"Why Do the Wicked Prosper?"

"Oh, God, why do the wicked prosper?" This was the repeated worry and lament of the psalmist, who can sometimes come across as a real complainer, falling into a common form of philosophical confusion.

We all know, or know about, people of whom it's said that "He gets away with everything!" At least until he doesn't, like Bernie Madoff. We can even be tempted to say of such a person that he's crazy lucky or strangely blessed to get away with everything he does. Plato and Epictetus, by contrast, say that he's cursed, because "getting away with stuff" makes him a worse and worse individual, corrupting his soul even more with every "success."

The classic philosophers would often say: Bad is the man who wants to do evil, worse is he who gets it done. In what can appear to be a run of unethical achievement, there is no true success but only corruption, the degradation within that Socrates warned us about.

As the poet Terence once said, "Wealth is a blessing to those who know how to use it, a curse to those who don't." The same is true of any worldly accomplishment. Those who seem to get away with wrong, if we look closely, also seem to grow more and more desperate as time passes. They don't feel inner contentment, or fulfillment, or genuine happiness, in even a small measure. I've seen this up close. They can't maintain true friendships, or deep relationships of any kind. They aren't free at all but are rather enslaved to false, blighted, and immensely unhealthy motives. Their very progress down the road of their urges takes them farther and farther from their true good. They are to be pitied and not resented or, last of all, grudgingly admired. They become shells of who they could have been, and almost ugly, contrastive caricatures of human excellence. They are never flourishing, but at best can only maintain the outward counterfeit of that. So, God let the psalmist complain, and then calmed him down and turned him around with a little more of the wisdom he needed and that we all could benefit from, as well.

For more on what’s wise and otherwise, visit me any time at www.TomVMorris.com!

Courage and Cowardice in The House of Mirth

Wow. I just finished reading Edith Wharton's classic The House of Mirth. It follows a young woman, Lily Bart, through her energetic and often successful efforts to ensconce herself well within the most elevated echelons of high society in New York at around the turn of the previous century. The insights of the story about success, happiness, wealth, reputation, and status are deep and lasting. It's an incredible book. And, what an ending! But no spoilers here are to be feared. The main lesson I took away from it is how common and awful and damaging cowardice is in human life.

Many of us have times when we refrain from speaking up as needed, or doing the right thing, the hard thing, and the best thing, out of cowardice. But it's often terribly hard to admit that, and why? Again, cowardice. It's a quality that hides itself with itself. The word has such a demeaning negative connotation that no one wants to use it of themselves, even to themselves. But sometimes, the first spark of courage is the frank recognition of cowardice.

When I've been courageous, most often great things have ensued. When I've been ... the other thing ... events have not tended to go so propitiously. And that's just a way of saying that the fears ingredient in cowardice tend to be self defeating in their unintended consequences, a matter which is both ironic and noteworthy.

Cowardice is just the momentary state of being overcome by the feared consequences of an action that we believe to be right, or demanded of us. The problems with it go even beyond its self undermining tendencies. First, it typically depends on an overheated imagination, an inner mental vision of consequences that's often very wrong in its projections, either about what would happen if we did the brave thing, or about how we'd make it through those troubles that we envision as following from it.

Second, individual instances of cowardice, moments of failure in this regard, tend to create a habit of allowing its fear nature to hold us back. And with a strong enough habit, you have a disposition or an ongoing character trait that you don't want to have. No one seeks to be a coward.

The morally preferable alternative of courage isn't about doing dangerous things, or living on the edge. It's only about being able to do what's right, even when it's challenging or difficult, or when it may have some personally unpleasant consequences. Courage is guided by higher values. Cowardice is never the path to happiness or success. Courage often is. And that's a deep lesson in many works of illuminating fiction, including The House of Mirth.

The Unencumbered Life

Are the things we own blessings or burdens? Actually, do we own our stuff at all, or does it own us?

The New York Times ran a wild story this weekend about a French tech entrepreneur living in the US who has had a very unusual mid-life crisis. With an estimated net worth of 100 million dollars, Fabrice Grinda came to feel that all the great stuff he owned had become a burden that was actually keeping him from the more important things in life. So he decided to downsize radically and experience an unencumbered existence. He moved out of his huge mansion that sits on 20 acres of land in New York state, got rid of his $300,000 McLaren sports car, released his $13,000 a month apartment in the City, gave away tons of stuff, and kept only what he could fit into a roller bag suitcase and a backpack. He decided that he'd simply be a free spirit nomad and go live with his friends, one at a time, enjoying their company, rather than all that stuff. Having shed his physical burdens, however, he quickly became a major burden to each of those friends.

It seems that the wealthy man didn't do his own laundry, or make his own bed when he stayed with friends. He liked to talk loud, stay up really late, and eat everything in their refrigerators. He ended up giving all of them their own crises and learning as a result that the unencumbered life wasn't as easy as he had imagined.

This past week, I read several short novels by John Steinbeck, including the very funny Tortilla Flat, and the almost equally amusing Cannery Row, both of which are about groups of poor but festive characters in and around Monterey, California, in the early days of the twentieth century. They had no regular jobs, often slept in the woods, or in old, run down buildings that others provided, and managed to "find" food and wine on a fairly regular basis. They were scoundrels with hearts of gold. They lived off the generosity of their neighbors, but somehow thought of themselves as the real community benefactors. Their unencumbered lives gave them a special freedom, at least in their own minds. As you read their stories, you can't quite decide whether they present an extreme yet attractive ideal of the free spirit, or are really just completely irresponsible social parasites, living as slaves to their own peculiar instabilities and passing appetites, while depending on the charity, or gullibility, of others to support them. 

