Zeal For Truth

One of the main ideas in Searching For God Knows What, is an idea I’ll call the Lifeboat Theory. It serves as a sort of personality theory, or an alternative or addition to something like Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.

The Lifeboat Theory’s name comes from the classic lifeboat scenario which is an exercise in “values clarification” that is sometimes used in schools. The scenario pictures a number of different people who have different backgrounds, belief systems, attributes, capabilities, etc. It’s also revealed that there’s not enough room or supplies for everyone, and that a person (or people) have to be selected to leave the lifeboat (and presumably be left to their death). The class then discusses who should be ejected from the lifeboat and why.

The basic idea of Miller’s theory is that people have the need for something outside themselves to tell them who they are, and that this thing seems to be gone. Because this something seems to be gone, people often let other people tell them what their identity and purpose are. Miller found this idea to be of much greater use than the other personality theories he had studied:

It explained why I wanted to be seen as smart, why religious people wanted so desperately to be right, why Shirley MaClaine wanted to be God, and just about everything else a human did.

All of us are in the lifeboat, if we weren’t, feelings like pride, jealousy, and embarrassment would be foreign to us. We also wouldn’t get so upset when we feel we are disrespected. We get upset because when someone disrespects us, it’s a message that they think they we are less important than they are. That really shouldn’t matter, but it often feels to us that there is some sort of punishment for being thought less of; we fear that if people regard us as less important we’ll be thrown out of the lifeboat.

This is why cliques and the battle for popularity in schools and workplaces can be so vicious; it’s the establishment of a hierarchy with a punishment for those at the bottom. It’s why people like to associate with winners. Miller notes that some people (as he did) will say “we won” when their favorite team wins, but say “they lost” when they lose. People do not want to be associated with a loser. It’s why arguments over such silly things as if a movie is good or not can become heated, having wrong opinions can also be dangerous in the lifeboat.

This commercial reminded me of this idea:

Why does the driver care that his passenger may find he has “uncool” music? It’s because he’s operating in a lifeboat mentality.

There are ways to make sure you survive in the lifeboat: be an athlete, have good looks, be intelligent, have lots of money, be right. Basically, it’s to have or be something that the people of the world value. Another way is to participate in racism or other types of discrimination, that way there’s a whole group of people on the list to get thrown out of the lifeboat before you.

Miller says that this situation, this being in the lifeboat, is a result of the Fall. God had given Adam and Eve their meaning, but now separated from Him, people are desperately scrambling for something to tell them who they are. As Miller puts in:

All this is to say that when the Bible indicates life comes from God, and death comes from separation from God, it makes complete sense, and this truth serves as an explanation for all of our feelings, for the ways in which we entertain ourselves, and for the general precepts of the human plot. Without Him, we feel that we are being thrown out of a boat.