Hello Philosophy Society!
This week’s discussions spanned several subjects.
Discussion 1: Friendship
The first topic was friendship as something that is valued in itself or a means to an end. If friendship is a value in itself, that means that there are no consequences from the relationship that has any bearing on its value. The value would be intrinsic; it is good on its own independent of any other gain or loss. Some problems that we could think of from a purely intrinsic value for friendship is when the other party is using us or taking advantage of us. For example, the ‘friend’ who borrows money but never pays the individual back or is abusive would still could still be considered valuable either way. We would need to define what friendship is to limit certain kinds of relationships that do not fit the category. If friends are intrinsic no matter what, would there be a ranking of friends? Could we have a best friend if we were limited to intrinsic friendship only?
In contrast, one could view friendship as an instrumental value, something we have for some other purpose like camaraderie or companionship. Does valuing friendship in either way have an effect on the integrity of that value? If we see friendship as an instrumental means to an end relationship, does that depreciate the value of friendship? This leads into the next discussion of altruism and egoism.
Discussion 2: Altruism and Egoism
Altruism is the belief that we sometimes can do things for others without any self-interest or benefit from that action. Does altruism make sense? If someone helps out a friend by giving them 5$ and the friend does not have to pay them back, there would be no monetary self interest for the giver. However, the giver would feel good about being nice and charitable to their friend. This feeling good is something that is in all of our self-interest.
Even in the larger context of charity towards organizations or homeless people is not truly altruistic because most people give because of some moral obligation. If they did not give, they would feel bad from a sense of being immoral. Again, even in the context of giving money to homeless people or a charitable organization, our self interest is not monetary but emotional. Giving money away makes us feel good about ourselves and hence in our self-interest.
How could altruism exist? We would have to construct a case where the person helping another has no self-interest at all. One thought experiment that comes to mind would be taking a memory loss pill, where just as you give the money or do the act, you immediately lose all memory of the action. In this case, you would not gain the benefit of feeling good for your action that helped out some other person.
Egoism is the belief that we do actions for our self interest. Egoism can be seen on a spectrum, where there is a win/win on one end and win/lose on the other. An extreme of egoism would be machiavellianism, where a person manipulates and deceives people for their own selfish gain. Self-interest is not necessarily selfishness. In the context of a person who follows their instinct to grow does not necessarily entail taking away from others. The taking away from others as a means to grow is a coherent way to understand selfishness. We are placing ourselves above others in an unhealthy superiority complex.
We can perceive the world from an abundance mentality where there is enough for everyone. In contrast, we can also view the world from a scarcity mindset, where there is a finite amount of resources and what is mine necessarily takes from what is yours. Our competitive nature can bring some individuals to the tactic of thinking they need to take from others to grow. This is not necessarily true. Being competent is the true goal, not just being recognized as number 1. The trophy is meant to be a representation of competency but is easily confused as ‘being better than others.’
No one is better than another. We may vary in skill or circumstances like being able bodied. No human is better than another human. One person may be more skilled in some form of competency. We all feel pleasure and pain. To believe that you are better than others is a symptom of narcissism and a poor means to build up one’s self esteem.
The only person you can be better than is yourself. If you take the attitude that your present self can build, reflect and improve on your past self, then you will have a healthy attitude that you are in control of. You can see others who are more skilled than you as someone to learn from instead of someone to be better than.
The competition is a testing stage to see who’s skills and training has developed more competency. If you fail the competition, then learn from the person who is more skilled than you. Being jealous or envious will only lead to suffering for you. However, when you learn from others and increase your competency, you will not suffer from those that are more skilled. A competition is only the testing of present competitors. If you maintain your training, are honest in your reflection of where you can grow, and learn from those who have developed more skill, your results will present themselves. Knowing what is in our control and what is not, is fundamental to our success. Setting realistic goals, like being your best self, is much more achievable than being better than everyone else.
The spectrum of egoism is a more coherent belief system than a wishful thinking view of being altruistic. Accepting that we do things so we feel better about ourselves but that others also benefit is realistic and healthy. Manipulating and deceiving others to ‘win’ is not healthy and evidence of narcissism or antisocial personality disorder.
