Don’t Settle for the Pretense
If I could only teach my grandchildren one thing, what would that be? I’d hope to help them see that one thing I wish I’d understood sooner - the full reach of their potential…the range of possibilities available to us all… IF we learn well and choose wisely in this life. But choosing our lives intelligently is not something we teach our young in the world such as it is. So how would I teach them differently?
I suppose I’d start by encouraging them to sort the mere appearance of good from the real thing, for “everyone wants what’s good for them,” as Socrates teaches, “but not everyone knows what that is.” Pleasure, happiness, friendship, love, and wealth – these are all good things, if they are understood truly - but…there are many pretenders at work in our world. If you think about it, what would be the first thing ‘evil’ would do, after all, if not try to create the mere appearance or pretense of good?
But we also have the ability to achieve these goods authentically, if we understand them in their true and ideal forms. (This is what Plato meant by this word ‘form’, by the way, not some far off unreachable goal, but targets we cannot hit if we don’t keep them in sight.)
For instance, we all know there is a difference in a mere friend and a true friend. But without dialogue about this difference, we scarcely understand the difference. Likewise with other intrinsic goods, like love, happiness, and wealth. The mere appearance of these is not the real thing – and how can we hit targets we don’t even aim at?
So we end up with something artificial, if we aren’t helped to understand the real deal, which can be done, if we hope to actualize these true potentials in our lives. And the truth is, understanding is not something anyone can give us - it must be arrived at by asking questions until satisfying answers quiet our curiosity. And only this will free us to ask other questions, push the envelope of our understanding further. Happily, the good thing about the truth is that it stays true, and it can be found, again and again, but only by those who ask the hard questions, by those with minds that do not give up on the search. It is in this search that we find our way in our life’s journey, our Tao. Your best path is not the same as mine, or anyone else’s for that matter, but all must either climb or decline, because everything living is either getting better or getting worse. And this dialectic climb is what ancient philosophy is all about.
This is what philosophy is – I call it small-p philosophy because so many Capital-P Philosophers have tried to redefine it. But this search (philos) for wisdom or truth (sophia) was what ancient philosophers in all cultures were up to.
We might call it the difference in survival strategies that help us either live up to our higher potentials or down to our worst. And as we will see, this is why the ancients taught their young, first thing, the golden rule – familiar to us all, in principle, but largely forgotten in the practices we teach our young.
The ancients taught that the way of the upward path was to always treat others as we would have them treat us, i.e. justly, fairly. It has been passed on by every worthy wisdom tradition the world has known for the practical benefit of their young.
As Jesus said, we should, “Do onto others as you would that they should do onto you.”(Matthew 7:12, Luke 6:31)[1] In the Jewish tradition, into which Jesus was born, it was said: "What is hateful to you, do not to your fellow man. This is the law: all the rest is commentary." (Talmud, Shabbat 31a.)[2] Hindu sages declared, This is the sum of duty: do not do to others what would cause pain if done to you. (Mahabharata 5:1517)[3] Buddhists say, Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful." Udana-Varga 5:18)[4] Confucius said, Do not do to others what you would not like yourself. (Analects 12:2) [5] Taoists put it this way: Regard your neighbor’s gain as your gain, and your neighbor’s loss as your own loss.(Tai Shang Kan Yin P’ien)[6] In Islam, it is written: "None of you [truly] believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself." (Number 13 of Imam "Al-Nawawi's Forty Hadiths.)[7] Native Americans taught their young that, "All things are our relatives; what we do to everything, we do to ourselves. All is really One." (Black Elk)[8] And in the philosophic tradition, Immanuel Kant quoted Aristotle, who quoted Socrates, who quoted all the others in holding that a wise person will treat others, “not as means to his own ends, but as ends in themselves” -- as “another self.” [9] Immanuel Kant says a reasonable person will act always they way they would have others act, and not make an exception of themselves. John Stuart Mill puts it this way: “My freedom ends where another person’s begins.”
Put Socratic relationships…*
The golden rule compels us to put ourselves in others places, ask ourselves how we would feel in their shoes, and to behave in ways that we would consider just if the tables were turned. This intuitive insight is the key to bringing out the good in those around us. In the same way, it would not allow us to spoil one another’s character by teaching others they can get away with being unjust, for that is not how we would have them treat us. It does rather recommend that we do what is best for others, as we would have them do for us, and that includes teaching them by our actions to treat us well. So it is wise, and even good, to reciprocate how others treat us, give back to givers, but never let a takers benefit from their error. We ought do always what is best for the other, which does not include allowing them to mistreat us.
The logic of the golden rule would encourage us to always act justly, which includes reacting to unjust others in ways that teach them that our loss is their loss. As contemporary game theory shows, the ethic of reciprocity would have us return both cooperation and defection, tit for tat, so that others learn that it’s in their interest to treat us fairly. And there is an important lesson in this for our time, for it helps us learn how to bring out the best in others by giving them the best in ourselves.[10]
We may often find that good is buried deep in others, beneath layers of accumulated callouses, but remembering that it can be recovered, indeed relearned, is our only hope of educing it. It’s necessary that we look for this true and deep good in all for uncovering others true nature is the only way to remember and actualize our own good, which might also be buried deep inside, beneath habits we learned early on.
This is why the ancients thought that if we encourage this golden rule at an early age, everything else will take care of itself. But if we don’t, or worse, actually encourage our young to treat others in ways they wouldn’t want to be treated, unjustly and unfairly, then we will ensure they will go through life bringing out the worst in those around them – which is sure to harm them most of all! For surrounding ourselves with others who have incentive to retaliate because we take without giving, compete without cooperating, and feel the need to win at all costs. Well, that’s the true cost – that we teach others to treat us the same. And then we call it ‘human nature’ as if it was inevitable all along.
This is, arguably, the deepest sadness of our time – that we are taught such self-destructive life strategies early on, from parents who were themselves taught it, and religions that tell us it’s our nature, and institutions that employ this ‘economic man’ model of human behavior on which our education, economy, and politics are built. And little do we realize that we are teaching those around us how to treat us. And as a result, selfishness is so ubiquitous in our world that we are easily persuaded that it is actually human nature – when, in fact, it is only a bad habit that is amplified by continuous feedback in every one who didn’t or doesn’t learn the golden rule, either early on or eventually, which unfortunately is most all of us.
But lucky for us, the wiser life strategy that is the golden rule can be remembered, understood, and is not only medicine for the soul, but key to learning how to actualize the ideals of true happiness, true wealth, true friendship, and true love we all crave.
