CORRUPTED PRAISE
1 All for praise
If people weren’t so thirsty for praise, they would do far fewer stupid or desperate things. But would they do any great ones? ‘Nine tenths of the work of the world is done by it,’ as William James notes.
Why be Caesar, if not to be admired? Yet what’s the good of being admired by anyone less than Caesar? Vain people crave praise from those of whom they value nothing but the praise that they get from them. And the proud crave praise from those of whom they value not so much as that. Yet each of us is keen to tell our name, as Dickinson put it, ‘to an admiring bog.’
Praise is like the rest of the world’s goods. The praise that we have won buoys us up, but we don’t think much about it, and it fails to satisfy us. It’s the praise that we hope to win that fills our minds and keeps us on the go.
2 Fame
Most people have no need to become famous, since they feel as if they already were.
There’s no one who isn’t a household name in at least one or two households.
I am content with my lowly place under the sun, not because I think so little of my self, but because I think my place so high. It is not our modesty but our conceit that makes us feel at peace with our lot.
We don’t know ourselves, so why do we long to be known in fame by those who know neither themselves nor us?
No doubt it is absurd to seek our true good outside ourselves in the regard of people who don’t know us and are so full of error. But is it any less absurd to seek it within ourselves in our own self-regard, when we don’t know ourselves and are so full of error? As Montaigne says, ‘to stay inside ourselves is to take up the worst place of all.’
None are more heedful of the transience and futility of fame than the few who have earned a full measure of it. Their aim is to become a mere memory for men and women who forget.
Why does a celebrity who once enjoyed some faint notoriety seem such a sad nonentity to us who have had no taste of fame at all?
3 Neglect
Neglect turns some to water, some to fire, and some to stone. It wears down the will of some, enkindles others to flaming resentment, and some it freezes to a glazed numbness. Witness Van Gogh, Nietzsche and Melville. ‘Too long a sacrifice,’ as Yeats wrote, ‘can make a stone of the heart.’
Some people have to tell themselves that they will live posthumously, since the unregarding world has immured them prematurely.
I resent the world still more for its rightful neglect of me than I do when it neglects me undeservedly, since I know that its rightful neglect won’t change. On good days I’m vexed that my work has not received its due. On bad days I fear that it has.
To soothe the ulcer of your bruised obscurity, think what sort of dunces the dizzy world fetes. It lifts the untalented to such heights of fame, how could its esteem be worth obtaining?
Neglect goads some people to stack up a bonfire of the little that they have in order to strike a brief flame of attention. They beggar themselves of the penny prudence that might have rescued them from beggary.
4 We exaggerate praise
The ledger of my self-commendation always shows a profit, since I take much offence that is not meant, but far more as a compliment.
We feel sure that others esteem us more than they do, though less than they ought to. Our vanity amplifies both the praise and the calumny that we receive. And though we overprice the compliments that come to us, they still seem to set our rate too low. ‘None of us,’ Colton says, ‘are so much praised or censured as we think.’
I’m surprised and elated by all applause, but it still falls short of what I looked for. When I’m made much of, I feel like I’ve been brought to the ridge of some low knoll. It both dizzies and disappoints me. I am not due this. Am I due no more than this? All toadying takes me in, though it seldom satisfies me. I have heard it all so many times before done so much more fulsomely by my own smug self. Twain quipped that compliments ‘embarrass me. I always feel that they have not said enough.’
5 Praise for the wrong reason
You need to earn the praise that you give as well as the praise that you get. You have to make yourself worthy of the high works that you commend.
We learn by admiring. So be sure to admire the right things. ‘All understanding,’ Goethe says, ‘starts with admiration.’ Though admiration may fool you with appearances, it is the one road that might lead you to the truth. You ought to praise either because you understand or in the hope of understanding. But most of the time we praise because we don’t understand or so that we won’t have to. Our praise is mere presumption. We are willing to imitate the lazy applause that all give to acknowledged masterpieces, but not to strain our minds to find out why they are worthy of it.
