The Wrong Road to Success

A Sentimental Education.

Decently smart people can do indecently stupid things. An intelligent and attractive young man from a country town near Paris moves to the city to find wealth, fame, and love. But it never seems to occur to him that he might have to do or be something of merit in order to deserve any of these things.

Frederic Moreau becomes a clever manipulator of others to further his own aims, and demonstrates what a life is like with no inner core or reliable sense of what’s right. He’s fickle, undependable, and greedy. He falls in love with a married woman more than once and finds himself living parallel secret lives with his various lady friends, all in his efforts to advance his own interests in fortune and status. Revolutionary events begin to swirl around him and it’s never certain who can be trusted. Ambition drives everyone else in his circles as much as it does him. Lust and despair alternate in his life, causing giddiness one minute, and grim hopelessness the next. When he does come into money, he wastes it on showy extravagances to impress those around him as he seeks to heal an inner need that can never be satisfied in such a way.

At the end of the story, he sits with his one remaining friend, the companion of his youth who had become a lawyer in order to prevail in politics, and they reflect on their lives.

<<They'd both been failures, the one who'd dreamed of Love and the one who'd dreamed of Power. How had it come about?

"Perhaps it was lack of perseverance?" said Frederic.

"For you maybe. For me, it was the other way round, I was too rigid, I didn't take into account a hundred and one smaller things that are more crucial than all the rest. I was too logical and you were too sentimental."

Then they blamed it on their bad luck, the circumstances, the times in which they'd been born.>> (462)

Frederic never came to realize the inner man he had neglected to his own great detriment. He never understood the role of character or true commitment in life or love. And in that blind spot, he prefigures many in our own time.

Our Actions Matter

Our actions matter. All of them do. And that’s a lesson most often learned from the more unfortunate of our choices, rather than through the better things we produce. 

In the novel, A Place on Earth, by Wendell Berry, a father has long taught his son to farm, and the time has come to turn over a patch of land to the young man to let him plow and plant it on his own. The father is later reminiscing on the event, and ruminating on how much topsoil has been lost over the years to bad decisions—from mistakes he saw his own father make, as well as from his own misjudgments. He then tells what happened with his son:

“Anyhow, Virgil broke his ground farther over the brow of the hill than he should have. Like a boy, you know. Didn’t stop in time. But he got his rows laid off about right, and got his crop out—and I didn’t say anything, hoping he’d have luck and get that mistake free. Thought I’d show him later what he’d done wrong, soon as I could do it without hurting his feelings.

"But there was an awful rain one night after his crop had been out, I guess, two weeks. I heard it begin and lay listening to it, knowing what was bound to be happening. And the next morning I said, ‘Let’s go look at your crop.’ So we went, and walked all the way around it. It was hurt. Bound to have been. There’s no way to plow sideline ground so it’ll hold in a rain like that. ‘Virgil,’ I said, ‘this is your fault. This is one of your contributions to the world.’ That was hard for me to say. And he took it hard. I saw he was about to cry. And bad as I hated to do it, I let it work in him while we stood there and looked. I knew he was hating the day he ever thought of raising a crop, ready to give up. Finally I put my arm around him and I said, ‘Be sorry, but don’t quit. What’s asked of you now is to see what you’ve done, and learn better.’ And I told him that a man’s life is always dealing with permanence—that the most dangerous kind of irresponsibility is to think of your doings as temporary. That, anyhow, is what I’ve tried to keep before myself. What you do on the earth, the earth makes permanent.”

I love the words: Be sorry, but don’t quit. What’s asked of you now is to see what you’ve done and learn better.

We can recover from most mistakes. But the world somehow records them all. And that’s a serious thought. Equally important is the idea that we’ll all make mistakes, and our job then is to keep going, learn, and improve. We’re not here with the expectation of perfection, only with the hope of improvement. Our actions do matter. One way or another, they're all permanent. And we have to live with that fact.

Integrity

Integrity. It's one of those words we all think we understand, and yet, when asked what it means, we might find ourselves stumbling out partial answers. It's about character and being ethical. It's about doing the right thing, or aligning yourself with the side of good. It involves telling the truth, and keeping promises, and being dependable. Right? 

Well. These are all implications of integrity. But what, actually, is it?

The word comes from the same etymological root as integer, meaning a whole number. And there's a big clue. Integrity is somehow about wholeness. It's about not compartmentalizing your decisions and actions, walling off some from the rest of who you are. It's about acting with the wholeness or entirety of your beliefs and values, in every choice. 

But wait. A thoroughly bad guy, an immensely corrupt character, a murderous terrorist could act in every choice with and from the wholeness or entirety of his insane beliefs and perverse values, but we wouldn't call him an individual with integrity, would we? No. Of course not. Because integrity isn't just about consistency. It's a moral concept. And there's our second clue.

A rascal, criminal, or deranged psycho can be consistent in his actions, throughout the range of his conduct. That is to say, his actions can be consistent with each other, and with the false beliefs and skewed values he holds. But to have integrity, you have to display wholeness in another sense. You need the wholeness of health. Integrity is about moral health. And that's about more than just mere consistency among your actions. Your choices and action have to also be consistent with objective standards of health that are independent of your own thoughts and feelings - that are, in a metaphysical sense "out there" in the world.

What are those standards? I suggested years ago in the book If Aristotle Ran General Motors that they're Truth, Beauty, Goodness, and Unity, understood properly. If your life, thought, and actions are all consistent, or at one, with Truth, Beauty, Goodness, and Unity, then you are a person of integrity. You have integrity. Or better, it has you. Because there's an important sense in which you don't really possess it until it owns you. You can be good in fits and starts - a mostly good character, a decent soul, overall, even a kind person most of the time, but if there is not a higher calling that you've said yes to, in a deep and abiding way, perhaps because you really don't see any reasonable alternative, then you aren't yet a person of integrity.

