Self-Promotion

By Daniel Rigney

I confess to being deeply ambivalent on the whole issue of self-promotion.  Should we toot our own horns? Bang our own drums? Sing our own praises? Or should we practice modesty and humility even in the midst of a capitalist culture that seems to demand constant self-aggrandizement –  or what Norman Mailer called “advertisements for myself”?

I come from a long line of Mennonites (akin to the Amish) on my mother’s side.  In that cultural tradition, disturbingly influenced by the actual teachings of Jesus, good people do not aggrandize themselves. They are modest, humble, and (more often than not) completely obscure.  People of this quality help the world along in their own quiet way, but we don’t know their names. They are the unknown contributors.

Now consider the reward system of competitive American culture. To offer a personal example, I as an academician was periodically required to prepare an elaborate self-celebration each time I came up for faculty promotion or tenure. My applications included statements of my own wonderfulness and notebooks full of documentation attesting to my greatness as a teacher, scholar and servant of the common good. This sort of ceremony of self-celebration is a promotional requirement in many organizations, including not just academic bureaucracies, but corporate and governmental bureaucracies as well.

I was required to be shamelessly self-promoting as a condition of continued employment and advancement. It was the game, and no one wants to be a loser.

Self-promotion is among the deepest and most enduring of all American values. We find it in every corporate advertisement, in every political speech, on every celebrity talk show, in every job application and interview. Competition for recognition and reward is socially Darwinian, and the bloody spoils often go the most shamelessly and shrewdly self-serving.

Who are the lobbyists for modesty and  humility? Where is our appreciation of the unsung heroes who do not  sing their own praises aggressively and strategically?

I would like here  to honor those who serve but do not seek the spotlight, who  give but do not receive in return.  I honor those whose lives are not about self-promotion, but about something finer and more beautiful, even if it is rarely recognized in this world.

I honor the unknown  contributor.

By the way, did I mention that my most recent book, The Matthew Effect: How Advantage Begets Further Advantage (Columbia, 2010), is now available in Italian and Korean translation?