The Rise of Show Vulnerability

What does “vulnerable” mean, and are we hypocrites about it?

I was in two minds about posting this. I wrote it a few of weeks ago and was worried it came across as a bit pessimistic and it is definitely the outcome of re-reading Notes From Underground a lot for an upcoming double-length video. But, in the spirit of the post, I thought I ought to do so anyway.

So, enjoy :)

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By nature I am not a cynical person at all. If anything, I tend towards naive optimism. And yet there is something that always puts me in a slightly cynical frame of mine, and it is the discourse around “vulnerability” and “being vulnerable”. Partly because it sometimes feels like a big societal conjuring trick. On the one hand, we are told to “be vulnerable” especially with our nearest and dearest, and to de-stigmatise vulnerability. But on the other, this almost seems like a contradiction in terms. To be vulnerable is to open yourself up to harm. It is to show an aspect of yourself that you know stands a fair chance at being rejected. This means that de-stigmatising vulnerability is conceptually in tension. The minute something becomes properly de-stigmatised, it thereby becomes something you can no longer be “vulnerable” about.

Take crying for example. I am a man who does not particularly struggle with crying. Many of my books have tearstains (though the ones on my Model Theory textbook are more from strain than from sentiment), and one of my friends will always recount my blubbering reaction to Aragorn telling the four Hobbits that they “bow to no one”. As a result, I always thought I was quite good at being vulnerable. Upon reflection, I think this was something akin to spiritual pride. “Look at me” my inner voice seemed to boom, “aren’t I oh-so-modern, being all vulnerable in front of my friends, family, and lovers”.

The great irony is that I felt okay crying not because I was good at being vulnerable, but because among the people I know, it is not particularly frowned upon. I grew up in quite an emotionally expressive household. I have seen most of my male family members shed a dignified tear from time to time, and in any case, crying over literature or film is always prettier than the messy business of genuine despair over cold material reality. The second-hand grief over a fictional death is always much neater than the kind of raw, unpredictable flood that hits when it finally sinks in that you will never again be able to hear your loved one’s voice, nor feel their touch.

And this got me wondering. I think we have created a three-tiered model of vulnerability. On the surface there is the social world and our outward persona. This is the face we show to strangers and acquaintances. It probably will not show too much negative emotion, and will reflect how we want to be perceived more than however we are genuinely feeling at the time. This is not to denigrate the outward persona. The ability to temporarily put your feelings aside when you need to is a vital skill, and it also keeps something hidden away for those closer to us.

Next there is what I will call “show vulnerability”. This looks a lot like vulnerability. It reflects the kind of things we will tell our friends in trusted conversations, the emotions that are reserved for our romantic partners, and the secrets we will only confide in our immediate family. However, it is still incredibly “edited” as it were, and we are still sure it will not meet genuine censure or rejection. An example will perhaps illustrate what I mean.

When I cried at the end of Lord of The Rings, I knew that it would be received warmly. This is a wonderful thing. It is brilliant not having to bottle up my emotional reaction to a masterpiece of cinema in front of my friends. But could I honestly say that I would have let it out if it were a less acceptable emotion. Probably not. I was not opening myself up to be wounded, but staying well within the bounds of what I was sure would be smiled upon.

This reminds me of someone I once met at university. He would make a point of telling any young woman he was on a date with that he cried at the end of Bronte’s Wuthering Heights. On the surface, this looks like vulnerability, and he very much perceived it as such. But it is, upon closer inspection, a sort of strange boast. At the point of saying it, he would probably know the reaction from his date would be “Ah! And he’s emotionally aware” rather than “Oh God, what a wet lettuce”.

There is also nothing wrong with show vulnerability in principle. I am glad when people feel like they can open up to one another in this manner. But is it “vulnerability”? It doesn’t seem to come with much risk.

”So what!” You might say, “it’s good that these states are lower-risk”. That’s a fair point, but I think it can trick us into thinking we are more accepting of human frailty than we truly are. What would a really vulnerable confession look like - that third layer down? Well, I think it would be something like the following:

”I was a spiteful civil servant. I was rude and enjoyed being rude. You see, I never took bribes, so I had to compensate myself in some way…Whenever people came with their petitions to the desk where I sat I would snarl at them and I felt inexhaustible pleasure whenever I succeeded in upsetting someone.”

Eagle-eyed readers will recognize this quotation from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground, which I have been re-reading a lot for a video I am working on (incidentally, I don’t recommend reading this book over and over again in a short period - it truly will make you miserable). This strikes me as a very vulnerable confession, because I am willing to bet that a few of you read that and thought “what a bastard!”. I thought that as well! But when was the last time you revealed something like this to someone? Something that was not just embarassing, or feels a bit socially uncouth, but could genuinely cause people to think you were in some way despicable? I am willing to bet it was a long time ago. But surely this sort of confession, that comes with no confidence that it will be met with understanding, and could just as easily elicit scorn, suits the word “vulnerable” at a much deeper level.

I am not 100% sure where I am going with this. To be honest, I don’t know if we should go around confessing these sorts of things to one another. Would it do any good if we actually told people what we felt when we were in our worst moods? When we were at our most hateful, our most resentful, our most impotently angry? Filled with horrible, detestible, and shameful thoughts? I sort of doubt it. Perhaps, as La Rochefoucauld might say, we will be able to love one another more by preserving our ignorance.

Maybe all I want to say is: let’s not fool ourselves. Chances are we are all hiding our ugliest parts from one another, and that’s okay. But let’s be consistent. There is no prevailing movement to help people make confessions of resentment, or deep envy, or aggressive despair. By-and-large, people do not want to hear someone’s vulnerable hatred, spite, or antisociality. They find it upsetting, because it is. What is actually pushed for is a sanitized version of our vulnerability. There is nothing wrong with this, but let’s call it for what it is. It is not the liberation of our deeper emotions, but another kind of social performance. All I want is to call a spade a spade.

Although, this spade-dubbing is made more difficult by our ability to hide these uglier parts of us even from ourselves. To again quote Notes from Underground:

“In every man’s memories there are certain things that he will not reveal to everyone but only to his friends. And there are things that he will not even disclose to his friends, only to himself and even then under a veil of secrecy. But, finally, there are things that he’s afraid of divulging even to himself and every decent man has quite an accumulation of these.”

So I suppose my question is this: what are we afraid of admitting to ourselves? What could we confess that would not make someone go “it’s really brave you’ve said that”, but instead “You’re a freak”?