How could you not love that face?

Don’t worry, I’m not going all gushy on myself. Nor do I expect you to.

So one of the things I do to escape from stress is to read about the history of philosophy. So far I have a rough knowledge of Western thought from the Greeks up through about the beginning of the fourteenth century, and a couple bits of Muslim, Indian, and Chinese philosophy from various parts of history.

Anyway, I was reading about John Duns Scotus (ca. 1265 – 1308) in Frederick Copleston’s masterpiece, and I came across the following provocative passage:

Scotus often gave a peculiar stamp or emphasis to the elements he adopted from tradition. Thus in his treatment of the relation of the will to intellect he emphasized freedom rather than love, though he held, it is true, to the superiority of love to knowledge….

This helped me to articulate something I’ve known for some time but have never quite managed to say clearly.

Let me ask you a question. What does your will do? What is the action of your will? What is its purpose?

Okay, that was three questions, or at least, three ways of asking one question. Sorry about that. But I hope you have an answer.

I’m guessing your answer is something like, “My will chooses things. It’s purpose is to choose freely, to be free.” And that is a typical modern answer. In fact, in the twenty-first century, it’s hard to consider that there might be another way to answer the question.

But, as you might guess if you’ve read enough of this blog, the medievals would have answered very differently. They would have said, the act of the will is to love, that is, to pursue what is good. And they would have had almost as much trouble understanding our emphasis on freedom as we have understanding their emphasis on the necessity of choosing good.

Getting medieval on you

Here’s how it works, from a medieval point of view: the human mind has certain powers or “faculties” that perform different tasks. The senses apprehend particular objects – colors, textures, sounds, etc. – and understand the objects of the physical world. The intellect apprehends the essence of those objects, that is, it understands that this four-legged yapping creature is in some way the same kind of thing as that four-legged yapping creature; they are both dogs, even though they are distinct individuals. In other words, the intellect sees the nature of a thing.

The intellect also sees the implications of nature. Just as it makes connections between individual things in the physical world, it makes connections between ideas. This aspect of the intellect is called reason, and it allows us to form an argument and to examine our ideas logically. The intellect is able to evaluate both things in the world and ideas in our minds.

Now, both the senses and the intellect have a power that the medievals called “appetites”. The appetite of the senses is, well, the things we call appetites today: desires for things like food, pleasure, comfort. Sensible appetites motivate us to pursue sensible goods. The intellectual appetite, though, motivates us to pursue intellectual goods, like truth and beauty and the common welfare of society. This appetite is the will. The will, by its very nature as an appetite, is necessarily ordered toward choosing good things. In fact, it was taken for granted in ancient and medieval times that we are incapable of choosing evil for its own sake; it is impossible to choose anything unless we see something good in it.

In other words, to know something, anything, led immediately to a desire for the good of that thing. That’s the sense in which to know me – or anyone else, for that matter – is to love me.

Freedom!

But because the will is a power of the intellect, it is able to use rational argument and to see different ways of achieving the good that it necessarily desires. This power is called liberum arbitrium, which is Latin for “free choice” but has traditionally been translated “free will.” It is the ability to choose the means to pursue the good.

For example, it is good for me to be healthy. One necessary aspect of health is regular exercise. But there are lots of ways to exercise: I could ride a bicycle, do pilates, swim laps in a pool, lift weights, take a walk with a friend, and so on. My will is bound to desire health; unless I’m obtuse, I recognize that exercise is necessary to health, but I’m free to choose how I’ll go about getting exercise based on what I enjoy, and what works best for my body type.

I’m also free to choose some other aspect of health as more important, such as getting my diet under control or making my sleep schedule regular. Maybe I need to focus on mental health before physical health. And maybe I’ve twisted my understanding of health so much that all I see is the need for pleasure and comfort. The point is, the will seeks what is good; freedom seeks the ways to achieve that good.

That’s how the medievals saw things, up until John Duns Scotus. Since then, the idea has been growing that freedom, rather than love of the good, is central to the will. It wasn’t long before people began to claim that the will could choose either good or evil with equal freedom, even though the only way medieval people could see to choose something evil was if the will was bound by a kind of slavery. Eventually, the idea that civil laws, and even moral teaching, would try to impose goodness on the will became repugnant to the ideal of freedom. Freedom was exalted as the highest value, even over good.

