Hope

We all have hopes, and I think we should have many. Some are small, others are big. Many are superficial, and a few are deep. We have morally profound hopes and others that are just preferences of a personal sort. I can hope that tomorrow will be a mild, sunny day, and that racial justice will come to prevail in America. In an exceedingly fine recent book, Hope Under Oppression, philosopher Katie Stockdale explores the nature of hope, and especially its importance among people in disadvantaged and socially oppressed groups, where hope is often the hardest and also the most important to have and maintain. But her work illuminates the nature and role of hope more broadly in all our lives. And it’s a study that can benefit anyone who wants to think carefully about our moral engagement with the present and future.

The book is also a paradigmatic example of analytic philosophy done well. Katie makes all the conceptual distinctions we need to make, but no more than are required to gain clarity on the topic, and she argues clearly, using those tools, to establish new insights that are vitally helpful. She’s fair to other points of view, but also quick to spot error hiding behind truth in previous discussions of hope. Her guidance is sure footed and reliable on issues of substance, and it encompasses not just hope, but also such equally important human experiences as the very different emotions of anger and bitterness in the face of injustice, along with the roles of faith and courage in pursuing the good against great challenge.

I consider this to be an excellent and encouraging exercise in moral philosophy. It even ends up by being a bit inspiring. It reinforces my pride to be a philosopher and makes me newly thankful for all the young women who are busy bringing their voices, sensibilities, and talents to this ancient enterprise and broadening its concerns, while at the same time hewing to the highest levels of logical rigor and careful consideration regarding the human condition. This book has taught me a lot. I hope that many of you who are philosophically inclined will give it a careful read. But even if this is not your thing, I wanted you to know of the brilliant young philosophers who are using their talents to shed light on matters of crucial weight in our time.

For the book, Click here.

The Cost of Happiness

I just came across this photo online, this electric sign and its message: Happiness is Expensive. It struck me at first like the petulant complaint of a spoiled diva or dandy suddenly forced to pay their own way in their faux fantasyland of swag and swagger. You just gotta have that shirt, shoe, pant, ring, watch, car, house, travel, meal, bubbly, image, and life. And when you foot the bills yourself, yeah, it’s expensive. But wait. Maybe I’m being too quick with this statement.

And then I paused and pondered. Remember when you were a kid? If you were anything like me, happiness seemed to come free of charge. It was natural, easy, available almost anywhere and anytime. It could be interrupted and often was, but it would naturally descend again on my heart, whether I was playing with friends, reading a book, cavorting with the neighbor’s dog outside in the yard, or lying on the floor of my little house arranging toys in an imaginary game. Then I grew and began to chase things and states of being and to work for approval and success and the resources I would need to work even harder for more of the same. And happiness often stood to the side and watched me, patiently available, if only I would notice. But I thought it would return to me only if I invested in all the right things, paid the price, and then again, at higher and nearly exorbitant amounts as the years passed. And the dopamine came more frequently and bigger and I was giddy, then happy again, I thought, but it was all so expensive indeed in effort and time and resources and plans. And costly in what I had lost along the way.

And then I woke up. And I began to rediscover the real path, the one of my childhood, the one where my natural partner of happiness was keen on accompanying me daily without all those demands that it turns out I had put on myself over the years, following the lead of others who were themselves a bit lost, and when I began to enjoy again the company of my old joyous inner friend, our companionship became again more constant and reliable, and seemingly free again, but really hard earned in the coin of mistake and wisdom. This new walk along the proper path had been expensive to find, indeed.

So my conclusion is that the message of the sign can mean different things at different stages, and while foolish at one, can be wise at another, and deeper, and fuller phase of life.

Self Discipline

A friend asked me this morning to ponder and write something on Facebook on the idea of self discipline. Good place for such a topic. At first, I thought "Eventually, when I get around to it." Then I said, "No, get down to it now!" So, Ok, before you leave due to this opening lame humor, like a philosophical DJ, I’ll spin that platter by request. I’ve posted on social media, and realized I haven’t blogged here in more than a week, so here goes for you wise people who through self discipline stay off social media.

First, I’ll not hyphenate the word, in order to emphasize both components. You can write it either way. Our word ‘discipline’ comes from the Latin ‘disciplina’ (you can see the resemblance already, whether you haven't had your coffee or have had your cocktails; and more implications on that later) which meant “instruction, teaching, training, knowledge.” That eventually gave us the late 14th century meaning of “system of rules and regulations” often used in the Catholic Church, but not before the 12th century French (‘descepline’) and a few Old English had translated the Latin, or added on the additional gloss of “chastisement or punishment.”

