What do your surroundings say about your identity?
“One and the same human being is, at various ages, under various circumstances, a totally different human being… but his name doesn’t change, and to that name we ascribe the whole lot, good and evil” – Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn won the 1971 Nobel Prize for his book the Gulag Archipelago. He writes about his and others’ accounts in the brutal Soviet Camp system. But he does not blame the camp guards for their cruelty, even when most actually enjoyed the pain they were causing. Instead he asks us to imagine if we had been given the reins of power as a camp guard and told what we were doing was for the good of everyone. “It is after all only because of the way things worked out that they were the executioners and we weren’t” [1] . What would you have done?
You are Not Really You
The (in)famous Stanford prison experiment is one of the most cited, though controversial, research experiments in recent times. In it, normal college students became either guards or prisoners for a two week study to see how their behavior changed.
It only lasted six days.
“In only a few days, our guards became sadistic and our prisoners became depressed and showed signs of extreme stress” according to Professor Zimbardo [2]. The experiment transformed normal students to cruel guards completely unpredictably. I’m sure none of the students would imagine themselves changing in any meaningful from this experiment had they been asked beforehand. But with a simple environment change they turned into different people altogether.
We assume our beliefs guide our actions. It is easy to see the environment has shaped us to who we are now. But we undervalue our surroundings in the present. The Stanford Prison Experiment, along with Solzhenitsyn’s account, show us that we can change, even violate, our beliefs based on our current environment. Unless we understand this impact on our lives, we will end up never solidifying who we really are.
The Every-Day Impact
This issue is not just found in extreme cases like the above. If this environment shift can change our core nature, imagine what it is doing to us every day in the details. The type of food we have in our kitchen. The apps we have on our home screen. The type of friends we surround ourselves with. Each environmental detail can have consequences on the habits we build. And imagine how that magnifies to the identities we form. But the key is that these details can be changed for the better.
We have a notion that to achieve our goals is to will our way to them through grit. While this may be a factor, James Clear notes that when one studies human behavior, they find that “motivation (and even talent) is often overvalued. In many cases our environment matters more” [3].
This was something I put to the test myself. After reading Clear’s work, I decided to leave my phone in a separate room when I went to study. I wanted to see how much more focused I would be. Throughout the day I would unconsciously reach for my pocket expecting to go on Instagram or some other app to distract myself. Then I would be dumbfounded at why I had done that considering my pockets were empty and immediately get back to work. I realized that when I’m studying, I naturally reach towards my phone. Heck, I’d do it when I knew my phone wasn’t even there! It was clear to me that willpower wasn’t going to make me productive. I needed to put myself in a position where I’d naturally be focused.
Our environment clearly has an influence on our behaviors. But the takeaway here is not that fate determines success. We can control our environment unlike any other species. Just like how I separated myself from my phone, Clear suggests we leverage this tool by using the environment to our advantage. We can set the fruit out at an easier distance. We can make it harder to access social media apps. We can surround ourselves with optimistic friends. For most of our goals, there are ways to improve our environment to support us.
If you’ve ever felt like you haven’t been able to force your way out of bad behaviors or stick to better ones, start paying attention to your surroundings. Go through your day as you usually do. But when you do something you planned to do or hoped to avoid, don’t relish or regret the moment. Simply ponder on what got you to that point. You’ll likely find environmental cues that led you there. From there you can reverse-engineer them to your benefit.
Then you can make your environment your ally.
[1] The Gulag Archipelago, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
[2] Stanford Prison Experiment https://www.prisonexp.org/
[3] Motivation is Overvalued. Environment Often Matters More, by James Clear https://jamesclear.com/power-of-environment
I enjoyed the Segway from a persons account of his time during a soviet work camp and his take on the environment that led to people supporting those camps through there job as prison guards, ones that enjoyed the suffering they gave out, to environment and how it changes us. Though the environmental factors like societal praise keeping the guards ready and willing seem a bit of an off comparison then a situation where the environment of a student and his phone, I get the point of environment comparison but the students environment is more of a habit based thing we’re trying to correct and the guards is kind of an different environment of that makes sense. Overall I enjoyed it even if the post wasn’t anything groundbreaking, I look forward to more.
Thanks for the nice words! They’re certainly different situations but I opened with these stories to show what extent the environment can change us and then ponder what it’s doing to us everyday. I will work to make connections like that more clear, or at least more related, in the future. I’m hoping to try more new ideas in the future as I get comfortable posting as well so stay tuned!