What I Don't Know Could Fill a Library

I Know Much Less Than I Think.

Socrates knew more than anyone around him realized when he presciently claimed that his wisdom consisted in his awareness of how little he knew, by contrast with the crowds of people in his day who thought they knew much more than they did.

A review of a new book helped me to recapture today the Socratic sensibility that, in our own hearts, a nobility of aspiration should always be wed to a humility of belief. The book is The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone. It can be found at the link: http://amzn.to/2pTwssT

And the interesting review is here: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/18/books/review/knowledge-illusion-steven-sloman-philip-fernbach.html

Are You Wise, or Otherwise?

Questioner: Are you a wise man?

Answerer: I'm only a few short steps down the path, and it's a very long road.

Questioner: You respond in the best way.

Answerer: And you.

The Power of Mercy

My guess is that you haven't thought much about mercy recently. And it may be quite important, to be so overlooked.

In too much of our history, power has been associated with aggression, force, and revenge. On this perspective, the good avenge their friends. They take what they want, and they celebrate their own strength.

According to this view, the strong choose to take, and the weak are forced to give. In so many of our ancient stories, across cultures, a certain warrior ethic that draws this map prevails. And for those who incline to think that business is war, the same can be thought to hold true.

But there is another ancient ethic that's very different. It finds ultimate nobility lying deep within the unexpected sphere of humility, and presents the highest power as associated with kindness and mercy. In this vision, the sovereign is a servant. The enlightened warrior is a protector of all that should be safe. And love is what finally conquers hate. Justice is important, indeed. And so is mercy. In fact, within this other tradition, justice is understood in such a way as to involve, essentially, the powerful seasoning of mercy.

I'm sure you recognize right away that these are things we don't often enough think about in the context of our work together in the modern world.

In Shakespeare's play, The Merchant of Venice, Portia represents this second ethic, this alternative and powerful perspective, and says, quite poetically:

The quality of mercy is not strain'd, 

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven 

Upon the place beneath: it is twice blest; 

It blesseth him that gives and him that takes: 

'Tis mightiest in the mightiest: it becomes 

The throned monarch better than his crown; 

His sceptre shows the force of temporal power, 

The attribute to awe and majesty, 

Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings;

But mercy is above this sceptred sway; 

It is enthroned in the hearts of kings, 

It is an attribute to God himself; 

And earthly power doth then show likest God's

When mercy seasons justice.

Mercy seasoning justice: What can this mean for our ongoing work with other people in a corporate context, or in our individual life and business dealings?

Are we as concerned about mercy as we are about justice? Are we able to forgive whenever we can, and allow the people around us some needed room to grow? Mercy never condones or coddles, but it's meant ultimately to enable the better things that are possible. It's a realistic approach to the imperfections of life in the world, and always sees the potential in people. It's never to be unrealistic or unjust, irrational or self-defeating, indulgent or dumb. 

It's a quality, or tonality of action, that we do well to remember, as we deal with the rough and tumble of life. And then, we and others can be doubly blessed.

Oh, and by the way, I wrote on this topic in some different but harmonious ways in the Hufington Post four years ago. For the meditation, click here.

My Most Embarrassing Book Signing. Ever.

A major bookstore event to herald a new publication can be an interesting experience.

I was telling one of the staff members at our largest local bookstore yesterday how much I loved Donna Tartt's new tome The Goldfinch. I had come back to buy her first book, The Secret History, which I'm now reading and also loving. He asked what it's like for me, as an author, to read other people's books, and in the end, he told me that when my new novel series is published, I should launch it at his shop, with a big book signing, and with lots of local publicity. At my last event there, eight years ago, they told me it was the first time in the history of the store that they ever sold out of books in the first hour of an author signing. It was great. I felt like a local version of J.K. Rowling, only male, and a philosopher, and publishing a nonfiction book, except it was indeed about Harry Potter.

But, in retrospect, I couldn't help but think of other book events past, all over the country - some with huge crowds, in places like Manhattan, and Kansas City, and Boca Raton, and others with small and yet very interesting turnouts.

