My forever questions: who, in any tradition, is practicing being awesome at relationships? At giving and receiving love? At resolving misunderstandings? Transforming conflict?
I appreciate art, medicine and a really well-designed logistical plan, but these other topics matter to me so much more. And I think it’s what at least a significant chunk of people are really asking about when they ask about morality.
Recently in a recorded conversation with Charlie, you spoke about man in an elevator who whose companion was annoyed with him. This man was able to transform the conversation in some way that both made his partner feel heard, but also dissolved the frustration of the situation. Who is the best at this? Who is even quite good at it, enough to offer instruction?
The absence of aspirational examples seems to be part of the reason why people get so upset when “so-and-so person I admired had sex with the wrong person.” People are looking for role models who are awesome at navigating relationships when the stakes are high, like when sex or anger are in the mix. They project their desire for a heroic example onto all manner of targets. And I get it—I can’t think even think of an imaginary ideal like Achilles or Merlin, but for interpersonal heroism. We have so many examples of heroes who are smart, hot, rich, enlightened, powerful, interesting, agile, fearless, the very best at violence—who is the very best at mediating conflict so no party feels humiliated? Where is our warrior class of citizens who knows how to diffuse a bar fight before punches are thrown?
I don’t want to “face personal challenges with gentleness and intelligence to attain spiritual realization.” Facing personal challenges with gentleness and intelligence seems fully self-justifying! I would prefer to practice that directly.
There is so much be gained, in so many different domains of human activity, by valuing expertise in these areas. Where are the people being heroic and awesome *like this*?
> My forever questions: who, in any tradition, is practicing being awesome at relationships? At giving and receiving love? At resolving misunderstandings? Transforming conflict?
These are excellent questions. There are many traditions that teach these. Buddhism is, unfortunately, mostly not an example. (There are rare exceptions, but I wouldn't particularly recommend them.)
These are major themes in some threads of Christianity, I believe. (Not my area of expertise.) Also of psychotherapy, counseling, and coaching. And various personal development systems. And so on.
> I think it’s what at least a significant chunk of people are really asking about when they ask about morality.
That seems right, and an important insight! As one example, I first got seriously interested in morality in the context of difficult issues in relationships with girlfriends. (Moral philosophy was a great disappointment, as was psychotherapy, and at the time I couldn't find much of anything else.)
> Who is even quite good at it, enough to offer instruction?
Well, in my opinion, Charlie... You probably know about their "Kaleidoscope of Interaction" course, but for the benefit of anyone listening in (or in case you don't):
> The absence of aspirational examples seems to be part of the reason why people get so upset when “so-and-so person I admired had sex with the wrong person.” People are looking for role models who are awesome at navigating relationships when the stakes are high, like when sex or anger are in the mix. They project their desire for a heroic example onto all manner of targets.
Another great insight!
> I can’t think even think of an imaginary ideal like Achilles or Merlin, but for interpersonal heroism.
There's examples I find inspiring in novels. Romance novels, in particular. I personally like combined romance-and-adventure novels (maybe because I'm a guy). Examples that come to mind: _Bratt Farrar_; the _Thief_ series, particularly _The Queen of Attolia_ (second in the series but it would probably work to start with it); the character Geralt in the _Witcher_ mythos; T. Kingfisher's _Saint of Steel_ books (with several unusual characters who fit your bill).
> Facing personal challenges with gentleness and intelligence seems fully self-justifying!
Yes. I'm not very interested in "spiritual realization." Actually, not interested at all.
Oh, something I was going to say, and forgot: Although it's not usually taught explicitly, Vajrayana does have relevant resources. This tweet from Jake Orthwein earlier today is highly relevant: https://x.com/JakeOrthwein/status/1820551525305127342
Thank you for this thoughtful response! Just to echo one thing you mentioned for anyone listening in—I did take Charlie's "Kaleidoscope of Interaction" last summer and found it hugely useful. Strong recommend! I wish there were more things like this course in the world, with a variety contexts and flavors.
