The self- it is almost too complex to grasp, but there are the easy things. Today, for instance, is absolutely beautiful, the first warm and sunny and fairly windless day in quite a while. Under such circumstances, what to do with some free time was obvious for me - take a hike in the nearby woods and fields. It was everything I could ask for - the smell of new fallen leaves and hickory nuts and acorns and pine, the slight whiff of someone burning a brush pile, the clarity of the river that ran under the walking bridge, the surprised warnings of the blue jays - all beautiful, the perfect morning. But others would not choose the same. Years and years ago, my friend from college, Mike (who appears in my book Dream Weaver, which I now shamelessly plug: Amazon for about $17, and Kindle for $2.99) came up to the family home for a visit in the country. We drank beer and played poker as usual that night, but by morning he was already bored. What do you guys do out here?, he asked, disgusted. Why, hike, I said. Let's hit the mountains behind the house - great hike where I had seen a cougar just the year before! Nothing doing, said Mike - who continued to lounge about for another day before pressing to get out of the country and back to the action, the city.
I recall being incredulous - how could he want to go back to the noise and grime and downright claustrophobia of the city? I have commented on that lack of imagination of his to my friends since, but criticism was not really warranted; for as much as he hated the country, I hated the city (and still do). It was merely a choice, not made on purpose, but by some individual design. Yes, he had been raised in the city and I in the country, but many of my neighbors left the country for the city - New York and Boston figured prominently, because that was where the action was. And worldwide, people have been flocking to the cities in droves - sometimes for safety and simply for food, but at other times, not for these reasons at all - in fact, many live worse in the cities than in the country ( I have Caracas in mind). Reading about this phenomena in a journal, the author went through several rational reasons for this movement of people to the cities, but in the end he had to admit that all of them in combination still did not suffice - and he had to conclude that, like Mike, they merely wanted to be where the action was.
This can be seen as a part of who we are, for we seldom choose outright what we enjoy - rather, it seems given to us. This phenomena shows us something of the intangible nature, but it is superficial. More important is how we direct the sum total of our actions. I spoke of the "good" yesterday, and that, I think, is our most important focus. I believe that each viable society and familial setting bestows on us the idea of the good. It may well entail the Viking code of spearing babies in raids, but that would not be the focus of the overall Scandinavian society from which they came. Instead, its focus would be towards social harmony that would depend on feedback loops to restore order from certain predictable perturbations (feuds, warfare, heavy drinking). The Vikings would stray from this "good," only to be brought back into harmony - and if they did not, their society, families, and very survival would be threatened. That, this drive towards peace and harmony, is what can best be summarized as the "good."
And it is through our concurrence with this path towards harmony where our deepest selves are to be found. Does one rebel against the most commonly held mechanisms to maintain harmony? Does one strive to make them more equitable or efficacious? Does one dump the whole business and go off into the woods to live off the grid? Does one purposely violate them simply out of spite?
In another anecdote, my son often hung around with a kid on the margins of society, and whenever he did, something disturbing would happen, but not THAT disturbing. He was trouble, but of a marginal kind. His half brother, however (his family life was a mess) was, at the age of 20, already a career criminal. It was not just that he was rebelling, but purposefully hurting people for a personal sense of power. On another stint out of jail, he and his girlfriend were smoking crack (this in a small, almost crime-less town) when my son, Jeff, came into the room with his friend. After several nasty exchanges, Jeff said, "So, I know resorting to morality won't get you to change your ways, but do you really want to keep sucking the c... of the prison system? The reply was instant: "I don't give a f..."
He knew what he was doing was not only wrong, but pointless, in that it would destroy just about any personal power that he had. He will, undoubtedly, be in jail most of his life, as he should be. But what drives him? Why that choice? - and unlike, say, some bullied kid in a ghetto, he had a choice.
This, we might say, is how we find our true selves - not only through our inherited or nurtured qualities, but by our choices. Our free will determines what we are by what we choose to constrain and what we choose to advance. This is the point that was made about "self mastery" - not a bitter, Puritan restraint of the soul, but a mastery of impulses that leads one to the life that, under careful consideration, we wish for.
Maybe that bad guy feels a need for eternal punishment - it is hard to say. But it is through our own will that we determine, on the most important issues, who we are. We are born with both good and bad - and we make of ourselves from what we are given who we most truly are. FK
I recall being incredulous - how could he want to go back to the noise and grime and downright claustrophobia of the city? I have commented on that lack of imagination of his to my friends since, but criticism was not really warranted; for as much as he hated the country, I hated the city (and still do). It was merely a choice, not made on purpose, but by some individual design. Yes, he had been raised in the city and I in the country, but many of my neighbors left the country for the city - New York and Boston figured prominently, because that was where the action was. And worldwide, people have been flocking to the cities in droves - sometimes for safety and simply for food, but at other times, not for these reasons at all - in fact, many live worse in the cities than in the country ( I have Caracas in mind). Reading about this phenomena in a journal, the author went through several rational reasons for this movement of people to the cities, but in the end he had to admit that all of them in combination still did not suffice - and he had to conclude that, like Mike, they merely wanted to be where the action was.
This can be seen as a part of who we are, for we seldom choose outright what we enjoy - rather, it seems given to us. This phenomena shows us something of the intangible nature, but it is superficial. More important is how we direct the sum total of our actions. I spoke of the "good" yesterday, and that, I think, is our most important focus. I believe that each viable society and familial setting bestows on us the idea of the good. It may well entail the Viking code of spearing babies in raids, but that would not be the focus of the overall Scandinavian society from which they came. Instead, its focus would be towards social harmony that would depend on feedback loops to restore order from certain predictable perturbations (feuds, warfare, heavy drinking). The Vikings would stray from this "good," only to be brought back into harmony - and if they did not, their society, families, and very survival would be threatened. That, this drive towards peace and harmony, is what can best be summarized as the "good."
And it is through our concurrence with this path towards harmony where our deepest selves are to be found. Does one rebel against the most commonly held mechanisms to maintain harmony? Does one strive to make them more equitable or efficacious? Does one dump the whole business and go off into the woods to live off the grid? Does one purposely violate them simply out of spite?
In another anecdote, my son often hung around with a kid on the margins of society, and whenever he did, something disturbing would happen, but not THAT disturbing. He was trouble, but of a marginal kind. His half brother, however (his family life was a mess) was, at the age of 20, already a career criminal. It was not just that he was rebelling, but purposefully hurting people for a personal sense of power. On another stint out of jail, he and his girlfriend were smoking crack (this in a small, almost crime-less town) when my son, Jeff, came into the room with his friend. After several nasty exchanges, Jeff said, "So, I know resorting to morality won't get you to change your ways, but do you really want to keep sucking the c... of the prison system? The reply was instant: "I don't give a f..."
He knew what he was doing was not only wrong, but pointless, in that it would destroy just about any personal power that he had. He will, undoubtedly, be in jail most of his life, as he should be. But what drives him? Why that choice? - and unlike, say, some bullied kid in a ghetto, he had a choice.
This, we might say, is how we find our true selves - not only through our inherited or nurtured qualities, but by our choices. Our free will determines what we are by what we choose to constrain and what we choose to advance. This is the point that was made about "self mastery" - not a bitter, Puritan restraint of the soul, but a mastery of impulses that leads one to the life that, under careful consideration, we wish for.
Maybe that bad guy feels a need for eternal punishment - it is hard to say. But it is through our own will that we determine, on the most important issues, who we are. We are born with both good and bad - and we make of ourselves from what we are given who we most truly are. FK
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