I can see some reasons for this line of argument; it’s not entirely irrational. But I think it makes a small mistake at the beginning, and leads to disastrous consequences. Freedom cannot itself be good without being one good among many; and freedom is not the standard or definition of good. Rather, the only way freedom can truly be free is to place itself at the service of love.

Where to begin...?

As a sophomore in college, I had a single dorm room. No roommate. A space entirely my own. And I remember that, after the first ten minutes, it terrified me. I don’t think I ever finished entirely unpacking.

I had no one to tell me where my things were supposed to go.

I know that most normal people – you do realize I’m rather abnormal, I hope – would feel the thrill of freedom and the drive to creativity in deciding for themselves where their own things should go. But I was very caught up in a way of thinking limited to “right” and “wrong,” that had no room for “good” and its chums “better” and “best”.

It was actually the required class on Western Civilization that woke me up, or started to. The prof was describing the ancient and medieval notion that has come to be called “the great chain of being,” essentially that everything in the universe has a fixed place on a strict linear hierarchy, like rungs on a ladder, with “prime matter” at the bottom and God at the top.

It seemed obvious to me that, while a linear hierarchy is one way of organizing and relating the various things in the universe, it’s probably not the most useful. There are different kinds of order, and different kinds of relationship between things. Therefore, it didn’t surprise me when, years later, I discovered that great thinkers in ancient and medieval times held a much more subtle and nuanced view than that simplified and dumbed-down notion.

What did surprise me was how long it took me to apply my insight to my own life and behavior.

Clean your room, young man!

I’ve been living in my current apartment for about six months now, and I’m still not entirely unpacked. I have boxes and crates stacked against the wall, waiting for me to decide where to put their contents. Some of these boxes have remained unopened for the past couple moves I’ve made. This is because there’s a part of me that’s still afraid to put something in the wrong spot.

This fear is, I know, entirely unrealistic. It is stuck in a misunderstanding, or maybe a misapprehension, about freedom and order.

Order is nothing other than the relationship of things to each other. How I decide to order something, whether it’s the files in a cabinet or the furniture in a room or the tasks on my to-do list, depends on the relationships I’m looking at. With files, my goal is quick and easy access to information; the relationships I’m looking for are based on the use of the information I’m filing away. For example, bills and receipts go together, and letters from friends go together, and owners manuals and warranties go together.

Relationships between furniture, on the other hand, is based on the relationships I hope to develop between the people using the furniture. I like open rooms, where everyone can see and communicate with everybody else. There’s a part of me that wants to maximize open floor space, but a friend pointed out that putting some furniture pieces at an angle – even though it cut off a square foot-and-a-half in the corner, provided better sight lines for people sitting in chairs and on the sofa.

My to-do list actually benefits from a strictly linear ordering: first this, next that, third something else, and think twice before re-ordering the list. That’s because many activities, in reality, require something else to come first. It’s linear because the relationships are based in the uncompromising march of time.

Order provides the structure for free action. If my files are organized, I’m more free to find the information I want; if my furniture (and my to-do list) is well ordered, it’s easier to have fun with my friends.

Fear of punishment and fear of chaos

So order is both something that I create from and for myself, because it depends on the relationships I’m choosing to look at, and something that is independent of me, because those relationships are based in something real and objective.

This is normal and reasonable and helpful to me. Why, then, do I have such a fear of both aspects of order? Why am I afraid both that I’ll have to decide what to do, and that someone else will impose a decision on me?

I’m sure there are plenty of psychological reasons and childhood traumas that might explain the origin of my fears. But those don’t matter very much. What matters is, replacing my false view of order with a true one. And that is done one act at a time.

This is not a natural love

I don’t like to talk much about sex, partly because I’m ashamed of my own weaknesses in this area, and partly because any restriction on sexual “expression” or activity is seen as “backward” (and I’m vain enough to want to be seen as progressive), and partly because sex is just plain everywhere already and I don’t particularly want to add to the mess.

But what with the foolish hooplah over Pope Benedict’s out-of-context statement on condoms, and in light of some personal questions from a few different friends, and considering a fascinating conversation over at Just Thomism, I thought I’d toss my tuppence into the ring.

Human nature

The human person is made for love.

That sentence has many meanings, because “love” has many meanings. Love could mean, broadly, fellowship or relationship with others. Love could mean, figuratively, sexual intercourse. Both these – as well as other senses of love such as philanthropy or friendship or romance – have some truth to them, but it is important not to confuse them.

