Wonder and its Questions

Wonder and Its Questions

Both Plato and Aristotle believed that philosophy begins in wonder. That mindset, attitude, and activity represented by the Greek “philo-sophia,” meaning “the love of wisdom,” has no other origin. Wonder is the source.

But that explanation can use some clarification, because we typically speak of wonder in two different senses. First, there is wonder as awe. Your first look at the Grand Canyon up close, or a first experience of the Northern Lights undulating in the dark night sky, may evoke a cosmic sense of wonder as an overwhelming awe. You are entranced, and perhaps even speechless. You may feel very small in the immensity of things. But in each case, you might subsequently wonder what caused such a phenomenon, and that’s wonder as asking. it’s an interrogatory mode, a quest for discovery and illumination. So there is wonder as an awe and as an ask. I believe the early philosophers had both senses in mind. A deeper experience of life, and perhaps of your work, can begin only through a sense of wonder as a real awe and as a deep asking.

Both Plato and Aristotle had learned from Socrates, and he was the individual who launched philosophy into the broader world by relentlessly posing questions about things others assumed they knew. He had the curiosity and courage to interrogate reality in new ways and to involve others in his endless quest to understand.

In this connection I want to recommend heartily Walter Isaacson’s new massive biography of Elon Musk. Poor Elon (the only context in which you’ll ever see these two words together in reference to the world’s richest man) had a truly terrible childhood of massive emotional abuse at the hands of his own father, and of physically violent schoolyard bullies along the way. But he was a survivor, and went on to found company after company that he successfully steered through impossible challenges, largely by a relentless asking of questions: Why are things done in this way? Why is this a rule or regulation? Who made this a rule? How can we do things differently? What can we eliminate from the complexity of this product or process? How can we make things simpler, faster, cheaper, and more efficient?

Musk has overcome incredible odds over and over again, despite many self destructive emotional tendencies coming from his harsh childhood, by asking childlike questions where others take things for granted, or as givens in the world. He uses the tool of relentless questioning to turn industries upside down and make new things happen. He seems to have next to no empathy for other people, and near zero emotional intelligence, but his entire business history is driven by his remarkable capacity to ask the right questions over and over again, demanding real answers and not accepting the common prejudicial opinions that result merely from long-time habit.

This is a trait Elon Musk shares with the late Steve Jobs. Both of them have managed to launch world-changing enterprises by asking questions about things everyone else just assumed. Why do we need this? Can we do without it? Why don’t we try this another way? Can we take a risk here? Who says it’s impossible? What’s the worst that can happen if we give this a try?

Questions are powerful tools, and this particular type of tool is vastly underused because it’s under appreciated in our time. The great discoverers and inventors have always wondered what there could be beyond the known. And they have acted on their wonder, bringing the tool of asking to their awe and both then to action in the world.

Young people wanting the success of a Musk at Tesla or Space-X, or the world changing impact of a Jobs with his i-world wrongly ape their dress or darker manners, thinking that minimalist cool or hot anger and rage can give them the achievements they seek in their own lives. But if they were to really ask what has made Jobs and Musk able to pioneer new things, they would quickly discover that it’s the power of asking questions well and relentlessly, and thereby stripping away illusion and false necessity that is the art standing behind their accomplishments, as well as nearly any remarkable success. And it’s a tool each of us can use. If that goads you to ask how, then you’re already well on your way.

For the Musk book, click HERE. And if you’re curious, which is good, I have a book where I explore all the philosophical tools Steve Jobs used to attain his extraordinary success. It’s called Socrates in Silicon Valley and is HERE.

The Difficulty of the Climb

Good morning, friends! I just did my morning post across social media and wanted to share it here because it’s an insight that’s become very important to me. I just had a new and unexpected project come my way. At first it was a major surprise and challenge over whether to say yes, then I realized it was a wonderful opportunity, and it very quickly turned into a tremendous challenge that slowly revealed itself to be one of the most amazing adventures ever. I’ll say more about that later. But here is my post today for you to ponder. I’d love to hear what you think.

