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Your Inner Weasel: An Owners Guide
Knowing and managing your unconscious advocate.
Posted August 15, 2023 Reviewed by Hara Estroff Marano
Key points
- We each have an inner weasel that can rationalize why we deserve more.
- Our inner weasels are as old as life's struggle for existence.
- Some people manage their inner weasel while others deny having one.
- The best way to call someone on their inner weasel is by admitting you have one too.
Consider your inner advocate, that voice that whispers reasons why you should be able to weasel out of disadvantages and into advantages, that voice that sometimes leaks, squeaks, speaks, or shrieks out loud impulsively in your defense when your self-discipline runs low or the self-serving advantages get too tempting.
That voice that makes you want to stop reading this because it’s insulting. That voice that you might give free rein to when you’re driving alone and snarl to yourself at every “idiot” who gets in your way. That voice that says, “You’re wrong!” when confronted by someone whose opinion would cost you a lot to consider, let alone embrace. That voice that whispers in your ear that other people have that voice, but not you.
Everyone’s got that voice. Its goal is corner-cutting for greater efficiency, which isn’t necessarily the devil’s handiwork, though it can be.
The voice is old and new. It’s old in that all organisms struggle for their own existence. A living being is a self, biased toward keeping itself alive and thriving. All creatures are self-ish. Even trees. They’ll weasel their way into a better view of the sun the way we might try to cut in line. The “law of the jungle” is lawlessness, animals out for themselves and their kin—territorial behavior in all its manifestations.
Humans still have all that old struggle-for-existence self-ishness, but our inner weasels are different. With language, ours have a voice, and a very persuasive one. With words, we can rationalize, moralize, and self-justify. We can always word-weasel our way to self-serving, self-gratifying arguments in ways no other critter can.
Words put our inner weasels on steroids, making them far more evasive, persistent, persuasive, and insistent. With words, we can hold grudges, hire lawyers, plan vendettas, and launch crusades.
Meanwhile, technology changes our expectations. We expect more and pay less and can become Karens when we don’t get our way.
Our inner weasels are our birthright. Without our weasely struggle for existence, we wouldn’t be here. They are also our responsibility to manage, not that everyone accepts that responsibility. Our inner weasel can always come up with reasons why we shouldn’t have to manage it, for example, that other people have inner weasels but we don’t.
We can all detect other people’s inner weasels when they are at odds with our own. Just as an accent is any accent but our own, a bias is any bias but our own. Our inner weasel can accuse others of having a self-serving bias, which can feel like proof that we don’t.
Some people get a handle on their inner weasels, maybe because theirs is weak or maybe because they have more conscientious self-discipline and often because their culture and status don’t allow them to voice their inner weasel. It’s suppressed and oppressed until it’s tamed.
Other people get away with full-throated venting of their inner weasel, at least in some settings— the arrogant, impulsive boss or spouse, the rock star who got famous for being so uncensored, the politician who treats their inner weasel as heroic. Success goes to their heads. They expect more for less because they’ve gotten more for less.
Things get ugly when conflict arises between people who don’t have a handle on their inner weasels. They accuse each other of self-serving bias and they’re both right. There’s just no talking to either of them about their own contribution to the conflict.
If you have more of a handle on your inner weasel than another person, you can try to expose them to their inner weasel, but it’s tricky. Their inner weasel will come to their rescue. “How dare you suggest I have one.”
Still, if they won’t get a handle on their inner weasel, what can you do? Leave and find people who do, or humor them. Those are two options. Another is to expose their self-serving double standards while admitting to your own. Don’t pretend that spotting theirs proves you don’t have one. We all have one. And don’t counsel selflessness. It’s absurd. Everyone’s self-ish. Even trees.
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