That's a high standard. But that's because it's what integrity is all about. Most people admire it from afar. Some actually live with it. Many are apparently blind to it, and just don't get what the big deal is about it. But I'm convinced that it's tied in deeply with not only what I call "true success," but also true happiness, contentment and fulfillment. It's also a part of what it takes to make your best possible mark on the world.

Are you living with it? many of us try to embody it in at least most aspects of our lives, at least most of the time. But it calls us to live it wholeheartedly, fully, and consistently across everything we do. It's a high calling, and a hard calling, but it's the one true path to the best life we can live. As such, it's well worth working hard to attain.

Insult, Offense, and Rage

Contrary to apparently widespread opinion, it’s not possible to insult, offend, demean, or disparage a great leader, prophet, religion, nation, or individual. It’s easy, of course, to insult and enrage lesser people. Many seem prepared to take umbrage at nearly anything. But true greatness is in this distinct way completely untouchable. The target is too far from its detractors. Any arrow of invective or caricature will fall short.
 
Public events of recent days and decades can seem to indicate the opposite. A movie is announced to be an offense and an insult to a revered leader, or to an entire swath of the human population. A cartoon, a video, or a passage in a book can be said to have committed a grievous injury that must be avenged “by all means necessary.”
 
The problem is that all this rage and reaction is based on a faulty understanding of the very notions of insult and offense that are being used to explain and justify the responses of anger, threat, and violence that seem so enormously out of proportion to whatever incited the response.
 
You just can’t claim with logical consistency both that your leader, or nation, or cause is great, and that he, she, or it has been insulted, offended, or demeaned by any words or works of art. It’s literally impossible to successfully insult, offend, demean, or disparage real greatness.
 
There’s an old proverb: The lordly lion ignores the yapping of small dogs. This is an image of a philosophical insight. Greatness has, within itself, its own intrinsic honor and worthiness of respect. When it’s not shown that respect, a wrong is done, not to the great person, nation, movement or religion being attacked, but both by and to and in the one communicating the disrespect. With anything other than greatness, however, things are quite different. But true greatness has an essential immunity to such diminishment.
 
Socrates believed that others could harm us only physically. We alone are capable of hurting and demeaning ourselves spiritually. He was also convinced that the worst efforts of lesser men could never do genuine harm to the souls of greater men, however they might contrive to inflict that damage.
 
Of course, there’s often a dynamic of insult, offense, and rage within businesses and industries, as well as within cultures. And far too much energy is wasted on these things. Any who react with anger and even rage to such perceived wounds need to engage in the age-old enterprise of self-examination. Are they defending their honor, or their great mentor’s honor? True honor needs no such defense. It’s fine, as it is. Once they understand this, then, perhaps, they'll be able to discover what's really going on in their own hearts and minds, and make some changes that can result in something philosophically and emotionally healthier.
 

Talent and Character

"A talent can be cultivated in tranquility; a character only in the rushing stream of life." Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe.

I remember as a boy of twelve sitting alone at home practicing holding my fingers in the right positions on the fretboard of a classical guitar. The house was quiet and my soul was filled with the difficult efforts I was making.

Many talents can indeed be cultivated in solitude and in tranquility. But character requires more.

What we do in solitude and tranquility can contribute to our character, certainly, and powerfully, but most of its formation is due to how we respond to and grow from the rough and tumble of life. What Goethe called "the rushing stream" will carry us in one direction or the other.

I understand character as just the sum total of the inner strengths and weaknesses that we bring to any challenging situation. And these strengths and weaknesses result from many forces - heredity, upbringing, association, and mostly choice. How we choose to react to people and events over time will slowly form our character, for better or worse. And then it's that character which will empower or diminish us as we move forward to new challenges.

Long ago, the philosopher Heraclitus said, "Character is destiny." And that about sums it up. It's hard to rise above who you most inwardly are. Those of us who would accomplish great things should work to establish great foundations within. And, in the end, it's all about how we react to the good things and the bad things, to the opportunities, achievements, challenges, and disappointments that come our way today, and tomorrow.

Whenever I react to a situation in a way that I later regret, I try to pay attention to what led me to do that, and I work to avoid responding that way again. The more honest we can be with ourselves in evaluating our actions, the better we're prepared to cultivate character with strength.

To judge someone else's character, pay the most attention to how they act in "the rushing stream of life." 

Little Things, Habit, and Life

"Sow an act and you reap a habit, Sow a habit and you reap a character, Sow a character and you reap a life." Statement by Charles Reade.

“Just this one time won’t hurt anything.” Statement by Almost Everyone Else.

How often do we use this reasoning, The-Insignificance-of-One-Time? Well, here’s the news from ancient times: Little things add up. One deed is never insignificant. 

This is bad news for bad actions, good news for the good. We're always in a state of becoming. Every decision, action, or reaction, every thought we have or emotion we feel sows seeds for the future. Anything we do now will make it easier to go do likewise in the future. And as the great diagnostician of human character, Montaigne, once said, “Habit is second nature.” The bad exception thus infects us. But the good effort grows in us.

Positive actions, however difficult, pave the way to a better future. Our actions create our character, and our character creates our destiny. The ancient philosopher Heraclitus proclaimed that “Character is destiny.” And he was right. Do something about your destiny today. In some little way, with some decision or act of initiative, however small, build toward the future you desire for yourself and those you love. 

However hard the right thing to do might feel, it will create a tendency that will carry you on more powerfully toward the future you genuinely want. So remember that.

Today.