"Five good things," or how a sort-of obscure feminist theory helped me find myself in others
“People in rooms together trying to do stuff.”
As a graduate research student, you get asked approximately 5,000 times a day what your research is “about.”
This is always an off-putting question, partly because it makes you sound like some sort of grown-up (something you never really feel like as a research student), and partly because the honest answer is usually: “I have no idea, maybe nothing?”
When you do try to explain your research, you’re often met with glazed-over eyes and slow nods — not because the person asking is too stupid to understand, but because they’re smart enough to recognize almost immediately that they don’t actually care about the answer and would have rather just not asked it, and so they know the best course of action is to just let you get your reply out and then quickly change the subject.
Research, it turns out, is a lot like the dream you had last night. Really interesting and meaningful for you, but no one wants to hear you explain it over breakfast.
And so in recent weeks I’ve settled on the eight-word explanation at the top of this post whenever someone asks what I’m researching:
“People in rooms together trying to do stuff.”
It’s accurate, it’s straightforward, yet it’s vague enough that it doesn’t tend to inspire follow-ups.
But, like the dream I had last night in which aliens moved the moon, it absolutely fascinates me. Why?
It turns out that “people in rooms together trying to do stuff” describes the entire history of human evolution, development, culture, and society. Sure, the “rooms” were actually just caves for a lot of that history until we graduated to actual rooms. But the point stands.
If I were to summarize the basic overarching through-line of psychology research over the last few decades, it would look a little something like this:
“People start out as dumb useless babies that learn from adults until they’re smart and independent and don’t need help anymore.”
Then:
“Okay, social interactions still influence us as adults. Friends = good.”
Then:
“Turns out social relationships are actually super important for the human experience generally.”
Then, finally:
“People are not people without other people.”
The lockdowns of COVID-19 were so distressing not because they stripped us of our cultural, national, racial, or professional identities. They stripped us of our relational identities — who we are based on who is around us. Human beings don’t do relationships. We have relationships, the way trees have bark. Relationships are not a behavior. They’re a trait. Isolation from that trait makes us inhuman. It’s no wonder that studies of solitary confinement in incarcerated people show that the experience is as distressing as being physically tortured.
The fact that I’m American influences me. The fact that I’m socio-economically middle-class influences me. The fact that I’m a white dude influences me. The fact that I live in Australia influences me. But nothing influences me like the day-in, day-out enviro-social setting I occupy: the physical place I am, the people I’m there with, and what we’re doing there together.
People in rooms together trying to do stuff.
Since I started this whole research process, I’ve been struggling to identify a framework that would help me understand what being in rooms together with people does to us. How it shapes us and changes us — and how we can in shape and change the ways it shapes and changes us.
Then I came across the work of Jean Baker Miller.
See, back in the 1970s, Jean Baker Miller looked around at the current state of psychology research and thought — hey, this all seems to be centered around understanding one very specific type of person.
(Hint: it’s the type of person who has a penis.)
Baker Miller argued that the prevailing psychological theories of the time, centered around growing independence and personal mastery as the key signs of flourishing, didn’t really align with what she knew about most women. That is, that they don’t slowly develop away from interdependence, but rather through interdependence. For women, she said, relationships aren’t training wheels on the path to personal growth — they’re the whole damn bike.
Over time, Baker Miller and those who follow her school of thought developed relational-cultural theory to argue that actually, this isn’t just true of women. It’s true of people generally. Everybody. Who we are is shaped by our relationships with others. Failing to understand that makes us all miserable.
Personally, I spent 30 of my 32 years following the training wheels method. Needing help, relying on people, that was fine — but once you get going, they’re really only going to slow you down. Relationships support us, I thought. But they should never define us. If they do, we’re less of ourselves. If too much of me comes from other people, then where’s the me?
It was that kind of Western individualist male goofiness, writ large across all of society, that Baker Miller was talking about.
If you want to really understand how ahead-of-her-time Baker Miller was, check out the following quote. It’s insane how accurate it is in describing our current social landscape, despite the fact that she wrote it in 1976:
Practically everyone now bemoans Western man's sense of alienation, lack of community, and inability to find ways of organizing society for human ends. We have reached the end of the road that is built on the set of traits held out for male identity-advance at any cost, pay any price, drive out all competitors, and kill them if necessary…
…It now seems clear we have arrived at a point from which we must seek a basis of faith in connection—and not only faith but recognition that it is a requirement for the existence of human beings. The basis for what seem the absolutely essential next steps in Western history if we are to survive is already available.
I mean, come on. JBM was cooking.
But Jean and her crew weren’t happy to just point out how messed up things were. They helpfully outlined the kind of relationships that were most likely to foster growth. They found that these mutually growth-fostering relationships had some key traits in common, what Jean called the “five good things.”
A sense of zest
Clarity about oneself, the other and the relationship
A sense of personal worth
The capacity to be creative and productive
The desire for more connection
The moment I read that list, I thought to myself — that’s the stuff. That’s something I could spend the rest of my life reading about and trying to figure out.
Because that list doesn’t just describe the best kinds of relationships. It describes the best kinds of environments where people do anything.
Imagine that list describing, say, a classroom:
A sense of zest
Clarity about oneself, the other and the relationship
A sense of personal worth
The capacity to be creative and productive
The desire for more connection
That looks like a description of the perfect classroom.
What about a work setting? Say you’re a manager or team leader, and you’re looking for a list of ways you can make your workplace a happier, more productive place to work together:
A sense of zest
Clarity about oneself, the other and the relationship
A sense of personal worth
The capacity to be creative and productive
The desire for more connection
If you haven’t noticed, I’m obsessed with the “five things.”
And so I’m following the obsession. I want to understand that list. I want to apply that list places where it hasn’t been applied yet. I want to be that list. If someone said I bring a “sense of zest” to any setting, then that’s about the highest praise I could possibly get. Is “zest” an extremely old-timey word? Sure. Call it “hype” if you want. Or “vibez.” I don’t care.
The point is, relationships aren’t what we need. In a sense, they’re what we are. So that’s what I want to understand.
It’s what the alien in my dream last night would want.