Tender or Tough: Revisiting an Old Dichotomy in the Age of Polarisation
The great American psychologist and philosopher William James, in his 1907 book Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking, introduced an interesting characterological dichotomy. James distinguished between “tough-minded” and “tender-minded” persons, and suggested that we all tend to fall into one or the other of two categories. A tough-minded person is someone who advocates stoicism in the face of difficulties, takes a fatalistic and pessimistic view of life, and believes in discipline and hard work. Philosophically, these are the people who demand hard evidence and dismiss “airy-fairy” theories and abstractions. A tender-minded person, on the other hand, believes in attuning to one’s own feelings and respecting the emotions of others, has an optimistic and often spiritual view of life, and values imagination, art and freedom of expression. On the “Big Five” personality typology, tender minded people are higher in Openness to Experience and Agreeableness and tend to be somewhat lower in Conscientiousness, whereas tough-minded people are the reverse.
These types are so immediately familiar that I am sure the reader will have no difficulty in classifying him or herself accordingly. It’s also not hard to recognise the ways in which conflict between these attitudes plays out in public and private domains. Think of the standoff between parents (usually the father playing tough to the mother’s tender) over whether a child’s wayward behaviour should be met with understanding or punishment, the political debates over whether money should go to arts programs or the military, or the scientific conflicts between results-focused empiricists and elegance-oriented theoreticians. The tender-minded often see the tough-minded as philistines and insensitive brutes, while the tough-minded dismiss the tender-minded as impractical bleeding hearts.
The relevance of this dichotomy for our politically polarised age is obvious. The tender/tough dynamic plays itself out over and over again in online slinging matches between “rednecks” and “snowflakes”. Tough-minded right wingers dismiss “woke” concerns about the impact of language on people’s feelings, while tender-minded progressives pour scorn on conservatives’ regressive and simplistic solutions to complex social problems.
What is interesting in this polarised environment is the degree to which tender-minded and tough-minded attitudes are becoming exaggerated within their respective political constituencies, bringing out the worst of both temperaments. Conservatives are becoming more and more reactionary, cruel and authoritarian, while progressives are becoming ever more hysterically sensitive, moralistic and dogmatic in spite of common sense and pragmatic realities.
What can moderate this increasing irrationality and extremism? The indigenous Australian politician Noel Pearson once wrote an interesting essay on aboriginal policy in Australia in which he put forward the notion of a “radical centre” in politics, suggesting that the best policies often emerge, not from one extreme or other of a political debate, but from the point of greatest tension between the two. The best outcomes, he suggests, are produced by a dialectical process in which different value systems and ideologies confront and challenge one another. Obviously, this is a position unlikely to win many friends in the current polarised environment — and indeed Pearson has fallen out of favour in recent times — but as much as my own politics lean left, I believe Pearson’s idea has some merit.
That tender- and tough-minded temperaments are such recognisable elements of human nature suggests that these are character traits with deep evolutionary roots. This in turn suggests that both styles of thinking have a role to play in our survival and that it is the dynamic interplay between toughness and tenderness that leads to an adaptive response to changing circumstances.
This is similar to other dichotomous psychological drives and tendencies that coexist in the human psyche. Consider for example the relationship between curiosity and fear, or aggression and cooperativeness. We all possess different admixtures of these drives, and each has an important adaptive role to play. Yet each polarity functions adaptively only in a dynamic equilibrium. The more it becomes divorced from its countervailing pole, the more dysfunctional its expression. A person in whom cooperativeness completely overrides aggression becomes a spineless doormat, exploited and trampled on by others. On the other hand, a person who only ever acts aggressively will become isolated and vulnerable to attack from others they have harmed or offended.
What is important here is not only that both poles of the dichotomy are behaviourally available, but also that they can be evoked responsively to differing conditions. In a relatively safe, secure and abundant environment, curiosity is a more adaptive behaviour than fear. Yet the fear response needs to be latently available to react rapidly to the emergence of danger. Dysfunction occurs when either curiosity or fear become entrenched as a rigid behavioural pattern resorted to regardless of external circumstances.
Tough- and tender-mindedness are no different. We need both of these modes of response available to us, both individually and collectively. The fundamental impulse of tough-mindedness is to minimise sensitivity, whereas the tendency of tender-mindedness is to maximise it. Both these approaches are adaptive in different situations. In circumstances of privation, suffering and hardship, tough-mindedness is necessary. We need to suppress our sensitivities, inure ourselves to pain and disregard fear in order to survive. Yet in times of relative security and prosperity, tender-mindedness can safely reemerge, like spring regrowth, allowing us to flourish, heal and create. This also accounts for the pessimism of the tough-minded and the relative optimism of the tender-minded. These attitudes reflect differing contextual realities and the outlooks best adapted to them.
