Who Needs Friends?

We have been working our way through Aristotle's notes on ethics. Let's finish the subject of self-love and then answer the question of why we need friends in the first place. We have concluded that the kind of selfishness that is criticized is that which has to do with passions and appetites; the things everyone craves and compete for. A person with healthy self-love goes after what is noble by doing what he ought; the things that are best for everyone especially himself. The ultimate love is when a person endangers his life to protect others. This person loves himself but doesn't choose a life of doing small mundane noble acts. His wants a life that goes beyond simple acts of doing what he ought. It doesn't mean that a person dislikes himself if he puts himself in harms way for a noble purpose. It is because he values both his life and the life of his friends and is willing to take the risk of losing his own life in the process of defending them. This is the ultimate act of love and nobility.

Since the ultimate good person has everything he needs and has self love, it begs the question, "Why would he need friends?"  It is easy to observe that friends fulfill needs for each other but absent needs, why have them? There seems to be a contradiction. We don't want to say that we have friends only to fill a void in our lives. Having friends helps when we are lacking but the goal is to prosper and so if someone reaches this goal, who needs friends? The greatest of our external goods are our friends and a view that they exist only to be helped or for us to help them leans toward a utility type relationship. These are necessary and good for us to accomplish things and are based on usefulness. If we are lacking nothing yet still want friends then they must serve another purpose. A person who is a hermit isn't considered someone who has reached ultimate happiness. It gets back to the principle that those who love life, want to celebrate it with others. In particular, we seek out someone who has the same values that we can celebrate it together with.

A content person in this way doesn't need pleasures or usefulness in a friend. He desires someone who loves life in the same way that he does. They enjoy living together first while adventures and needs are bonuses. The activity of living together and seeing the world together at whatever level they can is enough. Perception and thinking together are the most important part of being a human. Humans don't herd together like animals just to fulfill their appetites.

Since life is desirable, experiencing life with someone else who perceives it the same is even more desirable. So those who love each other will get a thrill out of sharing and discussing the world around them. A person who is happy and confident will have a need to share it with someone else on the same level. The sharing itself is the reward.

It is Good to Be Alive

We are looking at selfishness and are trying to sort out the bad from the good. There is a part of our soul that has to do with passions and appetites; they rise up in the irrational part of our soul and aren't voluntary. If a person chooses to act directly from these without considering consequences, his actions are more like an unreasoning animal. The object of the passion becomes more of an obsession when ramifications are ignored. This is the kind of selfishness that we try to avoid. We dislike seeing it in others and in ourselves. These actions bring guilt to us. The things concerning pleasures and passions are the things that people compete over, causing anxiety. It might be called being materialistic, self indulgent or just plain selfish.

The good kind of selfishness considers quality of life in the rational area of their mind first. Someone who loves himself will hold his desires up to a light of  innate good principles that everyone possesses. These standards look at what is best for a person's life and point to what's noble. Noble actions are the ones that keep ones soul at peace. This is the characteristics of true love; to love someone's life, celebrate it and to do what is best for it. A person cannot overindulge in this kind of love.

This love will sacrifice present pleasure for a greater good. When we violate principles of virtue, it produces guilt in us. There are two kinds of guilt also. The damaging kind looks at past indulgences thinking they are impossible to forgive. This person can be hard on themselves and constantly loath decisions of the past. The healthy kind looks at poor decisions of the past and sees them as lessons learned. It is alright to judge ourselves and others. We can examine them in an unforgiving way or with a desire for their well-being. Good judgment is optimistic toward future decisions and potential. This includes a commitment to love ourselves and others in a good way.

 It takes far more strength to follow the right principles than to react on appetites and passions. Solomon said that a man who is temperate is stronger than one who can conquer ten cities. Those of us who have strong passions require more courage to be temperate. It is easier to act on passions than resist them. There are heroes around us we may not even recognize.

Imposition

The main reason for ethics is to help people to get along. We accomplish the most when in unity. Ethical behavior also brings peace; both inner and with those around us. We all want the ability to accomplish what we have passion for while staying at peace with each other; this is called "the common weal". The more a people are ethical, the less they need laws. In the rational part of all of us we already recognize the existence of a "governing authority"as Aristotle put it.

Rather than imposing rules on what we shouldn't do, ethics shows us what we should chase. It is a study of observations rather than spirituality. The spiritualist approaches are diverse and are numerous but this approach looks simply at passions and actions; things we all can see as obvious no matter what our beliefs are. Individuals reach their highest potential when we are ruled by the governing authority. It contains justice, kindness; all the things that point us to what is noble and right. For us to need a third party, be it government or religious, to keep us on the right path is second best since neither knows the particulars of each persons life. Rules are based in generalities but we are beings with particulars and are better equipped to recognize what is best for our own selves. Lets move on and study the concept of self love a bit more.

We touched on self love earlier but it is important enough to deserve further study. We looked earlier at being a benefactor or a giver and that the more it costs someone of his own stuff, the more a person loves what he is giving to. This sort of giving isn't always reciprocated but to show love gives us satisfaction. One school of thought is that to love oneself is something to be ashamed of. The only way to be satisfied is to sacrifice oneself for others and live a life that way. They say that wickedness is based in selfishness and that to be good we need only sacrifice our own interests to help our friends. But this has contradictions.