The fact is that individual people are dependent on one another, both physically and socially. Love allows those dependencies to fulfill our nature, to build us up both individually and together. In terms of virtue, love directs us toward a good that is at the same time personal and universal.

Our interdependence can be abused, though. We can treat each other in ways that denigrate human nature, usually by pitting one need against another, or by substituting one kind of love for another. That is what the vices do, and particularly the vice of lust.

Lust kills love

Lust does for sex what all the vices do: it reduces the world to some small, solitary good, and refuses to acknowledge the connections of that good to everything else. It reduces a person to an object of sexual satisfaction. That sexual satisfaction may be emotional as well as, or instead of, physical; but it still “objectifies” a person, reduces him or her to a mere thing to be used.

Now, it’s one thing to become momentarily lost in the enjoyment of some good thing. For example, when I’m savoring a truly fine wine, or a perfectly spiced pasta sauce, I take a minute to ignore everything else in the world and simply float in that fullness of flavor. But such moments are gifts, and I soon return my attention to my companions at the table.

Lust seeks to control and command the pleasures of sexual interactions, rather than receive them as gifts. It treats a companion as an excuse or as a tool to achieve a solitary ecstasy.

Where natural, virtuous sex profoundly unites a couple, lust isolates. It refuses to relate the pleasure of sex to the joy of communion.

Sex au naturale

Now, one of the first things lust ignores is the intimate connection between sexual intercourse and procreation. This is, of course, where all the controversy around birth control and homosexuality and so on comes from. None of those approaches to sex are conceivable until the bond between intercourse and childbirth are broken.

I have a great deal of sympathy for couples who can’t see how they could afford the expense of a child, or for people attracted to members of their own sex. I have very good friends who fit into both those categories, and their longing for affection and understanding and security is both deep and genuine. I mentioned above my own vulnerability to sexual temptations as well, and (without going into any detail) I will admit that I have myself sought to avoid the natural course and consequences of sex.

The temptation makes sense: sexual passion is intense and is rooted in the depths of both body and soul. It is easy to let it take over.

But human nature is not meant to be dominated by any single passion, no matter how powerful or profound. Freedom lies exactly in being able to say both “yes” and “no”, and in knowing the best time for each. Reason lies, neither in suppressing nor indulging our passions, but in bringing those passions to their fulfillment in the whole person, and in each other.

True love lies in welcoming and respecting every aspect of others, including their minds, their personalities, and even their fertility. Love, when it meets another, always creates something new and beautiful.

Fiction as a “virtual reality”

We're in trouble now!

This is a little off topic for the blog, but what the heck: it’s only a blog after all. In addition to this blog, I’m a fiction writer as well. Being both neurotic and an introvert, I spend way too much time interrogating myself about whether it’s good or realistic or productive or whatever to write stories.

This is how I justify it to myself. I hope that my justification has some basis in reality.

The reason I am so obsessed with stories – both reading or watching them and writing them myself – is that my whole perspective on the world is profoundly shaped by the stories I believe in. So, for most of my youth, my paradigm for reality was Star Wars. I saw everything through the lens of The Force. Later, I discovered Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, which I have found to be a far superior guide to reality than Lucas’ mess. Still later, a friend introduced me to the romances of Jane Austen, which provide a profound counterpoint to Tolkien’s vision.

Light fare, perhaps? Yes, perhaps. But, for good or ill, these are the stories that have largely shaped my understanding of the world.

And I’m convinced that it cannot be any other way. It seems to me that stories are a necessary part of human life, and of learning how to be human.

The plotline of life

The primary way we learn anything, of course, is through direct experience. Ouch! That burner is hot! But what happens in that moment of experience?

I’ve had many friends tell me how their awareness of a particular cause or passion woke up through an experience. They suddenly realized that there are millions of poor and suffering people in the world, or that problems can be solved by engineering solutions, or that someone really does love them after all. As soon as they describe the event, they spin it into a story: this understanding of the world shapes their own character. It becomes a plot twist in their own life.

And what changes in that moment? What is realized, or learned, or discovered? It is a new way of viewing the world as a whole. It is like putting on glasses and realizing for the first time just how blurred your vision had been. Objects come into focus, and distinctions become clear.

And, seeing clearly, you are now free to act.

Virtual reality and vicarious experience

Now obviously there are limits to any one person’s experience. For example, I don’t remember ever burning my finger on the stove top. But I watched my older brother do so, and I learned from watching him. In a way, I made his experience my own.

