On priestly psychology per Nietzsche

In the first essay of his On the Genealogy of Morals, Friedrich Nietzsche spends some time talking about the psychology of the priest. 

Think, for example, of certain forms of diet (abstinence from meat), of fasting, of sexual continence, of flight "into the wilderness" ...: add to these the entire antisensualistic metaphysic of the priests that makes men indolent and overrefined, their autohypnosis in the manner of fakirs and Brahmins ... and finally the only-too-comprehensible satiety with all this, together with the radical cure for it, nothingness (or God—the desire for a unio mystica with God is the desire of the Budhist for nothingness, Nirvana—and no more!).  [Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, First Essay, Section 6.]

What is the source of this priestly intensity? Why should priests be the ones in society whose behavior tends to extremes, the ones who are most likely to become fanatics? (As an aside, I'm not sure if priests really are the natural extremists, at any rate in today's society. But for Nietzsche they were.)

Nietzsche himself tries to answer this question by looking at diet and habits. But there is another answer that he misses, but which fits in exactly with the kinds of explanation he allows.*

Consider that part of a priest's regular job is prayer, and that prayer often takes the form of asking God for something. But we all know that God is not a vending machine; if you ask God for stuff, the odds are that sometimes you'll get it and sometimes you won't. Many volumes of theology and theodicy have been written to account for this outcome from the perspective of faith. (Meanwhile it's easy to explain it from the perspective of atheism. If God doesn't exist, then prayer is wasted effort; in that case, whether you get the thing you prayed for is a matter of random chance, which turns up now Heads and later Tails.)

But a priest's ongoing service of God generates a kind of relationship with God. And there is a huge literature in the field of psychology about the phenomenon of intermittent reinforcement in relationships. For a sample of what is out there, just now I did a quick Google search, and the following articles were among the first to show up: here, here, here, here, and here.

Briefly, intermittent reinforcement is a classic element of abusive or alcoholic relationships. It consistently results in the dependent partner becoming addicted to the intermittently reinforcing one, abandoning all other interests and any kind of self-care in order to get the love and attention that have proven so unreliable. What's more, if the dependent partner finds that a certain behavior increases the odds of getting the reinforcement they need, even by a little bit, she will repeat and exaggerate that behavior over and over, in ever more frantic efforts to tease out the needed reinforcement.

Isn't this an exact description of a priestly psychology, taking the form of a "crazy fool for God"? And doesn't this mechanism offer a simple, elegant—and, to qualify in Nietzschean terms, completely materialistic—explanation for the growth of priestly asceticism (and ultimately fanaticism) over time?

I think it does. If Nietzsche had known about this result, I think he would have mentioned it.

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* What follows is fleshed out from a Post-It note that I left in my copy of Walter Kaufmann's translation of this work, Vintage Books, p. 32. The note is dated 1992-10-12. So I've been sitting on it for a while, it seems.         

Kierkegaard on regret

How have I NOT posted this delightfully melancholy quotation before now? It comes from Søren Kierkegaard, and you can find it all over the Internet. I'm sure you've seen it before.

The thing is, I remember figuring this out on my own many years ago ... possibly even before I'd heard of Kierkegaard, and certainly before I ever encountered the quote. I knew people who regretted major decisions in their lives, turning points where they were sure (in retrospect) that they had taken the wrong path. And I remember thinking, after I'd known them for a while, ...

All this regret is silly. In the first place, if you could go back in time to The Day you made that Big Decision, you would once again be the person you were back then. You'd think the way you thought back then. You'd have the same priorities you had back then. And so you'd end up deciding the same way all over again.

What's more, even if you did happen to pick the other choice, you'd always second-guess yourself just like you do today. No choice is ever perfectly blissful. No road is ever perfectly smooth. So you'd run into problems and difficulties (just like you do today), and I guarantee you'd start telling yourself, "If only I had made The Other Choice back on That Day (meaning the one you really did make in reality), then everything would be fine now!" 😀 In the long run you'd just be trading one batch of troubles for another, and it wouldn't be any better.

Then one day I read the quote by Kierkegaard, who said the whole thing so much more elgantly.

 

    

What's wrong with following your passion?

There is a kind of fashionable advice on careers that says to find work you are passionate about. The argument behind it is that your passion will fuel your hard work, and the hard work will bring success. And usually there is an example given, of this or that person who never finished school or labored under some other handicap, and who nonetheless succeeded because of single-minded dedication fueled by passion. 

This argument is wrong in two ways, not just one. One well-understood flaw is that it is an example of survivorship bias. (See especially this section of the article, as well as this cartoon.) 

But the second error is that it assumes passions are immutable. On the one hand, if you find yourself becoming successful at something you are likely to start feeling passionate about it. But also, if you regularly fail at something you are likely to lose your passion. Think of a young boy who loves role-playing as a superhero. He hears the advice about following your passion, and so he makes it his life's goal to achieve fame and fortune in a career where he can role-play as a superhero. Of course such careers exist — there are actors who star in superhero movies, after all — but they are few and far between. So the numerical odds are stacked way against him, and the overwhelming probability is that he will fail.

What then? Will he be as passionate about playing superheroes at 45 as he was at 10? Probably not. His tastes will likely have changed over time, and his repeated failures to make even a bare living this way will likely have dampened his ardor. But if he then complains to the propagandist who sold him on the "Follow your passion" dogma years ago, how is that fellow going to reply? "Don't complain to me, Sonny. Just look at yourself: you're no longer passionate about superhero role-playing, and so of course your flabby commitment is dragging down your performance. Of course you failed. It's your own fault for losing that passion you had when you were younger, because if you had only kept the flame alive you would surely have succeeded one day."

In other words, "follow your passion to achieve success" really means "your failure is your own fault." 

But sometimes it ain't.

See also a similar point made by Scott Galloway on Twitter, here. 

This clip is excerpted from a much longer speech which you can find here: