Upbringing as the Substitution of the Meaning of Action with Social Approval

The Initial Formula

One common formula of upbringing goes as follows:

If you want people to think well of you, behave properly: be well-mannered, speak politely, and stay calm.

At first glance, this seems to be a set of practical recommendations about behavior among other people. A child is told how to speak, how to avoid rudeness, how to make a favorable impression, and how not to provoke disapproval.

Yet the formula contains something far more consequential. It does not merely propose certain means. It establishes the goal against which those means are to be evaluated.

Instead of first investigating what is happening between people, what is true and significant in what is happening, what it means to respect another person, and why one should act in this particular way at all, a goal is offered as already given: to obtain a positive evaluation from those around you.

The initial formula can be written as follows:

G₁: “If you want people to think well of you, behave properly.”

But it can be transformed radically:

G₂: “If you want people to think well of you, you’re a moron.”

The second formula is a deliberate provocation. It does not diagnose anyone’s intellectual abilities, nor does it assert that every desire for recognition indicates stupidity. Its content lies at another level: it refuses to treat other people’s approval as a self-evident supreme goal around which one must organize one’s own action.

Crucially, the second formula does not dispute the instructions for obtaining approval. It questions the very necessity of seeking approval.

That is the object of this inquiry.

1. An Entire Construction Is Hidden in the Initial Formula

Consider a sequence that usually goes unnoticed because attention is focused on the words “behave properly.”

1. A desired result is presupposed: other people should think well of the person.
2. A criterion is established: behavior is considered correct if it increases the likelihood of that result.
3. Means are proposed: politeness, calmness, propriety, demonstrations of agreement, and compliance with accepted rules.
4. An external observer is introduced: the success of an action is determined by the evaluation of those in whose presence the person acts.
5. External evaluation acquires the status of a ground: for its sake, one is encouraged to change not only the outward presentation of speech but also the very mode of participation in what is happening.

The hidden premise is located in the first point. Why, precisely, should the positive evaluation of those around us be a desirable result? Who established its priority? Under what conditions does it matter? What happens when the pursuit of positive evaluation conflicts with a lie that has been discovered, the need to object, the need to defend someone else, or the need to preserve an essential distinction?

Until these questions are asked, the means and the goal appear to form a single indisputable requirement.

A person hears, “Behave politely.” But together with this instruction they imperceptibly accept the answer to another question: “What for?”

Thus upbringing can transmit not only a form of behavior but also an unexamined hierarchy of goals.

2. The Main Operation: The Goal Is Presented as Self-Evident

The ordinary debate about upbringing concerns means:

• Should one raise one’s voice?
• Is it necessary to remain calm?
• Can one speak directly about something unpleasant?
• Should one agree for the sake of maintaining good relations?
• Would it be better to choose a softer formulation?

Yet all these questions are secondary to the question of the goal.

If the goal really is to create a favorable impression, one can discuss which actions work best toward achieving it. In that case, calm speech, a smile, and politeness can be perfectly rational instruments.

However, the rationality of a means relative to a chosen goal does not justify the goal itself.

The fact that certain behavior helps people like you does not entail that the pursuit of being liked should determine your behavior.

This distinction can be expressed formally:

• “Action A contributes to achieving goal G” is an assertion about the relationship between means and goal.
• “The subject should pursue goal G” is a separate assertion about the significance of the goal itself.

The first does not prove the second.

It is precisely the transition from the first to the second that often remains hidden. The goal is included in the instruction in advance, and its possible rejection is treated as a violation of the instruction itself.

The mechanism of upbringing becomes dogmatic when a goal chosen by someone ceases to be presented as a choice and is transformed into an impersonal “this is how it must be.”

3. Reversing the Formula: Rejecting the Goal, Not Failing to Know the Means

The meaning of the radical phrase “If you want people to think well of you, you’re a moron” is determined by its relation to the initial formula.

In the ordinary construction, the question sounds like this:

Do you know how to behave so that people will think well of you?

In the new construction, another question emerges:

Why did you decide in the first place that people must think well of you?

These are two different objects of inquiry.

The first question tests mastery of a social technique. The second investigates the ground for applying it.

A person can know that:

• calm speech is often received more favorably than harsh speech;
• observing etiquette can reduce the likelihood of condemnation;
• outward agreement makes it possible to avoid an open dispute;
• displaying friendliness can facilitate acceptance into a group;
• pointing directly to a contradiction may provoke rejection.

Knowing all these regularities does not oblige the person to place positive evaluation from others above other goals.

They can understand the mechanism and refuse to use it in a particular situation.

Therefore, a subject who does not seek approval is not necessarily a person who is unable to obtain it. A fundamentally different case is possible: the subject understands how to obtain approval but does not consider obtaining it a meaningful result of their action.

The substantive reversal takes place before the choice of means.

4. Substituting an Inability to Follow a Rule for a Rejection of the Goal

A characteristic error of interpretation becomes visible here.

An observer sees another person behave in a way that is not conducive to social approval. If the observer already considers approval a natural and mandatory goal, they explain the deviation as a deficiency in the other person:

• “He doesn’t understand how to communicate properly.”
• “He was never taught how to behave.”
• “He can’t control himself.”
• “He doesn’t know the most elementary rules.”
• “He doesn’t understand that people will think badly of him if he behaves that way.”

But none of these conclusions follows from the single fact of failing to conform to a social norm.

At least several distinct relations to the rule are possible:

Relation to the rule	Knowledge of the mechanism	Goal of obtaining approval	Action
Rule not mastered	The mechanism is unknown	May be present	The person fails to achieve the expected result
Instrumental compliance	The mechanism is known	Present	The person chooses an approved form
Conscious rejection of the goal	The mechanism is known	Rejected within this relation	The person does not subordinate their action to external evaluation
Independent choice of the same form	The mechanism is known	Not decisive	The person acts politely or calmly for other reasons

Consequently, outward bad manners do not establish a lack of understanding, and outward good manners do not establish meaningfulness.

Particularly revealing is the error of responding to the substantive objection “I don’t need people to think well of me” by explaining once again how to get people to think well of you. The interlocutors are discussing different questions. One is examining the ground of the goal, while the other continues to instruct them on achieving it.

The result is that disagreement with the goal is presented as an inability to perform the means.

5. Upbringing as Training to Live Under the Gaze of an External Observer

The formula “behave in such a way that people think well of you” changes the subject’s position in relation to their own activity.

In place of the direct question:

What is happening right now? How do I relate to it? What do I consider significant? Why should I act in this particular way?

another question appears:

How will I be judged if I act this way?

Other people become not only participants in what is happening together, with their own questions and distinctions, but also an authority on whose presumed judgment the choice of one’s own action depends.

The person begins to see themselves through the eyes of an imagined external observer. They evaluate not only what they do, but also how their action will appear. Gradually, the presentation of the action may acquire greater weight than its content.

The following sequence becomes possible:

The subject encounters reality
    ↓
Discovers a relation, question, contradiction,
or necessity for action
    ↓
An external criterion is introduced:
“What will people think of me?”
    ↓
The original content is evaluated according
to its social acceptability
    ↓
The action is reorganized to correspond
to the anticipated evaluation
    ↓
The socially approved form takes priority
over the original meaning

This sequence does not describe every form of upbringing or every act of politeness. It reveals a particular mechanism of substitution that arises when other people’s evaluation starts directing action instead of the subject’s own examination of what is happening.

6. A Relation to the Other Is Replaced by Impression Management

When interacting with another person, the subject can be oriented toward that person’s actual content: hearing an objection, answering a question, respecting a boundary, investigating a contradiction, acknowledging an action and its consequences.

But when action is subordinated to social evaluation, another activity appears: creating an impression of one’s own relation.

These are different things.

One can sincerely disagree and express that disagreement politely. One can respect another person and nevertheless object sharply. One can speak calmly because it makes it easier to express a thought precisely. In all these cases, form may remain an instrument of the relation.

Something different arises when the form is produced so that an observer will attribute to the subject a quality that the form itself does not establish: goodwill, respect, being right, confidence, or moral superiority.

The person may then be occupied not with examining what the other actually said, but with maintaining the image of someone who “behaves properly.”

Orientation toward reality is replaced by orientation toward the image of oneself in other people’s eyes.

At the limit, it is precisely the image that becomes the object of defense: what matters is no longer what happened, but making sure that no one can say the person behaved improperly.

7. Calmness: A Possible Means, but Not Independent Evidence of Being Right

Calmness is particularly convenient for this substitution because it can be observed externally and evaluated socially.

Nevertheless, several independent distinctions must be preserved:

1. A calm state is an actual way of experiencing what is happening.
2. A calm manner of speech is a form of expression that may coincide with the state or differ from it.
3. Meaningfulness of action concerns the presence of a relation to the content of what is happening and to the grounds of the action.
4. Correctness of an assertion concerns whether what is said corresponds to the subject matter under investigation.
5. Responsibility is a relation to one’s own words, actions, and their consequences.

None of these distinctions is reducible to another.

A calm tone does not prove that someone is right. A sharp tone does not prove that they are mistaken. The ability not to shout does not guarantee that the person has understood an objection. An emotional response does not nullify the content of what was said.

When, after a contradiction has been presented, the conversation is redirected to the question “Why are you angry?”, a shift in the object of discussion may occur. Instead of investigating the contradiction, the emotional form of the person who raised it is evaluated.

A discussion of emotion can be independent and justified. Substitution occurs when it is used instead of answering the original question.

It is especially important that refusing to make calmness an unconditional goal does not mean necessarily choosing anger. The subject may remain calm or speak sharply depending on the situation and their own grounds. The object of criticism is not calmness but its absolutization as the supreme criterion of the quality of a person and their actions.

8. How Social Evaluation Begins to Replace Truth

Imagine a situation: one participant makes a contradictory assertion, and another discovers the contradiction and demands that it be examined.

Two different objects of conversation are possible.

Investigation of content:

• What was asserted?
• What grounds were provided?
• Where did the contradiction arise?
• Is it acknowledged, or is a resolution proposed?
• How will subsequent action change after the contradiction is discovered?

Investigation of social form:

• Who spoke more calmly?
• Who appeared more well-mannered?
• Who raised their voice first?
• Who spoiled the atmosphere?
• Whom do the people around them feel more comfortable talking to?

The second set of questions is not meaningless. But it does not answer the questions in the first set.

If the second set is used to settle the first, the object of inquiry is replaced: instead of establishing what happened, one establishes who appeared more socially acceptable.

It is precisely here that the formula of upbringing acquires an epistemic consequence. A socially approved form begins to function as though it were evidence of truth, and a socially disapproved form as though it were a refutation of it.

Approval is a fact about other people’s relation to the subject; it is not, in itself, proof that the content of the subject’s words is true.

9. What Exactly the Formula of Upbringing Does to the Subject

The mechanism can be broken down into several operations.

9.1. Establishing the Goal

The subject is encouraged to seek a situation in which the people around them think well of them. The goal is not presented as a separate choice that needs examination.

9.2. Attributing Naturalness to the Goal

The desire to obtain approval is considered so obvious that its absence is interpreted as a deviation rather than as another possible position.

9.3. Connecting the Goal to Rules

Calmness, politeness, and conformity to expectations are declared necessary signs of correct behavior because they can maintain a favorable impression.

9.4. Moving the Criterion of Action Outside the Subject

The measure of an action becomes other people’s evaluation of it. The subject’s own relation to what is happening loses priority in the decision about how to act.

9.5. Reducing Disagreement to Deficiency

If the subject rejects the goal, they are taught how to follow the rule again, because it is presumed that they cannot do it or do not understand. A rejection of a value is mistakenly transformed into a defect of skill.

9.6. Consolidating the Form

A person can learn to produce the desired impression flawlessly without examining why this result should determine their actions. In that case, the rule is reproduced, while the question of its ground is closed.

This is not an assertion that every well-mannered person necessarily performs all six operations. It describes a mechanism that becomes visible in a particular formula of upbringing and its application.

10. The Desire for Recognition Is Not Identical to Subordination to Recognition

It is necessary not to turn the distinction identified here into a new dogma.

Other people’s positive evaluation sometimes genuinely matters. A person may seek to earn trust for cooperation, obtain recognition for work performed, be heard, establish friendships, or correct a false impression of themselves.

In these cases, external recognition may be part of another activity and sometimes a necessary condition for it.

But the question remains: what place does recognition occupy in the hierarchy of goals, and is the subject capable of questioning its significance?

The following relations are different:

• “I want to be understood because I want to communicate particular content.”
• “I want to be trusted because without trust we cannot work together.”
• “I want to be approved of even if that requires concealing my actual relation or abandoning an essential distinction.”
• “I want people to think well of me because a positive evaluation is, in itself, a measure of whether my behavior is correct.”

In the first cases, the positive relation of others is connected with a substantive task. In the latter cases, it may become an independent and determining goal.

The object of criticism is therefore not the desire for recognition in general, but the transformation of recognition into an unconditional criterion of action.

11. Outwardly Identical Behavior: Different Grounds

Suppose two people speak calmly and politely.

The first does so because they want to avoid condemnation. The second does so because, in the particular situation, calm speech allows them to express disagreement more precisely, avoid losing the object of inquiry, or avoid causing unnecessary harm.

The outward form coincides. The grounds differ.

Now suppose a third person sharply points to a contradiction. One can examine the accuracy of their assertions, the consequences of the chosen form, and whether another action was possible. But one cannot infer from sharpness alone that they do not know the rules of politeness or cannot behave differently.

This reveals a fundamental asymmetry between observed behavior and its explanation:

The goal for which a subject performed an action cannot be directly inferred from the form of that action.

To make such an inference, one must examine the context, the history of distinctions, the subject’s words, and their subsequent actions. Even the subject’s own acknowledgment does not make investigation unnecessary: the declared goal and the relation actually enacted may diverge.

12. Distinguishing the Teaching of a Capacity from Training for Approval

Another distinction can be drawn here.

Teaching a capacity provides a person with a new instrument: they learn how communication works, what consequences words may have, how to express disagreement, how to preserve precision in conflict, and how to take another person into account.

Upbringing oriented exclusively toward approval reinforces the link between action and anticipated evaluation: act in such a way that others consider you a good person.

The first expands the space of possible actions available to the subject. The second can narrow it to actions permitted by an imagined observer.

These are not necessarily two isolated educational institutions. They may coexist in actual upbringing. The distinction is needed to see what exactly is being taught in a particular episode: how to use an instrument or how to subordinate one’s own activity to an external criterion.

A child can be taught to speak politely without declaring someone else’s approval the highest ground of politeness. The value of calmness can be explained without turning anger into evidence of inferiority. The consequences of harsh words can be discussed without closing the very question of justice, contradiction, or responsibility.

Conversely, flawless observance of a ritual can be achieved without ever touching the child’s actual relation to another person.

13. Subjecthood Is Not Reducible to the Rejection of Social Rules

It would be a mistake to turn the distinction discovered here into an opposite obligation: “always behave contrary to expectations.”

That would create a new form of dependence, only with a negative sign. Acting according to the rule “never be liked by people” can enclose the subject within a relation to other people’s evaluation just as much as the rule “always be liked by people.”

Subjecthood does not lie in always agreeing or always arguing, always being calm or always expressing anger, always observing etiquette or always violating it.

It manifests itself in the possibility of distinguishing goals, grounds, and the boundaries of the applicability of forms, without taking any of them to be the final measure of reality.

A subject may want to make a favorable impression and do so. They may refuse. They may change their decision. They may discover that a goal they previously chose concealed another task. Neither the positive nor the negative reaction of other people removes the need to examine the content of the action.

Therefore, the essential alternative to the initial formula is not “To be free, behave rudely.”

It is something else:

“Before deciding how to obtain approval, find out why you intend to seek it and what you are prepared to stop distinguishing for its sake.”

14. Why Rejecting the Initial Formula Looks Like a Lack of Understanding

If a person regards social approval as an obvious good, they may perceive every failure to obtain it solely as a failure.

Within that model, only simple explanations are available:

• the subject does not know the rule;
• the subject is insufficiently well-mannered;
• the subject cannot control their behavior;
• the subject does not understand the consequences.

But another possibility is absent from that model: the subject knows the rule, understands the consequences, and does not choose the proposed goal.

Thus the limit does not necessarily lie in the knowledge of the person who refuses. It may lie in the range of alternatives admitted by the person evaluating the refusal.

In that case, the phrase “You just don’t understand how to behave” may mean: “I do not consider the possibility that you understood and disagreed with the goal itself.”

This is not a dispute between two ways of attaining one goal. It is a collision between a goal taken as self-evident and the act of calling that goal into question.

15. Scheme of the Two Formulas

FORMULA OF SOCIAL APPROVAL

Goal G is accepted in advance:
“People should think well of me”
                  ↓
Selection of means:
politeness / calmness / propriety / conformity
                  ↓
Evaluation of success:
“What did people think of me?”
                  ↓
Risk of substitution:
the content of the action is evaluated
through the impression it creates


FORMULA OF INVESTIGATING THE GOAL

Goal G is presented:
“I want people to think well of me”
                  ↓
Questioning the ground:
“Why do I want this?”
                  ↓
Investigation of the relation:
“What am I doing, and what might I lose
for the sake of approval?”
                  ↓
Subject's choice:
accept G / limit G / reject G /
choose another goal / reconsider the formulation
                  ↓
Selection of the form of action in relation
to the actual meaning of what is happening

The distinction is not that one scheme necessarily leads to politeness and the other to conflict.

The distinction lies elsewhere: in the first scheme, the goal has already been determined before investigation; in the second, the goal itself becomes the object of investigation.

16. Practical Questions for Detecting the Substitution

When confronted with a demand to “behave properly,” it is useful to separate several questions.

1. What exactly is being proposed? To stay calm, speak softly, avoid arguing, agree, or refrain from expressing a particular thought?
2. For what purpose is it proposed? For understanding, safety, prevention of specific harm, maintenance of cooperation, or simply to look like a good person?
3. Who established this goal, and why should it have priority?
4. Which distinctions will disappear if the rule is followed? For example, lies and truth, agreement and the appearance of agreement, respect and a ritual of politeness.
5. What happens if the subject understands the mechanism but does not accept the goal? Will their position be recognized as possible or declared an incapacity?
6. Can a change of form genuinely help the original task, or will it merely remove signs of conflict that are unpleasant to the observer?
7. Does the subject matter of the conversation remain open for investigation after the demand for politeness and calmness has been made?

These questions make it possible to avoid substituting an assessment of a relation’s outward acceptability for the actual relation.

17. Central Conclusion

The formula “If you want people to think well of you, behave properly” contains more than an instruction about behavior. It can establish social approval as the initial goal, which the subject is no longer invited to investigate.

The radical counter-formula “If you want people to think well of you, you’re a moron” is valuable here precisely as a rupture of this hidden construction. It cancels the supposed self-evidence of the goal and returns the question to the place where it was closed: why should I organize my own action around how others will think of me at all?

Refusing to seek approval does not entail ignorance of rules. Knowing the rules does not entail a duty to apply them for approval. Following rules does not entail understanding the meaning of an action. Breaking rules does not entail the absence of such understanding.

The fundamental substitution takes place when a person stops investigating what they are doing and why, and their action begins to be determined by what impression of them it will produce.

The task of subject-oriented upbringing, within the framework of this distinction, is not to destroy rules or replace politeness with rudeness. It is to avoid handing a child someone else’s evaluation as the final source of the meaning of their own actions.

A person can be taught how to be approved of, without ever raising the question why they should seek approval.

It is precisely this omitted question that changes the entire construction.

Related Materials

• Rule, the Subject’s Meaningful Movement, and the Moment of Transparency of Action — on the difference between knowing a rule, applying it, and absolutizing it.
• The Subject’s Relation to Their Own Activity — on the difference between the subject’s own result of action and recognition by others.
• Subjecthood and Relations — on the relation to reality and the possibility of revising a form of understanding.
• Politeness as a Form of Concealment and Substitution of the Relation — on distinguishing the form of communication from the actual relation.
• Defensive Mode: Replacing Meaningful Conversation with Defense of a Position — on how a defensive form excludes the content of a conversation.
• Closing a Question as a Defect of Thinking — on premature certainty and the exclusion of alternatives.