Learning from someone’s example is a kind of second-hand experience. It may not be my exact prescription, but it helps me see much better than I could before. And it saves me from some of the worse consequences of my blindness.

Now, what’s interesting is that it doesn’t seem to matter a great deal whether that second-hand experience is factual or fictional. Many a child has been inspired to honesty by the story of George Washington’s refusal to lie about cutting down a cherry tree, despite the (at best) questionable historicity of the tale.

What matters is that I am able to make the story my own somehow, that my experience of the story becomes a genuine part of my experience of life. So, as I said, Star Wars gave me a heroic lens to view my own life that appeared to be so far from the “bright center” of the universe. It opened my eyes to powers beyond my ability to understand, and to the requirement for those powers to be used for good.

Problems arose, of course, when I discovered that The Force was not in any significant sense real. I don’t mean the fantasy elements of it; a mere child can see through that. I mean that The Force ultimately contradicts itself: it seems impersonal, yet it has a guiding quality; the difference between the “good side” and the “dark side” seems to “depend greatly upon one’s point of view,” yet it is imperative to resist the draw of darkness.

In other words, Star Wars gave me a better lens than I had, but it still left me blind in some very important parts of life.

The importance of good stories

Reality is the ultimate test of all worldviews, whether gained from personal experience or through the virtual reality of a story. I cling to the lens I found in Jane Austen’s work because she sees aspects of the world that, as a twenty-first century American male, I literally cannot see. She reveals a spot as invisible to me as the back of my head, and enables me to see that aspect of the world in my own family and friends. On the other hand, I find most romances (of page or screen) actually raise obstacles to understanding the people in my life.

I try to be discerning in what I read and watch. I try even harder to be discerning in what I write. My goal is to write stories that draw people more deeply into reality rather than distracting from its difficulty.

My friend Jenny, though, drew my attention to the tragedy of the loss of local businesses. There are many causes of this tragedy, but one of the causes is the choices of thousands of individuals to patronize “big box” stores and national chains rather than these local businesses. It’s true that buying local may hit the pocketbook a little harder, but that’s largely because we’re paying something much closer to the actual cost of the goods we’re purchasing.

So, at least consider shopping local whenever you can. Economics begins at home, after all.

How can you mend a broken heart?

So there are a couple people in my life that make lots of bad decisions. (I don’t think they read this blog, but I won’t name names anyway.)

I’m not talking about decisions I disagree with, like choosing the creme brulee when there’s chocolate mousse on the menu. I’m talking about undeniably bad decisions, like burning bridges and painting yourself into a corner.

It’s hard to love someone in that situation, for two reasons. First, their bad decisions put up obstacles to receiving love; and second, I just stop wanting to love that person.

The limits of love

To love is to will the good of the one you love. But I’m not able by my own power to make good things happen for those I love. I’m just a guy, a mere mortal, with not much money or fame or power. So it may be very very good for a friend to get a new car, but I can’t afford to buy it for them. A friend may want a spouse desperately, but I can’t wave my wand and make romance spark. Someone may be suffering from an incurable disease of mind or body, but I’m not God that I can heal them.

So my love is limited by my ability to actually accomplish some good thing for those I love. But sadly that’s not the only limiting factor. Love can also be limited by a refusal to accept the good that I can and do give.

I know I’ve refused love myself in the past. (I probably still do more often than I admit to myself.) An obvious example is my lack of gratitude for the gifts my grandparents gave me when I was a child. I was a Star Wars fanboy, and I was obsessed with getting the Millennium Falcon playset – come on, who wasn’t? And I was so focused on getting the one thing I wanted that, when I didn’t get it, I practically spat on the action figures and Darth Vader carrying case that they did give me. I did return some action figures to the store, not because I had them already, but because I wanted something different.

More subtle refusals arose out of fear, rather than greed. I turn down offers of company when I’m feeling depressed, or I turn down offers of help when my pride is hurt, all because I’m afraid of my own weakness or of some imagined future regret.

So love can be inadequate to the need, or love can be refused. But there’s a third limitation as well: my own heart can grow cold.

All those rom-com superlatives, “I’ll love you forever!” and “Nothing can stop my love for you!” really do describe the ideal of what love is about – both romantic love and charitable love. As St. Paul puts it, “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.” But my emotions come and go, and there are lots of times I just don’t bear all things, or hope all things. There are times when, as a feeling anyway, my love comes to an end.