I want to suggest that self discipline is a process of guidance and guardrails, offered internally, within our own hearts and minds, for the sake of attaining a state of heart, mind, or body that we desire, or else an external goal that we seek. It is a process in which we act as our own coaches, advisors, and trainers, laying out practices of behavior and monitoring and correcting actual performance to that end. Guidance and Guardrails. And that’s one of my definitions of wisdom. Self discipline is by nature a partner of wisdom, but of course can be used toward foolish and evil ends, and so is never the same thing. It’s a subordinate virtue, depending on its positive value for the other virtues it serves.

We have the ability to rise above ourselves, or stand outside ourselves, and monitor and appraise our own conduct. It’s a secret to positive growth and healthy achievement in any domain of life. But too few people cultivate and use this innate ability in our time. External distractions and unruly passions block the light of the sun, and too many have forgotten the need we often have to strive and work, resisting fleeting impulse and following genuine insight.

As I see it, self discipline uses at least four tools: reason, imagination, accountability and habit. Reason is for understanding what we truly need, as distinct from what we merely want. Imagination helps us vividly depict the path we’re on and where its taking us, along with where we’d be better off going instead. Accountability brings us buddies and partners who care about us enough to encourage us, point out our inconsistencies, and help us get back on the path. And finally, cultivating a healthy habit can be the ultimate tool of self discipline, and can help us avoid even having to fight big battles in order to follow consistency the way we’ve chosen. Self discipline is a key and pervasive ingredient in a life well lived, and is far too little understood and practices in our day. Sorry I couldn’t say it all more succinctly, but I didn’t have enough, well, you know.

Summer Book Club? Reading my novels together.

Summer Book Club? Someone suggested here the other day that I host a summer book club for my novel series of philosophical fiction that I often characterize as the best practical and deeper philosophy I've ever written. It came to me as a mental movie and changed my life. So I'm going to ask you all to let me know if you'd like to be part of such an adventure. We'd read together The Oasis Within and The Golden Palace between now and the end of June for a first meeting (Oasis is short, GP is medium length), then do a book a month for succeeding months, digging ever deeper into the ideas. If enough people are interested, I'd try to find a day of the week and time that would work for international time zones. Just let me know if you'd be interested and if there are enough of us, I'll announce within a week or two. And we'll gather around the Zoom campfire, just us, and dig deep. Please forward to friends you think might be interested. Summer Book Club!

If you’re interested, drop me a note at TomVMorris@aol.com!

Boris Becker and Beowulf

The Editor of Germany's prominent paper Die Zeit emailed me in 2001. The German tennis superstar Boris Becker, as big in his country at the time as Michael Jordan was here, had just suffered a bankruptcy of his company, seemed headed for another, his marriage had just broken up, he had fathered at least one child with a model in a hotel linen closet (reportedly), and his world seemed poised on the verge of collapse. The editor asked me to write a short column of advice. He said:

<<So, the question to you would be: How can Boris Becker get back on track? Assuming that perhaps his personal exploits are his own private thing: How should he approach another go at a career as a businessman? His stated goal,now that his career as a tennis player is definitely over, IS indeed to be a successful entrepreneur. And he does seem in desperate need of some Wisdom! Do you think you (and the great minds of the history of philosophy!) could help Boris Becker turn his currently rather bleak situation around - with less than 800 words? And would you be willing and able to write this short piece listing a few pieces of good philosophical advice by this coming Sunday? That would be just terrific!>>

I decided to get creative. And I guess Boris didn't take my advice. Because he was just sentenced to a prison term for criminal conduct. But the advice was simple:

Boris Becker and Beowulf

Tom Morris

The newspapers, magazines, and television networks of the world first carried stories about Boris Becker because of his many triumphs. Now they seem to be filled with accounts of his troubles. A bit of reflection on the pattern to be found in this turn of events can yield a measure of wisdom for us all, perhaps including even Mr. Becker himself.

One of the great cautionary tales in European literature is the ancient Anglo Saxon epic of Beowulf. As a young man, Beowulf was a powerful warrior whose tremendous victories won him widespread fame and deep respect. But with accomplishment always comes danger. At one point in the story, a wise old king warns the young conqueror about the challenges that life can hold for anyone who experiences great success in their early years. He explains that God sometimes allows a man to enjoy extraordinary worldly accomplishments, indulge all his desires, and temporarily forget about such realities as illness, old age, and death. But then a sort of pridefulness creeps in - what the Greeks called “hubris,” and this poet refers to as “overweening” - and this attitude renders the great man vulnerable to tragic failure and unnecessary unhappiness.

