Friday Night Philosophy

I first heard it on the radio some thirty years ago. An author was plugging his recently released self help book, and he said,” It isn’t necessary for someone else to feel bad in order for you to feel good”. Yet those of us who have watched winners grinning in sporting finals, while losers are left lamenting, would argue with that. Winning is what this life is all about, we say. This is how we have survived over millions of years. In order for us to know we are winning, we have to prove our superiority by making someone else feel bad by losing. I think this ”truth”, buried deep in our psyche, motivates us more in daily life than we would care to admit.

Many reasons have been advanced for the recent success of the Prop 8 proponents in California, where a majority voted that gay marriage be no longer permissible. Most attributed the result to the influence of the churches, and they are probably right, but I don’t think that is the full story. I think that because most people are straight, some took the opportunity to make themselves feel good by making someone else feel bad, in this case, the minority gay and lesbian community. It was a double banger. While some were able to ensure their precious souls went to heaven by doing the bidding of the priests, others could satisfy the demands of their psyche by making themselves feel good by making others feel bad. In many cases, both were deciding factors.

For many, religion gives the certainty that justifies their right to impose their views on others, but for others this is not a certainty that they, in all conscience, can live with. For this reason, they reject religion as their certainty, but are then left in limbo between religious certainty and something else that they can only vaguely discern. They try to develop a personal philosophy to fill the void previously filled by religion, but are constrained by the demands of a busy life to find the time to discern the right philosophy for themselves. We have to develop that philosophy on the run and make do with what our parents have taught us, together with the scraps of knowledge that we have gleaned in a haphazard fashion in a life that meanders through many twists and turns. As a result, we crave certainty in an uncertain world.

For most of us, we measure that progress towards certainty by measuring it against our fellows. They are our sounding boards. So if we “win” against them, then that is our reassurance that we are right, and that they are wrong, and we have taken a further step towards that elusive certainty. But have we?

At some point we come upon the wonderful words of Max Erhmann in his lovely “Desiderata”, “If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.” And we realise that this childish game we play is just like the sporting games people play. It is just another game. But this wondrous journey that we take is so much more than a game.

So the author was right. He said that the measure of how well we are progressing in this life is not by measuring that progress against others, but by measuring it against ourselves.

And that, I think, is the beginning of true wisdom.