The good news is, as George Elliot once put it, “It’s never too late to become the person you might have been.” It’s easier to not develop those bad habits to begin with, of course, than to break them later on, which is why the ancients taught it young, and taught us to teach it young. For it is too easy to look around at our own generation, after the damage is done, and think there is no hope. But people can and do change. It is easy to bring out the good in those around us? No. Especially once they’ve been well conditioned into habits of defensive, narrow, and competitive self-interest. Not easy, but it is possible, because people can and do change, and all crave their own happiness, because the mere appearance of happiness, wealth, friendship and love is not satisfying. And sometimes it takes hard-learned lessons and time for regret before we are ready for change. It takes time to understand that and how our life strategy is not working, and maybe even backfiring. And when people reach that crisis in mid-life, when they see that the way they were taught and conditioned to be is only brining out the worst in them and those around them, then they are ready for rebirth. They change when they finally see and understand how to achieve the real thing. For some, religion feels like the way, because Jesus was onto something. But what passes for love in his name may be more of the mere appearance than the real thing too.
But again, the good news is that it’s our true nature to learn and grow, to discover truth if we ask the hard questions. We will come to see what we did not earlier, to understand what is true, not because we believe it, but because it makes sense. This is the hope for humanity, that we can learn from our mistakes, and choose the upward path, as soon as we remember our better selves, and understand how to bring out that good in ourselves and others, by choosing justice, fairness, reciprocity and the way of the golden rule.
The ancient called this the golden mean – nothing to excess – a powerful tool for catching our balance. Because the truth is being good does not require that we be perfect. For nothing that is always changing can or should be perfect, but always perfecting. Being the best you can be is a process of constant self-improvement, and as any journey, beginning with our first steps, it requires keeping one’s balance. Human excellence is a mean between the extremes of excess and deficiency – the secret of enough! Call it the ‘Goldilocks’ theory of life – finding what is just right for us! Your best self is unique to you, and while others can give us tools for our tool box, we must apply these principles of practical wisdom to the choices we make in life.
“Everyone wants what’s good for them,” as Socrates says, “but not everyone knows what that is.” Finding this is our journey, and along that path our task is to keep our balance between all of the complementary opposites of the world – self and others, give and take, compete and cooperate, egoism and altruism – nothing to excess, and all things at the right time for the right reason.
This is how we can help bring out the good in others then too – by helping them understand their own true good, and find ours in the process. And it does begin, as the ancient Hindu taught, with choosing between good and bad pleasures (for again, ‘evil’ has every incentive to appear good). Seeking what is pleasant and avoiding what is painful is wise, for it will help us to survive. But choosing pleasures that actually bring pain as their consequent is unwise, for this is how the ‘devil’ tricks us into doing what is actually bad for us.
The ancient sages helped their young learn this by way of a metaphor. The universe is like a magic wishing tree, they said. They called it Kalpatura, and taught that it will give you everything you wish for in this life…AND ALL of the consequences of those wishes. How better to teach the young to choose wisely, to find what is truly good by weighing the consequences of our actions. This is the essence of karma too. Seeing our choices in terms of their consequences, our actions in terms of their reactions, is the source of all wisdom in this life. And it is not taught, but learned in the process of seeking pleasure intelligently, But be careful what you wish for, because you might just get it! (repeat?*)
Likewise, this is the lesson of the golden mean: avoid both excess and deficiency - just because something is good does not mean that too much of it is better. There is a balance between excess and deficiency (like the goldilocks story) that is just right. So virtues are "somewhere in between," as Socrates put it (e.g. courage is the balance between cowardice and foolishness, and honesty is the balance between deceit and cruelty, and so on.)
As the I Ching put it, “The secret of success is to walk the central path, that is, never overreact.”(I Ching, p.276) “to avoid overdoing things, to walk in the central path.”(I Ching, p. 484) “guard against overreacting,” for one thing leads to another, so “Overdoing and being stubborn will bring misfortune.”(I Ching, 468)
“In his Doctrine of the Golden Mean, Confucius says, “Under Heaven, only the person possessing he most complete sincerity and trustworthiness is able to fully develop his true nature. If one is able to fully develop his true nature, he is able to fully develop the nature of other people. If one is able to fully develop the nature of other people, he is able to fully develop the nature of all creatures. In so doing, he is able to be involved in heaven and Earth’s transformational and nourishing functions and become one with Heaven and Earth.”(I Ching, p. 471)
Learn this young, they understood, and one will live a good life filled with true pleasure – true happiness, true friendship, true love, and true wealth. But even if we fail to learn it young, it is never too later to learn it well. And that is when we begin to actualize our higher potentials, our personal excellence. The ancients called this our heavenly or divine potentials. On the other hand, they knew, hell if your life gone wrong. And for this reason, the only real sin is not learning, for choices made in ignorance can be downright diabolical. There will be some suffering in every life, but choices made in ignorance will magnify it, for us, and all those who learn from us. For we are all teachers, just as we are all students, and we are responsible for what we teach, that is, what we bring out in others.
So this is our incentive to learn how to change our selfish habits to those that are in our best interest, and others, and so grow from narrow self-interest to broad self-interest.
Perhaps Confucius put it best, going beyond the simple golden rule, he called this moral law jen. Jen translates as goodness, benevolence, human-heartedness and love, and is held to be “the virtue of virtues.” It represents the ideal of a healthy relationship (consisting of the characters for human being and two). It is probably never fully realized, Confucius admits, but as an ideal, a target, “it induces courtesy, unselfishness, and empathy – the capacity to ‘measure the feelings of others by one’s own.’”[11] For “The self is a center of relationships,” and exists “as a node, not an entity.”[12] Such that, “becoming fully human involves transcending…egoism,”[13] “expanding one’s empathy indefinitely. This expansion proceeds in concentric circles…that begin with oneself and spread from there” including one’s family, friends, community, and ultimately all of humanity. And “In shifting the center of one’s concern from oneself to one’s family one transcends selfishness…” And “this broadening process is accompanied by one that is deepening… Inside and outside work together... The inner world deepens and grows more refined as empathy expands.”[14]
In this way then, Confucius “puts everyday life at the center of human spirituality.”[15] For “only of such large-hearted people, Confucius thought, can civilization be built.”[16]
In huna, an ancient Hawaiian tradition, they believe that before you can pass on to the next life, you will be asked, "Did you love enough? Did you learn enough?" In Hawaii, the ancient philosophy they call huna is inherent in the very meaning of their greeting, ALOHA, which means (simplified) look to the light of oneness, truth, humility, dialogue, and true love. "The minute you think you're better than somebody else…" one huna practitioner says, "you separate yourself from true love."