Unthinking praise wins a name for generosity in this self-congratulatory world, while cool comprehension plies its plain justice in vain. As Pope wrote, ‘Fools admire, but men of sense approve.’
You should admire as you should read, not much but ardently.
Contempt saves you from wasting your time. And your admirations teach you to use it in the right way.
6 Fake praise
When you win praise for performing a worthless duty you soon learn that it is well worth performing.
High-minded people may dine on the praise of a low toady, but they still hunger for an unaging lustre. As Pascal said, we long to be famous through the whole world. So why is the mouth-honour of five flunkeys enough to turn our heads?
Fake praise is good enough for me, if I trust it will last. And if a flattering semblance stays fixed, I’ll be glad to take it for fact.
Those who would excel can’t afford to admire what doesn’t deserve their admiration. But those who are on the make can’t afford not to. You learn by genuinely esteeming what merits your respect. But you please and thrive best by pretending to prize what does not. You rise in the world by lowering your standards. ‘Among the smaller duties of life,’ said Sydney Smith, ‘I hardly know of any one more important than that of not praising where praise is not due.’
7 We praise the mediocre
We can make out small and common talents with our own eyes. But we need to be taught to see great and noteworthy excellencies. We must be trained to discern which are the original minds by those whose minds are in no way original.
We dote on cheap and second-rate things. But we coldly commend the best, since we love only what is like us. We voice our awe for what is great because we have no choice. I prefer to humour slothfully the many who don’t merit it than to do arduous justice to the few who do. We hug to our hearts the beguiling frauds that have gained the world’s good report. ‘Great talents and great virtues,’ Chesterfield says, ‘will procure the respect and admiration of mankind, but it is the lesser talents which must procure you their love and affection.’
Superficial people and exploits stir us to the quick. The second-grade are a necessity, the best a mere luxury. We judge the best strictly, while we pet and indulge the tawdry and amusing.
People claim to feel awe for great things, though they have no idea why they deserve their awe. And they may know full well why the poor and broken have a claim on their sympathy, but the best they can do is sham it.
SELF-REGARDING PRAISE
8 It is ourselves that we praise
Most of us venerate nothing but more successful versions of our own self. Bierce defined admiration as ‘our polite recognition of another’s resemblance to ourselves.’ The ideal that I adore is my own self, corrected and perfected in line with the norms of the age.
What more could you wish for those whom you love than that they should turn out to be like you, though more fortunate? Parents hope that their children will grow up to be just like themselves but luckier. And they trust that they will have more luck since they have them as parents. And they groom them in their own habits of self-adoration and self-torment as the best legacy they have to pass on. But as most parents go, they are the worst luck you could have.
Procreation is an organism’s way of flattering itself, while rendering its own existence obsolescent.
9 We praise what is like us
Few of us prize any talents but the ones we believe that we possess. But we all therefore prize a swag of talents that we don’t possess.
I admire some people because I guess that they are like me. But by admiring them I come to see that they are not like me in the least. True admiration begins in a false identification of likeness, but grows to be an astonished delight in difference. But few of us know any higher way to honour great things than to remould them in our own flawed image. And we think that we do them homage when we note how like us they are.
We may espy all the traits of those whom we look down on, save how like they are to us.
I choke on the acclamation that I’m obliged to dole out to my rivals. But I lavish praise on those who are like me, in order to boost the price that my own talents will fetch. ‘We but praise ourselves in other men,’ as Pope points out. Whether complimenting or complaining, it is always our own self that we are commending.
10 Self-regarding praise
Some people are sure that their own endorsement of a thing is proof of its worth, or that their glib inattention to it is enough to show its unimportance. What value can a thing have, if it has no value for them?
We think well of others on the strength of their accidental attributes, and of ourselves on the strength of our intrinsic ones. I esteem them in parcels, but deprecate them in their entirety. And though I may fault some of my own parts, I am never less than enraptured with the whole.
I praise others no more candidly than I criticize myself. And I’m relieved when my sincere veneration of a person turns out to have been unfounded.
We might be far less warm in our admirations, if we had no chance to hold forth on them. ‘If the commending others well did not recommend ourselves,’ Halifax wrote, ‘there would be few panegyrics.’
