Someone recently told me that “protect your peace” and “your inner peace is the most sacred thing you have” are common memes among Tik Tok influencers. My first thought was, That’s great. They’re catching on. After all, I’ve been saying virtually the same thing for years.
Then I read the article in which my friend found out about those memes. It was written by New York Times business reporter Emma Goldberg (no relation). I was taken aback by the title: ”Is Today’s Self-Help Teaching Everyone to Be a Jerk?” and dismayed by the content.
The piece was about the self-help marketplace as a whole, not just Tik Tok influencers, and the tone was cautionary. Apparently, megaselling books such as The Courage to Be Disliked and The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck are encouraging a kind of self-absorbed “Gotta be me” approach to life in which inner peace is found by setting boundaries. As the reporter puts it, “They tell readers not to worry so much about letting people down, not to answer those calls from aggravating friends, not to be afraid of being the villain.”
I’m all for boundaries, but merely asserting one’s self-sovereignty and distancing oneself from annoying people can produce, at best, a minor league version of the deep inner peace commended by the seers of all spiritual traditions. Ending toxic relationships and being true to yourself is good advice. It’s liberating, and the absence of aggravation can indeed provide relief that feels a lot like peace—but not what the Bible calls the peace that surpasses understanding or the profound stillness the yogis equate with ananda, or bliss.
Why settle for a weak inner peace when spiritual insights from every imaginable source are literally at our fingertips and we have ready access to methods for accessing the silent sanctuary at the core of our Being? One hopes that the time people save by setting boundaries and worrying about pleasing others—as influencers advise—will be used for the higher purpose of finding real peace rather than in trivial pursuits.
But there’s another point Emma Goldberg makes in that article. If her reporting is correct (I haven’t read the books she references and have never been on Tik Tok), the aggressive self-protection ethic is being used to justify social indifference—"ignoring the apparent travails of others” in her words, hence the “teaching everyone to be a jerk” in the article’s title.
Sure, we all have to turn off the news from time to time. Yes, we can’t let ourselves get overwhelmed by heartbreak when witnessing the world’s suffering. We absolutely have to set limits on our caring, even with those we love. But true inner peace is a seedbed for compassion. Becoming, in the Bhagavad Gita’s famous metaphor, like a flame in a windless place enhances our capacity to be of service to others and gives us the strength and stability to be helpful without sacrificing our equanimity.
I should note that there’s nothing new about this critique except that the invention of social media makes every phenomenon more widespread and, in some cases, more insidious. After all, the 1970s were labeled "The Me Decade," and the young baby boomers of the era were called “The Me Generation.” Christopher Lasch’s 1979 megaseller, The Culture of Narcissism, lambasted the decade’s individualistic self-absorption. And here we are, with the quintessential self-absorbed 70s narcissist serving as national role model.
Every generation, it seems, needs to learn the same lessons, so it’s a good thing the insights of history’s greatest sages are timeless. Those of us who have absorbed that wisdom, however imperfectly, have a responsibility to (politely) share it with those with ears to hear. Maybe in that way self-protection will one day evolve to Self-realization.