Both the stories of Steinbeck and the peculiar tale of Fabrice Grinda raise the question: Are the things we own indeed blessings or burdens? Do we actually have possession of them, or do they have possession of us? Are the many responsibilities of ownership to be avoided or embraced?

You may not be surprised to hear that most of the great practical philosophers have said, "It depends." On what? Attitude and intent. Your proclivities, enjoyments, and tolerances. I've known people with four or five big houses. They seemed unburdened by the responsibility. They knew how to manage the complexity. They thoroughly enjoyed what they had. And it didn't at all appear to constrain their freedom. There are, of course, also big  moral issues deep in the background, behind all lavish lifestyles, matters of global scope and existential perplexity, but my friends have seemed unburdened by those, as well. We can't solve all the world's problems. But we can solve some of our own.

The point of responsibility is to grow us as souls. Our commitments, to people, endeavors, and things, form us. We can make bad commitments or good ones. How do they function in our lives? That's the central question. It's all about functionality. Can we do great and valuable things with the people, endeavors, and things in our lives? Do they serve to enrich us, or to burden us? The things we own need to be maintained, repaired, protected, and, of course, used. And we all differ as to where the point is that this becomes a problem rather than something we can enjoy. We typically don't discover our limits in such matters except by crossing them and finally seeing them from the other side. That's part of what keeps fantasy alive for those who haven't reached their limits, yet.

Throughout history, ascetics have believed that the path to salvation lies in ridding ourselves of all our stuff and then opening ourselves to the spirit. But as a philosopher, I believe that the second, and ultimately important, activity does not depend on the first. Physical things can become a spiritual obstacle, but they need not be, in proper measure and with the right role in our lives.

The Oracle at Delphi proclaimed, "Nothing in Excess." What counts as excess for you? Are you living on the far side of it, and suffering from that? Do you need to make some adjustments? Fabrice Grinda came to believe he needed to make a radical change. But like many, he went too far, and has been schooled, as a result, in moderation. I guess that's hard when your finances tell you anything's possible. But regardless of what our net worth might whisper to us, many good things are possible, and they depend on our own discernment, a function of wisdom. It's the path of wisdom to choose properly. Don't let a culture of materialism dictate your life and put you in chains. And it's just as important to avoid false fantasies of freedom. Pick your own proper way. And that, ultimately, depends on the Oracle's second main injunction, "Know Yourself."

Philosophers and Sophists

What's the difference between a philosopher and a sophist? In the ancient world, the sophists were well trained and highly educated people who offered to teach others and help them to attain their goals. And they did this as a well-paying occupation. Their own wealth was their main, or sometimes, only goal. But Socrates, by contrast, the first famous philosopher who tackled life questions with others, the paradigmatic philosopher, notoriously refused payment for his services and, as a consequence, went around barefoot.

I teach others and help them to attain their goals. And I'm often well paid for it. So what makes me a philosopher, rather than a sophist? I was actually asked this question recently, at a college. And I enjoyed answering it.

It's true that Socrates refused to charge anyone for what he did. And it may be no coincidence that he had a very unhappy wife. I'm just saying. But in many ways, I can't imagine that he was the easiest and most practical guy to live with.

He could, however, be the life of the party. And he often was. His capacity for both wine and wisdom was legendary. And yet, he would never tolerate sloppy thinking. Certain sophists of the age, by contrast, were said to be willing to use any sort of thinking to help their clients win and attain whatever their desire might be.

Throughout history, the sophists of ancient Greece have had a pretty shady reputation as professionally amoral, hired guns of the mind. They would reportedly help people to attain any goal, by and large, regardless of what it was. They would advocate any case, promote any cause, and empower any person, if the money was right and wealth would flow. 

Philosophers, for the most part, have walked on the side of the angels, whether they believed in angels or not. They may sometimes have had reputations as prolix and obscure, complex and abstract, otherworldly and out of touch, but they have, for the most part, seemed to be purer souls in their focus and work. But why exactly? That's the key.

The sophists were much more concerned about how than about why. The philosophers have always been more cautious. They have wanted to help people reflect not just on how to attain their goals, but on why they are pursuing certain aims rather than others, and what, perhaps, might be best to seek, and again, why. They have certainly analyzed deeply all the relevant issues of how, but have always raised the question of why. And this is what I try to do. That's the reason, when you read any of my books on success, you'll come across a lot on what success is, and what it's not, and why we should be careful in what we focus on and pursue.

There's a new-old saying: "You can get anything you want, if you help enough other people to get what they want." On the surface, this sounds like great advice. And most who say it mean well, thereby counseling people to find a need and meet that need. But wants aren't the same as needs. And, as a matter of precision, the new-old saying is an example of sophistry. It's generally true, but equally dangerous.

The sophist wants to help you get whatever you want, and will assist you in doing so by giving other people whatever they want, without urging anyone involved in all this to reflect on whether what they happen to want right now is truly good for them, or not. And this is not wise. At certain points in life, for certain people, getting what they want may be disastrous. It could be that their wants need to be changed, not satisfied, or improved and refined, through the guidance of real wisdom. We can get what we want by helping others to get what they want, but should we always do that, regardless of the particular wants involved, and their consequences? The new-old saying can be used to motivate a drug dealer to provide more dangerous, destructive substances, and more liberally, for his customers. And that's clearly not the path of wisdom.

I love to help people attain their goals, but only if their goals are right for them and will bring them genuine fulfillment and happiness, not disaster and regret. So I help them to reflect on all the important issues. For a philosopher, understanding must precede and guide the best life accomplishments. Wisdom is everything. Then, true wealth will come. So I say:

Sophistry is not for me/I much prefer/Philosophy.