As the ancients taught, it is essential that we learn to want what’s actually good for us. Only in this way, “One is able to eliminate selfishness in relationships and to act in accordance with the central way.”(I Ching, p. 123) “This equilibrium is the great basis of all human activities, and this harmony is the universal path for all to pursue.”(I Ching, 449)
“It is understandable that in order to obtain mutual influence one has to overcome or get rid of one’s selfish heart to become unselfish, or selfless.”(I Ching, p. 268) Only when one “is able to overcome her shortsightedness and rid herself of selfishness…can [one] do good for other.”(I Ching, p.462)
Each of the ancient wisdom traditions taught us one or several such lessons to help us understand and so live this process. The more we learn from them, the more mysteries unfold. And if questions arise without response in one tradition, they are answered in yet another. And if we learn from them all (that is to say, the best of them, not the rest of them) then we can arrive, at last, at an understanding of what Einstein called ‘reality in the round’ – an integrated understanding of what the ancient called the whole truth – which involves the ability to see from all our complementary perspectives. No one ever completely understands everything, of course, for life is just too short. But seeing how everything is connected, what they called dialectic, gives us both the incentive and the ability to for the love of it for the whole of our lifetime. To see beyond the limits of our physical eyes into the metaphysics of the mind’s eye. And this is one vision of it: *
*put graphic
For those who glimpse this complementarity of the relative perspectives that make up the whole of truth, education takes on a whole new purpose.
Respect*?
To my grandchildren I would say, what your purpose will be in this life will be for you to find and choose. Offering this to you has been mine.
What the ancients tried to teach us was simply how to teach well! But we ignore them, generation after generation, while we look hopelessly at our own age, thinking it represents our nature, when what it represents is simply a failure of education - only partial education, when it is the whole that we need. We have fed our young a diet that includes only a few foods that have intrinsic value and compelling worth. But, in my experience, once they see the banquet they’ve been missing, they grow hungry to learn far beyond what we are inclined to teach.
Hope for this world lies in recognizing that the next generation is not yet corrupted and conditioned, not limited and self-restricted, and needn't be! The situation that we call ‘human nature’ only continues if every generation looks at its own bad habits, and says "there’s no hope!" Hope lies in learning to not do the same damage to the next generation as was done to us, if only by way of imbalanced learning.
The good news is – bad habits can be broken! And we can learn, from the ancients how to stop teaching our young the same bad habits that we find so difficult to change in ourselves!
*intrinsic goods?
Practical wisdom, empathy, the golden rule…these are the technology of the mind’ that help us tell right from wrong, by putting ourselves in others places so to see how we’d see it from there, which helps us find the balance of what’s fair to do…if we think it would be ok from their shoes, then it probably is, whereas if we would think it wrong from the receiving end, then we clearly shouldn’t do it…this is how the golden rule exercises empathy…stretches our vision to be able to see from different points of view…it also engenders future vision…moving us to ask, how will this effect the future? Both empathy and this future vision encourage us to listen to our inner voice…why listening to our inner voice is wise (as opposed to our feelings, which often proves foolish, if only because feelings can change inexplicably, and need reason to make sense of them…whereas acting on feeling without good reasons are the source of selfishness…makes us tend to ignore the truth of things because one’s feelings so distort it that we don’t see things as they are, but as we are… responding to some ever-changing inner whim, we can’t be known, and can’t even know ourselves…let alone hear what the universe is trying to tell us… So this is important... because our feelings should be an effect of our actions, not reasons for them, and so intelligence puts feelings into context, and rather than follow them, listens to our inner voice that can actually answer questions – am I harming someone by my actions? What would I think if someone did this to me? Would I think this is fair and right from the receiving end? Would I be ok with everyone doing this? Or maybe how will this action effect the future, my own and others? Will it come back to haunt me? Will it reverberate into the future? Or could I prevent all that harm by simply not indulging this selfish feeling…Feelings are not inherently selfish, in fact they’re the true intrinsic rewards of life. But acting on or for the sake of feelings can be a very big mistake, if only because those feelings may be distortions, and what’s more, may further constrict our interests to just our selves … and even in our own self-interest, the challenge is doing the right thing at the right time for the right reason…and only we can be the best judge of that… whereas natural intelligence can figure out right and wrong reasons… there is no one right thing we should all do, only avoid doing wrong…the universe gave us an inner voice so we can hear it’s answers when we ask the hard questions…to remind us what not to do…Because we wouldn’t want it done to us…it’s that simple…that’s how we know something is wrong, because we wouldn’t want it done to us… so if we’d see the wrong of it from the receiving end, then we should not do it…But when ego takes over, ‘what I want’ is all that matters, and usually others good and what is right by others is not part of that, except when it creates the mere appearance for self-interest’s sake…All of which obscures areal riches right in front of us, so we miss out on true wealth, true beauty, true friendship, true love, true intelligence and true happiness, and all the rest, because we’re too busy trying to create the mere appearance of them… creating only the appearance of being a good person gets one only the mere appearance of happiness, never the kind that a truly good person would have. For true happiness has an element of self-respect and earned confidence that false happiness doesn’t have. It knows itself to be good, and can trust it’s inner impulses to guide right. This is also why it’s not enough to simply follow rules to be good… rules and dictums are helpful guides (like thou shalt not kill…), but there are exceptions to every rule (…except in self-defense), so rules must be applied to particular circumstances…as we weigh out the best choice…all things considered…to say that something is practical wisdom is not simply to say that they can be put into practice, but that they must…the golden rule does us no good to simply know, for we don’t really understand its importance until we act on it…here too the golden mean is useful, because the wrong thing is usually some extreme, and the right thing is somewhere in the middle, a balance between the extremes of excess and deficiency…which is why they recommend wu wei…one foot in front of the other…choosing well, intelligently…in tis sense, good reasoning is like a muscle we must develop to be able to think on our feet and intelligently self-regulate…,check ourselves so that others don’t have to put us in check… before we make the mistakes that are sure to haunt us…
Choose pleasure, but choose it intelligently… …because the difference in good and bad pleasures is the effects they have on the rest of our life, and the consequences may be long term, long after the momentary pleasure is over…so choose what’s truly good for you, not just what seems good for the moment … the inner voice can articulate what is fair according to the golden rule…and this is why our feelings are not a good guide for our actions, if they make us care only about us… feelings tend to focus us on serving ourselves as we try to enhance our feelings…which makes others just means to our own ends… which is why feelings can so easily drown out our inner voice when they become ego, so bent on what one wants that it can’t hear or care about others…narrow egoism doesn’t care what is fair, so doesn’t ask the questions that intelligence would (a broader egoism perhaps), so doesn’t give the inner voice a chance, … all ego hears is what we want, and neglect the side and long term effects we probably don’t want, but don’t care about in time to prevent…or worse, cause ourselves …kalpatura…in this way, the future is an effect of our actions now… so avoid doing wrong for our own future sake, as well as the good of others … tell the difference in right and wrong by how we would have others behave toward us… if we wouldn’t have others do it, then we shouldn’t either…. … guided by not doing wrong is right…karma…. happiness… the real thing/ not the mere appearance of being good…so focused on what we want, that we’re never really happy…
Put “impulse of the soul”?
