10 March 2021
Last week we began exploration of the importance of the Delphic inscription “Know thyself.” Why did the ancient Greeks hold self knowledge in such regard? As a next step, it may help to realize that even that basic statement—that knowing oneself is important—must, per Aristotle, occur within a context of comprehensible movement and choice to possess such importance.
I’ll break that down. If the world is not comprehensible, and many philosophers claim it is not, then surely, we, as humans inhabiting that world, are not comprehensible to one another or to ourselves. Which is why I love Aristotle. He was the guy who said, in logical terms, that what you see is what you get—it is real, you are real, and you are perceiving what is real. And the truth is, we all know it anyway and cannot cooperate, communicate, or function without that knowledge. So much for comprehensibility.
In the blog on vectors (3.vi.’20), I introduced some of the ideas we’re looking at today. For example, Aristotle maintained that humans are innately directed to actualize their fullest potential. There is a string of right and wrong habituations between potential and actualization, but the statement is accurate. This brings in the two points from above: movement and choice.
The blog on vectors introduced the idea of our lives necessarily being in a positive or negative trajectory. This comes of Aristotle’s (and others’) realization that the essence of life is movement. It’s simple: are you optimistic, growing, pursuing goals, and enjoying life (helpful movement) or are you pessimistic, shrinking, avoiding goals, and generally feeling unwell (unhelpful movement)? Given average health, it is actually a choice we each make, consciously or unconsciously, every day of our lives. (Yes, that is heavy.)
This also harkens back to M. Scott Peck’s claim that once faced, life’s hardship is not so hard. Aristotle made a similar claim: to know yourself you must first come to terms with the capacity of the human mind to understand what it encounters. Aristotle knew that a failure to take ourselves or our world seriously, and at face value, was a failure to know life’s parameters. The theme under this is that we are of this world, that we began and belong here.
Once that sense of belonging is accepted, good habit formation (habituation) becomes Job One. Good habit formation is the creation and maintenance of character. It is vital to see a non-judgmental link here: this is not about Shame on you, Dan; you’ve lapsed, used drugs... It is essentially about human health. Humans have distinct and real attributes as does life on earth. Health is the result of a growing harmony between a well-habituated human and her life on a planet she recognizes as knowable and hospitable.
Aristotle is famously non-prescriptive in his ethics as he recognized the importance of context and personalities to good ethical conduct. His advice, to those seeking answers, was to search out the counsel or example of a wise person who has won your respect. More explicitly, Aristotle left us a list of virtues and a sliding scale between too much and too little with an optimum of moderation in the middle. While Plato and the Stoics went with self-discipline, courage, justice, and wisdom, Aristotle added liberality, magnificence, greatness of soul, ambition, gentleness, truthfulness, wittiness & tact, and friendliness to that list of virtues (Bartlett and Collins, 2011).
So, what’s the takeaway? We have some control over our choices and life movement. Practicing virtuous behaviours in moderation, over and over with necessary human corrections and slips, is the key to building good habits. Good habits lead to a well-spirited life and the actualization of potential.
Dan Chalykoff provides one-to-one counselling concerning life direction, addiction, and change. Since 2017 he has facilitated two voluntary weekly group meetings of SMART Recovery: danchalykoff@hotmail.com
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