Hi, Emma! In fact, I responded to the conversation entry with Charlie that you’re referring to precisely because it seemed extremely likely to me that the person was using Nonviolent Communication. From my perspective, no other system or approach comes close to the power that NVC has in this regard.
There are videos online of Marshall Rosenberg’s training sessions, and in them you can find examples of how he applies NVC in real-life situations. I can’t recommend it strongly enough.
In my years of experience with this kind of language, mindset, and communication style, it truly feels like a superpower!
> According to Scott, the motivation for one sort of contemporary slave morality is to never have to feel inferior to anyone in any way. You can attempt to accomplish that by denying that anyone is better than anyone else in any way. Specifically, anyone who might appear to be superior in some way is actually extremely bad because they are oppressors or some such species of villain. This entails the stance that better is worse. That is—obviously—false and harmful.
The corollary of this, which I saw operating in my own psyche, is that being “good” means never feeling superior to anyone else. As soon as you feel superior to another in any domain, that part of you must be taken down, dismantled and put away. If you’re feeling superior, you must be on your way to acting villainous and oppressing someone. Giving in to these ideas can be severely self-limiting. Self censorship is often worse than that which comes from the outside!
The critiques of the Western axioms are abundantly justified, but their Eastern counterparts don't seem to get their due nearly as well. That benevolent God-Emperor production (even accepting that it is in fact feasible, for the sake of the argument) could get stymied by bureaucracy for centuries (millenia?) sure is concerning, clearly they didn't get everything right over there either. It appears that the need for some kind of superman to sort this out is still present.
Yes, increasingly these seem important to me. I've been saying for a few years now that I ought to write about them in depth. I suppose that would be useful!
It means *doing philosophy* though, or rather *undoing philosophy*, and that seems extremely tiresome. I'm not sure I'm bodhisatva enough to take *that* on :)
Just wanted to add a +1 to the comment above. I found this part of the piece particularly eye-opening. Would love to see you try to dismantle some more of these axioms - or, if not, could you point me in the direction of someone/something that has already engaged in this kind of stuff?
Thanks! It's quite strange—I've been puzzling about this—no one seems to have written an accessible debunking of Greek philosophy in general. I haven't looked hard, but no one seems to have written an accessible debunking of specific central Greek ideas, either; nor an inaccessible academic general debunking. In fact, I'm having trouble remembering any pushback against Greek stuff at all; although I'm sure there must be plenty, some of which I'd need to track down.
Greek philosophy is somehow treated as Holy. You aren't expected to explicitly believe it, but you aren't allowed to challenge it either. "Plato was a tendentious idiot and got absolutely everything wrong" gets you yelled at, not congratulated.
The other pillar of the Western tradition, Christianity, has been challenged and dismantled and dismissed for three hundred years now. That was the European Enlightenment (hooray). There's still Christianity, of course, and it's still hugely influential, but you are allowed to question it.
I don't think I did, really... Yesterday afternoon's draft had a thousand words at the front that was actually about Scott's post, and Charlie read it and said "this part sucks, nobody cares about some substack tempest in a teapot, remove it, the vajrayana stuff is great" so I did. (They were right, I think.)
In particular I think pointing out the limits of Western metaphysics, and articulating or pointing to a viable alternative, in active discourse is indeed cool and very warranted. Helps land what can otherwise be....abstract.
One skepticism that arises for me - the history of Indo-Tibetan societies is not very inspiring in this regard, is it? Vajrayana has been available there for centuries, and both Christian and Greek influences are pretty distant from those cultures.
What you propose may work for certain individuals but would it work at larger scales?
Um, not sure what you are asking. Vajrayana isn't a social or political theory. There are some social and political theories developed by authors who practiced Vajrayana, but it's not part of the religion. Vajrayana *was* the state religion of much of Asia during the Pala Dynasty. Whether that was good is hard to say. (Compared with what available alternative?) It's still the state religion of Bhutan, and there are clear Vajrayana influences on the way it was recently governed.