Understood this way, we can see how times of hardship tend to give rise to right-wing, tough-minded politics. Individuals faced with daily deprivation and misery naturally adopt more tough-minded attitudes in order to cope, which in turn influence them to support tougher, more authoritarian political leaders. In times of plenty, needs higher up Maslow’s hierarchy reemerge, and individuals move towards a more tender-minded, progressive position. Social progress flows from prosperity, repressive regimes from poverty.
The same is true in parenting. Just as in politics, we tend to see our parenting philosophies in absolute terms. The tender-minded parent focuses on helping his or her child flourish, fosters creativity over obedience and prioritises self-care over self-discipline, whereas the tough-minded parent attempts to instil self-reliance, a strong work ethic and respect for authority. Both approaches make perfect sense if we imagine them stemming as much from different worlds as from different people. In a safe, flourishing, healthy world, the tender-minded thrive. But in a world of scarcity and violence, it is the tough-minded who survive. Parents who adopt these different approaches differ as much in the world they see, as in their value systems.
The irony is that both attitudes are to an extent self-fulfilling. The tough-minded father who beats his child in order to “toughen him up” for a cruel world also traumatises him, and often creates the kind of person who will go on to make the world a crueler place. The tender-minded parent who instils values of respect for difference, sensitivity to others’ needs and finely attuned creative responsiveness tends to raise children who will help make the world a safer and more fulfilling place. We should all want to live in the world which the tender-minded perceive and strive for, a world in which the vulnerable are protected and our higher order needs for creative, emotional and spiritual fulfilment can be met.
The rub, however, is that we do not yet live in this world. We continue to confront situations, both individually and collectively, to which only tough-minded responses are adequate. This is not only because of the tough-minded military leaders, dictators and criminals in the world. It is partly in the nature of the world itself. Taking the toughness out of everyone’s minds might make the world kinder, but it would leave us profoundly unfit to deal with hardship or make difficult decisions. It would render us unable to override our own emotional reactions or to anchor in rough common sense when the moment calls for action.
Wisdom lies in the middle way. Or, as the philosopher Hegel would say, it often lies in the synthesis of what, at an earlier level of understanding, looked like an irreconcilable antinomy. We need our tenderness leavened with grit, our toughness softened through its encounter, again and again, with loving sensitivity. This brings us at last to some higher kind of strength that is not desensitised, and a higher kind of sensitivity that is also pragmatic and capable of exercising power.
This type of balanced perspective is often lacking when the proponents of these traditionally masculine and feminine modes of wisdom speak. Jordan Peterson is a classic example of the masculine, tough-minded mode. His admonitions basically to “grow a pair and stop whining” speak to young men for whom this type of simple formula makes archetypal sense. Men know how to do this. We’ve been told by coaches, sergeant majors and authoritarian father figures to toughen up since the dawn of time. On the other hand, women are often drawn to the voices of tender-minded figures like Oprah Winfrey who offer maternal solace and gentle understanding. This has value of course, but can easily slide over into self-indulgence, sentimentality and wishful thinking. It is a far harder ask to learn the true wisdom of knowing how to integrate toughness and tenderness, and know when each mode is called for.
A personal story comes to mind. As a tender-minded and very inexperienced young man I travelled around India. On the day I was supposed to fly home I got to the airport and discovered I had lost my passport. Having no idea what to do, I fell into a state of hopeless dejection and panic. Eventually I was directed to a police station where I sat on a bench shedding tears of self-pity. A policeman came and sat next to me. He looked at me with great kindness and laid a hand on my shoulder. I no longer recall his precise words, but I remember the gist perfectly. He told me that my tears were unbecoming of a man. That as men we must face such challenges with courage, that we get up and face them, we do not collapse. He gave me fifty rupees, which in those days would have been no trivial sum for a lowly Delhi copper, and called a rickshaw to take me to nearest British embassy.
I treasure those tender-tough words, and if I could find that man again I’d buy him a beer, and some. He showed me the limits of my tender-mindedness and revealed to me the possibility of facing the world in a way I’d never really known was possible (I’d lacked the kind of father who offered such simple masculine wisdom). In the nicest possible way he’d told me to man up, yet he’d done so with such care and gentleness that I took the medicine straight to heart and never collapsed in the face of adversity again. In that moment, a dose of tough-mindedness was exactly the medicine I needed.
In this world of polarised absolutes, we need to restore the dialogue between tough and tender modes of being, to understand each not as intrinsically right or wrong, but as a response to the world seen through a lens of hardship or plenty. Wisdom lies in the place where opposites meet. When tough yang divorces itself from tender yin, we are left only with the harsh strength of the iron fist, and when tenderness refuses to acknowledge the need sometimes to be tough, only useless dreams and fantasies remain.