There are days when this is how it seems. A vertical ascent, the hardest of environments and difficulties. But ponder this guy’s likely mindset. Focus. Determination. A strong sense of purpose and a goal. An exhilaration at the very difficulty. An easy climb can’t bring the deep satisfaction of the all out commitment and complete engagement required by the extreme challenge. So, climb on. One finger hold and foot hold at a time. Inch by inch of progress. Alert. Aware. Relishing the process as the deep adventure into yourself that it always is. The summit awaits and is as patient as you and I are learning to be. #difficulty #hard #adversity #focus #determination #grit #success #wisdom #mindset

Consciousness. Awareness. Mindfulness.

A good friend just asked me last night by voice mail: What’s the difference between consciousness, awareness, and mindfulness? By the time I heard the message, it was late and I was on the verge of losing my grip on each of those things. So I’ve waited until this morning. You all want to take a crack at this one? My first thoughts are that consciousness is the base level of what we all experience except when we’re sitting through a long and boring lecture in a warm room. It separates people and animals from plants, maybe, or all three from stones, maybe. Or. It’s an awake visual surround sound sensorium of perceptions, memories, and thoughts, whenever they’re present, and lively, or “brought to mind.” We all know what the opposite is like, to be unconscious, except of course while it’s going on, which is odd in its own right, right? And then there’s the subconscious that takes over and drives your car in way that Tesla software can't when your conscious mind decides to take a break and wander in warm trustingness that this other part of you can make do just fine, most of the time, unlike Tesla's CEO.

Awareness is just another name for what distinguishes consciousness from the totally oblivious unconscious, or what strangely attaches both conscious and subconscious states to a greater reality beyond the individual mind. It can take such forms as the immediacy of sharp visual seeing or keen concurrent hearing, or else the indirectness of merely realizing.

Mindfulness is by contrast a particular focus of the conscious, aware mind. It’s about paying attention and keenly noticing in an undivided and nondistracted way. It’s a purity of being there, or here, and now. It’s a spiritual attainment, whereas consciousness and awareness at least begin as among our most basic, given equipment, our starting points for active participation in the world. I may be wrong, but I’m not yet conscious, or aware, of how, and yet I’m mindfully open. You?

Decisions

One more this week for those of you who aren’t with me on social media. I’ll not usually do back to back posts here but today, I decided to do so!

Decisions. How many decisions do you make in a given day, week, month, or year? Sometimes they can seem as numerous as a big sky full of migrating birds, and much less likely to make their intended destinations. It can feel overwhelming at times. We walk through a fog of the unknown and radically unpredictable. And yet, we want to get each decision right. But in an uncertain and dynamic world, we should know that’s impossible. No mere human has done it yet. None of us will likely be the first. And so that provides a different perspective on the challenge. Maybe the practical point of decisions isn’t to get them all right, but merely to be fully responsible in them all. We do our best, and this is all that’s asked. The world then takes over and we await the results, which most likely will present more decisions. It’s less like a test a school room exam, but parts of a journey, an adventure forward, where we’re exploring and perhaps building, but it’s all a bit tentative. Our learning and growth is foremost. Our curiosity, creativity, and courage are to be developed and deployed into the world. But perfection isn’t even on the horizon. And to worry about it is wasted energy. We’re here to fly. And the sky is indeed big, with lots of great stops along the way. #growth #building #creativity #learning #courage #decisions #choices #wisdom #life #leadership

Comment: Many people find themselves frozen by decisions, as if so much turns on each one. Once we frame them differently, we free ourselves from most of that pressure. Sure, there are some decisions we have to do our best to get right, but if we’re resilient and creative, if we’re alchemists or what I can lemonade makers, we can adapt and adjust when we see what the world has done with our input. As long as we seek to mitigate risk so that no decision is so bad as to take us out of the game of life altogether, we have the chance to rebound and redirect, change and do that thing everyone mentions these days, pivot. It’s Ok to be even a little bird brained now and then, as long as we’re agile enough to recover and relaunch. And, yeah, we have words like pivot and agile because they name things we need to be able to master. So I try not to be tired of them or irked with their repetitive ubiquity. At least they give us a chance to use phrases like ‘repetitive ubiquity.’