Or maybe you are asking: what percent of the population could realistically practice Vajrayana seriously? I don't know. It has never been more than a small fraction who did. Maybe it could be a larger fraction. Maybe that would be good! Or bad. I don't know. It's always been considered difficult and requiring dedication and maybe innate capacity.
There's been now more than 150 years of diverse movements to scale up lay Buddhist practice, with varying degrees of success. A pretty significant fraction of Americans have learned McMindfulness, and probably on the whole that's good. But it is a weak sauce. Maybe not many people can tolerate more than that.
Maybe a "Mc" version of Vajrayana which hundreds of millions of people could practice would be good. Maybe it would be terrible. I don't know! It doesn't seem imminent. On the other hand, Evolving Ground *does* intend to scale up. Not, however, at the expense of what it considers essential, even if the essential elements are difficult for most people.
Reminds me of the image of the monster hero as mentioned in Buddhism for Vampires. The nobility and the monstrosity. I found that image both beautiful and powerful, totally worth internalizing. Like, I could feel deeply that this is how I want to live and to be. This post has a similar vibe to it.
That last paragraph you quoted sure reminds me of something else I read from a different 19th century philosopher also interested in overcoming conventional morality:
“…after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly – only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!”
I haven't slogged though your philosophy post series yet, so perhaps this is irrelevant, and I am not a big fan of philosophy myself (I like David Stove's takedown) and also a relative ignoramus. That said, I would like to point out two possibilities regarding Greek models of the self which you may find interesting. One I gleaned from Popper's "Open Society": that these models were not as solid/unitary as later Christian doctrine developed them. To quote OS (Ch.5, VII):
> It is worth mentioning, in this connection, that the analogy [between the state and the human individual] serves to further the analysis of the individual rather than that of the state. One could perhaps defend the view that Plato (perhaps under the influence of Alcmaeon) does not offer so much a biological theory of the state as a political theory of the human individual{32}. This view, I think, is fully in accordance with his doctrine that the individual is lower than the state, and a kind of imperfect copy of it. In the very place in which Plato introduces his fundamental analogy, it is used in this way; that is to say, as a method of explaining and elucidating the individual. The city, it is said, is greater than the individual, and therefore easier to examine. Plato gives this as his reason for suggesting that ‘we should begin our inquiry’ (namely, into the nature of justice) ‘in the city, and continue it afterwards in the individual, always watching for points of similarity [...]’
> {32} For some applications of Plato’s political theory of the soul, and for the inferences drawn from it, see notes 58-9 to chapter 10, and text. For the fundamental methodological analogy between city and individual, see especially Republic, 368e, 445c, 577c. For Alcmaeon’s political theory of the human individual, or of human physiology, cf. note 13 to chapter 6.
The second point I wish to make is that to the extent Greek and derived Western models of the self were solid/unitary, this may well have been because their builders were concerned with different classes of phenomena, where these models work better: namely public/political/legal spheres. A person may "self" in one way in one milieu and in other ways in other milieus, but it is impossible for one way of a person's selfing exclusive of others to incur obligations, to bear legal or moral responsibility, to participate in political life, or to serve in the military (Socrates and Plato both did), and it is at least highly non-trivial whether or in what manner one way of a person's selfing exclusive of others can be commended or punished for transgressions, whether legal (likely as impossible as the former examples) or social (very tricky, thinking of some of Kegan's examples of environments serving as 2->3 and 3->4 bridges). Doctrines of emptiness don't seem to be particularly useful for such phenomena either. Later, e.g. Christian, philosophers of the self were often concerned with the same classes of phenomena, and may have used unitary models beyond their area of applicability simply by default, although this may well have been harmful, as you argue.
Thanks as always. I was wondering if here or in the future you might add to your great statement about the self being "empty," where you add "whatever that means—no one can explain clearly!"
That's just great. I'd love to hear you list the many ways in which it has been unclearly explained!