My most embarrassing book signing wasn't the one in Washington, DC, long ago, where only one person showed up, and he told me he was the father of one of my students at Notre Dame, and then asked me for a $20,000 loan. No, that didn't come close. The cosmic nadir, the ultimate bottom of the vortex, was when I was at an independent bookstore somewhere in America, and had spoken to about fifty or so people regarding my newest effort, and had signed books for most of them, and then had talked to the manager of the store for nearly an hour afterwards, standing near the register, and signing lots more books for the shop to keep in stock with those little stickers that say "Autographed By the Author."

Right before I was going to leave, I saw an elderly lady walk up to the cash register and put down a stack of books - bird books, dog books, gardening guides, and … there it was: my new book about philosophy and life. As her other selections were being rung up, she picked mine out of the stack to examine. With a glow of pride, I watched her face as she thumbed through it, starting at the end and flipping backward. She finally got to the first page and stopped in shock. She looked up at the bookstore employee who was ringing up the sale. And, in a voice of supreme irritation, she said, "Some fool has written in this book!"

He stopped and looked at the page she was pointing to and said, "Oh, yes, that's the author's personal signature! You have an autographed copy!"

She contemplated it for a second and looked back up and said, "Well, I don't want a book some fool has written in!"

He got her a clean copy, and I went home, suitably humbled.

But I still sign books when I can, assured by my wife that, surely, it doesn't detract too much from the value of the item.

Humility. Yikes.

I had a recent lesson in humility. Actually two. I wrote this post days ago with a bad title and almost no one read it. That was lesson two. I can write bad titles. Actually, I should have realized that years ago, having penned a book called Anselmian Explorations. On one level, it was aptly labelled. On another, the phrase doesn't quite sizzle, does it? But anyway, my blogpost title didn't exactly lure in multitudes to philosophize with me. It was a lonely pondering day.

Humility Lesson One happened several days prior to that.

I had worked hard and for many days to memorize the famous "To Be or Not To Be" soliloquy from Shakespeare's great play, Hamlet. It's longer than you might remember, at over two hundred words. After a lot of effort, I finally had it nailed, with feeling. It's worth the effort, for the ideas you eventually glean from it, as you perform it while feeding the dog, or driving to the store, And that very day, the day I had first done it perfectly, start to finish, I was in the checkout line at my local grocery store, rehearsing it once more in my head as my purchases were bring rung up, when I suddenly became aware that the checkout girl was saying something to me. "I'm sorry, what did you say?" She repeated herself and I laughed and said, "I didn't hear you the first time because I was practicing in my head something I recently memorized."

"What did you memorize?" She seemed genuinely interested.

"The To Be or Not To Be passage from Hamlet." I said it with a feeling of great pride in myself.

"Oh, I memorized Hamlet once," she replied.

"Wait. You mean a passage from Hamlet?"

"No, the whole thing."

"The whole thing? The entire play?" My large balloon of pride was rapidly losing air.

"Yeah, the whole play," she said, and then added, "but, not in English."

"What do you mean not in English? It's an English play." I gave her a puzzled smile.

"I know, but I memorized it in Klingon."

"In what?"

"Klingon."

"The Star Trek language?"

"Yeah, it took me five and a half months. But I got it."

"Wow. Jeez. That's pretty amazing."

"Yeah, it was fun." My balloon was now empty and lying pathetically inert on the ground.

The lesson I learned, and reflected on as I carried my bags to the car, was that we should all remember the two inscriptions written in marble at the Oracle of Delphi in ancient Greece. First: Know Thyself. And second: Nothing in Excess. If you have a tendency to puff up in pride at the least accomplishment, knowing that about yourself is the first requirement for controlling it and reigning it in. It's fine to feel a glow of accomplishment, of course, but, as the Oracle also reminds us, "Nothing in Excess." Because, more often than you think, whatever you've done, there may just be someone else out there who has done much more, and in Klingon. So remember, as the Klingons say, yIDoghQo' - or in English, "Don't be silly," control the balloon of pride.