As the story progresses, we learn that, in many ways, Beowulf is a good man, but that, as a result of his unparalleled success in one area of life, he is filled with exactly that form of pride about which the king had warned. He is not able to learn and change as the years pass, or put himself, his talents, and his natural human limitations into a proper perspective. Because of this, his actions end up being responsible for his own very public failure and death, as well as for extremely damaging consequences in the lives of many other people. A younger warrior, commenting on his great fallen comrade, gives us the last words of the poem by saying, “Often, when one man follows his own will, many are hurt.”

As a modern philosopher, I spend my time advising some of the most accomplished people alive on how not to follow in the footsteps of the older Beowulf. Nothing is more common, or more surprising at first thought, than the dramatic failure of people who have formerly been very successful. But it is an ancient pattern. And it shouldn’t be so surprising. What worked in the past may not continue to work for even the most talented individual in the present, and may become actually self-destructive in the current situation. Life is adaptation. And that is one lesson Beowulf never absorbed.

But there is a deeper lesson about life success that we all must learn. With even the best adaptiveness to the context of new circumstances, we need always to hold fast to a few ultimate principles that never change, and, in particular, four transcendentals discovered by philosophers long ago - the ancient principles of Truth, Beauty, Goodness, and Unity.

We all experience life in four dimensions. The intellectual dimension of our experience demands Truth. The aesthetic dimension of our lives needs Beauty. The moral dimension requires goodness. And the spiritual dimension of our experience moves in the direction of a deep need for a sense of connectedness, or Unity. Each of these four principles must be pursued in the context of the other three. And if we lose sight of any one of them, we suffer.

Extraordinary athletic accomplishment can cultivate an extreme physicality in our sensibilities, and that in many ways can lead to an immersion in the aesthetic dimension of life to the neglect of one or more of the others. This is always dangerous, and has implications for our overall success in life that can become quite problematic. As a philosopher, one thing I would advise Boris Becker is to renew his personal commitment to all the values that need to structure life in the world, and not to let himself be derailed from anything that really matters in the long run, in the pursuit of something that might otherwise seem attractive in the short run.

The great American psychologist and pragmatic philosopher William James realized that it is normal for very talented people to encounter great difficulties along the way in life. No one enjoys uninterrupted success in everything. But in a study of the sports champions in his day, James also discovered that the greatest of them shared in common an ability to renew their personal confidence in any challenging situation, find a path that can work, and once again attain victory. Any champion fallen from grace can, with the help of an enlightened pragmatism, triumph once more.

In a book called True Success, I have drawn from the thinking of James and many other philosophers to show that, in every situation, we need seven things to guide our path and raise the probability of appropriate and sustainable success: a clear conception of what we want that is firmly rooted in self-knowledge, a strong confidence in our prospects, a focused concentration on what our goals will require, a stubborn consistency in the orientation of all our actions, an emotional commitment to the importance of what we’re doing, a good character to guide us and keep us on a proper course, and a capacity to enjoy the process along the way.

Six of these conditions are never enough. All seven must be respected and followed. If Boris Becker, or any accomplished person who may now likewise be struggling with new difficulties and challenges, can cultivate a faithfulness about the four principles that never change, and follow these seven conditions of success that have been handed down to us by so many of the great thinkers of the past, he can move into the future with renewed hope for success yet to come. Otherwise, the nature of the news coverage will never change, until it just eventually ends.

I'm Proud of You

I’m proud of you, those of you I know, and many of you I’ve never met in person, and I feel that pride well up whenever you do or say something noble and good, or show your spirit of creative love or compassion to another person, or in reference to some event that brings out the deepest and best in you, though it might not affect everyone that way. And this raises a question.

What does it mean to be proud of another person, or for someone else to be proud of you? Proper pride seems paradigmatically to do with our own actions and hard won accomplishments. Is pride in someone else then just metaphorical, a poetic tip of the imaginary hat? No, actually, I suspect not. I think it’s literal, real, and true. If you have invested any measure of time, attention, energy, or kindness in the life of another person, however directly or indirectly, and they go on to do especially good things, it’s natural and proper to think that, in however small a way, you have tended the garden. And even in the most extended sense, to the extent that we all invest in the human family, I think we can even feel something like moral pride for a stranger seen in doing something fine, something good, compassionate, and honorable. As a self-regarding attitude, pride can be a healthy thing, within its proper measure, but beyond a healthy dose, it can become dangerous and distorting. By contrast, well placed, morally and spiritually keen pride for another person is itself at no risk of unhealthiness, whatever its measure, even though it could in principle give way to something else that is a distortion rather than a grace. But in a well formed heart, boundless pride for the goodness in others can flourish and inspire the heart itself that honors the good.