Thanks! “Emptiness” is a mass of different, semi-related vague ideas, leading to many confusions and mystifications. Usually when people set out to set this right, they try to explain “what emptiness really is.” Unfortunately, it’s no one thing. And now there’s 2000 years of people giving different interpretations, many of them with important but hard-to-pin-down insights. That would make sorting the whole thing out a gigantic project :(
I realize it’s a contested term. I was very happy you were so glib and matter of fact about it. You often sort out quite “giant projects” as you go about your writing. I suspect you are going to address this inadvertently on the way to explaining something else.
Great post. I thought it was funny that you quoted Scott, as it's related to the main problem with their philosophy - they think all humans arrive at birth with a number called IQ and having a bigger one makes you automatically better at everything. (This is bad because they imagined inventing a computer with a higher IQ than them, decided it was obviously going to enslave them, and now resent the imaginary computer for it.)
I'm not sure modern societies actually use slave morality that much though. Venkatesh Rao had a blog essay about the middle class where IIRC he said the modern approach was for everyone to invent a personal rating scale where they were #1, and then we all agree not to compare notes. This always sounded nice to me.
Also… I know Californians tend to think Buddhism is a kind of therapy, and presumably I should be disagreeing with that. But when I read your writing it's hard to avoid thinking this!
One other question was how many similarities there are between the life of Gesar and that of Genghis Khan. Do you think the details to Khan’s life were added to make him a kind of prophetic fulfillment of Gesar’s return, or was Gesar’s epic altered after Khan’s passing, incorporating many incredible details from the Khan’s life to further embellish the raucously entertaining story of Gesar’s?
I enjoyed the post very much. Particularly as it sent me down a Gesar rabbit hole I didn’t know I needed to go down.
Today it suddenly occurred to me the similarities between your god emperor thesis with the Chinese classic, “Journey to the West.”
In it, the Monkey King, Sun Wukong (Ape aware of nothingness, a pun name that could basically make him any of us), first becomes a world conqueror rebelling against heaven itself, before being imprisoned by the Buddha for 500 years with a prophecy that the man who frees him will be his new master/teacher.
What’s interesting about this story is that Monkey is actually awakened before the meat of the story begins. He’s already an immortal with nearly-omnipotent powers, capable of 72 transformations.
But to become a true Buddha, he must stop being the main character and join three other disciples accompanying a weak, naive and even foolish monk on his quest to attain scriptures to save mankind. While not overtly stated, he acts as a kind of Bodhisattva, taking on whatever guise will help his master overcome the obstacles needed to fulfill his own enlightenment path.
The flesh of a monk as pure as his master is said to bestow immortality on whoever eats it, so when the demons come to devour the party, Monkey kills. A lot.
Monkey is also described as a “Thunder God” which is a reference to a kind of penitent demon or militant guardian often placed outside Buddhist temples to guard the gates. Another familiar figure who served this function in temples built under Alexander the Great’s successors in India was Heracles, usually shown guarding Gautama himself.
This post was so fun to read.
My forever questions: who, in any tradition, is practicing being awesome at relationships? At giving and receiving love? At resolving misunderstandings? Transforming conflict?
I appreciate art, medicine and a really well-designed logistical plan, but these other topics matter to me so much more. And I think it’s what at least a significant chunk of people are really asking about when they ask about morality.
Recently in a recorded conversation with Charlie, you spoke about man in an elevator who whose companion was annoyed with him. This man was able to transform the conversation in some way that both made his partner feel heard, but also dissolved the frustration of the situation. Who is the best at this? Who is even quite good at it, enough to offer instruction?
The absence of aspirational examples seems to be part of the reason why people get so upset when “so-and-so person I admired had sex with the wrong person.” People are looking for role models who are awesome at navigating relationships when the stakes are high, like when sex or anger are in the mix. They project their desire for a heroic example onto all manner of targets. And I get it—I can’t think even think of an imaginary ideal like Achilles or Merlin, but for interpersonal heroism. We have so many examples of heroes who are smart, hot, rich, enlightened, powerful, interesting, agile, fearless, the very best at violence—who is the very best at mediating conflict so no party feels humiliated? Where is our warrior class of citizens who knows how to diffuse a bar fight before punches are thrown?