It's Up to Us

It’s ultimately up to us how we experience this moment. We bring a sensibility to every situation, a predilection, a perspective or disposition. And we forget that fact all too often, giving the circumstance much more power than it inherently has. Part of a happy and fulfilled life is taking that power back and using it properly, for the good of others as well as ourselves. This little trick can even allow the welcome visitor of joy to come our way.

This is what the great practical philosophers and their wisdom traditions seek to remind us. It’s an inner game. It’s a soul journey. We’ve been given much more power than we use, resources we ignore or forget. When we reclaim our inheritance and use it in healthy ways, we flourish together and as individuals. May you flourish more today than yesterday, and tomorrow even more.

The Real Truth about Comfort Zones

The Real Truth about Comfort Zones. The number one piece of business, personal growth, and high achievement advice in our day gets shouted out from stages, repeated in podcasts, and endlessly printed in the pages of best selling books: “You gotta get out of your comfort zone!” “All the good stuff is to be found outside of your comfort zone!” And: “You want one piece of advice from me today that will change your life? Get out of your comfort zone!” But as I realized long ago and have mentioned in a short reflection before, the last few times I heard someone repeat this advice as if it were scintillatingly new and powerful and desperately needed, they were voicing it from the middle of a stage, in front of a big audience, under spotlights, where they are to be found dozens, scores, or even hundreds of times a year, or, in other words, from right smack dab in the middle of their own comfort zones. Yeah. Ponder that for a second. Now this is a conundrum, and that always attracts a philosopher’s attention.

If you’re stuck in a rut, hiding from anything new, wallowing like a little pig in warm mud deeply ensconced in a dulling comfort, or you’re robotically frozen in a rigid routine that prevents you from experiencing or discovering anything new, then yes indeed, maybe you need to get out of your comfort zone. Right now. But there’s a deeper truth and a much more powerful one that nobody ever mentions. You ultimately need to learn to develop a different sort of comfort zone, one of mastery not mediocrity, and take that comfort zone with you wherever you go. Get out of that? No. Get into it if you aren’t already. Then: Take it with you into any new situation.

It just occurred to me yesterday that all the championship athletes I’ve ever known play best in their comfort zone, one they’ve built up and cultivated and constructed into an inner cathedral of strength that they can take with them into any new stadium, field, arena, or contest where they’ll be mightily challenged to prevail. All the great musicians I’ve ever seen also tend to play right in the middle of their own well earned comfort zones, where there’s a groove and a deep feeling of flow. Masters of any art or craft, intellectual discipline or difficult enterprise most often live and work inside an amazing comfort zone that the rest of us can only admire with great respect. They make it look easy, no matter how incredibly hard it might be.

The real truth is that there are two very different kinds of comfort zones. There is of course the one that the motivational speakers and high paid business advisors are urging you to leave behind. And that’s what we can call “The Complacent Comfort Zone.” But then there is another kind that we might call “The Courageous Comfort Zone.” It’s a commanding place of strength and skill. It’s about attitudes and emotions, talent and skill, and seemingly effortless lightning quick thought. That’s what’s worth creating and sustaining and taking with you wherever you go. That’s where greatness happens. It’s the garden of delights for the excellence of peak attainment. It’s the highest playground of mastery.

And that’s where I’ll see you soon. Ok? Bring your own.

The Individual

The Myth of the Lone Individual. In western civilization, if we can now even call ourselves civilized, we have a distorted view of human beings along many dimensions, one of which is often referred to as our philosophy of individualism. This viewpoint atomizes human beings as each an island, an isolated self, a sole former of beliefs, feeler of emotions, holder of attitudes, and initiator of actions. On such a view, the metaphysically isolated individual alone is responsible for his or her path in the world. If you succeed or fail, it’s all on you. If you’re loving or cruel, the same is true. Individual responsibility is an implication of individual isolation.