You and I are Artists

I posted this on social media today, and wanted any of you who are not social media browsers to be able to see it. It’s a lesson that took me far too long to learn. But it now enriches every day.

So, I’m 70 years old today. And it occurred to me: I’m an artist and, strangely, also a work of art. So are you. My life is full of attempts and erasures and start-overs. I’m a painter, sculptor, and composer, an author and architect, a dancer, an actor, a gardener, even a puzzle creator and solver. And so are you. There’s no museum for what we do, and no set awards or prizes with ceremonies beamed across the globe. But there is the great and wonderful satisfaction of the art itself. To live is, at its best, to love and create, to create with love, and to love the creating, even when it’s just a start and will need a retry and restart. It’s good to learn to release all the rest. That’s one gift we can give ourselves.

Chronos and Kairos

I love watches. I typically wear 2-5 different ones in a day. Yeah. Crazy. I change them to suit my moods. Today I began with a simple, beautiful Timex, stainless steel 38mm case with a white face with black hands and numbers, held on by a great thick reddish brown strap with a small touch of light blue stitching near the lugs. Pictured below is the next one up, the Gerald Genta (pronounced "Zheeral Zhenta"), seconds before I changed into it. GG was by most estimates the great watch designer of the 20th century, creating the Constellation for Omega, the Royal Oak for Audemars, the Nautilus for Patek, and on and on. Then he formed his own company and made wild nonstandard watches, like the jump hour, where the hour numeral would pop into a window, and a horseshoe of minute numbers with one standard hand indicating them kept you apprised of how that hour was progressing. Sometimes both the hour and minutes would jump. My GG sports watch here on a rubber strap (with his name in raised letters in the rubber) is the only watch he made that was "normal" - nonstandard for him among his nonstandard designs, looking like a regular watch but with the numbers configured to allude to the jump hour versions. Steel fluted 38mm case, domed and beaded crown, carbon fiber dial—all sorts of idiosyncratic details adorning an ordinary looking watch. But it's special to those who know.

And now, with that lead in, my topic: The Greeks had two words for time, chronos which meant normal clock time, watch time, your smart but not wise phone time, and what leads to the calendar, the increments of seconds, minutes, hours, and days that pass the same for all regardless of how we experience them. Then there is kairos, a very special time, maybe a sacred time, a unique thread that weaves through the world, behind the scenes, and if you can pick it up and respond to it, you find unusual synchronicity, special coincidences, you meet with unusual successes helped along by unseen forces. That person comes into your life, that thing happens just when it's needed, whether you realized the need in advance or not.

There is a statement in the New Testament, in Galatians I think: "When the time had fully come, God sent forth his son." If I recall, the term here is one ordinarily used for a pregnant woman ready to give birth. It's a concept of readiness, or fullness. When the everyone is running around doing things too soon or late, the person with a keen sense of kairos does them at the perfect time, the Goldilocks time, and succeeds. Most of us just do when we do and hope for the best. And often we have to be patient because the best will happen in the kairos time, not in the chronos time, the clock time or calendar time we have in mind. Faith, hope, love, and the culmination of them in patience are required to get us to the kairos. So be of good hope. Seek the special, unusual, unique kairos, which I see alluded to in my old Gerald Genta watch, the one that tells me it's now kairos time to stop.

Interpreting With Humor

Imagine Jesus Laughing. Ok, not a lot in water. His was mostly a dry humor. But if we can't imagine this, I think we misunderstand a lot of his words as recorded in the Bible. Everyone who seriously reads the Gospels comes across passages that seem to make no sense, given the background belief of the writers that Jesus was somehow literally God, a divinely perfect being, as well as being fully human. He can come across as rude to his mother or disparaging about his family, or sound like a hellfire Puritan preacher on rare occasions. But what if he had a great sense of humor? What if was often playing around with his conversation partners, using metaphor and simile and lots of other off-literal forms of language to evoke insight through irony or mirth or exaggeration or sounding like he was saying the opposite of what point he wanted his friends to get? We most often often read him as if he was a grim faced somber individual with a harsh disposition. What if that's the opposite of the truth?