When I praise, I preen myself on my generosity. And when I censure, I preen myself on my discrimination.
You can count on people’s admirers to pare them down to size, and in most cases it’s their own size.
11 Enthusiasm
We daub the plain face of our selfishness with our gaudy idealism. And we have to lay it on thickest where it’s most unsightly.
Real enthusiasm lays people open to discouragement, despair and madness. And they are saved solely because their zeal is so promiscuous and their illusions so faithful. But two-faced enthusiasts don’t put a cent of their own funds into their pet ventures. They know how to manoeuvre their dupes to sink their savings in them. They live on debt, which they don’t own up to or pay back. And if the price of their object slumps, then it’s the clods who lodged their faith in it that lose.
Some of our most selfless enthusiasms gain us as much as our most self-seeking schemes harm us. How much cunning there is in our naivety. And how much cold calculation there is in our heart-warming enthusiasm.
Enthusiasm is the virtue of salesmen. It makes them seem big-hearted. They hike the price of what they hawk, and then convince their chumps that they’ve got a bargain.
Disgruntled supporters may come by and by to be enthusiastic leaders. They learn to praise their loyal subordinates’ merits, which they poked fun at when they were their peers and contenders.
FLATTERY
12 Conceit can bear to flatter
My self-regard makes me averse to flattering but desirous of being flattered. And my self-interest makes me wary of being flattered but willing to flatter. My vanity can’t bear to praise those who deserve it, but my ambition stoops to applaud those who do not.
How could we bring ourselves to praise the talents of others, if we didn’t think so well of our own? And we can bear to flatter them because they are not worth flattering.
Some people gild the undeserving in order to show how dull is their clay. How much benign contempt lurks at the bottom of most compliments. We condescend when we commend.
We are more gratified by a chance to truckle to the great than they are by our truckling. Vauvenargues notes that, though the prominent are easily flattered, ‘we are still more easily flattered when in their presence.’
I am so expert in overpraising others, because I have practised so long on myself. But I never praise them as much as they would like, since I give myself all the praise I like.
13 Disguise your flattery
To flatter convincingly, you have to stay so far from the object of your homage that it is not subject to your reason, or so close that your self-interest is subject to it.
You must disguise your fawning, first from those you pay court to, so as not to rouse their distrust, then from your rivals, who would grudge you getting the start of them, and lastly from your own eyes, since it would make you blush to see what a spaniel you are. My flattery of others fools me as much as it does them.
Flattery, like fornication, can be decently done only in private between no more than two people.
Those who praise generously look jealously on their rivals when they try to do the same. ‘There is,’ Renard wrote, ‘jealousy in admiration as there is in love.’
There’s no need to make your truckling too subtle, since most people’s appetite for it is so gross. And yet you still have to use some tact to serve it up in the form that they find most flavoursome. And you need a good deal of empathy to know how to flatter people in just the way they want.
14 Self-flattery
Self’s the vilest toady of all, the ‘arch flatterer,’ as Bacon designated it. Each of us keeps a little court of fawners in constant session in our heads, who cry up all that we do. We praise our own selves so inventively yet so effortlessly, so variously yet so repetitively. Our self-flattery is fantastic but unimaginative.
How could we see through the rare and mild flattery that others deal us, when we don’t see through our own much grosser self-flattery?
We live inside a bubble blown by our own self-praise.
The most dim-witted people are never at a loss for clever pretexts on which to preen themselves.
Even in others we find self-flattery more attractive than self-knowledge.
Other people’s mirrors seem more impartial and unflattering. But our own have learnt to reflect back the image of ourselves that we want to see. How did we teach them? And there are no more gratifying mirrors than our friends or spouse. And we believe we love them, so long as they show us the image of ourselves that we want to see. ‘Whenever they can,’ Pessoa wrote, ‘they sit opposite a mirror. While talking to us, they look at themselves with infatuated eyes.’
Even the few who tastefully understate everything else grossly overstate their own success. And the unctuous terms that are so ridiculous when applied to others seem just and modest in our own case.
