Scales

If you’ve read some of my past postings you would know that I often see the world in terms of continua. Recently I had a discussion with the young men I work with in church (the priests quorum) about what self-reliance means. We spoke in terms of temporal self-reliance (making a living) and spiritual self-reliance (building one’s faith). In the conversation it seemed like maybe a self-reliance scale might correlate with a pride scale.
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The first scale might look like this:

​Realistically, nobody is on either end of this scale. The idea of being “self-sufficient” in my opinion is equivalent to the belief that someone can be completely independent. I would say there is no such thing. It is true that we can work and earn a living. We can cover all our needs by using the money we earn to buy what we need. That is still not completely self-sufficient. We have to buy stuff. We don’t make our own clothes. If we do make some of our own clothes we still would have to buy the cloth, or at least the raw materials to make the cloth. We don’t grow our own vegetables year around. We buy them, or most of them. We didn’t personally build our own homes. Even if we did, we didn’t create the materials needed to build the home. You get the point. We can be self-reliant in that we do all we can do, but in virtually every aspect of life we become dependent on someone else to provide something.

The greatest example of this interdependence issue would be on the spiritual side. Nobody receives salvation without the Savior. We cannot do it on our own. We show faith by doing all we can. Then we acknowledge where we fall short and depend on the Atonement of Jesus Christ to lift us the rest of the way.

I would argue our level of interdependence is simply a measure of how much we can do for ourselves in balance with how much we have to depend on others. Some people will have more challenges in life and be closer to the dependent side of the scale. Others might land towards the more independent side of the scale. I would also argue, regardless where we fall on this scale, so long as we do all within our power to sustain ourselves, however limited that might be, then we are being self-reliant. Self-reliance is less a measure of our independence so much as it is a measure of our effort to put ourselves as far to the right of this scale as we can, given our individual limitations. Nobody gets all the way to complete independence. We should do what we can to match our self-reliance efforts with our interdependence capability.

​The second scale might look like this:

​A correlation could exist between these two scales in several complicated ways.

A person could believe they have limitations beyond their control. This could lead them toward discouragement wishing they were not as limited, and more like “normal” people. It could also lead them to self-justify in self-limiting if the limit is perceived and not real. Low expectation has kept many from better levels of self-reliance.

A person could actually have limitations beyond their control (in fact we all do). As with perceived limitations, discouragement can be an outcome for the same reasons.

A person with either perceived or actual limitations who feel they are living up to that level are perhaps less likely to be discouraged to the degree that they accept the level of dependence they have.

There are exact opposing issues on the pride side of the confidence scale. To the degree a person recognizes or perceives their dependence, they might tend away from the extreme of the pride side of the scale.

Just like self-reliance requires both a true understanding of interdependence and an effort to do all in one’s power to do what they can to match efforts with ability, so to, having a true understanding of interdependence and effort level should lead to appropriate level of self-confidence. Getting too far out of balance leads towards discouragement or pride. Either could be the result of an unrealistic perspective of one’s level of interdependence on others and/or an unrealistic perspective of one’s level of effort toward true self-reliance.

I think the key to the relationship between the two scales is to recognize that there may be correlation and causation, or not. The cause of pride or discouragement is when the perceived interdependence does not match actual interdependence. If we believe there is less interdependence than there actually is, we might tend toward pride. If we believe there is more interdependence than there actually is, we might tend toward discouragement. If our level of interdependence correlates with our perception of interdependence, then we are being self-reliant and are more likely to have self-confidence.