Chapter 13 13. Superiority Complex and Cooperation Spirit

How can we help those who seek superiority the wrong way?This is not difficult if we realize that the quest for superiority is common to all human beings.Knowing this, we can put ourselves in their shoes and empathize with their struggles.The only mistake they make is that their efforts are directed toward the useless side of life. Behind every human creation lies the quest for superiority, the source of all contributions to our culture.The whole of human activity advances along this great line of action—from bottom to top, from negative to positive, from failure to success.However, the only people who can really cope with and master the problems of their lives are those who can also show it in the process of struggle.Altruistic people who go above and beyond in a way that benefits others as well.

If we treat people in this right way, we shall find that it is not difficult to make them repent. All human judgments of worth and success are ultimately based on cooperation, which is the greatest common denominator of the human race.Our various requirements for behavior, ideals, goals, actions, and character traits are that they should be conducive to human cooperation. We will never find a man who is completely devoid of social feeling. Neurotics and criminals know this open secret.This can be seen in their desperate attempts to justify their style of life and to shift responsibility elsewhere.

But they have lost the courage to move on to the useful side of life.An inferiority complex tells them, "It's not your place to be successful in cooperation." They have avoided the real problems of life and fought shadows of nothingness to reassure themselves of their strength. In the human division of labor, there are many spaces where different specific goals can be placed.We have said that every goal may contain errors, and we can always find something else to find fault with. For one child, superiority may lie in mathematical knowledge, in another the arts, in a third physical fitness.A child with dyspepsia may think that the problems he is facing are mainly nutritional problems.His interest may turn to food because he feels that by doing so he will change his situation.As a result he may become a dedicated chef, or a nutritionist.

Among the various specific goals we can see that, together with genuine compensation, there is also a resistance to certain possibilities, and a certain training in self-limitation.A philosopher, for example, must in fact be constantly away from society in order to think and to write.But if a high degree of social feeling is included in its goal of superiority, it is not so erroneous.