On the other hand, feelings can be a good reflection of our self-worth and the reward for being and doing our best, that is, as effect rather than a cause of our karma. In fact, we can become sensitive enough to hear and feel what Heisenberg calls “the impulse of the soul” that can “turn men into saints,” as Smith puts it. Being as sensitive to others feelings as to our own helps us to be our best guide, find our best path, and prevent our feelings from getting in our way or clouding our vision. And then every step that avoids error will be the right step.
We’ll probably still make mistakes, of course, but not the same ones over and over at least. And when you master these challenges of your journey, you’ll come out the hero of your story in the end. But if we don’t do this, if we don’t check ourselves as we go to prevent against making the same mistake we’ve already learned hard way, then we can hardly be surprised when the same results keep happening. And at some point, we have to take responsibility for causing our own troubles.
And of course, we’ll never really know what might otherwise have been, if we keep ourselves busy fighting off the furies of the past. The consequences of past mistakes will become our norm as they repeat and repeat until we learn how we are causing them. And only when we do learn to see the connection between our actions and the consequences in our feelings, only then will we quit making those mistakes.
This is why Plato says epiphany is nice, but we don’t actually understand something and that knowledge does us no good until and unless we remember it when it comes time to act. We may have an insight that “to be good is to be happy,” but we can’s say we really know it if we don’t put it into practice. This is how we make the same mistakes, and so face the same consequences, over and over throughout life…because we haven’t actually learned, and are still oblivious to our real power to end the cycle, and to create real happiness where we otherwise have real confusion and frustration.
This is why teaching the golden rule to the very young is so important – not only because it illuminates the right and wrong of things, but because it makes it easy to avoid making the mistakes they might otherwise spend their lives regretting. And not leaning this, or learning it in a certain limited sense, but not putting it into practice is a recipe for a life of self-inflicted turmoil. Not because we’re bad, or stupid, or because it’s human nature, but because we never learned or don’t yet understand the real value of the golden rule for creating our own true happiness. We can’t see the difference in right and wrong if we let our wants distort our inner voice and make it hard see errors before we make them, and to choose true pleasures, rather than those that bring bad consequences. This is why the ancients did not worry about sin – but about errors that come from mistakes in value – that is, not knowing what’s worth trading for what, and so giving up our true happiness as we chase the mere appearance of it.
Our work is always, and in all ways, to promote justice in this world, as the golden rule would have us. For therein lies the secret of happiness! This is why karma is such an interesting subject because the reasons why and how the universe works on this invisible level is the ‘technology of the mind’ that they ancients understood, and we have neglected to teach our young for too long.
If you don’t believe this (and you probably won’t at first, for it often seems that fortunes go to the undeserving), then please read on and reflect throughout your life. For this is what the ancients understood – i.e. how true happiness is withheld from the undeserving and reserved for the worthy – a truth that is far too easy to disbelieve or forget, if only because so many may seem happy from outside looking in, or we may think we would be happy, if we had their lives. But the truth is, momentary fun and collecting the trappings of wealth do not themselves bring happiness, which is reserved only for those with true self-respect. And only the just have that.
So I’m writing this book to convince you that the true reward – call it true bliss – comes with knowing yourself to be the hero of your own story, and with the memories of having lived a life you can be proud of – not a perfect life, for everyone makes mistakes, but learning is the good that can come of them. Learning for self-improvement turns out to be among life’s intrinsic goods and greatest happiness. This is the source of personal excellence and the secret to being happy.
As the ancients knew, the path is different for each of us, and true and practical wisdom is that which helps us each find our own way – what they call in the east, the Tao. And this is why we must learn it for ourselves, and not simply follow others.
For my part, I chose the path of academic life, which is as sweet in the rear view mirror as it once was in my dreams. There was a lot of hard work in between, but it was work that was so much fun that I’d have done it for free, just for the love of it! Indeed, teaching has all the benefits (minus some of the headaches) of being a student – such as getting to know other growing and open minds over big ideas and great books – and for a long time, we actually pay for that opportunity. So it’s a real treat when the time comes that they’ll pay us to spend our days in dialogue with young minds so bright they sparkle in memory. And it does come with maybe more than it’s fair share of other's respect, as well. And all this is set in some of the most beautiful (human made) environments in the world. Indeed, is there anywhere on earth more steeped in romance than ivy covered collage campuses where people spend their time engaged in teaching and learning - the highest human purpose?
This introduction purports to speak to my grandchildren (who are six and twelve as I write this), but is also an appeal to all parents, grandparents, and anyone who cares about the young and the future we deliver them into.
We have too long left the education of our young to institutions, when what they need most they can get best from those who love them. The influence that we have in this world is nowhere more powerful than by way of the seeds we plant by the questions that we ask and the lessons that we teach.
As Lou Marinoff has put it, “One plants olive trees for one’s grandchildren. Perhaps one does philosophical practice for them too.”
[1] (Smith, 1958, p.249)
[2] http://www.religioustolerance.org/reciproc.htm
[3] http://www.religioustolerance.org/reciproc.htm
[4] http://www.religioustolerance.org/reciproc.htm
[5] http://www.teachingvalues.com/goldenrule.html
[6] http://www.teachingvalues.com/goldenrule.html
[7] http://www.religioustolerance.org/reciproc.htm
[8] http://www.religioustolerance.org/reciproc.htm
[9] (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics Book 8: Section 3 1156b10)
[10] See Robert Axelrod’s Evolution of Cooperation, for the logic of this wisdom. By way of the iterated prisoner’s dilemma, we can see that, while our conditioned ego has learned that we should win in every interaction (that is, come out with an advantage over the other), as Axelrod shows, ‘tit for taters’ never have to worry about winning individual games, and in fact, never win any! Still, they outplay everyone and win the tournament by giving others incentive to cooperate with them and taking away others incentive to defect. The value of a future relationship (and trust, though Axelrod denies this as a variable) becomes the element that gives mutual reciprocators the edge as an evolutionarily stable survival strategy. In other words, seen aright, nice guys do finish first.