And that’s where the virtue of love kicks in.

Loving when it’s tough

Virtue is all about actions; feelings (or “passions”) are important only in that they give information or motivation to act. But an emotion is not a virtue, and a virtuous action doesn’t require feeling in the moment. Most of the time, it’s the action that gives rise to the related feeling rather than the other way around.

So taking the actions of love, even when my own heart is cold, is the way to grow in the virtue of love. It also reminds me that love involves the brain as well as the heart and the gut.

Dealing with my friends who are making bad decisions requires me to think things through: what is actually in my ability to do? what are they able or willing to receive from me? and how can I overcome my own fear or resentment toward them?

Mine! You can't have any!

In Christian circles, there are two great commandments (Matthew 22.37-39):

1. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.
2. You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

This is the foundation of the Christian approach to the virtue of Charity, and I’ve mentioned the first one in a previous post. It can be controversial for those who don’t agree with the Christian approach to God.

The second is something we tend to equate with the “Golden Rule”: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It tends to be accepted in secular and religious ethics alike.

Almost every comment on these commandments raises an interesting point: there are three kinds of love in these two sentences: love of God, love of neighbor, and love of self. You have to love yourself in order to love your neighbor in the same way; you have to know what you want your neighbor to “do unto you” if you’re going to treat them accordingly.

How do I love myself?

Love pursues what is good. So, if I love myself, I’m after what is good for me. That sounds awfully selfish, doesn’t it?

The difference between loving myself and being selfish is in the good that I’m pursuing. So, if I ignore the good things that make me more human – learning, community, health, and so on; that is to say, virtue – and chase after the good things that are mere derivatives of those fully human goods – pleasure, comfort, satisfaction, etc. – then I will basically get what I ask for. I will have short-term pleasures and comforts which will fade when I find myself ignorant and unhealthy and alone.

What is good for me is based on who and what I am. I am a human being, endowed with a mind and existing as part of a community. The good that I must pursue, the love I must show toward myself, is rooted in the community and is discovered by my mind.

Even my emotions come through the filter of my mind. I remember a time in high school when I was mad at my mom because she was late picking me up from school – till I discovered that she’d been delayed by some crisis of her own. My emotions followed my understanding: I was angry when I thought I was being treated unjustly, but grateful when I saw how much my mom went through to pick me up, and compassionate besides when I knew what she was struggling with.

Discernment: the habit of discovering the good

It’s not always easy to sort out what’s really good and what’s a derivative or lesser good. For example, I have a cold right now. It’s hard to focus for very long, and I get these coughing fits. I just want to lie down and sleep – for about three years.

At the same time, I have work to do: commitments I’ve made to others, and projects of my own that need attention. There are friends and family who need me in small ways, and I want to be available to them.

In times like this, I remind myself that the good is always one. What is truly good for me is (at least) not harmful to the community that I’m a part of; and what’s good for them is not seriously harmful for me. Love of self cannot be contrary to love of neighbor, that is, to seeking what is good for those around me.

So today, I’m trying to balance the good things I can do for others (I hope this blog is a good thing!) with the “self-care” I need: the clear liquids, bed rest, chicken noodle soup, etc. I’m pulling back on some commitments, and pushing myself through discomfort on others, based on what I’m able to do and what has a greater urgency to be done.

This blog, by the way, is one of the easiest things I do during the day. It’s a great way to prove to myself that, even if I’m a little uncomfortable, I’m still able to do something. And it lets me know that I can do a little more, still, before I hit the wall.

I’ve mentioned before some of the principles I wish were more prevalent in political conversation. Here’s the list again, for those who hate clicking on links:

• Common good
• Subsidiarity
• Interdependence, aka, Solidarity

Many more good things worth talking about certainly belong on the list, but this is as far as I’ve gotten in trying to articulate some essential political principles.

However, while I generally like to focus on the positive, it’s important to recognize the genuine evils out there which undermine any possibility of real human life, liberty, and community.

Recognizing evil

A quick reminder: evil is not any thing in itself. Evil is the distortion or destruction of something good. So when my anger starts rising up, I have to remind myself to look for the good that’s being distorted. I have to remind myself that whoever is committing or supporting evil is actually trying to accomplish something good, albeit in a twisted way.

In other words, if there’s a way to achieve the good without distortion, then I have made my enemy into my friend.