The sole thing that no one makes too much of is the world’s indifference to themselves.
15 Vanity and praise
Angling for praise, I find that I’m caught in a snare of small achievements.
The fortunate, who have always had such a sufficiency of adulation, quaff it down like water. But a bare thimbleful befuddles the inconspicuous like wine.
Those who give themselves the most unreserved praise still need to get the most praise from us. Why do we assume that those who crave praise must be gnawed by self-doubt, or that a narcissist must lack self-esteem, or that braggarts feel insecure, or that fanatics are prey to incertitude, or that the self-righteous are racked by their own guilt, or that ingrates feel overburdened by their debts, or that executioners are traumatized by the atrocities they commit? If only they were.
I’m never more rapt with the human race than when I’m intoxicated. And I’m seldom so intoxicated as when I’ve been plied with a draught of cheap praise.
The braying of an ass sounds as sweet as the chant of the sirens so long as it is commending me, though none but the most unfaltering hero can listen to it and not come to grief.
16 Grudging praise
I think less of others when I flatter them. Yet when they flatter me I think more of myself. I’m sure that they are slow to commend me because their commendation is forced from them by my real merit. But I’m slow to compliment them since my compliments are extorted by mere courtesy. Their praise of me is as grudging as my praise of them is gratuitous. I am loath to give them praise, since I suspect that they don’t deserve it. But they are loath to give me praise, because they know that I do. Yet I’m pleased even by plaudits that I sense I have not earned the right to.
17 I deserve the praise I get
I love to receive flattery, since I know that it tells the truth, even if the giver disbelieves it. And I can bear to spoon out flattery, because I know it lies. ‘We give others praise in which we do not believe,’ said Jean Rostand, ‘on condition that in recompense they give us praise in which we do.’ People may not be sincere in the applause that they give me, but at least they are right to give it. And how are they to know that I am due far more? Though I may not trust the praiser, I never doubt the praise. And though I may not swallow all the praise that I’m served, it tastes so good that I thirst for more.
When people flatter me, I take it that they must know me almost as well as I know myself. Unfortunately they know me all too well.
18 Credulous self-flattery
‘A man must be a fool indeed,’ Greville wrote, ‘if I think him one at the time he is applauding me.’ When we win the praise of those whose vision is bleary, we take it that our worth must shine so resplendently that it gives sight to unseeing eyes. I make much of the perspicuity of anyone who is perspicuous enough to make much of me. The most generous compliment I can pay a person is to grant that they have the talent to see how talented I am.
How could I see that people are only flattering me, when their praise sets too low a value on my real worth?
A flatterer pretends to think better of you than you pretend to think of yourself, but knows you better than you think you know yourself. The demagogue works in just such a way.
Drop a small hint, and your mark will crouch to pick up a big compliment. By flattering them tepidly, you learn how warmly they flatter themselves.
People are never more candid than when they are flattering themselves, or less convinced than when they are flattering others. Flattery is the insincerest form of imitation.
19 Flattery is met by self-flattery
We love to learn from experience and flattery, since they don’t ask us to learn anything that we don’t already know. Why does praise thrill us, when, as La Rochefoucauld points out, it reveals to us nothing new? I still long to hear a voice other than my own telling me what I tell myself each hour of the day. I’m cheaply pleased, since a mere murmur of praise echoes so thunderously my own hollow self-applause.
My self-flattery is a meal that I never get sick of. But I still like to dine out on praise from others.
Take others as seriously as they take themselves, and you’ve made a good start. Do to them as they do to themselves. That is to say, fawn, coddle, cosset and fool them. And in order to praise them, track down what they think of themselves and replay it back to them. As Lawrence wrote, ‘the things that he tells himself are nearly always pleasant, and they are lies.’ Learn to talk to them as they do to their own heart. Artists do this for us, and we dote on them for lending shape and grace to our instinctive self-acclaim.
In order to flatter some people, all you need do is shut up and leave the field open for them to flatter themselves. They’ll lay it on as thick as they like in just the right places.