"To thine own self be true," says Polonius in
Hamlet.
So what does it mean, and what's the problem?
It's a way of saying that nothing at all matters more to how we should act than our own esteem. It says that we should stick to our principles, not assimilate, and that we should do what we believe. It is certainly beautifully phrased, and invokes ideas with positive connotations: truth, self-ownership, individuality.
But, are these virtues really hiding a fundamental vice?
They are. The phrase echoes something which I have heard subscribers to a particular brand of therapy repeat as a sort of mantra: "I just really need to focus on me right now."
In fact, the phrase appeals to our complacency, not to our resilience.
Its function is to swell our laziness, not to stoke our resolve.
It's use is to excuse our disagreements with society, not to force us to reconcile them with fact.
We are all victims, suffering in vain, alone in our wisdom, against an unfair society that condemns iconoclasts.
"How do I square the circle of perceived condemnation? How do I ignore the majority opinion telling me I must do something, or be something which isn't expedient for me?" "It doesn't matter what anyone thinks, or what I know is good. This is who I am, and I'm just being true to myself."
It's a universal excuse, a get out of jail free card from the prison of having to consider and acknowledge your own failings and biases and whims. I don't have to conform to the world; it has to conform to me.
Of course, there always are
some lone
victims who are
genuinely iconoclastic and genuinely oppressed, and it is they who progress our society forward. But it is not they who cling to "to thine own self be true". They don't need an excuse to do nothing, because they are too busy finding an excuse to do
something.