A good thing, like a virtue, can be distorted in at least two ways: too much (excess) or too little (defect). There may be other dimensions of distortion out there, but I’m not wise enough to talk about the much. In any case, a good always falls into the category of evil if either A) there’s just not enough to actually be the good it’s trying to be, or B) it so overextends itself that it ceases to actually be that good thing.

An example: the dignity of the human person is perhaps the fundamental good that government exists to protect.

It is evil when the government fails to actually protect that good, in cases like physician assisted suicide or unjust war, or even in less clear cases like lack of enforcement of environmental or food health regulations.

It is also evil when the government extends the protections of human dignity beyond the human person, for example giving corporations “rights” under the First and Fourteenth Amendments, or giving teachers greater rights than parents over the education of children.

Support an imperfect good, but never support evil

Now, no law is perfect, just as no individual person is perfect. We all make mistakes. We disagree about what the best course of action is.

Thomas Aquinas notes that the moral obligation is to seek the good, not necessarily to seek the best. The best isn’t always possible, and the best isn’t always clear. But it usually is clear when a good is so minimized or so distorted that it ceases to be good anymore.

My friend Mark notes that “10% less evil than the other leading party” is still evil, and therefore not worthy of a vote or any other form of support. He writes in a candidate if both the major party candidates take positions in support of some evil: for example, a Democrat may support unlimited access to abortion while the Republican opponent may support the torture of prisoners. Both positions are distorted at their core: they reject the good of human dignity in favor of some lesser or dependent good – say, convenience or security; so these core distortions are called “intrinsic evils”. Therefore, he won’t consider voting for either of those candidates, and will seek someone who at least does not support some intrinsic evil, even if there’s not much else to agree on.

It’s the least we can ask of our public officials, that they do not promote anything intrinsically evil.

My evil list of evil

I’m putting out here a list of things that are absolute deal-breakers for me. These are things so obviously and intrinsically evil that, if a politician is in favor of them – or even not opposed to them – I cannot in good conscience lend them any support. Sadly, this leaves me with almost nobody in the major parties today that I can vote for. Like Mark, I fear I’ll be writing in most of the candidates I’m voting for this election.

• Abortion – it’s murder, and I can’t condone it; this includes IVF, and any research that takes a human life
• Physician-assisted suicide, aka, euthanasia – again, murder is unjustifiable, for any reason
• Unjust war – I follow the basic criteria laid out by Thomas Aquinas and others; the Iraq invasion was manifestly unjust; the current Afghanistan situation has only the slenderest chance of meeting Just War criteria
• Torture – they’re human beings, even if they’re our enemies

Again, this list is incomplete, but it’s as far as I’ve sorted out at this time. Feel free to add your own thoughts in the comments.

No, not that kind of pie!

Last night, I attended a talk (not a lecture) by Prof. David Whalen at the Seattle Chesterton Society discussing John Henry Newman’s The Idea of a University.

Newman’s Idea doesn’t apply merely to academic life, though. He’s describing way a fully human life requires the mind, and the whole mind. Prof. Whalen put it something like this: we encounter the world as one, as a universe of reality; but in order to think about it, in order to understand it, we have to break it down into little pieces, like slicing up a pie. We can call those slices “economics” and “engineering” and “ethics” and, if we’re adventurous, can even use words that don’t begin with “e” such as “theology.” But it’s important to realize that each piece is just that – a piece, not the whole pie, not the whole of reality.

So it’s critical that we make sure that all the pieces are there, and that each piece is in the right place. Otherwise, our ability to understand and relate to the real world becomes distorted. If ethics is lost, other disciplines over-extend themselves to fill the gap: politics, economics, psychology, psychiatry – all of which touch on ethics, but none of which are really competent to describe human life in a particularly ethical way. And meanwhile, people grow more and more confused about how to act ethically.

A fully human life needs to make sure that all the different ways we understand the world really fit together, so that our understanding keeps in sync with the world itself.

The rubber meets the road

Newman describes an ideal education for a full human life. But he was aware that in his day, as in ours, that ideal is nowhere close to becoming a reality. Then, as now, people were increasingly focused on practical matters: making a living, increasing efficiency, solving problems. Schools were shifting their focus from educating for character to training for productivity. The human person was viewed a “resource” for economic growth.