[11] (Smith, 110)
[12] (Smith, 113)
[13] (Smith, 117)
[14] (Smith, 114)
[15] (Smith, 112)
[16] (Smith, 110)
If I could only teach my grandchildren one thing, what would that be? I’d hope to help them see that one thing I wish I’d understood sooner - the full reach of their potential…the range of possibilities available to us all… IF we learn well and choose wisely in this life. But choosing our lives intelligently is not something we teach our young in the world such as it is. So how would I teach them differently?
I suppose I’d start by encouraging them to sort the mere appearance of good from the real thing, for “everyone wants what’s good for them,” as Socrates teaches, “but not everyone knows what that is.” Pleasure, happiness, friendship, love, and wealth – these are all good things, if they are understood truly - but…there are many pretenders at work in our world. If you think about it, what would be the first thing ‘evil’ would do, after all, if not try to create the mere appearance or pretense of good?
But we also have the ability to achieve these goods authentically, if we understand them in their true and ideal forms. (This is what Plato meant by this word ‘form’, by the way, not some far off unreachable goal, but targets we cannot hit if we don’t keep them in sight.)
For instance, we all know there is a difference in a mere friend and a true friend. But without dialogue about this difference, we scarcely understand the difference. Likewise with other intrinsic goods, like love, happiness, and wealth. The mere appearance of these is not the real thing – and how can we hit targets we don’t even aim at?
So we end up with something artificial, if we aren’t helped to understand the real deal, which can be done, if we hope to actualize these true potentials in our lives. And the truth is, understanding is not something anyone can give us - it must be arrived at by asking questions until satisfying answers quiet our curiosity. And only this will free us to ask other questions, push the envelope of our understanding further. Happily, the good thing about the truth is that it stays true, and it can be found, again and again, but only by those who ask the hard questions, by those with minds that do not give up on the search. It is in this search that we find our way in our life’s journey, our Tao. Your best path is not the same as mine, or anyone else’s for that matter, but all must either climb or decline, because everything living is either getting better or getting worse. And this dialectic climb is what ancient philosophy is all about.
This is what philosophy is – I call it small-p philosophy because so many Capital-P Philosophers have tried to redefine it. But this search (philos) for wisdom or truth (sophia) was what ancient philosophers in all cultures were up to.
We might call it the difference in survival strategies that help us either live up to our higher potentials or down to our worst. And as we will see, this is why the ancients taught their young, first thing, the golden rule – familiar to us all, in principle, but largely forgotten in the practices we teach our young.
The ancients taught that the way of the upward path was to always treat others as we would have them treat us, i.e. justly, fairly. It has been passed on by every worthy wisdom tradition the world has known for the practical benefit of their young.
As Jesus said, we should, “Do onto others as you would that they should do onto you.”(Matthew 7:12, Luke 6:31)[1] In the Jewish tradition, into which Jesus was born, it was said: "What is hateful to you, do not to your fellow man. This is the law: all the rest is commentary." (Talmud, Shabbat 31a.)[2] Hindu sages declared, This is the sum of duty: do not do to others what would cause pain if done to you. (Mahabharata 5:1517)[3] Buddhists say, Hurt not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful." Udana-Varga 5:18)[4] Confucius said, Do not do to others what you would not like yourself. (Analects 12:2) [5] Taoists put it this way: Regard your neighbor’s gain as your gain, and your neighbor’s loss as your own loss.(Tai Shang Kan Yin P’ien)[6] In Islam, it is written: "None of you [truly] believes until he wishes for his brother what he wishes for himself." (Number 13 of Imam "Al-Nawawi's Forty Hadiths.)[7] Native Americans taught their young that, "All things are our relatives; what we do to everything, we do to ourselves. All is really One." (Black Elk)[8] And in the philosophic tradition, Immanuel Kant quoted Aristotle, who quoted Socrates, who quoted all the others in holding that a wise person will treat others, “not as means to his own ends, but as ends in themselves” -- as “another self.” [9] Immanuel Kant says a reasonable person will act always they way they would have others act, and not make an exception of themselves. John Stuart Mill puts it this way: “My freedom ends where another person’s begins.”
Put Socratic relationships…*
The golden rule compels us to put ourselves in others places, ask ourselves how we would feel in their shoes, and to behave in ways that we would consider just if the tables were turned. This intuitive insight is the key to bringing out the good in those around us. In the same way, it would not allow us to spoil one another’s character by teaching others they can get away with being unjust, for that is not how we would have them treat us. It does rather recommend that we do what is best for others, as we would have them do for us, and that includes teaching them by our actions to treat us well. So it is wise, and even good, to reciprocate how others treat us, give back to givers, but never let a takers benefit from their error. We ought do always what is best for the other, which does not include allowing them to mistreat us.
The logic of the golden rule would encourage us to always act justly, which includes reacting to unjust others in ways that teach them that our loss is their loss. As contemporary game theory shows, the ethic of reciprocity would have us return both cooperation and defection, tit for tat, so that others learn that it’s in their interest to treat us fairly. And there is an important lesson in this for our time, for it helps us learn how to bring out the best in others by giving them the best in ourselves.[10]
We may often find that good is buried deep in others, beneath layers of accumulated callouses, but remembering that it can be recovered, indeed relearned, is our only hope of educing it. It’s necessary that we look for this true and deep good in all for uncovering others true nature is the only way to remember and actualize our own good, which might also be buried deep inside, beneath habits we learned early on.
This is why the ancients thought that if we encourage this golden rule at an early age, everything else will take care of itself. But if we don’t, or worse, actually encourage our young to treat others in ways they wouldn’t want to be treated, unjustly and unfairly, then we will ensure they will go through life bringing out the worst in those around them – which is sure to harm them most of all! For surrounding ourselves with others who have incentive to retaliate because we take without giving, compete without cooperating, and feel the need to win at all costs. Well, that’s the true cost – that we teach others to treat us the same. And then we call it ‘human nature’ as if it was inevitable all along.
This is, arguably, the deepest sadness of our time – that we are taught such self-destructive life strategies early on, from parents who were themselves taught it, and religions that tell us it’s our nature, and institutions that employ this ‘economic man’ model of human behavior on which our education, economy, and politics are built. And little do we realize that we are teaching those around us how to treat us. And as a result, selfishness is so ubiquitous in our world that we are easily persuaded that it is actually human nature – when, in fact, it is only a bad habit that is amplified by continuous feedback in every one who didn’t or doesn’t learn the golden rule, either early on or eventually, which unfortunately is most all of us.
But lucky for us, the wiser life strategy that is the golden rule can be remembered, understood, and is not only medicine for the soul, but key to learning how to actualize the ideals of true happiness, true wealth, true friendship, and true love we all crave.