But there is an ancient Chinese and more broadly Asian counterpoint to this view, a philosophy in which we are all essentially entwined parts of a greater whole, believing, feeling, seeing, and acting in community within an all embracing system that surrounds and permeates us, in what can be imagined as concentric circles of influence and cooperation, indeed of collaboration. Some of the deeper classical Christian thought has its own version of such a conception. On this view, life is a vast partnership of all with all, either for good or ill. Community matters. Surrounding systems and structures are powerfully involved in our lives. Things like heroism or racism, to cite two polarities, are never just the responsibility of the sole individual so characterized, but are effects of collective forces.

This does not rob us of individual responsibility, but rather shows the full stage on which that responsibility develops and plays out. We live best when we understand the involvement of systems and communities of agency in the situations and souls of those around us, as well as with ourselves. Primal societies even see the objects around us as having a form of agency to help or hinder. Some of our deepest political problems arise out of an extreme individualist myth that sees each of us as solely accountable for whatever we think, feel, or do. If you're poor, it's all your fault. Feeding the hungry is going out of your way to solve a problem the hungry created for themselves. A more enlightened philosophy will cast its net more broadly and understand the collaborative nature of existence and action in all its forms. We live within a huge and intimately engaged ecology of things and spirits enlivened with energy. We need to think more and do more to enhance our broader communities of being and doing. That's the only sane and safe way forward.

Note: This post was inspired by an extraordinary essay in Aeon: https://aeon.co/essays/in-classical-chinese-philosophy-all-actions-are-collective?utm_source=Aeon+Newsletter&utm_campaign=2789347d4a-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2022_11_21_05_39&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_-2789347d4a-%5BLIST_EMAIL_ID%5D

So. I'm a Wisdom Coach

I’m what you might call a wisdom coach, a philosophical guide, a mentor for others as I also continue to absorb deeper lessons on life’s path. When I pass on what I’ve received, I always see more.

We typically best learn from digging deep and doing well in the company of those who know. One of my favorite grad school professors at Yale long ago reflected that we were in danger of losing our greatest model of education, the master-apprentice relationship, where a novice accompanies an experienced expert on a journey, an adventure of imitation, repetition, individuation, and growth into a form of distinctive excellence. And we’re never too old to apprentice ourselves to a master. As the British social scientist and philosopher Michael Polanyi showed long ago in his books Personal Knowledge and Tacit Knowing, that’s how greatness is sparked and conveyed.

So I’m launching a new enterprise soon, a new official form of service as a mentor, advisor, and guide for C suite executives, company founders, and top performers in many domains who seek more wisdom and practical philosophy in their lives. I’ve done it informally and quietly for a long time, but now, while it will still be quite confidential an endeavor, I’m going to officially open up for a few more ongoing partners and companions along the way. But, shhh. It’s still a very quiet enterprise.

Oh, and about the picture: The small horse is me. The bigger one represents the great sages of our history, showing us the way, if we’ll only attend and take it all in. You may want to run with us.

Final thought for all of us each day: Who are you helping to grow? Who is helping you?

Reflections

What if this world, as real as it is for what it is, is at the same time a reflection of another more solid and substantial reality? I think Plato had a suspicion of the possibility that finally became a belief.

We typically suppose our surrounding snow globe of a cosmos to be in its physicality fundamentally solid, dense, and firm, within all its open emptiness, but our odd friends, the physicists, tell us it’s mostly that emptiness, even lurking beneath the solidity, vastly empty space filled by enigmatic energy packs that are themselves barely substantial at all, beyond the sheer mathematics that may actually comprise them. What if then we merely mirror a more robust reality beneath or beyond it all?

We think of the body as solid and the spirit as, well, more like the merest gas or steam, or an insubstantial shadow. But what if it’s the other way around? We need to keep our minds and hearts open to the deeper possibilities, the stranger things, however outside our normal experience, as we take in the beautiful and terrible reflections in this world.

Plato even joked that we're just in a cave and that the bright light of reality yet awaits us outside it. I like my little cavern, but perhaps it's preparing me for something yet more and greater and beyond my ability now to grasp. Let's keep in mind the vision, as we interact with others today and tomorrow, leaving room for the greatness they may be here to mirror, even when they don't shine brightly.

