Human relationships lend themselves readily to a spatial metaphor: within any relationship, someone functions as its axis, and someone else revolves around that axis. People tend to organize their relationships around one of two such axes. In the self-centered mode, the individual places himself at the center and expects others to accommodate him. In the other-centered mode, the individual treats another person as the center and continually orbits around that person instead. Neither model proves sustainable. In self-centered relationships, the individual is satisfied while the other party is depleted; in other-centered relationships, the other party is put at ease while the individual depletes himself. This essay examines the psychological and social mechanisms that give rise to each axis, and argues for an alternative: a relational model in which each party establishes his own axis and, on that basis, respects the other's right to do the same.
I. Self-Centered Relationships: Bending Others Toward Oneself
When an individual places himself at the center of a relationship and expects others to conform to him, three conditions typically operate.
1. Excessive Self-Certainty
People with excessive confidence in their own judgment tend to treat that judgment as an absolute standard. Operating from the premise that they cannot be wrong, they come to regard the correction of whatever displeases them as the enactment of justice. The New Testament warns of precisely this danger. Jesus, foretelling the persecution his followers would face, states that those who expel and even kill them will imagine they are thereby serving God. Conviction itself is indispensable to faith and judgment; the danger lies in its tendency, once absolutized, to become an instrument of violence.
“They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the hour cometh, that whosoever killeth you shall think that he offereth service unto God.” (John 16:2, ASV)
2. The Acquisition of Power
Power constitutes a second, potent catalyst for self-centeredness. Galinsky and colleagues' 2006 study offers experimental confirmation.1 Participants were asked to draw the letter “E” on their foreheads; those primed with high power tended to draw it as legible to themselves—appearing backward to an observer—while those primed with low power tended to draw it as legible from another's vantage point. The finding suggests that power impairs perspective-taking. In the absence of power, people remain attentive to others and accommodate them even at some personal cost; once power is acquired, however, they grow far less tolerant of their own discomfort. Ecclesiastes captures this pathology of power:
“Then I returned and saw all the oppressions that are done under the sun: and, behold, the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter; and on the side of their oppressors there was power; but they had no comforter.” (Ecclesiastes 4:1, ASV)
3. The Paradox of Good Intentions
A third, more paradoxical source of self-centeredness is good intention itself. There is a fable of a cow and a lion who fell so deeply in love that they married. Each morning the cow prepared her finest vegetarian dishes for the lion, who, out of love, forced himself to eat food he found repellent. Because he never seemed to relish it, the cow's resentment quietly accumulated. Each evening the lion prepared a fine steak for the cow, who likewise forced down food she could not digest—and the lion, in turn, grew resentful that she never seemed to eat with real appetite. The marriage did not survive a month. As they parted, each said, “Still, I gave you my very best.” Neither was lying. Yet a best effort defined entirely on one's own terms—a best effort that fails to see the other—produces the worst outcome precisely in proportion to its sincerity. When Peter stood in Jesus' way to prevent his crucifixion, Jesus rebuked him sharply for the same reason.
“And Peter took him, and began to rebuke him, saying, Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall never be unto thee. But he turned, and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan: thou art a stumbling-block unto me: for thou mindest not the things of God, but the things of men.” (Matthew 16:22-23, ASV)
Peter's motive was love, but it was a love drawn from his own fear and his own standards rather than from Jesus' calling. When good intention is directed not toward the other but toward one's own reassurance, it can be experienced by the other as violence—however sincere it may be.
II. Other-Centered Relationships: Bending Oneself Toward Others
Conversely, subordinating oneself to another's axis is driven chiefly by two motives.