The good news is, as George Elliot once put it, “It’s never too late to become the person you might have been.” It’s easier to not develop those bad habits to begin with, of course, than to break them later on, which is why the ancients taught it young, and taught us to teach it young. For it is too easy to look around at our own generation, after the damage is done, and think there is no hope. But people can and do change. It is easy to bring out the good in those around us? No. Especially once they’ve been well conditioned into habits of defensive, narrow, and competitive self-interest. Not easy, but it is possible, because people can and do change, and all crave their own happiness, because the mere appearance of happiness, wealth, friendship and love is not satisfying. And sometimes it takes hard-learned lessons and time for regret before we are ready for change. It takes time to understand that and how our life strategy is not working, and maybe even backfiring. And when people reach that crisis in mid-life, when they see that the way they were taught and conditioned to be is only brining out the worst in them and those around them, then they are ready for rebirth. They change when they finally see and understand how to achieve the real thing. For some, religion feels like the way, because Jesus was onto something. But what passes for love in his name may be more of the mere appearance than the real thing too.
But again, the good news is that it’s our true nature to learn and grow, to discover truth if we ask the hard questions. We will come to see what we did not earlier, to understand what is true, not because we believe it, but because it makes sense. This is the hope for humanity, that we can learn from our mistakes, and choose the upward path, as soon as we remember our better selves, and understand how to bring out that good in ourselves and others, by choosing justice, fairness, reciprocity and the way of the golden rule.
The ancient called this the golden mean – nothing to excess – a powerful tool for catching our balance. Because the truth is being good does not require that we be perfect. For nothing that is always changing can or should be perfect, but always perfecting. Being the best you can be is a process of constant self-improvement, and as any journey, beginning with our first steps, it requires keeping one’s balance. Human excellence is a mean between the extremes of excess and deficiency – the secret of enough! Call it the ‘Goldilocks’ theory of life – finding what is just right for us! Your best self is unique to you, and while others can give us tools for our tool box, we must apply these principles of practical wisdom to the choices we make in life.
“Everyone wants what’s good for them,” as Socrates says, “but not everyone knows what that is.” Finding this is our journey, and along that path our task is to keep our balance between all of the complementary opposites of the world – self and others, give and take, compete and cooperate, egoism and altruism – nothing to excess, and all things at the right time for the right reason.
This is how we can help bring out the good in others then too – by helping them understand their own true good, and find ours in the process. And it does begin, as the ancient Hindu taught, with choosing between good and bad pleasures (for again, ‘evil’ has every incentive to appear good). Seeking what is pleasant and avoiding what is painful is wise, for it will help us to survive. But choosing pleasures that actually bring pain as their consequent is unwise, for this is how the ‘devil’ tricks us into doing what is actually bad for us.
The ancient sages helped their young learn this by way of a metaphor. The universe is like a magic wishing tree, they said. They called it Kalpatura, and taught that it will give you everything you wish for in this life…AND ALL of the consequences of those wishes. How better to teach the young to choose wisely, to find what is truly good by weighing the consequences of our actions. This is the essence of karma too. Seeing our choices in terms of their consequences, our actions in terms of their reactions, is the source of all wisdom in this life. And it is not taught, but learned in the process of seeking pleasure intelligently, But be careful what you wish for, because you might just get it! (repeat?*)
Likewise, this is the lesson of the golden mean: avoid both excess and deficiency - just because something is good does not mean that too much of it is better. There is a balance between excess and deficiency (like the goldilocks story) that is just right. So virtues are "somewhere in between," as Socrates put it (e.g. courage is the balance between cowardice and foolishness, and honesty is the balance between deceit and cruelty, and so on.)
As the I Ching put it, “The secret of success is to walk the central path, that is, never overreact.”(I Ching, p.276) “to avoid overdoing things, to walk in the central path.”(I Ching, p. 484) “guard against overreacting,” for one thing leads to another, so “Overdoing and being stubborn will bring misfortune.”(I Ching, 468)
“In his Doctrine of the Golden Mean, Confucius says, “Under Heaven, only the person possessing he most complete sincerity and trustworthiness is able to fully develop his true nature. If one is able to fully develop his true nature, he is able to fully develop the nature of other people. If one is able to fully develop the nature of other people, he is able to fully develop the nature of all creatures. In so doing, he is able to be involved in heaven and Earth’s transformational and nourishing functions and become one with Heaven and Earth.”(I Ching, p. 471)
Learn this young, they understood, and one will live a good life filled with true pleasure – true happiness, true friendship, true love, and true wealth. But even if we fail to learn it young, it is never too later to learn it well. And that is when we begin to actualize our higher potentials, our personal excellence. The ancients called this our heavenly or divine potentials. On the other hand, they knew, hell if your life gone wrong. And for this reason, the only real sin is not learning, for choices made in ignorance can be downright diabolical. There will be some suffering in every life, but choices made in ignorance will magnify it, for us, and all those who learn from us. For we are all teachers, just as we are all students, and we are responsible for what we teach, that is, what we bring out in others.
So this is our incentive to learn how to change our selfish habits to those that are in our best interest, and others, and so grow from narrow self-interest to broad self-interest.
Perhaps Confucius put it best, going beyond the simple golden rule, he called this moral law jen. Jen translates as goodness, benevolence, human-heartedness and love, and is held to be “the virtue of virtues.” It represents the ideal of a healthy relationship (consisting of the characters for human being and two). It is probably never fully realized, Confucius admits, but as an ideal, a target, “it induces courtesy, unselfishness, and empathy – the capacity to ‘measure the feelings of others by one’s own.’”[11] For “The self is a center of relationships,” and exists “as a node, not an entity.”[12] Such that, “becoming fully human involves transcending…egoism,”[13] “expanding one’s empathy indefinitely. This expansion proceeds in concentric circles…that begin with oneself and spread from there” including one’s family, friends, community, and ultimately all of humanity. And “In shifting the center of one’s concern from oneself to one’s family one transcends selfishness…” And “this broadening process is accompanied by one that is deepening… Inside and outside work together... The inner world deepens and grows more refined as empathy expands.”[14]
In this way then, Confucius “puts everyday life at the center of human spirituality.”[15] For “only of such large-hearted people, Confucius thought, can civilization be built.”[16]
In huna, an ancient Hawaiian tradition, they believe that before you can pass on to the next life, you will be asked, "Did you love enough? Did you learn enough?" In Hawaii, the ancient philosophy they call huna is inherent in the very meaning of their greeting, ALOHA, which means (simplified) look to the light of oneness, truth, humility, dialogue, and true love. "The minute you think you're better than somebody else…" one huna practitioner says, "you separate yourself from true love."
