Esse Quam Videri (To be rather than to seem)
— state motto of North Carolina
For the second time in a little while, I came across a reference to a paradigm shift in the literature and culture of personal development from the “character ethic” to the “personality ethic” that occurred in the early XX century. I’ve been listening to Stephen R. Covey’s “7 habits of highly successful people” book, which holds this shift as the defining thesis. The character ethic has been the prevalent paradigm in the old days, being popularized by Ben Franklin’s autobiography, among other works. The main premise is that a person needs to develop one’s own character in order to become successful in life. For example, Franklin identified 13 virtues to develop: temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity and humility. From a practical standpoint, he would pick a single virtue at a time and work on it for a fixed period of time (about a week) before moving to the next one. He would repeat the cycle every 13 weeks.
The personality ethic is exemplified by Dale Carnegie’s 1936 book “How to win friends and influence people“. The main difference with the character-centered mindset is that the objective is to improve the way one interacts with other people in order to create the most favourable impression on them. For example, you would be advised cultivate an interest is hobbies of people whom you’d like to influence, employ mnemonics to remember the names of new acquaintances, etc.
The argument in the “7 habits” book is that the principles of the character ethic are more fundamental, and that the social success would naturally follow as a by-product of character improvement. I certainly like this idea, but would probably not dismiss the personality-centered approach either. Maybe, consistently acting the way a person with a strong character would eventually leads to an underlying character transformation, in a way becoming a self-fulfilled prophecy. Still, this “faking until you make it” approach seems to be a roundabout way to personal development for at least two reasons. First, at some level, you would always have to convince yourself that the personality traits that you are trying to develop are, in fact, ethical and not purely manipulative. Second, people are generally quite good at seeing through a personality if it is not genuine, which can interfere with communication. As Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in 1875 and quoted in the “7 habits” book in a slightly streamlined form for the modern audience: “What you are shouts so loudly in my ears that I cannot hear what you say.”