Our friends are an extension of ourselves and so it would follow that we would have to be good at taking care of ourselves in order to have inner resources and the capability to love someone else. Anything else would make us dependent on them for our own well being with little to give. A person really needs to be his own best friend in order to be friendly. But this is in contrast to what we mentioned above and so we are in need of particulars to sort this all out. That will be in the next post..

Expression

It is a good feeling to be a benefactor; to be the giver in a relationship has its certain kind of joy. Recipients are more passive. It is much easier to receive love or help and takes little work. But to give takes value out of one's life and the satisfaction level is higher. There isn't the dependency either and so an element of freedom exists for a benefactor, since choice is involved. You can't make a person give and so dependency has uncertainties. Being on the giving side also has a higher element of love.

Bitter people try to characterize others as being greedy since they want the satisfaction and honor of being the benefactor. But in actuality, if a person isn't a giver with the little they have, they won't be that way with more. To be in the habit of grasping shows bad character no matter what amount of resources one has. It takes motivation and activity to accomplish the things that bring satisfaction. Passivity runs contrary to our nature of creativity.

We can dream about the future and reminisce about the past, but the activities in the present are where our passions are expressed. A poet will write to bring thoughts where they can be enjoyed and he will dote on them like children. We all have things that we enjoy and it takes activity to bring them out. An artist creates and loves what he creates but the created thing can't appreciate them back. This occurs with a beneficiary and a benefactor. Giving isn't always appreciated but the action of love is self satisfying.

Giving that is done to gain some sort of advantage isn't as noble. Supplies always get used up and they don't make memories. We have a stronger desire for useful things but soon forget them. Noble acts committed  for expression instead of usefulness are the things that give us lasting pleasure. A musician can enjoy his music and play for the joy of it but trying to make money with it can turn it into drudgery.

Good things don't come easy. We feel obligated to take care of necessities; pressing needs can take up all of our time. But they don't bring as high amount of satisfaction as when we do the things we do as an expression of ourselves. Someone who gives to get advantage (even if it is to please God) doesn't enjoy life as much as a person who gives simply because he enjoys helping others..

Unanimity

We looked at goodwill; the start of friendship. It is similar to delight; the start of love. It is possible to have goodwill but not actually know a person and it is possible to delight in someone you don't know. But it isn't possible to be a friend without goodwill or be in love without delight. The terms goodwill and friendship get used interchangeably at times but you really have to interact to be an actual friend. A person might have goodwill toward an athlete and know everything about them but until they interact favorably toward each other, they aren't really friends in the strict sense. We use the word love interchangeably with delight but actually have to know a person, miss them and hate being apart to be in love. Goodwill is based in some kind of excellence or worth while delight is in a person's form or being.

The next concept is unanimity. We use the word unity today. Everyone has different tastes and passions so there will never be unity in everything. But they do have necessary things and when we cooperate, it can improve all of our lives. Passions get in the way of this since everyone has opinions of what is necessary, so finding common ground can be an arduous task. Good leadership will do this and help all parties walk away with some amount of satisfaction. It doesn't matter if it is a parent group or a government, getting along forms a good atmosphere that gets things done so all benefit.  An important part of this is that no one is overlooked but each person's interests are important and are respectfully a part of every decision. Identifying and coming to agreement is easy for good people since they seek what is just and good for everyone.

We always address where things go wrong and the deviation from unity is faction. What happens when bad people are involved in decisions is that factions are formed. They look out only for their own interests and disregard everyone else. Their opinion is the only one that matters.When in public office, they criticize everyone else while reaping more benefits than they deserve. Those with bad character have a hard time being friends with people so it follows that they don't govern well either. They delight in putting compulsion on others and justice for them is getting back at people..Having factious people involved in making decisions destroys unity for everyone.

We're Bad

In the past, we spent time studying utility relationships. These friendships have to do with usefulness and justice is the goal. Currently, we have been studying criteria for commonality relationships. These don't have to do with justice but have different depths. These don't come and go as often, especially the close ones, since commonalities are stable. Later we will address pleasure.

The extreme commonality relationship we call being in love and the least intense are considered shallow. It is possible to have numerous shallow friendships and that isn't bad. We have fellow citizens, teams and celebrities that we want to see do well and have good will toward. But toward the extreme of love we can have very few and usually look for one person to share the most depth with.

Is it possible for a bad person to have these kind of friends? Bad things are those things that violate our conscience. Sometimes we act in a moment of passion. At times it is a kind of defiance to declare our freedom. Those with good hearts will be miserable afterward and have a hard time living with themselves. Restraint can be difficult and becomes an act of love. It preserves the peace in each person's heart. The easy, uncaring route is to just go with it and pay later. Sometimes good people  admire those who can do things with no regrets and wonder what it is like to be that way. But the question is whether the conscience can bear it. Those who act that way usually have the most inner conflict of all but it is a different kind; the cycle of vice and regrets. It is scary to be around people who have no conscience at all since there is no telling what they will do and who they will burn. We, in the same way, don't want to turn ourselves into a person with no conscience since happiness involves feeling good about ourselves; the self love or inner friendship we discussed earlier. Aristotle emphasizes that we should avoid violating our conscience at all cost since to do so puts a person in a state of wretchedness.