1. The Motive to Preserve the Relationship
Most people accommodate others out of a wish to preserve the relationship, fearing that failure to do so will create awkwardness or conflict, and so they choose self-sacrifice instead. Yet a passage from the Analects (Zilu)—“The gentleman is harmonious but does not conform; the small man conforms but is not harmonious” (君子和而不同, 小人同而不和)—points precisely to the paradox in this kind of compliance. Living a life of accommodation does not by itself guarantee a harmonious relationship; conversely, one can maintain both conviction and harmony at once. Aesop's fable of the miller, his son, and their donkey illustrates the cost of a life spent conforming to every voice without conviction of one's own. When the father rides, he is criticized for making his son walk; when the son rides, for neglecting his father; when both ride, for overburdening the donkey; when both walk, for the folly of walking beside an unridden donkey. In the end, father and son bind the donkey to a pole to carry it themselves, and in crossing a bridge, drop it into the river and drown it. What is striking is that none of the townspeople's individual criticisms was entirely wrong; the problem lay in the father and son's habit of yielding, in turn, to every one of them. Paul draws the same boundary against this kind of conformism.
“For am I now seeking the favor of men, or of God? or am I striving to please men? if I were still pleasing men, I should not be a servant of Christ.” (Galatians 1:10, ASV)
2. Fear of Others' Regard
A second factor that keeps people from living by their own convictions is the fear of how they appear to others. Social life makes it impossible to disregard others' opinions altogether, but difficulties arise once that regard becomes one's sole point of reference. In his play Huis Clos (No Exit), Sartre gives us the famous line “Hell is other people” (L'enfer, c'est les autres).2 The characters are confined to a room without mirrors, able to confirm their own existence only through one another's gaze, in a space with no darkness in which to hide. To exist solely as one is seen by others—this, Sartre suggests, is hell itself. Solomon Asch's conformity experiments offer empirical confirmation that the pressure of others' perceived judgment can distort perception and reasoning themselves.3 Placed in situations where a unanimous majority endorsed an evidently incorrect answer, a substantial proportion of participants deferred to the group's answer over the evidence of their own eyes. Jesus issues a comparable warning.
“Take heed that ye do not your righteousness before men, to be seen of them: else ye have no reward with your Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 6:1, ASV)
III. An Alternative: Four Criteria for an Autonomous Life
The third way—neither self-centered nor other-centered—consists in each party establishing his own axis while respecting the other's right to do the same. This requires establishing autonomous criteria in at least four domains.
1. The Criterion of Judgment: From Heteronomy to Autonomy
The first condition of an autonomous life is a self-established standard of judgment. Without one, a person inevitably comes to depend on the judgment of others. The word “autonomy” itself, from the Greek autos (“self”) and nomos (“law”), denotes the capacity to give oneself one's own law. Strictly speaking, people obey only the law they have internalized: traffic regulations, though externally imposed, are followed without complaint precisely because they have been internalized; norms that remain unintegrated persist as mere heteronomy and fail to command voluntary compliance. Self-Determination Theory in psychology lends empirical support to the same principle, finding that action grounded in internalized, self-endorsed values sustains motivation and psychological well-being more effectively than action driven by externally imposed control.4 Scripture affirms this same principle of autonomy. Paul urges each believer to be “fully assured in his own mind” regarding matters of religious observance—not as license for moral relativism, but as a call to responsible living grounded in an autonomy formed within one's relationship with God.
“One man esteemeth one day above another: another esteemeth every day alike. Let each man be fully assured in his own mind. … So then each one of us shall give account of himself to God. … The faith which thou hast, have thou to thyself before God. Happy is he that judgeth not himself in that which he approveth.” (Romans 14:5, 12, 22, ASV)
In the end, a person is measured by the standard of autonomy rather than heteronomy.
2. The Criterion of Satisfaction: From Social Standards to Personal Standards
Second, an unshakeable life requires a self-defined standard of satisfaction. People readily evaluate their lives against tacit social consensus—the notion, for instance, that a given stage of life should be accompanied by a certain level of wealth or status—and feel unhappy whenever they fall short of it. Yet that standard, from the outset, reflects none of one's actual circumstances, temperament, or values; it is simply an external measure. When a person can instead establish a standard of satisfaction suited to his own situation and orientation, contentment becomes possible regardless of prevailing social standards. Paul's own confession exemplifies this kind of contentment.
