Irza Fidah's Key Ideas from The Courage to Be Disliked
by Ichiro Kishimi, Fumitake Koga

There are two objectives for behavior:

• To be self-reliant.
• To live in harmony with society.

And there are two objectives for the psychology that sup- ports these behaviors:

• The consciousness that I have the ability.
• The consciousness that people are my comrades.

Educators and leaders must ascertain the children’s goals instead of focusing only on their actions.

Youth: But if you don’t praise them at that point, they’ll lose their drive and turn into children who don’t do anything at all. And in some cases, they’ll start engaging in improper behavior, won’t they?

Philosopher: No. You teach them continually that they have worth, even if they are not “special,” by showing them respect.

Youth: Concretely speaking, how do you do that?

Philosopher: Instead of focusing on whenever a child does some “good thing,” turn your attention to the smaller everyday details of their words and actions. And then focus on and sympathize with that person’s concerns.

Philosopher: The fifth stage of problem behavior is “proof of incompetence.”

Youth: Proof of incompetence?

Philosopher: That’s right. Here, please try to think about it as if it were you yourself. Though you have taken all sorts of steps to ensure that you will be treated as a “special being,” none of them is going as planned. Your parents and teachers, and even your classmates, are not hating you as you wish them to. You cannot find a “place to be” in either the classroom or at home.

The objective of education is “self-reliance.” And the educator is a “counselor.”

Youth: A sickness of the entire classroom?

Philosopher: Yes, it is a disease called the principle of competition. What is needed of educators is to look at the community in which the problem behavior is occurring, not at the individual who is engaging in it. And then, instead of attempting to treat the individual, to go about treating the community itself.

Adlerian psychology is a horizontal relationship–based “psychology of democracy.”

By saving another person, one tries to be saved oneself. By passing oneself off as a kind of savior, one attempts to realize one’s own worth. This is one form of the superiority complex that people who cannot dispel their feelings of inferiority often fall into, and is generally referred to as a “messiah complex.” It is a mental perversion of wanting to be a messiah, a savior of others.

Philosopher: Being self-centered does not mean looking only at oneself because one “likes oneself.” In actuality, the opposite is the case, and it is because one is unable to accept oneself as one is, and because one is constantly beset with anxiety, that one has concern only for oneself.

Youth: So, you’re saying that because I “hate myself,” I look only at myself!?

Philosopher: Yes, that’s right.

Philosopher: Self-reliance is “breaking away from self- centeredness.”

Youth: … !!

Philosopher: This is why Adler called community feeling “social interest,” and also referred to it as concern for soci- ety and concern for others. We have to get past our obsti- nate self-centeredness and stop trying to be the center of the world. One has to break away from “me.” One has to break away from one’s pampered childhood lifestyle.

Philosopher: Marriage is not a matter of choosing a “target.” It is a matter of choosing one’s way of living.

Youth: Choosing a way of living! Then, the “target” can be anyone?

Philosopher: Ultimately, yes.

Youth: Don’t mess around!! Who would ever recognize such a statement? Retract that, retract it right away!!

Philosopher: I recognize that this is a view that is met with a great deal of opposition. But we are able to love anyone.

Of course, there are many people who felt “destiny” on meeting someone and decided to get married in accordance with that intuition. But that is not a previously established destiny. It is only that one decided to believe it was destiny. As Fromm remarked, “Loving someone is not simply an intense emotion. It is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise.” It doesn’t matter how the meeting happens, if one makes the firm decision to build real love from that point, and one confronts the “task accomplished by two people.” Love is possible with any partner.

Youth: Love and marriage are the dance that two people make together. 

Philosopher: You are standing now at the edge of the dance floor of life and watching other people dance. You are assuming that “there couldn’t be anyone who would dance with someone like me,” while in your heart you are waiting impatiently for your “destined one” to reach their hand out to you. You are doing everything you can to endure and to protect yourself, so that you do not feel any more miserable than you do already, and so that you do not begin to dislike yourself.

 There is one thing that you should do. Take the hand of the person beside you and try to do the best dance that you can possibly do in that moment. Your destiny will start from there.