Bold Thought

Most people who read Plato's Republic as adults, or his other shorter dialogues featuring Socrates, usually get caught up in the discussions and never notice a very strange thing. The master pattern is something like this: Someone brings up a topic, and Socrates begins asking questions. He quickly finds that at least one person present seems to think he knows all about the topic, or at least has a high degree of certainty about some central idea or claim. Our philosopher begins to dismantle that certainty. And the dialogue tends to end with no more accurate truth to replace the counterfeit insight that was originally so confidently presented as the truth. Then Socrates ambles off.

Careful readers eventually say, "Wait. Why no resolution? Why does Socrates leave things unresolved? Is he trying to show us that philosophy unsettles us but never gives us answers?" No. Not at all.

On reflection, it looks to me like what most motivated Socrates was not actually clarifying common concepts or evaluating popular claims to arrive at ultimate truth, but rather inducing a measure of intellectual humility into others as a way of sparking a courageous curiosity about life. Then, great things could happen. We're too tied to the status quo, too pressured by peers, too often caught in group think, too chained to the assumptions of our day, or industry, or profession, or party. We need to be bold thinkers, all of us, unafraid to try ideas, to test assumptions, and to think in new and creative ways. That's when we can make our greatest contributions.

Limits

Ok, one last blog post this week. Then I’ll shut up for a while. But I had to share something.

Are there any new philosophical questions? Here's one new for you to ponder this weekend. The most ancient human epic story in our possession is the epic of Gigamesh, which, while called an epic, and it is, is actually a relatively short story. Clay tablets could be only so big. It's about a king who is a bad leader and a pretty terrible person primarily because he has no sense of limits. We live in a world where we seek to deal with limits by fight or flight. We smash them or run from them. We have bumper stickers that say "No Limits!" But what if we need them? When Gilgamesh discovers his, he is transformed. Have you discovered yours? Have we as a culture? Have our leaders? Have fun with this short article sent to me by a friend, a retired CBS Radio News anchor: https://twitter.com/dwnews/status/1578359377077178370

You: The Waterfall

Do you ever pour energy into a project, a massive waterfall of thundering effort, a veritable Niagara of activity, and find yourself astonished to realize that only a small stream meandering through the undergrowth seems to result? We all have that experience at some point, if we ever try anything big, challenging, and exciting.

We’ve aimed really high, prepared extremely well, worked endlessly hard, and in the aftermath, only a trickle of result seems to ensue. We’re exhausted and bewildered, and perhaps despondent.

The world can sometimes seem set up not to aid or magnify our efforts for good, but to resist them mightily and filter them down to nearly nothing. It can feel like a force field surrounds us and blunts any attempt we might muster for the new great thing. But then, who said anything worth doing would be easy? Why think progress will ever be automatic, that results are guaranteed, or that any of us can work magic through sheer will?

Maybe the world is set up with quite different ends in mind, and among these are growing us in wisdom and strength, and for that, difficulty is needed. Challenge is required. Obstacles must be plenty, and large, and sometimes scary. Perhaps the process is the point. The waterfall itself is what was wanted. And maybe, just maybe, what the world needs right now is precisely that trickle your gushing has produced, along with all the beauty and noise of its production, that small stream fed by your massive cascade of energy. And that just may set you up for what’s next, and next after that, until there is something so wonderful you could never have imagined it, not for a moment, streaming and flowing from all your tries, failures, disappointments, and hopes along the way.

Circles: And My New Book

Circles. We’ve used the image of concentric circles for a very long time. Aristotle spoke of a goal or purpose as a “telos” or bullseye, or innermost circle on a target. The Roman philosopher Hierocles used the image in an interestingly different way, parallel to the way I use it in my new book, The Everyday Patriot. Imagine your life as mapped by a series of concentric circles. In the bullseye is your inner self, your heart and mind. Order that in a healthy way and you have something good to contribute to the next closest circle out, your family. A healthy family in turn contributes to a broader circle of good friendships, and a healthy neighborhood, which then helps make up a positive, well functioning community, town, state, nation, and world. Each circle should contribute in a positive way to the next circle out. And every outer circle should always be in turn reaching back to nurture and support its innermost circles.