Goodwill; the desire to see one do well is the beginning of commonality friendships in the same way pleasure is the beginning of love. To be in love, a person must first delight in someone. Of course we can delight in anyone but it becomes love when we miss them. So in the same way, we cannot have friendship without goodwill first. To have goodwill, doesn't mean we are friends though. Goodwill means we want to see someone succeed due to a perceived excellence.

Wow! What a Person!

We have been looking at the ideal traits that a person at peace with himself has and how these are the same traits that we look for in others to make good friends. A couple posts ago I gave a list of those traits;

Friends are our greatest good and so a study on how we form friendships is also a great study. We are looking for a good friend; according to our perception of goodness. Of course there are standards we agree on for good character such as justice, kindness, courage etc. An ideal person will try to have these as their own traits also. The reason for this is that we all want whats best for ourselves and doing what is right keeps our hearts at peace.  All our ambitions should answer to this and this is a healthy kind of selfishness.

One of the worse things that can happen to us is to lose our individuality. That is why the need to keep up with others and compare ourselves with them is unhealthy. It is called selfishness but really isn't in our best interest. To love life means to love being an individual person. Who want's to be someone else? The ideal person celebrates this in the same way a parent loves to see the personality of each child revealed. This person's mind is full of contemplation, will have no regrets and look forward to the future. But he also grieves when it is proper and enjoys what he should within himself.

Wow! What a person! When we make friends, these are the things we want. A friend is an extension of our inner selves. We want someone who has similar standards; we like their personality and celebrate it with them; we want to exchange joy and grief as though the person were our own self.

These are the characteristics of ideal friendships that we seek both in ourselves and others. But we are also human so next we will look at a couple scenarios that aren't ideal. Afterward Aristotle continues not on the kinds of friendships we have looked at; such as utility, pleasure and commonality; but he looks at depth. It is an interesting study. Sometimes I have to back up and catch up on details, (hopefully you don't mind.) The last chapter is coming up and it goes in depth on pleasure.

The Tender

Having friendship with oneself is an important criteria for happiness. It is also essential for quality friendships with others. The internal struggle is between our animal existence and the part of us that knows certain standards. We have passions, memories and lessons learned that our mind records and responds accordingly. There have been discussions as to the source of our actions throughout the centuries. Religions, philosophers and psychologists try to sort it out. The exception with humans over animals is that they can ponder these sort of things. Something higher than simple mind experiences influence our decisions and drive us to study. Aristotle claims it is similar to a mother who is looking out for our well-being. The conflicts we have within ourselves are between this inner moderator and our mind.

How many times did something seem like a good idea at the time? It was our right, fulfilled a need and there would be no regrets. But afterward, it comes back to haunt us. The deepest person, the tender in our soul, or what can be called "our spirit" feels violated. It has such high standards! We know we need to be guided by it, but it isn't easy when trust is broken within. It is miserable to have a conscience that is violated. A commitment can be made inside to do better and reconcile; but it brings relief to know those we hurt are alright too. That is why there is forgiveness and grace. Both for ourselves and toward others.

The Christian view is that these trespasses against the standard bearer in our soul cannot be simply dismissed but payment must be given. That is why Christ died; to pay for those violations. But whatever a person's beliefs, the conflict is there and we do better if it is resolved. For psychologists, the resolution comes through counseling; for philosophers, it comes through studying; and for religions the higher power that set the standards has to be appeased somehow.

Regardless of your approach to resolving this, the conflict is there and harmony is a great thing. There is nothing better than having a drink and enjoying an evening while at peace within ourselves. Even better is doing the same with others who feel the same with no pretense and no conflicts...

Self Love

These discussions are structured with the details first but that approach can be a little dry in our modern day of mass media. It helps to show where we are going to keep it interesting: Aristotle has a unique approach to selfishness. He felt that self love is the only way we can love others; he makes the argument that you cannot love oneself too much. The first point is made by using a mother tending her children as an example. She will always do what is best for their well-being.

When we see virtue, we see things that will bring sustained happiness to a person's life. Vices are the things that steal joy from us and cause regrets. When we call something selfish, we normally think of a self indulgent person. But when we do self destructive things, dislike who we are, hate to be left to our own thoughts, lose direction and are dishonest with ourselves, we become miserable and hard to be around. This isn't selfishness, but the opposite is true;  it is the result of things that aren't virtuous. We see this with image and wealth also. Those who aren't content with who they are will try to impress others and fill the void with things or honors. It is an interesting line of thinking that we will detail. 

What we are heading towards in these discourses is how to remain civil toward ourselves and others. Having good relationships with our peers is the basis for having a good relationship with our community and then our country. Good principles of finance and relationships for a nation start with good personal interactions of its citizens. A person at war with himself will be at war with others.