Now, the fact is, economics is a real and important part of life. I need to put food on my table, and pay my rent, and keep clothes on my back. And our social structures provide a way to do that. But that way is founded on a narrow and limited idea of what human life is all about.

Newman, and other people I’m reading, promote a better way of living, one in which the economic and practical needs can be met without degrading the human person, turning us into mere cogs in the machine of “progress.” Progress toward inhumanity is no progress at all.

But how do we get from here to there? Or, as a reader on another blog I write for asks:

How do you take usury out of a market grounded on usury? How do you take materialism out a market grounded in materialism?

Looking for a solution

One proposed solution is called Distributism. The idea is to use the freedom we have as individuals and small communities to make small but significant changes in our own lives and in our immediate surroundings.

This looks to me like a real possibility: a kind of “Think globally, act locally” approach that goes beyond environmentalism. Our economy and government is massively corrupt; so, to the extent that is possible, I will minimize my interactions with corrupt businesses, use my vote and my voice to encourage more honorable government, and establish as fully human a life as I can in my own neighborhood.

The major obstacle, it seems to me, is my own sloth. This course of action would require me to work harder, to take risks, and to live without a number of luxuries I take for granted (things like cheap clothes or out-of-season food or super-fast internet). In other words, it’s easier to take the benefits of this skewed society and pretend that the detriments are not as harmful as they really are.

It’s easier, but it’s not really better. In the end I find myself less and less able to deal with reality, and my efforts increasingly backfire. So, today, my goal is to find some small way to refocus my perspective, so that I can take those small actions to make my life and the life of my community more human.

Cutting through to the heart of the question

The profound James Chastek points out that James T. Kirk must have hated Greek drama:

The Greeks loved sticking characters in the midst of problem for which there is no right answer: Antigone must bury her brother and obey the king; Agamemnon must sail and love his daughter; and the fight between Achilles and Agamemnon is like the fight between the head coach and the star quarterback. The circumstances demand action but make every action wrong, or at least very problematic. This applies even to inaction : Achilles is doing something when he sits in his tent and lets his compatriots get slaughtered and pushed back to the ships.

In other words, the Greek playwrights loved exploring the dynamics of a no-win situation. The near-Greek Alexander the Great took matters to a new level by challenging the limits of the test: using a sword to loose the Gordian Knot.

But most of us don’t have the resources of an Alexander or a Kirk. Most of us, like Antigone or Agamemnon, are stuck facing powers greater than ourselves. Those powers don’t have to be gods; they could be banks, or governments, or even bosses.

And these are the kinds of situations that push all our moral buttons. What do I do when faced with an impossible choice? Do I pay my utilities or my mortgage? Do I alienate my best friend or my brother? Do I break the law or break my promise?

What is impossible?

The reason these situations can’t be easily resolved is because we are all limited, finite human beings. We are not all-powerful. We do not have bottomless bank accounts. We can’t be in two places at once. Eventually, we will die.

But I do have a certain power that is unlimited: that is my freedom. I am able to make choices without any restraint or encumbrance. I will always have to face the consequences of my actions, but my decisions are truly and completely my own.

How does this help anything? Freedom allows me to step away from the choice presented to me and ask another question entirely: what is the good that I can do here?

These situations are only impossible because they present every choice as something evil. But evil does not exist in itself: it is nothing but the loss or distortion of some good. And if the question turns to a choice, not between evils, but about the kind of good I can do – then I see what is truly possible, rather than fearing what is impossible.

Outwitting evil

Only two things are necessary to face any “no-win” decision: a clear understanding of what is good, and a clear knowledge of one’s own abilities.

Granted, gaining true clarity about those things could take a lifetime, or longer. But it shows what is important to look for, what the questions need asking and what questions are mere distractions.

Paying the bills with limited resources won’t get done by worrying about which axe will drop first. But it can be solved by overcoming fear and pride, talking to creditors, seeking different ways to gain income.

Maintaining close relationships with people who hate each other can’t happen by tip-toeing around the situation. But whatever is worth keeping in those relationships will remain if I seek love and honesty rather than avoiding hurt feelings.

It’s true, something will be lost or damaged, whatever choice I make. But this is true of all of life, not just the so-called “no-win” situations. But no good can be done by avoiding loss or hurt. The world is full of powers greater than any one of us, or even all of us together. Our goal is not to avoid suffering, but to do whatever good is possible. And because we can see the real good in the world, good made through our own efforts and those of others, we can trust that our work will not be in vain.