“Not that I speak in respect of want: for I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therein to be content. I know how to be abased, and I know also how to abound: in everything and in all things have I learned the secret both to be filled and to be hungry, both to abound and to be in want.” (Philippians 4:11-13, ASV)
3. The Criterion of Action: From Obligations Imposed by Others to Actions Chosen by the Self
Third, one needs a standard that grounds agency in one's own action. Human activity divides broadly into two kinds: “another's task,” undertaken because someone else demanded it, and “one's own task,” undertaken by one's own choice. What distinguishes the two is not the nature of the task itself but where the power of choice resides. A task imposed by another becomes one's own the moment one chooses to take it up deliberately; conversely, a task that was originally one's own becomes another's the moment it is imposed by coercion. People instinctively resent another's task, yet can bear even a difficult task of their own. The solution, then, is straightforward: to seize as much initiative and choice as the situation allows. The principle Jesus offers in the Sermon on the Mount targets exactly this point. Being compelled to go one mile reflects the practice, under Roman occupation, by which a soldier could conscript a passerby to carry his pack for a set distance. Jesus instructs his hearers to add a second mile of their own choosing to the first mile of compulsion.
“…but I say unto you, Resist not him that is evil: but whosoever smiteth thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man would go to law with thee, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go one mile, go with him two.” (Matthew 5:39-41, ASV)
The compelled first mile remains “another's task”; the freely added second mile transforms the same act into “one's own task.” Even when the circumstance itself cannot be altered, one can still reclaim the initiative within it.
4. The Criterion of Emotion: From Stimulus-Response to Choice-Response
Finally, one needs a standard that establishes agency over one's own emotions. That external stimuli provoke emotion is undeniable, but the relationship between stimulus and feeling is not therefore automatic or inevitable. If a person subjected to repeated negative stimuli lives in a perpetual state of anger as a result, the true owner of that anger is whoever supplies the stimulus. The psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, drawing on his experience in the concentration camps, held that human beings cannot be fully explained by stimulus-response theory alone, and that the capacity to intervene between stimulus and response—to choose and to decide—constitutes the very essence of human freedom.5 The insight he left us—that a space exists between stimulus and response, and that within that space lies the freedom to choose one's response—applies equally to the domain of emotion. Even when feelings such as anger or anxiety seem to surge up instantaneously, a genuine, if imperceptibly brief, margin of choice separates the stimulus from the eventual response. To become the owner of one's emotions is to recognize this margin and to choose one's response deliberately rather than reacting automatically. This is not a matter of suppressing or denying emotion, but of securing the capacity to intervene between the moment a feeling arises and the moment it is expressed or acted upon. The wisdom of Proverbs speaks to the same point.
“He that is slow to wrath is of great understanding; But he that is hasty of spirit exalteth folly. A tranquil heart is the life of the flesh; But envy is the rottenness of the bones.” (Proverbs 14:29-30, ASV)
Conclusion
Placing oneself at the center of a relationship and placing another there may appear to be opposites, but they are, in fact, two faces of the same underlying problem. Both reflect a failure to establish one's own standard for living. The former conceals that deficiency by imposing its own standard on others; the latter evades it by surrendering to another's standard. A healthy relational axis is formed neither by self-centeredness nor by other-centeredness, but by each party independently internalizing standards of judgment, satisfaction, action, and emotion—that is, by establishing autonomy—and, on that basis, respecting the other's autonomy in turn. This is the substance of what the Analects calls harmony without conformity (和而不同): relationship achieved without assimilation.
Notes
1. Galinsky, A. D., Magee, J. C., Inesi, M. E., & Gruenfeld, D. H. (2006). Power and perspectives not taken. Psychological Science, 17(12), 1068–1074.
2. Sartre, J.-P. (1944). Huis clos [No Exit]. Paris: Gallimard.
3. Asch, S. E. (1956). Studies of independence and conformity: A minority of one against a unanimous majority. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, 70(9), 1–70.
4. Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The "what" and "why" of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11(4), 227–268.
5. Covey, S. R. (1989). The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. New York: Free Press. On the disputed attribution of “Between stimulus and response there is a space …” to Frankl, see Quote Investigator, “Between Stimulus and Response There Is a Space” (Feb. 18, 2018); the Viktor Frankl Institute likewise notes that the phrase cannot be located in Frankl's own writings.