotent conceit, believing like an infant that they are God, responsible for everything around them. “Conceit” -> “taking all responsibility upon oneself”: “If there is guilt anywhere in the realm, the guilt lies with me alone.” Next come self-attack, self-negation, self-hatred, and self-destruction. “Conceit—inferiority—self-hatred”: this is the “trinity” of Horney’s psychology.

VI. There Is No Need to Fear Problems, Dark Sides, or Shortcomings

What unspeakable, unatonable crime could an ordinary person possibly have committed?

Even serious crimes such as manslaughter and malicious assault carry fixed prison terms rather than life sentences, while those whose mistaken decisions cause tens of millions of deaths often live to a ripe old age.

The problems and dark sides that a person avoids, represses, and blames themselves for are often not problems, but journeys within life.

A person’s dark sides and shortcomings—the inner demons and vulnerabilities you find so hard to work through—come from the human and historical predicaments you bear as an ordinary person. These are predicaments that only a group of the very best people can confront together, let alone solve.

Human civilization is still in its early stages. An individual “having” a dark side and fearing that “dark side” is like ancient people fearing solar and lunar eclipses, or fearing winter. Today, beyond eclipses, people have already “largely solved, on an overall level,” the fear of winter.

Do Not Feel Ashamed of Falling into a Poor State

Falling into a poor state is a personal challenge. But it is no reason for shame, self-blame, or self-attack.

Examples include scrolling on your phone, masturbation, procrastination, various compulsive behaviors, and binge eating and drinking.

It is like seeing a child in Africa living in unsanitary and uncivilized conditions: this is not his personal problem. This is his life of hardship.

Positive Significance

Psychologists all know that the so-called dark side often contains clues through which people can become aware of their own nature, freedom and responsibility, and the truth about others and society. It is a treasure trove.

Your shortcomings and inadequacies are precisely the authentic expression of you as a human being. They are a basis on which first-rate people can recognize and respect you, complement you just where you need it, and cooperate with you. Like the grooves in a gear, they are not defects, but a source of the limitless power generated by the whole set of gears. An ordinary person feeling despair because they are ordinary, and forcing themselves to become “superhuman,” is not an individual problem, but a social problem.

VII. What Can Be Done?

Over the next few hundred years, dozens of generations will not live to see the Internationale in which both the productive forces and the relations of production have developed enormously. We can only go along with history and society, with our tiny selves and our complete innate wholeness.

Face your challenges directly, develop wisdom and courage, but do not take on challenges and responsibilities that do not belong to you. No longer treating non-individual problems as individual problems is itself a challenge.

Marx and Zhuangzi offer a philosophy for ordinary people.

Addendum:

When I wrote this article, I had not thought closely about the lyrics of “Bohemian Rhapsody.” But after finishing it, I remembered a few of its classic lines and looked up the lyrics. Sure enough, the whole song conveys this very meaning. About messing up, responsibility, judgment, refusing to be judged, and letting things take their course. Rock music is often connected with “existentialism.” Existence, meaninglessness, freedom and responsibility, loneliness, death.