I don’t want to “face personal challenges with gentleness and intelligence to attain spiritual realization.” Facing personal challenges with gentleness and intelligence seems fully self-justifying! I would prefer to practice that directly.
There is so much be gained, in so many different domains of human activity, by valuing expertise in these areas. Where are the people being heroic and awesome *like this*?
> This post was so fun to read.
Glad you enjoyed it!
> My forever questions: who, in any tradition, is practicing being awesome at relationships? At giving and receiving love? At resolving misunderstandings? Transforming conflict?
These are excellent questions. There are many traditions that teach these. Buddhism is, unfortunately, mostly not an example. (There are rare exceptions, but I wouldn't particularly recommend them.)
These are major themes in some threads of Christianity, I believe. (Not my area of expertise.) Also of psychotherapy, counseling, and coaching. And various personal development systems. And so on.
> I think it’s what at least a significant chunk of people are really asking about when they ask about morality.
That seems right, and an important insight! As one example, I first got seriously interested in morality in the context of difficult issues in relationships with girlfriends. (Moral philosophy was a great disappointment, as was psychotherapy, and at the time I couldn't find much of anything else.)
> Who is even quite good at it, enough to offer instruction?
Well, in my opinion, Charlie... You probably know about their "Kaleidoscope of Interaction" course, but for the benefit of anyone listening in (or in case you don't):
https://vajrayananow.com/kaleidoscope-of-interaction and
https://www.tickettailor.com/events/vajrayananow/907748
There isn't a scheduled repeat of this currently, but Charlie now includes much of the material in their retreats; the next one upcoming is https://www.tickettailor.com/events/vajrayananow/1260332?
> The absence of aspirational examples seems to be part of the reason why people get so upset when “so-and-so person I admired had sex with the wrong person.” People are looking for role models who are awesome at navigating relationships when the stakes are high, like when sex or anger are in the mix. They project their desire for a heroic example onto all manner of targets.
Another great insight!
> I can’t think even think of an imaginary ideal like Achilles or Merlin, but for interpersonal heroism.
There's examples I find inspiring in novels. Romance novels, in particular. I personally like combined romance-and-adventure novels (maybe because I'm a guy). Examples that come to mind: _Bratt Farrar_; the _Thief_ series, particularly _The Queen of Attolia_ (second in the series but it would probably work to start with it); the character Geralt in the _Witcher_ mythos; T. Kingfisher's _Saint of Steel_ books (with several unusual characters who fit your bill).
> Facing personal challenges with gentleness and intelligence seems fully self-justifying!
Yes. I'm not very interested in "spiritual realization." Actually, not interested at all.
Oh, something I was going to say, and forgot: Although it's not usually taught explicitly, Vajrayana does have relevant resources. This tweet from Jake Orthwein earlier today is highly relevant: https://x.com/JakeOrthwein/status/1820551525305127342
Thank you for this thoughtful response! Just to echo one thing you mentioned for anyone listening in—I did take Charlie's "Kaleidoscope of Interaction" last summer and found it hugely useful. Strong recommend! I wish there were more things like this course in the world, with a variety contexts and flavors.
Hi, Emma! In fact, I responded to the conversation entry with Charlie that you’re referring to precisely because it seemed extremely likely to me that the person was using Nonviolent Communication. From my perspective, no other system or approach comes close to the power that NVC has in this regard.
There are videos online of Marshall Rosenberg’s training sessions, and in them you can find examples of how he applies NVC in real-life situations. I can’t recommend it strongly enough.
In my years of experience with this kind of language, mindset, and communication style, it truly feels like a superpower!
My e-mail program apparently broke and I first received an e-mail from you simply with the subject „You should be a God-Emperor“ and no content.