Tribalism of any kind is where people get stuck in a circle and wrongly think its health depends on them shunning, suspecting, disliking, or fighting all broader circles in the world, or the disparate circles within those broader horizons. In seeking to make one’s closest group stronger, tribalism actually corrupts it and makes it weaker, and that corruption then leaks into its own inner circles, ending up in disordered hearts and minds.

By contrast, one of the most ancient virtues is that of hospitality, which just means opening your heart and mind, and your other inner circles, to the stranger who comes from a different inner ring of an outer band. It’s good for the stranger, and it’s very good for you. Remember, you are in most other people’s far outer circles, so you should treat them the way you would want to be treated by them, as a stranger to them. And that means with the attitudes and actions of a warm, welcoming, helping, and caring hospitality. In my book, I try to show how national patriotism, properly understood in any country, isn’t about tribalism, or national narcissism, but is about growing our own garden well for the sake of others as well as ourselves, creating a strong healthy, well functioning broad circle to offer to the even larger circle of the world, and to all its diverse inner circles, more indirectly, as well. It’s about inclusion, care, and health for all. Our own good is inwardly linked to the greater good and in a great many ways. If we could understand that better in our time, and take it to heart, the world would be a vastly more harmonious place, and so would our communities, physical and virtual.

For the little jam packed book, click HERE.

Meaning and Purpose

Meaning is connective. Purpose is directive. And each is also the other. The direction of purpose connects. And the connection of meaning directs. Answers to “Why?” bridge them both.

We all need a sense of both meaning and purpose. Meaning is about connecting up our lives and actions with broader horizons of value. Purpose is about directing our steps in accordance with meaning. Both are about our deepest commitments and ideals in action, within a bigger picture and along a better path.

Meaning connects up the details of your life with a broader landscape of value and importance, and cause and effect, positioning you within a larger story that makes sense, brings a concept of identity, and ennobles. It provides orientation and guidance at the deepest level. Purpose involves the why that leads to the what and when. Its forward guidance and related guardrails come from deep within and enrich everything else.

Meaning and purpose inspire us, empower us, and draw us together into creative partnerships like nothing else can. Socrates said that the least important things, we tend to think about and talk about the most; while the most important things, we tend to think about and talk about the least. We need to turn that around.

Spend a little time thinking through your own sense of meaning and purpose. It can light your path in vital new ways.

Partnering With Our Problems

There's so much great literature about the power of partnership precisely because it's so important in life. In fact, Aristotle's implicit formula in his book "Politics" for the peak of human good is "People in partnership for a shared purpose" (my words but his ideas). So The Iliad is all about partnership. So is The Three Musketeers and Dracula, surprising as that might be. My new novels are the same. People together can solve problems that were impossible to solve alone.

Yesterday, while doing a LinkedIn Live interview on video with the great Jan Rutherford, I had an epiphany. Jan asked whether struggles and difficulties and sufferings can strengthen and improve us. I said yes but added that it's in large part up to us how we use them. My insight, an idea I'd never had before, is that to benefit from a difficulty, we have to partner up with it.

That's quite a different sort of idea. How do most of us deal with difficulties or struggles? We certainly try to avoid them, and when we can't, we seek mostly to endure them, often with lots of inner negativity. But what if we leaned in to our difficulties, our challenges, and even our struggles? What if we partnered up with them in a positive way?

Partnership is all about something beyond cooperation. It's about creative collaboration. All members to a partnership have to bring the best of their minds and hearts, their thoughts, emotions, attitudes, and energies into service to some purpose. Many ancient philosophers clued us in that difficulties can be opportunities well disguised. They come to us, often unexpected. We need to meet them creatively, embrace them, and not just run and hide and hope for the best. What does that mean? In a struggle or challenge, get creative. Open yourself to what the difficulty is bringing you and showing you and perhaps hinting about new possibilities. You'll have to be very active in meeting and grappling with the problem to ferret out such stuff. Often it will take a further form of partnership with another person, or with a group of people. But it can be done.