As the ancients taught, it is essential that we learn to want what’s actually good for us. Only in this way, “One is able to eliminate selfishness in relationships and to act in accordance with the central way.”(I Ching, p. 123) “This equilibrium is the great basis of all human activities, and this harmony is the universal path for all to pursue.”(I Ching, 449)
“It is understandable that in order to obtain mutual influence one has to overcome or get rid of one’s selfish heart to become unselfish, or selfless.”(I Ching, p. 268) Only when one “is able to overcome her shortsightedness and rid herself of selfishness…can [one] do good for other.”(I Ching, p.462)
Each of the ancient wisdom traditions taught us one or several such lessons to help us understand and so live this process. The more we learn from them, the more mysteries unfold. And if questions arise without response in one tradition, they are answered in yet another. And if we learn from them all (that is to say, the best of them, not the rest of them) then we can arrive, at last, at an understanding of what Einstein called ‘reality in the round’ – an integrated understanding of what the ancient called the whole truth – which involves the ability to see from all our complementary perspectives. No one ever completely understands everything, of course, for life is just too short. But seeing how everything is connected, what they called dialectic, gives us both the incentive and the ability to for the love of it for the whole of our lifetime. To see beyond the limits of our physical eyes into the metaphysics of the mind’s eye. And this is one vision of it: *
*put graphic
For those who glimpse this complementarity of the relative perspectives that make up the whole of truth, education takes on a whole new purpose.
Respect*?
To my grandchildren I would say, what your purpose will be in this life will be for you to find and choose. Offering this to you has been mine.
What the ancients tried to teach us was simply how to teach well! But we ignore them, generation after generation, while we look hopelessly at our own age, thinking it represents our nature, when what it represents is simply a failure of education - only partial education, when it is the whole that we need. We have fed our young a diet that includes only a few foods that have intrinsic value and compelling worth. But, in my experience, once they see the banquet they’ve been missing, they grow hungry to learn far beyond what we are inclined to teach.
Hope for this world lies in recognizing that the next generation is not yet corrupted and conditioned, not limited and self-restricted, and needn't be! The situation that we call ‘human nature’ only continues if every generation looks at its own bad habits, and says "there’s no hope!" Hope lies in learning to not do the same damage to the next generation as was done to us, if only by way of imbalanced learning.
The good news is – bad habits can be broken! And we can learn, from the ancients how to stop teaching our young the same bad habits that we find so difficult to change in ourselves!
*intrinsic goods?
Practical wisdom, empathy, the golden rule…these are the technology of the mind’ that help us tell right from wrong, by putting ourselves in others places so to see how we’d see it from there, which helps us find the balance of what’s fair to do…if we think it would be ok from their shoes, then it probably is, whereas if we would think it wrong from the receiving end, then we clearly shouldn’t do it…this is how the golden rule exercises empathy…stretches our vision to be able to see from different points of view…it also engenders future vision…moving us to ask, how will this effect the future? Both empathy and this future vision encourage us to listen to our inner voice…why listening to our inner voice is wise (as opposed to our feelings, which often proves foolish, if only because feelings can change inexplicably, and need reason to make sense of them…whereas acting on feeling without good reasons are the source of selfishness…makes us tend to ignore the truth of things because one’s feelings so distort it that we don’t see things as they are, but as we are… responding to some ever-changing inner whim, we can’t be known, and can’t even know ourselves…let alone hear what the universe is trying to tell us… So this is important... because our feelings should be an effect of our actions, not reasons for them, and so intelligence puts feelings into context, and rather than follow them, listens to our inner voice that can actually answer questions – am I harming someone by my actions? What would I think if someone did this to me? Would I think this is fair and right from the receiving end? Would I be ok with everyone doing this? Or maybe how will this action effect the future, my own and others? Will it come back to haunt me? Will it reverberate into the future? Or could I prevent all that harm by simply not indulging this selfish feeling…Feelings are not inherently selfish, in fact they’re the true intrinsic rewards of life. But acting on or for the sake of feelings can be a very big mistake, if only because those feelings may be distortions, and what’s more, may further constrict our interests to just our selves … and even in our own self-interest, the challenge is doing the right thing at the right time for the right reason…and only we can be the best judge of that… whereas natural intelligence can figure out right and wrong reasons… there is no one right thing we should all do, only avoid doing wrong…the universe gave us an inner voice so we can hear it’s answers when we ask the hard questions…to remind us what not to do…Because we wouldn’t want it done to us…it’s that simple…that’s how we know something is wrong, because we wouldn’t want it done to us… so if we’d see the wrong of it from the receiving end, then we should not do it…But when ego takes over, ‘what I want’ is all that matters, and usually others good and what is right by others is not part of that, except when it creates the mere appearance for self-interest’s sake…All of which obscures areal riches right in front of us, so we miss out on true wealth, true beauty, true friendship, true love, true intelligence and true happiness, and all the rest, because we’re too busy trying to create the mere appearance of them… creating only the appearance of being a good person gets one only the mere appearance of happiness, never the kind that a truly good person would have. For true happiness has an element of self-respect and earned confidence that false happiness doesn’t have. It knows itself to be good, and can trust it’s inner impulses to guide right. This is also why it’s not enough to simply follow rules to be good… rules and dictums are helpful guides (like thou shalt not kill…), but there are exceptions to every rule (…except in self-defense), so rules must be applied to particular circumstances…as we weigh out the best choice…all things considered…to say that something is practical wisdom is not simply to say that they can be put into practice, but that they must…the golden rule does us no good to simply know, for we don’t really understand its importance until we act on it…here too the golden mean is useful, because the wrong thing is usually some extreme, and the right thing is somewhere in the middle, a balance between the extremes of excess and deficiency…which is why they recommend wu wei…one foot in front of the other…choosing well, intelligently…in tis sense, good reasoning is like a muscle we must develop to be able to think on our feet and intelligently self-regulate…,check ourselves so that others don’t have to put us in check… before we make the mistakes that are sure to haunt us…
Choose pleasure, but choose it intelligently… …because the difference in good and bad pleasures is the effects they have on the rest of our life, and the consequences may be long term, long after the momentary pleasure is over…so choose what’s truly good for you, not just what seems good for the moment … the inner voice can articulate what is fair according to the golden rule…and this is why our feelings are not a good guide for our actions, if they make us care only about us… feelings tend to focus us on serving ourselves as we try to enhance our feelings…which makes others just means to our own ends… which is why feelings can so easily drown out our inner voice when they become ego, so bent on what one wants that it can’t hear or care about others…narrow egoism doesn’t care what is fair, so doesn’t ask the questions that intelligence would (a broader egoism perhaps), so doesn’t give the inner voice a chance, … all ego hears is what we want, and neglect the side and long term effects we probably don’t want, but don’t care about in time to prevent…or worse, cause ourselves …kalpatura…in this way, the future is an effect of our actions now… so avoid doing wrong for our own future sake, as well as the good of others … tell the difference in right and wrong by how we would have others behave toward us… if we wouldn’t have others do it, then we shouldn’t either…. … guided by not doing wrong is right…karma…. happiness… the real thing/ not the mere appearance of being good…so focused on what we want, that we’re never really happy…
Put “impulse of the soul”?
