20 July 2024
Today’s blog is one of a chain from an in-process book entitled, Individual Excellence: The 4Ps of a Well-Spirited Life. What follows is the eighth passage of Process, the second of four sections of that book. Last week we placed footings. This week, we build foundation walls.
Metaphysical Foundation Walls
As related, the first time I helped build and raise a wall, I experienced my first non-academic sense of metaphysics. When that wall was vertical and braced, it was apparent that for the next century or so, some people would define their interior space, exterior views, and ceiling heights based on that wall. That was kind of metaphysical to a second-year university student in 1979, because it limited and defined so much for so long.
An aspect of the perplexing beauty of life is the both-and truth of metaphysical permanence (A=A) and flux, discussed in Part I, above, and summarized in Table I-iii, here While the wood framed wall, above, defined views and space, from the moment that spruce tree was harvested somewhere in Canada, the shelf-life timeline on each stud or plate was ticking. The wall seemed permanent to the people who lived in and near that house, but the longer-term reality was much less permanent and much more ephemeral, bare ruined choirs where late the sweet birds sang.
More fundamentally, energy is neither created nor destroyed according to physics. So the energy that went into designing, sourcing the material, fabricating, maintaining, and demolishing that wall went where? As an imperfect system, a lot of that energy was not used as well as one might hope. How does that wall compare to your own life? Has most of the energy been used efficiently and conserved or well transmitted into greater order?
My own life has been highly imperfect in terms of energy invested, harvested, and inherited by others. Yet I love virtually every moment of my one precious life because each of those moments has contributed to refining me, response by response, into a person I feel increasingly comfortable being. Being? Being with?
To answer those questions, requires metaphysics, a word chosen by Aristotle who saw the content of those studies known as Metaphysics as the things after the Physics (Morris, 1975, p. 825). But meta, as we use that Greek prefix in, for example, metacognition means thinking about thinking. And it is that usage, the transcending or overarching sense; being beyond the obvious that captures what Aristotle probably meant: those things beyond the physical or the laws of physics. And this puts us right into the heart of metaphysics and why a well-spirited human being needs to know where she stands in relation to this subset of knowledge.
Many highly intelligent people believe we are nothing more than physics, that all we do is ultimately a chain of nearly predictable reactions set off long ago and playing out generation after generation. On bad days, I can see why and how you might get there. Fortunately, I don’t have many bad days.
On good days, the least obscure explanation suffices. Viktor Frankl is miscredited with saying something like, Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. My work is in psychotherapy. If I do not believe in that space, I do not believe in free will. And free will is a term fraught with a wild overburden of accumulated arguments all of which, to the best of my knowledge, are decided individually, person by person, based on that person’s life experience. But…imagine psychotherapy, or physical exercise, or studying for a degree, if there is no choice and no improvement. Why spend money on a therapist if you do not have the capacity to think about your thinking, evaluate your emotional roots, and change your own behaviours? In the shortest probable terms, life is meaningless without the capacity for choice. If life is meaningless, nihilism is just around the corner. Nihilism is an inaccurate perception of nothingness and chaos; life per my Heraclitian-Aristotelian view is ordered somethingness in constant motion.
It is precisely so you can decide these issues for yourself (that capacity itself offering evidence of free will) that a well-spirited person needs to understand and come to terms with her own position on free will, being, and teleology—some of the main issues grappled with in metaphysics.
To provide examples of such positions, I will offer those held by this writer during the creation of this book. Free will, as directly above, the ability to make impactful choices. Being, an analytical and observing awareness of permanence within flux. In short, our identities remain but our being is in constant motion. Teleology, the study of ends, is most succinctly described by stating that the end (main goal) of a rational animal (a human being) is self-actualization. Self-actualization is a high degree of self-realization manifesting as congruence and wholeness i.e., lightly borne integrity.
As you can see, the foundation walls do their job but from the moment the mortar dries or the concrete heads toward 28-day hardness, those walls are subjected to water, frost, ice, wind, heat, pressure…they’re in motion just like you and me.
To recap our own motion and destination, in terms of the organization of this second quadrant of this book, we’ve gathered the five lists (10 Commandments, Covey, Peterson, Seligman & Aristotle) and combed those for how to know and how to be themes. The point is that the processes required to live a well-spirited life involve, first, knowing those two things. Though how we know and what we know will be challenged—often—and might even change, being able to think through and articulate your epistemological and metaphysical stances is the foundation of necessary processes—prerequisites of engaged human citizenship.
To be continued next week.
Dan Chalykoff is a Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying). He works at CMHA-Hamilton and Healing Pathways Counselling, Oakville, where his focus is clients with addiction, trauma, burnout, and major life changes. He writes to increase (and share) his own evolving understanding of ideas. Since 2017, he has facilitated two voluntary weekly group meetings of SMART Recovery. Please email him (danchalykoff@hotmail.com) to be added to or removed from the bcc’d emailing list.
References:
Morris, W. (Ed.) (1975). The Heritage illustrated dictionary of the English language. American Heritage Publishing Co, Inc.
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