Socrates as represented by Plato was very playful and funny. So then was Plato for so representing him. Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius can make you laugh out loud. So can Pascal or Kierkegaard, and on and on. When I was a professor, I used to tell my grad student TAs that philosophy is serious, but that doesn't mean it's somber. We can have fun doing it and we should. Great minds are often playful minds and we all move in their direction by a proper playfulness.

The mother of Jesus comes to him at the wedding at Cana and says, "They're running out of wine." I think this happened a lot wherever Jesus was. Draw your own conclusions as well as a little of the red from that wineskin. He says "Woman, what is that to me?" My mother would have smacked me on the spot. First, he doesn't address her as his mother, and secondly he acts like he has no idea why she's telling him this odd factoid. And it just sounds rude. But what if there is this rich history between the two of them, of playful joking around, and he knows she knows exactly who he is and what he can do. And, yeah, it's been a secret they've kept but he takes her cue after this head fake that it's time. And the wine flows. I imagine her smile or laugh. Let's call this the hermeneutics of humor. Interpretation that has to get as creative as the text. Did the Gospel writers intentionally make all this up and put such stuff into the mouth of their savior? I don't think they were that clever or sophisticated but I do think he was.

The Lesson from Moscow

In Moscow, hollow men with empty hearts play their desperate ego games on fantasy chessboards in their heads, making their moves with easy orders at a safe distance but using real lives that are deeply harmed and cut short. It's not just Putin, though it is of course primarily, but also those who put him into power, and those who serve him, who acquiesce and obey eagerly for their own false sense of power and ego.

When Lord Acton wrote that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, it was after he had extensively read and studied the letters and private papers of those considered politically great, or massive in their undertakings, throughout European history. His conclusion was that in this precise sense great men are seldom good men. The sad truth is that it is badly damaged egos, the hollow men, who claw their way to the top far too often, where they can do immense damage to those around them and to the broader world. We see it in our own nation and in many of our states. Containment is a messy and partial solution once such people have power and act on it. The key is to keep them from amassing power in the first place. On every level, we need to resist and suppress the ambitions of damaged, grandiose egos - from local elections and small business endeavors to the institutions that span a national and global scale. Such people come to power from two sources, by appealing to the sadly like minded, and because the rest of us are too careless and distracted to act early enough to stop their ascent. And there are always heavy costs as a result.

I've been quietly working on these issues for twenty years and have finally compiled what I've learned in a book manuscript called "The Frankenstein Factor: Monster Success and Massive Failure." It's all about grandiose ego, and the motives, means, and methods that repeatedly create havoc in the world. In Mary Shelley's famous novel about the production of a monster, which is one of the greatest cautionary tales about ambition and success ever written, we are given insights we can use to comb history for the wisdom we need right now. With Putin's invasion of Ukraine, we're seeing the Frankenstein Factor on a large scale. And if history tells us anything clearly, it's that this will not go well for the perpetrators, as well as a great many innocent people, in the long term. Without wisdom and the virtue to act on it, suffering spreads unfettered through the world. With the right measure of caution and courage, we can do something about it instead.

Living Without Goals?

Goals. As a philosopher who has studied goals and goal setting for more than 30 years, I’ve occasionally come across books with titles like “Goalless Living” and “Living Without Goals.” The idea of these books seem to be that goals lock us down in a world of constant surprises and that instead of chaining ourselves down with goals, we’re better off just going with the flow and letting serendipity do with us what it will. We can just be in the moment and let good stuff find us.

But imagine that I was impressed with such a book. What would I do, set it as my goal to live without goals? And what about normal life? Imagine that my wife asks me to take out the trash in a few minutes and later on today pick up three items she needs from the grocery store. Now imagine me saying, “Sorry, honey, I’m living now without goals.” Finally, imagine me with spouseless living. The first problem is that it’s impossible to live without any goals. So why not pick good ones? And the point about serendipity is this: I tend to find good luck come my way, serendipity and synchronicity, precisely when I’m pursuing clear goals. In fact, the clearer the goals I have, the better I’ll recognize good luck as such.

Finally, goals don’t lock us down, they get us going. It’s hard to see what life has in mind for you when you’re utterly passive. And that’s because, for one thing, life does not have in mind your being utterly passive. You and I are supposed to be planning trips, finding paths forward, setting and revising goals, dropping some, and attaining others. As Aristotle saw, human life is essentially teleological, or oriented toward purposes and goals. With an inattention to them, we end up largely aimless. So if goals are necessary, and they’re important, we might as well do our goal setting wisely, and not to chain us down, but to open us up and get us going forward, where serendipity awaits.