On the other hand, feelings can be a good reflection of our self-worth and the reward for being and doing our best, that is, as effect rather than a cause of our karma. In fact, we can become sensitive enough to hear and feel what Heisenberg calls “the impulse of the soul” that can “turn men into saints,” as Smith puts it. Being as sensitive to others feelings as to our own helps us to be our best guide, find our best path, and prevent our feelings from getting in our way or clouding our vision. And then every step that avoids error will be the right step.
We’ll probably still make mistakes, of course, but not the same ones over and over at least. And when you master these challenges of your journey, you’ll come out the hero of your story in the end. But if we don’t do this, if we don’t check ourselves as we go to prevent against making the same mistake we’ve already learned hard way, then we can hardly be surprised when the same results keep happening. And at some point, we have to take responsibility for causing our own troubles.
And of course, we’ll never really know what might otherwise have been, if we keep ourselves busy fighting off the furies of the past. The consequences of past mistakes will become our norm as they repeat and repeat until we learn how we are causing them. And only when we do learn to see the connection between our actions and the consequences in our feelings, only then will we quit making those mistakes.
This is why Plato says epiphany is nice, but we don’t actually understand something and that knowledge does us no good until and unless we remember it when it comes time to act. We may have an insight that “to be good is to be happy,” but we can’s say we really know it if we don’t put it into practice. This is how we make the same mistakes, and so face the same consequences, over and over throughout life…because we haven’t actually learned, and are still oblivious to our real power to end the cycle, and to create real happiness where we otherwise have real confusion and frustration.
This is why teaching the golden rule to the very young is so important – not only because it illuminates the right and wrong of things, but because it makes it easy to avoid making the mistakes they might otherwise spend their lives regretting. And not leaning this, or learning it in a certain limited sense, but not putting it into practice is a recipe for a life of self-inflicted turmoil. Not because we’re bad, or stupid, or because it’s human nature, but because we never learned or don’t yet understand the real value of the golden rule for creating our own true happiness. We can’t see the difference in right and wrong if we let our wants distort our inner voice and make it hard see errors before we make them, and to choose true pleasures, rather than those that bring bad consequences. This is why the ancients did not worry about sin – but about errors that come from mistakes in value – that is, not knowing what’s worth trading for what, and so giving up our true happiness as we chase the mere appearance of it.
Our work is always, and in all ways, to promote justice in this world, as the golden rule would have us. For therein lies the secret of happiness! This is why karma is such an interesting subject because the reasons why and how the universe works on this invisible level is the ‘technology of the mind’ that they ancients understood, and we have neglected to teach our young for too long.
If you don’t believe this (and you probably won’t at first, for it often seems that fortunes go to the undeserving), then please read on and reflect throughout your life. For this is what the ancients understood – i.e. how true happiness is withheld from the undeserving and reserved for the worthy – a truth that is far too easy to disbelieve or forget, if only because so many may seem happy from outside looking in, or we may think we would be happy, if we had their lives. But the truth is, momentary fun and collecting the trappings of wealth do not themselves bring happiness, which is reserved only for those with true self-respect. And only the just have that.
So I’m writing this book to convince you that the true reward – call it true bliss – comes with knowing yourself to be the hero of your own story, and with the memories of having lived a life you can be proud of – not a perfect life, for everyone makes mistakes, but learning is the good that can come of them. Learning for self-improvement turns out to be among life’s intrinsic goods and greatest happiness. This is the source of personal excellence and the secret to being happy.
As the ancients knew, the path is different for each of us, and true and practical wisdom is that which helps us each find our own way – what they call in the east, the Tao. And this is why we must learn it for ourselves, and not simply follow others.
For my part, I chose the path of academic life, which is as sweet in the rear view mirror as it once was in my dreams. There was a lot of hard work in between, but it was work that was so much fun that I’d have done it for free, just for the love of it! Indeed, teaching has all the benefits (minus some of the headaches) of being a student – such as getting to know other growing and open minds over big ideas and great books – and for a long time, we actually pay for that opportunity. So it’s a real treat when the time comes that they’ll pay us to spend our days in dialogue with young minds so bright they sparkle in memory. And it does come with maybe more than it’s fair share of other's respect, as well. And all this is set in some of the most beautiful (human made) environments in the world. Indeed, is there anywhere on earth more steeped in romance than ivy covered collage campuses where people spend their time engaged in teaching and learning - the highest human purpose?
This introduction purports to speak to my grandchildren (who are six and twelve as I write this), but is also an appeal to all parents, grandparents, and anyone who cares about the young and the future we deliver them into.
We have too long left the education of our young to institutions, when what they need most they can get best from those who love them. The influence that we have in this world is nowhere more powerful than by way of the seeds we plant by the questions that we ask and the lessons that we teach.
As Lou Marinoff has put it, “One plants olive trees for one’s grandchildren. Perhaps one does philosophical practice for them too.”
[1] (Smith, 1958, p.249)
[2] http://www.religioustolerance.org/reciproc.htm
[3] http://www.religioustolerance.org/reciproc.htm
[4] http://www.religioustolerance.org/reciproc.htm
[5] http://www.teachingvalues.com/goldenrule.html
[6] http://www.teachingvalues.com/goldenrule.html
[7] http://www.religioustolerance.org/reciproc.htm
[8] http://www.religioustolerance.org/reciproc.htm
[9] (Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics Book 8: Section 3 1156b10)
[10] See Robert Axelrod’s Evolution of Cooperation, for the logic of this wisdom. By way of the iterated prisoner’s dilemma, we can see that, while our conditioned ego has learned that we should win in every interaction (that is, come out with an advantage over the other), as Axelrod shows, ‘tit for taters’ never have to worry about winning individual games, and in fact, never win any! Still, they outplay everyone and win the tournament by giving others incentive to cooperate with them and taking away others incentive to defect. The value of a future relationship (and trust, though Axelrod denies this as a variable) becomes the element that gives mutual reciprocators the edge as an evolutionarily stable survival strategy. In other words, seen aright, nice guys do finish first.
[11] (Smith, 110)
[12] (Smith, 113)
[13] (Smith, 117)
[14] (Smith, 114)
[15] (Smith, 112)
[16] (Smith, 110)