Protocol #11: Making Friends?

I have a confession to make: I am not the best at making friends. Usually, when I am in a friendship, I constantly overanalyze the other person’s behavior, trying to figure out what they want from me and why they are being so nice to me. As a result, the only friends I can keep are mutually self-interested ones, i.e. friendships where both parties obviously get something from the other party. I’m sure many people can relate to my struggle. But that is no way to live life, and I decided to investigate why this is happening and how I can change my worldview to solve it. 

First, I decided to dive a little deeper into why this presumption of self-interest exists. French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir explains that we live in a society where “greed, envy, calumny, perfidy, and lies” are all considered unredeemable parts of human nature, and this idea comes from ideas from the Christian tradition. The idea of the original sin in Christianity denies that “any innocence or virtue exists on the natural plane” (205). In other words, only God can be virtuous; humans are always selfish. 

De Beauvoir says that in order to break free from the idea that all humans are selfish and that we cannot transcend our selfishness, we have to adopt an existential framework of thinking. Rather than condemning humans to misery, existentialists believe that it is up to humans to make themselves good or bad, and we can all surpass our selfishness by assuming our own freedom. Existentialism says that we can both welcome our self-interestedness without judgement and also “conquer” the selfishness because all people can access their freedom if they want to (213). 

So, how can I use these principles to fix my own friendships? Well, first, I have to recognize that not everyone is out to get me. If all people are free to access their freedom and transcend their selfishness, then at least a subset of the population will have assumed their freedom and used their freedom to surpass their selfishness. This requires me to assume my own freedom: I have to transcend my condition as jealous and distrustful so that I can engage with another person’s freedom. 

The biggest question you probably have for me is: why change now? You’ve gotten through your life with the friendships that you have, and you’ve been successful. If you’re not close to people, then you benefit because you’ll be able to take better care of yourself. But the thing that I am missing is genuine connection. I feel like it is impossible for me to understand others; I cannot “share the joys and sorrows of another, nor even understand them” (208). I feel this “solitude in common” among my friends. We are all together, but we are all enclosed and preoccupied in our own worlds. As de Beauvoir puts it, we have not “engaged the freedom” of each other (207). In order to stop feeling this solitude, I have to become an existentialist.