For more on goals, please see books of mine like “True Success” and “The Art of Achievement,” along with “The Stoic Art of Living” and “The Oasis Within.”

What Got Me into Philosophy

What Got Me Into Philosophy. It may be have been my high school Jack Purcells. I was a tennis nut. Most days, after school at Durham High, I'd head over to the Duke courts, a few miles away, and either play with friends or hit the practice wall with all I had. I couldn't try out for the school team because my band The Chateaus was often traveling with irregular schedules. I was the leader, though the youngest, and I had to be available for band practice or going to play parties at NC State or Duke or UNC or UVA or The Myrtle Beach Pavilion or wherever. But back to Jack. For a long time I was always in Jacks or Stan Smith white tennis shoes. Those Jacks and Stans took me onto the green clay courts most days where I'd relish the serves, returns, lobs and slams like they were the stairway to heaven. Then I had my first philosophy course at UNC and saw the verbal serves and returns and lobs and slams as just the same thing but in a new mode. I was hooked. And like on the courts with friends, it didn't really matter who won or lost, but whether someone got in a great shot, skimming off that back line or popping over the net and twisting the other guy into a knot in a futile effort to return the ball. I learned that philosophical argument, like a friendly game of tennis with a good buddy, is not about winning or losing, but about honing the skills of making those points that will end up with a discovery of truth, or wisdom, a new insight into something that matters. So thanks, Jack and Stan, and to all my high school friends who endured my endless need to hit a ball under the warm southern sun. Who knew that at my age now, I'd still be serving, not that white fuzzy ball of ancient times, but the ideas, even older, that may help us all to score a little happiness and goodness in our day?

At Any Stage of Life

As I approach the seasoned period of life, and even though I still think of myself as barely on its doorstep, mostly still viewing it from afar, I like to think of how many people in their mature years have made great contributions to the world, even surpassing their youthful creations. To paint, to sculpt, to choreograph an interesting and meaningful life at every stage is the key. Then whether our contributions are big or small, they can be distinctively our offerings to the enhancement of others as well as our own inner growth. And in the end, what we think of as big and small may be mostly unrelated to the true value of anything done well. Perhaps everything is small that comes from the small-minded, and anything is big that's given by the big-hearted.

Mental Mentors

One of my favorite philosophers, Mike Austin, posted a blog yesterday about moral emulation and role models. Remember the popular slogan a few years ago among Christians of a certain stripe, who in a difficult situation would ask WWJD? “What would Jesus do?” Well the answer would often be, he’d perform a miracle and then go call some of the religious leaders of his day vipers. And I’m all for that, but of course I could personally aspire to only half that formula on any given day.

Mike made an important point that what Jesus would do in any given situation arose out of what he did normally, or habitually, day to day, like spending time alone, engaging in serious prayer, and hanging out with some of his closest companions. Then, when a tough situation arose, he had the inner resources for handling it well. The lesson for us is that if we try to apply the question “What would Jesus do?” only to tough situations, but not to the daily routines and habits that prepared him for those situations, we’re likely to either get our answer wrong, or fail in trying to take action on that answer.

The Jesus question is a particular use of what the Stoic philosophers and others often referred to as having a mental mentor, a moral exemplar vividly in your mind and imagination, someone you admire greatly and would seek to be like, whose image and history you can draw on in times of pressure, testing, or puzzlement. What would Socrates do? Ok, insult someone and drink too much and get poisoned, so we’ll move on. What would Buddha do? What would Gandhi do? What would Grandma Do? These can be good touchstones of proper emotion, attitude, and action for any of us, but they can be applied well to difficult situations only if we also apply them more broadly to normal habits and routines.

Imagine you’re playing a tough pickup basketball game. You think to ask “What would Lebron do?” Well, he’d steal the ball and dunk over these suckers fast. But unless you’ve been emulating Lebron in your practices and preparations for a very long time, you’re not likely to copy him right now in situational fireworks.

It’s good to have a mental mentor, a wise virtuous example of humanity at its best whom we admire and would like to imitate, emulate, and make proud with our own actions. But to use that mental mentor just in tough situations won’t usually get the job done. We need to keep their ongoing practices in mind and emulate those, else we won’t be prepared when crunch time comes and the game is on the line.

So. Do that. Because I think it’s: What Mike Austin Would Do.

