Introspect Don't Project
Change Starts With You!
Welcome to Polymathic Being, a place to explore counterintuitive insights across multiple domains. These essays explore common topics from different perspectives and disciplines to uncover unique insights and solutions.
Today’s topic addresses our desire to change the world as we see best while failing to change the one thing we can: ourselves. This is where these topics become so important because the real work is facing what we see in the mirror and recognizing that we have the power to fix what we see… as long as we understand the reflection.
A core tenet of Polymathic Being is that I work hard to apply everything I write about to myself, long before writing about it for you. These counterintuitive insights are refined through my own application and, if you ask, I can provide dozens of examples where I’ve been there, done that, and faced the challenge of changing as I may suggest.
Whether it’s algowhoring, psyops, fear porn, lazy leadership, etc. I’ve been there. Those stories are as much about me as they are the people I use as examples. More importantly, I don’t write to correct them but to see in them what I want to excise from my own life. How can I help you live a better life if I weren’t willing to do the same?
It’s like an alcoholic counseling AA, a drug dealer counseling addiction, or a Six Sigma Expert whose business is run by bubble gum and baling twine.
Yet, it shouldn’t surprise us that much. In fact, we explored in Looking Into a Mirror, the most voracious denouncers of racism, homosexuality, etc., are themselves the most racist, homosexual, etc. What they rail against isn’t a reflection of reality but what they see in the mirror.
But guess what? That’s easy to see in other people, but we need to flip this around because if you don’t like what you see, you really have to look harder at what you’re looking at! Because that’s probably you. Most likely projecting.
Projecting
You expect from others what you expect from yourself.
In the social sphere, we see projecting all the time. “Should,” “could”, and “ought” are all powerful words, but words that lose their power when it’s you that should, could, or ought, but you either push that expectation on others or look to legislate that behavior through government. Simply put, you expect from others what you expect from yourself, and if you’re unwilling to be the change, you can’t imagine anyone else is either.
And if you think that last part is out in left field, consider what we explored in Agency vs. Addiction, where entire groups demand legislation instead of nurturing agency and accountability. Their tagline is: “It’s not you, it’s them.” It’s a complete abdication of agency for all behavior and change with no introspection.
Another example of how their moralizing is exploited for the gain of others is this great essay on how sex drives innovation from J. Daniel Sawyer where he describes:
This is called the Bootleggers-and-Baptists dynamic: Baptists seek to use the government to outlaw things they find morally objectionable. Bootleggers support this, because it creates business opportunities outside of legal scrutiny. Lawmakers and bureaucrats love it, because it allows the extension of their own private power, giving them opportunities for self-enrichment (via corruption) and the plenary power to persecute their political enemies (or simply those of whom they disapprove).
Key to all of that is projection and zero introspection, while the entire time, the thing we’d like to avoid manifests itself more deeply in our lives, and we are lulled into a sense of complacency as our moral outrage makes things worse.
That’s because projecting is easy. It’s visual. It’s loud and self-aggrandizing. It’s the easy path that demands accountability from someone else, typically on topics like politics that rarely impact those who are projecting. That’s because the true change you want to see is actually within yourself. And that’s hard.
Introspecting
This is where the most powerful tool comes into play. You’ve got to introspect. You have to look at what you dislike and try to find it in yourself first. This isn’t a new insight, as the most famous for us is probably Matthew 7:4-5: “How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”
And almost all other traditions have similar sayings:
Buddhism: “Easily seen is the fault of others, but one’s own fault is difficult to see.” - Dhammapada 252–253.
Confucianism: “What the superior man seeks is in himself. What the mean man seeks is in others.” - Analects, “Wei Ling Gong,” passage 22.
Islamic tradition: “When you want to mention your companion’s faults, remember your own faults.” - Ibn ʿAbbas in Al-Adab al-Mufrad 328.
Stoicism: “An uninstructed person will lay the fault of his own bad condition upon others.” - Epictetus, Enchiridion 5.
Taoism: “He who knows other men is discerning; he who knows himself is intelligent.” - Tao Te Ching 33.
Bahá’í Faith: “Magnify not the faults of others that thine own faults may not appear great.” - Bahá’u’lláh, The Hidden Words
So, if you struggle with this, that’s typical human behavior that has been admonished for thousands of years. However, that doesn’t mean it’s acceptable. There’s a reason I used the word admonished because it is a big problem.
Taking Action
So with this in mind. What do we do about it? Let me start with my own example:
Years ago, a much younger, less mature Michael was working with a fellow who was driving me nuts. His tone, condescension, and general attitude just rankled me. However, something was niggling in the back of my mind: the feedback I’d been getting recently about similar behaviors in myself.
It was surprisingly painful, but I realized that I had the tendency to do the same things. I brought this up to a coworker who was coaching me, and they paused, smiled, and said: “Yeah, that’s pretty accurate.” Talk about a slap of cold reality right in my face. I was chafing over the exact same behaviors that others chafed at with me.
The final nail in the coffin of my own justifications for this behavior came when I tried to gently explain to the other man my frustration and how I could see it in myself. His response doubled down on the bad behaviors and showed me just how much of an ass I could become if I didn’t introspect. That taught me how to find the triggers that I dislike, and instead of demanding others fix it, I look for them in myself.
It’s a painful process because it forces me to concede that my intent does not always match my actions and the corollary, that my actions or my demand for action from others, is a tell on myself and my own inadequacies. This first part is easier to accept. That last part is brutal to face.
And most won’t face it. You see the cognitive dissonance all around you with the added bonus of the self-righteous projection. This is the easy path to living. It’s the one that feels good, demands nothing of you, and cloaks the problem as someone else’s. It’s also emotionally stunting, reactive, and unfulfilling as evidenced by the angst oozing from the pores of every social media platform.
Let’s break this down into a few simple steps.
When you don’t like something you see, introspect and find it there.
When you think it’s someone else’s problem, it’s probably yours.
When you recommend a behavior change, make sure you are modeling it first.
At a minimum, you’ll slow the reaction, let the situation develop, and diffuse the tension. Maybe you’ve done the right thing in general, but there’s always something to learn. However, most often, you’ll find a plank in your own eye, blinding you with cognitive distortions. You’ll learn that you know nothing and that the best way to improve the world is to be the change you want to see. That’s the power of introspection over projection.
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Further Reading from Authors I Appreciate
I highly recommend the following Substacks for their great content and complementary explorations of topics that Polymathic Being shares.
Goatfury Writes All-around great daily essays
Resilient Mental State Insightful Life Tips and Tricks
Cyborgs Writing Highly useful insights into using AI for writing
Educating AI Integrating AI into education
Socratic State of Mind Powerful insights into the philosophy of agency
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This is rather extensive advertising for mirrors as well as comfortable wet-rooms ...
Thanks very much !!!