"All the world's a stage" and Agency... a Paradox?

Seeking the approval of the other is not to be confused with love of the other or the selflessness of satisfying the other. To love another you simply just have to love the other. It shouldn’t matter whether this person reciprocates the love. To seek the approval of this person is therefore the effort to satisfy one’s own ego.

When we appropriate the interests, the values, and the actions of the other, we divest ourselves of our own unique selfhood. In doing this we surrender our own agency as a uniquely thinking, feeling, and doing individual and assume those of someone else. We do this with the expectation of earning the approval of the person(s) from whom we’ve derived our sense of self: the other’s identity becomes our identity. In our sloth, our intellectual laziness, we see this as a sure and easy way to be accepted, acknowledged, liked, loved, etc. It is most definitely an easier way than loving, which is an investment that entails risk, effort, sacrifice, generosity, and possibly pain.

Therefore, seeking the approval of this other is not an act of love or even admiration. It is an act of aggression. It is aggressive because a) as explained above, there is no love involved in this modus operandi, b) you are presenting and inauthentic self to this other person, and c) when this mode fails to bring you ultimate satisfaction, you will have someone to blame for it. By surrendering your agency, you surrender responsibility for yourself and the other person.

The irony is that if this mode successfully yields satisfaction for you, you will not responsible for it. It will be a success in spite of you. However, if this mode fails to yield satisfaction to all parties involved, it will be because of you. You will be responsible for the failure. This is because each of us has our own particular role to play in this life. This is what Shakespeare has meant by his “all the world’s a stage” aphorism. We each have a part to play in humanity shared endeavour to make this world a better place, to make paradise possible for us all.