Find the original post at: https://michaelwaustin.substack.com/p/role-models-and-character-growth

Looking for a Little Light Together

I'm a philosopher. Well, so are you, of course, but it's my full time job to think hard about difficult things and try to shed a little light into the dark corners of our lives. Curiosity drives me, and it it's never just a matter of idle entertainment, a way to pass the time, but a passionate quest to understand something crucial for living well and then to share what I learn. I spend hours, days, and sometimes years, with the occasional two or three decade adventure thrown in to get clear on an issue, and don't always end up as a result fully bathed in light. But if I can find a little light, that means progress. I share that light here and in books and talks, and other people like you sometimes then light up as well and share your illumination with me and others, and pretty soon we can all see more than we had before. And I think that's a big part of why we're here. And that's why doing such as this together can mean joy. So, again, thank you for sharing the journey with me.

The Wisdom Umbrella

I found this image many days ago and it stopped me and whispered to me but I could not hear what it was saying. And then just now, I realized its message to me: Sometimes, we're out in the world doing a multiplicity of good things - we're perhaps getting exercise, going about in a carbon neutral way, taking something of beauty to someone somewhere so that it can be appreciated and even brighten several days, and then in the process we get rained on. And for many, that's a big negative that ruins it all. But for others, it's just another form of beauty and being-in-the-world that can be celebrated for the good it does and the distinctive joy it can also bring.

It's really most often up to us how we view our circumstances, through irritation and complaint or celebration and joy. Even in the worst of situations, as Victor Frankl reminded us, we do not lose our ability to choose our attitudes. We should remember this throughout normal days, so that the things that bother others won't interrupt our own missions and positive experiences. We should carry an umbrella of wisdom with us wherever we go, and that will help in the journey. And, yeah, you could probably see something like that coming at this point, couldn't you? You're very smart, you know. That's why I'm so glad you read my little ponderings here and on social media. And I appreciate it!

Oh, and by the way, I posted this on social media and one friend told me he was reading it in a store on his phone and that when he left, the winter wind had whipped up suddenly and he remembered he didn’t have his hat and instantly started to deplore the cold but then realized he did have with him a wisdom umbrella that he could hold out against that chill breeze and smile.

Concluding note: Just out! Part one of my recent chat with David Storey of Boston College on doing public philosophy! Wait. Who is that man with lots of hair and a purple bow tie featuring bright green electric guitars? If you’re curious, copy and paste this link and go have some fun.

https://davidestorey.com/2022/01/11/episode-22-the-tom-morris-experience-part-1/

Kind Words

I just came across this sign online. "Kind words cost nothing." And I thought, "Yeah, that's nice." But then, I thought, "And it may even be true if you're a saint of the highest possible order." Because, in lots of instances, kind words cost a lot: a lot of self control, a good deal of patience and tolerance and understanding, a rising above the situation, reigning in that natural irritation, or stunned anger, or shocked outrage, controlling our tempers, mastering a good bit of self control, and acting against what our feelings might be shrilly insisting. So, sorry, kind words can cost a lot. They can be very expensive in effort, and energy, and control.

I actually know a few kind people who aren't very good at kind words. They prefer the power they feel in the curmudgeon pose of gruff talk, or even with the banter of smart sarcasm, or they relish the pleasure of witty snark. They do good things for others all the time. But they prefer a banter of trash talk along the way. For them, kind words must seem more costly than kind actions.

But there is actually some good news yet to be found around this. Kind words are always a good investment, paying dividends at least within ourselves that far offset what they've cost up front. So do kind words cost nothing after all, at least net? Maybe so, but that may not be what they feel like initially. Yet, we need to trust the process and the wisdom of the ages. Kindness to others is always the greatest kindness to ourselves, and may even help them too. #kindness

A Christmas Thought

There’s an implication of the Christmas story that we may not think about enough. God didn’t come into the world because we were doing just fine. It wasn’t supposed to be a divine vacation in a super nice place. It was meant as a rescue operation, where we didn’t get the heavenly version of a heavily armed special forces team rappelling across dimensions into a desert village, but a baby born to a carpenter and his wife in humble surroundings, sent to grow among us and learn our plight and then live and preach a message of transformative love. We need that message now as much as we ever have. And the best way to preach it may be to undergo its transformation every day and then seek to live it, humbly. Merry Christmas. And have a happy holiday, whichever of the many great ones you may observe.