A famous parable in the New Testament is about a sower and seed. A farmer throws seed out onto the ground. Much falls on shallow dirt that won't support it, or into weeds, or gets eaten by birds. But some falls on fertile soil. I once asked a biologist what fertile soil is. He said, well, by contrast, sterile soil has no microbes, no bacteria, no worms, no life of any kind. Fertile soil is full of activity and life. When seed hits fertile soil, the soil partners with the seed for a great result, actively contributing to new growth. Consider that you are soil. Are you good soil?

One of our most common tendencies when a big new problem arises is to try to evade it or squash it and get back to the way things were before it arrived. But that can be a big mistake. The difficulty may be hiding a new path forward that won’t take us back to where we were but to where we need to be instead. Partner up with the problem to see how.

Are you in a time of challenge or difficulty? Lean in. Partner up with it. It's bringing you lots of clear negatives, so bring it some positives to balance the energy and break open new possibilities. New growth can result.

Each of us is Unique: Just like Everybody Else

No two of us are exactly alike. I don't know about snowflakes, though, do you? I mean, we keep hearing that claim, but who has examined them all, ever? And yet for people, we know in another way, from how different experiences, however slightly distinctive, form us into different people, different thoughts play a role, and interactions with others can be crucial to our developed uniqueness. I suspect that souls are different even prior to all this. But I'd find a proof of that hard to construct. Maybe you wouldn't. See? We're different.

I mentioned this in a talk once on the ideas in my book If Aristotle Ran General Motors, which was really about fulfillment and happiness through Truth, Beauty, Goodness, and Unity. At one point I was talking about the four basic spiritual needs of uniqueness, union, usefulness, and understanding. Afterwards, two ladies came up to me, dressed exactly alike, even down to the pearls and rings and such. I looked more closely and they were identical twins, impossible to tell apart. They said in unison, "We're sisters and we loved your talk!" I'm not kidding. Then one spoke. "We look exactly alike but we're so very different on the inside, in our personalities and mental lives!" The other was nodding vigorously, though I promise not mouthing the words.

Uniqueness. We need to keep that in mind. Even people who seem completely alike can be very different, distinctive, one in a god-zillion to the nth power, utterly unique on the inside. Maybe we need to recognize and celebrate that more. And I know, you've had the exact same thought. No?

The Astronomical Value of Humor

Over on LinkedIn, a young scientist posted this morning that he'd just been hired as an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Johns Hopkins University. It brought back vivid memories for me as a keynote speaker.

I've given over 1,200 talks in my role as a public philosopher and one of the most totally delightful events of all was an endowed lectureship, the Meridian Lecture, to an auditorium full of all the cosmologists, planetary scientists, and Hubble space telescope people at Hopkins. Great people, really fun, and super smart.

I like to spice my wisdom talks about success, uncertainty, change, or leadership with funny stories and other unexpected forms of humor. I've cracked up the leadership teams at Ford, GM, Merrill Lynch, International Paper, Hewlett Packard, and at so many companies. But the Hopkins scientists laughed louder at all my jokes than maybe any other group ever. Some of the guys were falling out of their chairs, bright red faces, holding their stomachs in convulsed merriment, unable to breathe. It was like a spacewalk of philosophical humor where the oxygen supply gets kinked. I thought we were going to have to call 911. Super brainy folks who could not find the men's room in their own building, or the door to the auditorium. It was like being in a Monty Python skit. But they can find a way to the stars. And spot the punchlines in any of my jokes from light years away. God bless the scientists of Johns Hopkins. You all set me up beautifully to tell my wife, "Well THEY thought I was funny!"

