The Real Value of American Pragmatism

And 3 ways it can create changes in your life

When Nick Carraway the character in Fitzgerald’s famous novel The Great Gatsby leaves his friend Gatsby, frustrated by not reconnecting with the love he once lost, he dropped these words :

“I wouldn’t ask too much of her. You can’t repeat the past”

His suggestion is close to one of the foundations of pragmatic thinking: the future is never the return of what we want it to be, until we bother to act.

Authors such as William James or John Dewey instituted this American intellectual tradition seeking to bring the conceptual depths of philosophy closer to practical life.

They have shown how our ideas find their full meaning in the practical consequences they imply, forged by the impacts of our most fundamental experiences.

They have created a new way of thinking life changes, based on experimentation and the concrete study of the results of our actions.

Let me introduce you to the ideas of these great thinkers, and how you can adopt concretely their principle in your life.

The Singularity of Pragmatism

Although I have been inspired by the European ways of thinking of my origins, I have always had a special attraction for American thinkers and their conception of action and success.

There is something in American thinking making it radically concrete and useful for our lives, immediately more valuable than European thinking more realistic or idealistic.

Thinkers such as William James or John Dewey have brought the intellectual conversation down to the level of our daily concerns and given them a real vision of progress.

One of their greatest accomplishments is having created a practice and philosophy of life changes, inviting everyone to experiment and implant small differences changing the way we perceive ourselves.

William James in his insightful What is Pragmatism? goes so far as to say that our beliefs in ideas are only true as far as they are applicable and work in the real world.

Consider the practical effects of the objects of your conception. Then, your conception of those effects is the whole of your conception of the object.

This maxim of action says it all about the value of our ideas, that we found it in the concrete impact on our actions.

We can only know the value of our ideas when they are applied and their consequences studied. Even further, beliefs are only the effects of our actions influencing us back and changing our relationship to the world.

Every day we produce actions whose consequences come back to us in the form of beliefs changing our interpretation of ourselves. The more we experiment, the more we can bring about these changes in our posture.

For example, changing our little habits- taking a shower in the morning rather than at night- alters our conception of ourselves, can increase or decrease the hope we have in the world.

Let me give you 3 ways to adopt these principles to gradually change your life and your confidence in the world.

1. Seek Actions That We’ll Effectively Change You

The principle of pragmatic action encourages us to act and experiment at all costs, to find the possibilities of our change.

We are free to make our own choices as so far as we seek to be active. The more actions we take, the stronger our freedom of choice become.

Conversely, the more we indulge in passive choices, the more our freedom of choice narrows and prevents us from progressing. The more we prevent ourselves from changing.

Action is a self-reinforcing movement, but there are several kinds of actions: those that are drivers of change and those that are not.

It is about finding life opportunities, habits, paths that we believe can best change ourselves and get out of our inaction:

Does your job or your passions teach you something more every day? Do your habits (the time you get up, the breakfast you eat, and the people you hang out with) allow you to improve every day? Will going to the gym bring you more than joining your speaking classes?

2. Believe In The Ideas You’ll Eventually Get

This maxim also applies to our beliefs and preconceived ideas about things. It is easy to believe that we need to accumulate knowledge and base it securely enough to be able to act.

But, in the end, this knowledge is less important than the experiences and lessons we gain in return for our actions. Our actions forge us from within, reform our beliefs, increase or decrease our own beliefs about ourselves.

This means that there is never an end to our knowledge, that we only know after our actions have been accomplished, and that it is, at first, natural not to know. Our knowledge is never complete before our experience, which means that we always have more to learn, and that is also the joy.

Every moment is fundamentally new, confirming less our knowledge than always adding something more to it, increasing our ideas of the unsuspected future.

The mystery lies in the unpredictability of the future, and not so much in the confusions of the past, and that is where we need to dig.

It is a matter of looking forward and looking at the obstacles we face, seeing them as challenges that bear new elements to understand and study.

What is it in the problem that you encounter that element that was not present in the problems of the past? What is beyond your current knowledge and perception? What do you miss in your partner’s strange behavior this morning, what is the hidden element?

3. Engage In The Changes Happening to You

William James being himself subject to procrastination, also developed a few words for a practice of daily habits and changes.

Each circumstance according to him is an opportunity to implement changes in your regularity of life. Each time chance alters your pace of life, you must take advantage of it to activate and follow the changes suggested to you.

Crises, such as the one we are currently experiencing, are drivers of change insofar as they are appropriated and not taken for granted.

You didn’t enjoy your favorite fast-food restaurants during this period? Why not find a new alternative now?

Have your office hours been disrupted? Why not choose now the schedules that suit you rather than the ones imposed on you?

Have you learned how to use teleworking tools? Why not continue to use them if it also allows your employees to improve their work/life balance?

Pragmatic thinking is an effective practice to disrupt and trigger life changes, and it’s only waiting for you!