The Cloud Around Us

The future is shrouded in a mist, a fog, a thick cloud of unknowing. Most of us realize that. But so likewise is most of the present, in many ways, and of course the past. We're surrounded by uncertainty. We guess. We assume. We think we know. And knowing is good, worth attempting and holding on to when we have it. But we have it as a possession much less than we think. So my conclusion is that we must be called to courage and faith and hope and creative action that does not depend on the full knowing we often wish and think we have.

The comparatively little that we do know should be our solid foundation for all else, but at the same time, we need to admit how much we do not see, or grasp. And yet, we should never let others pretend that nothing is known or that crucial things are no more than disputed, and should avoid that trap ourselves. It's a tightrope. A dynamic balance is our need. And that's a nice image, the taut thin rope representing those foundations we can know and use, and all the enveloping air standing in for the unknown and the very challenging. May we walk well into the uncertain together, whether on a bridge in the fog or on ropes in the air, and grow ourselves in the way that this alone allows.

The Power of Hope

I just gave a quick talk to a great group of Brits, by zoom, and the audio in the pub where most of them were gathered, after the power outage in their theater, was a little choppy, so I’m posting here a quick write-up. Hope you like it:

When Mark Masters asked me to talk about hope today, my actual first thought was … I hope I can come up with something. So at least I have recent experience of the topic.

Proper hope is not to be confused with delusion, or wishful thinking. Any healthy form of hope can act as a virtue, like honesty, or courage, a strength we can bring to the world.

Maybe it’s something like a second level virtue, depending on others for its goodness, robustness, and effectiveness. If you were to hope I die a slow and painful death, that might not count as a virtuous attitude. But based on compassion, love, and an elevation of the spirit, hope can be a virtue in the classic sense of the Latin Virtu, a strength or power, and even what military strategists call a “force multiplier” for your other strengths.

So, our first point. Proper Hope is a power, a personal strength to bring to any challenge or opportunity.

Now, remember, we’re not talking about irrational expectation or weak belief, or some vague desperate desire. Virtuous hope isn't a result of self deception or any sort of weakness, but is aligned with that faith beyond sight guiding the great explorers in the arts and sciences and philosophy, as well as business for a very long time.

Proper hope is a cousin of realistic optimism, which can be learned and developed. And so can hope. I have in mind Martin Seligman’s book Learned Optimism.

So: Point two, hope is akin to faith and optimism.

Now, recall the story of Pandora, who was presented with a gift box she wasn’t supposed to open. What sense does that make? In the original Greek, the term is better translated as a big jar, perhaps ornamental, with a top that shouldn’t be removed, just enjoyed visually. But Pandora had the quality of CURIOSITY, another strength, used properly. And she was not good at following instructions, like many of us. So she opened the jar, and as you know, most of the evils now in the world flew out and dispersed everywhere. What an experience! Much like the past year and a half. But the box or jar was not empty. And Pandora was curious enough to look again. There was something left at the bottom, something that stuck. You may remember that it was hope. She had this as the real gift, to help her deal with everything else.

One more point. Or maybe more. In the book If Aristotle Ran General Motors, I suggested there are two keys to leadership greatness that we almost never find balanced in people’s lives: Humility and Nobility. I mention this now because hope is one of the rare places where these things meet. Yes.

When you have proper hope, it’s because you have the humility to admit you don't actually know how things will turn out, and you also have the nobility of mind to maintain an expectation and commitment for something good, in whatever form it may come.

Hopelessness, by contrast, typically arises out of thinking we know more than we do. It’s a result of intellectual arrogance. Remember the recent book The Black Swan. The biggest things tend to come unexpectedly. Some black swans are challenging, but others are positive game changers. So to anyone struggling with hope, I want to urge a little more humility, where hope can grow. But to be helpful, hope must be put to work.

So: Point three: Hope is where humility and nobility meet.

And I guess, Point four: To be helpful, hope has to be remembered and used, moving forward.

By now you may hope I’m almost done, and I am. But one last and fifth point. Hope best arises and grows strong in partnership with other people, not as a solitary matter.

We give each other hope. And in particular: Creative partnerships spark hope. They provide it with deep roots and healthy growth.

You may have heard the story about the two college students who met and fell in love. She was in veterinary medicine, much like our beloved James Herriot, and he was studying zoology, to become a taxidermist. They got married and wanted to go into business together, oddly enough. So they hung out a sign with their newly shared name and a catchy slogan. It said, “Roberts Veterinary and Taxidermy: Either Way, You Get Your Dog Back.”

A creative partnership indeed. And a source of hope for us all.

Stuffed as we now are with philosophical ideas, may we all go forth with hope.