My point, and I usually have one—unless it’s lost in space—is that well used humor can be a very effective communication device. But like anything else, it must be used carefully and well. Done badly, it can be offensive, insensitive, demeaning, or just awkward. Deployed skillfully, it can be disarming, unifying, and uplifting. Self deprecating humor tends to work well, and it’s especially easy when you’ve made the career choice as I have to be a philosopher, with all the earning potential typically attached to that role in our time. As a professor, I tried to get my students to laugh because I wanted them to learn and remember. And forty years later, many of them still remember “that time in class when” I did something very funny, silly, or semi crazy to make a point. So consider using this powerful tool. It can ease tension and work magnificently, when it’s done well. Seriously.

Independence

It’s a big world. It’s a small world. It’s our world. The energy of life flows all around it on the surface, in the waters, through the air, under the ground. And wisdom traditions across all these lands seek to prod our distinctively human form of life to deeper roots of insight and greater heights of love and compassion. But we struggle with spiritual maturity and openness. We get balled up in the squealing demands of the small insistent self, as if it’s not just a tiny passing visitor on this spinning globe of life. Enlightenment, it turns out, isn’t just about reason, but imagination, emotion, and attitude unfettered by the crass chains of ego, freed to flourish with others in vibrant community and solidarity with all that lives.

The greatest independence frees us “from” in order to free us “for” the greatest and most wonderful liberation there is.

And I almost forgot. Today is the official publication day of my new book, though Amazon put it up a few days early in honor of the holiday weekend, a formerly secret project to do my part to help reclaim the ideals and values ensconced in the Declaration of Independence, with some great stories and new ways of thinking. I hope you’ll see it soon and let me know what you think! Here’s the link to copy and paste. The paperback and ebook are up, with the hardcover a week away. 134 pages. Packed! https://amzn.to/3aczxNK

A Room With a View

There’s nothing quite like a room with a view. Perhaps this is a good image and model for the mind at its best. The well developed mind should be like a room with a view. It should be a space in which we can safely and comfortably live, with all the necessities and conveniences it's nice to have. And guests should always be welcome to come and visit in it. But it should also be open to vistas beyond where we are and what we possess, allowing us to view inspiring scenes that can lift us up and call us forth with beauty, promise, and hope.

The Road to Wisdom

Many years ago. It was a big leadership meeting for a famous global company. I was at the head table of the large ballroom in the five star hotel, seated with the head poohbahs. Yeah. Cause I'm a philosopher and that's what I do.

A very senior woman says to me across the table, over the beautifully plated meals and glasses of wine: "Tom, you're always talking about the great philosophers of the past, like Socrates and Plato and Aristotle, but where are the philosophers now? Where are the great thinkers of the present day?" I paused a second to allow someone else at the table to point at me, but everyone just looked up from their meals, awaiting my answer, apparently also curious about where a philosopher might be found. I should have worn my "I'm a Philosopher" T shirt. I swallowed my steak and remaining pride and said, "You really want to know?" She then smiled. "Yes, of course!" I said, "They're among the limo and towncar drivers of America." There was a surprised laugh around the table.

"I mean it. What other job to you know of where the person working gets to meet new people constantly and spend often long periods of time with them—an hour, two hours, half a day, sometimes two or three days driving them around, listening to them on the phone, often chatting with them? They drive to weddings and funerals. They take financial people around to their roadshows. They facilitate "Girls' Night Out." They see the good, the bad, and the ugly, human nature in all its facets. They sometimes hear people's stories. Then they get the time to think about what they've seen and heard, time to process it all as they wait for the next client to land or finish dinner or get out of that crucial meeting. Many become wise from what they see and hear and feel from it all. It's like in the Bhagavad Gita, which on the surface is about a great warrior before battle but is really about his driver, his charioteer, who happens to be a deity in disguise. The driver listens to the warrior's troubles then gives him advice, like Bagger Vance, the legendary older golf caddie of fiction and film, whose story was a retelling, in a way, of the ancient tale. When you get into that Uber or Lyft, or that limo or blacked out Escalade, you may be entering the kingdom of true philosopher, even a deity in disguise. Make the most of it. You'll be glad. And, oh, I almost forgot. If you have to go anywhere after dinner, I'll bring a car around."