That was disorienting and refreshing.
Perfect
> According to Scott, the motivation for one sort of contemporary slave morality is to never have to feel inferior to anyone in any way. You can attempt to accomplish that by denying that anyone is better than anyone else in any way. Specifically, anyone who might appear to be superior in some way is actually extremely bad because they are oppressors or some such species of villain. This entails the stance that better is worse. That is—obviously—false and harmful.
The corollary of this, which I saw operating in my own psyche, is that being “good” means never feeling superior to anyone else. As soon as you feel superior to another in any domain, that part of you must be taken down, dismantled and put away. If you’re feeling superior, you must be on your way to acting villainous and oppressing someone. Giving in to these ideas can be severely self-limiting. Self censorship is often worse than that which comes from the outside!
The critiques of the Western axioms are abundantly justified, but their Eastern counterparts don't seem to get their due nearly as well. That benevolent God-Emperor production (even accepting that it is in fact feasible, for the sake of the argument) could get stymied by bureaucracy for centuries (millenia?) sure is concerning, clearly they didn't get everything right over there either. It appears that the need for some kind of superman to sort this out is still present.
This type of thing was of particular interest to me in this post:
- how Western axioms of thought are fundamentally dysfunctional.
- how the Ancient Greek Philosophers are responsible for most of the world's problems by promulgating this (wild!)
Yes, increasingly these seem important to me. I've been saying for a few years now that I ought to write about them in depth. I suppose that would be useful!
It means *doing philosophy* though, or rather *undoing philosophy*, and that seems extremely tiresome. I'm not sure I'm bodhisatva enough to take *that* on :)
But, maybe. Maybe soon, even.
Just wanted to add a +1 to the comment above. I found this part of the piece particularly eye-opening. Would love to see you try to dismantle some more of these axioms - or, if not, could you point me in the direction of someone/something that has already engaged in this kind of stuff?
Thanks! It's quite strange—I've been puzzling about this—no one seems to have written an accessible debunking of Greek philosophy in general. I haven't looked hard, but no one seems to have written an accessible debunking of specific central Greek ideas, either; nor an inaccessible academic general debunking. In fact, I'm having trouble remembering any pushback against Greek stuff at all; although I'm sure there must be plenty, some of which I'd need to track down.
Greek philosophy is somehow treated as Holy. You aren't expected to explicitly believe it, but you aren't allowed to challenge it either. "Plato was a tendentious idiot and got absolutely everything wrong" gets you yelled at, not congratulated.
The other pillar of the Western tradition, Christianity, has been challenged and dismantled and dismissed for three hundred years now. That was the European Enlightenment (hooray). There's still Christianity, of course, and it's still hugely influential, but you are allowed to question it.
Why didn't the same happen for the Greek pillar?
Hmm, maybe we have to peel things back one layer at a time. We've dealt with the christianity layer – next up is the greeks!
I was hoping you might write about that post 😀
What were you hoping I would write? Did I?
I don't think I did, really... Yesterday afternoon's draft had a thousand words at the front that was actually about Scott's post, and Charlie read it and said "this part sucks, nobody cares about some substack tempest in a teapot, remove it, the vajrayana stuff is great" so I did. (They were right, I think.)
You can always funnel the dross into Notes
In particular I think pointing out the limits of Western metaphysics, and articulating or pointing to a viable alternative, in active discourse is indeed cool and very warranted. Helps land what can otherwise be....abstract.
Pretty much the direction you took it, about vajrayana alternatives. I also like the Notes idea though!
One skepticism that arises for me - the history of Indo-Tibetan societies is not very inspiring in this regard, is it? Vajrayana has been available there for centuries, and both Christian and Greek influences are pretty distant from those cultures.
What you propose may work for certain individuals but would it work at larger scales?
Um, not sure what you are asking. Vajrayana isn't a social or political theory. There are some social and political theories developed by authors who practiced Vajrayana, but it's not part of the religion. Vajrayana *was* the state religion of much of Asia during the Pala Dynasty. Whether that was good is hard to say. (Compared with what available alternative?) It's still the state religion of Bhutan, and there are clear Vajrayana influences on the way it was recently governed.
Or maybe you are asking: what percent of the population could realistically practice Vajrayana seriously? I don't know. It has never been more than a small fraction who did. Maybe it could be a larger fraction. Maybe that would be good! Or bad. I don't know. It's always been considered difficult and requiring dedication and maybe innate capacity.
There's been now more than 150 years of diverse movements to scale up lay Buddhist practice, with varying degrees of success. A pretty significant fraction of Americans have learned McMindfulness, and probably on the whole that's good. But it is a weak sauce. Maybe not many people can tolerate more than that.
Maybe a "Mc" version of Vajrayana which hundreds of millions of people could practice would be good. Maybe it would be terrible. I don't know! It doesn't seem imminent. On the other hand, Evolving Ground *does* intend to scale up. Not, however, at the expense of what it considers essential, even if the essential elements are difficult for most people.
Reminds me of the image of the monster hero as mentioned in Buddhism for Vampires. The nobility and the monstrosity. I found that image both beautiful and powerful, totally worth internalizing. Like, I could feel deeply that this is how I want to live and to be. This post has a similar vibe to it.
That last paragraph you quoted sure reminds me of something else I read from a different 19th century philosopher also interested in overcoming conventional morality:
“…after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly – only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!”
I haven't slogged though your philosophy post series yet, so perhaps this is irrelevant, and I am not a big fan of philosophy myself (I like David Stove's takedown) and also a relative ignoramus. That said, I would like to point out two possibilities regarding Greek models of the self which you may find interesting. One I gleaned from Popper's "Open Society": that these models were not as solid/unitary as later Christian doctrine developed them. To quote OS (Ch.5, VII):
> It is worth mentioning, in this connection, that the analogy [between the state and the human individual] serves to further the analysis of the individual rather than that of the state. One could perhaps defend the view that Plato (perhaps under the influence of Alcmaeon) does not offer so much a biological theory of the state as a political theory of the human individual{32}. This view, I think, is fully in accordance with his doctrine that the individual is lower than the state, and a kind of imperfect copy of it. In the very place in which Plato introduces his fundamental analogy, it is used in this way; that is to say, as a method of explaining and elucidating the individual. The city, it is said, is greater than the individual, and therefore easier to examine. Plato gives this as his reason for suggesting that ‘we should begin our inquiry’ (namely, into the nature of justice) ‘in the city, and continue it afterwards in the individual, always watching for points of similarity [...]’
> {32} For some applications of Plato’s political theory of the soul, and for the inferences drawn from it, see notes 58-9 to chapter 10, and text. For the fundamental methodological analogy between city and individual, see especially Republic, 368e, 445c, 577c. For Alcmaeon’s political theory of the human individual, or of human physiology, cf. note 13 to chapter 6.
The second point I wish to make is that to the extent Greek and derived Western models of the self were solid/unitary, this may well have been because their builders were concerned with different classes of phenomena, where these models work better: namely public/political/legal spheres. A person may "self" in one way in one milieu and in other ways in other milieus, but it is impossible for one way of a person's selfing exclusive of others to incur obligations, to bear legal or moral responsibility, to participate in political life, or to serve in the military (Socrates and Plato both did), and it is at least highly non-trivial whether or in what manner one way of a person's selfing exclusive of others can be commended or punished for transgressions, whether legal (likely as impossible as the former examples) or social (very tricky, thinking of some of Kegan's examples of environments serving as 2->3 and 3->4 bridges). Doctrines of emptiness don't seem to be particularly useful for such phenomena either. Later, e.g. Christian, philosophers of the self were often concerned with the same classes of phenomena, and may have used unitary models beyond their area of applicability simply by default, although this may well have been harmful, as you argue.
Thank you very much! Both of these points are interesting and make sense.
Oh, and my stuff about philosophy is both irrelevant here and very incomplete, so you probably did will to skip it!
brilliant piece and a beautiful exploration of how to transcend and include outdated perspectives of excellence/nobility
with all the compassion for differing circumstances and without endorsing the abuse of power, we need to be honest and admit that BETTER IS BETTER
This gets me thinking of athletics. I think that’s the part of my life that aligns best with this mentality. I would love to see a Virtue Olympics.
Dear David,
Thanks as always. I was wondering if here or in the future you might add to your great statement about the self being "empty," where you add "whatever that means—no one can explain clearly!"
That's just great. I'd love to hear you list the many ways in which it has been unclearly explained!
All best,
Daniel
Thanks! “Emptiness” is a mass of different, semi-related vague ideas, leading to many confusions and mystifications. Usually when people set out to set this right, they try to explain “what emptiness really is.” Unfortunately, it’s no one thing. And now there’s 2000 years of people giving different interpretations, many of them with important but hard-to-pin-down insights. That would make sorting the whole thing out a gigantic project :(
I realize it’s a contested term. I was very happy you were so glib and matter of fact about it. You often sort out quite “giant projects” as you go about your writing. I suspect you are going to address this inadvertently on the way to explaining something else.
Thanks again, D.
Great post. I thought it was funny that you quoted Scott, as it's related to the main problem with their philosophy - they think all humans arrive at birth with a number called IQ and having a bigger one makes you automatically better at everything. (This is bad because they imagined inventing a computer with a higher IQ than them, decided it was obviously going to enslave them, and now resent the imaginary computer for it.)
I'm not sure modern societies actually use slave morality that much though. Venkatesh Rao had a blog essay about the middle class where IIRC he said the modern approach was for everyone to invent a personal rating scale where they were #1, and then we all agree not to compare notes. This always sounded nice to me.
Also… I know Californians tend to think Buddhism is a kind of therapy, and presumably I should be disagreeing with that. But when I read your writing it's hard to avoid thinking this!
Thanks! I liked that Venkat post too (I think; not sure I'm thinking of the same one, but it sounds right in any case.)
One other question was how many similarities there are between the life of Gesar and that of Genghis Khan. Do you think the details to Khan’s life were added to make him a kind of prophetic fulfillment of Gesar’s return, or was Gesar’s epic altered after Khan’s passing, incorporating many incredible details from the Khan’s life to further embellish the raucously entertaining story of Gesar’s?
Interesting questions! I don't know the history well enough to answer, I'm afraid. Glad you found the post enjoyable, however!
I enjoyed the post very much. Particularly as it sent me down a Gesar rabbit hole I didn’t know I needed to go down.
Today it suddenly occurred to me the similarities between your god emperor thesis with the Chinese classic, “Journey to the West.”
In it, the Monkey King, Sun Wukong (Ape aware of nothingness, a pun name that could basically make him any of us), first becomes a world conqueror rebelling against heaven itself, before being imprisoned by the Buddha for 500 years with a prophecy that the man who frees him will be his new master/teacher.
What’s interesting about this story is that Monkey is actually awakened before the meat of the story begins. He’s already an immortal with nearly-omnipotent powers, capable of 72 transformations.
But to become a true Buddha, he must stop being the main character and join three other disciples accompanying a weak, naive and even foolish monk on his quest to attain scriptures to save mankind. While not overtly stated, he acts as a kind of Bodhisattva, taking on whatever guise will help his master overcome the obstacles needed to fulfill his own enlightenment path.
The flesh of a monk as pure as his master is said to bestow immortality on whoever eats it, so when the demons come to devour the party, Monkey kills. A lot.
Monkey is also described as a “Thunder God” which is a reference to a kind of penitent demon or militant guardian often placed outside Buddhist temples to guard the gates. Another familiar figure who served this function in temples built under Alexander the Great’s successors in India was Heracles, usually shown guarding Gautama himself.