It is also important not to allow oneself to be exploited or taken advantage of by others. If you do not have some sort of ‘win’ in the interaction or if that which you are giving causes harm to you, it is not ethical to engage. If giving something away, with no apparent benefit to yourself, will dramatically or significantly help another person, but does not harm you, then it is good to do. It is good to incrementally help humanity when our efforts or actions are minimal to our own self-interest. If we all make a 1% proportional effort to help others, the whole world, including ourselves, will benefit. It is important to be cautious of those who do engage in manipulation and deceit so that we are not being taken advantage of. Giving people the benefit of the doubt is the best approach until we see signs of social loafing or manipulativeness.
Discussion 3: Emotions and Action
Our third discussion began with a review of the philosophy of CBT. See Summary of Feeling Good. One of our discussion partners brought up a valuable criticism of the CBT method: ‘I find that when I change my thoughts, the emotion does not change. It makes me think that the CBT method does not work.’ The role of understanding the nature of our thoughts is to make sure that they are not distorted. Our emotions may also be invoked from situational factors that require our action to remedy our past experiences like in the context of PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) that require us to deal with previous experiences.
In the context of situational circumstances evoking negative emotional states like sadness, anxiety or anger, can be adaptive and in place to motivate us. Emote is the core of motivation. In our psychological development, it is up to us to accurately read our emotions and take action when necessary in a constructive and healthy way. This is different from being ‘reactive’ which can lead us to being destructive and impulsive. Even if we act destructively, it still may be very adaptive for us because it helps us escape a situation we did not have the tools to escape otherwise. It is important to reflect on our reactive behaviour and make amends. After we have reflected, we can visualize and think on how we could have conducted ourselves differently to enhance our learning from the situation.
The first step is being able to be mindful of our emotions. ‘What is this feeling I have?’ Once we begin to develop a sense of identifying the emotion we can ask the second question, ‘What is the object of the emotion?’ The object of the emotion is the thing that is causing our upset. We then bring our awareness to the perceived thing that is causing our upset. Is it something in our present experience, from our past, a relationship we are involved with or some future expectation? It is important to apply the cognitive distortion checklist, see Feeling Good, to make sure that we are being realistic in our perceptions.
Some objects of emotion necessarily require our action to eliminate the emotion from being present in our mind and being. We have to do something. This is the evolutionary purpose of us having emotions in the first place. They are a non-linguistic way our psychological state or mind communicates to us something in our environment or way of being that needs to be changed. It is up to us, the thinker, the doer, the perceiver, the ‘you’ and ‘I’ to take action.
Action is different from habit. Habits are almost automatic behaviours whereas actions are volitional and presently intentional. Being a healthy adult, who has learned to integrate their emotions, means that you can accurately read them, make sure they are realistic, and have learned how to take action in a constructive way. Your instincts will speak to you through your emotions and guide you to your greatest wellbeing if you learn to accurately read them and test them to reality.
If the object of emotion is from our past, the literature on treatment for PTSD discusses something called the constructive narrative approach. This means that we find a way to change the story we are telling ourselves in such a way that it is empowering rather than victimizing. We can look at our past in such a way that we are strong, survivors and resilient individuals that can embark wisdom to others that we gained from the unfortunate circumstances we found ourselves in.
Discussion 4: Way of Being
The next talk was a continuation from our previous subject of emotions and action. How we are living, our ‘way of being’ is directly related to our mental health. Wellbeing, living well, and expanding on Aristotle’s eudaimonia, are related to our ability to be in touch with ourselves and direct our lives in an independent manner. Our relationship with our ‘self’ is fundamental to our mental health through our own self awareness and the decisions we make. Other people will appreciate our own ability to take care of our emotions and maintain our own wellbeing.
If others in our life are in a constant state of worry in terms of how we are doing or feel the need to be responsible for our mental safety, we will be encumbing a unnecessary amount of resources from them. These relationships based on dependency can easily become dysfunctional and not fair to those who care for us if we have the capacity to care for ourselves.
How we relate to ourselves, which is part of our way of being, is vitally important for our relationships with others. Whether it is platonic friendship or being in an intimate loving, sexual relationship, we first require a healthy relationship with ourselves before we can have a healthy relationship with others.
Discussion 5: Love and Attraction
The final topic was brought about by several philosopher’s asking ‘what is love?’ After arranging a comfortable seating arrangement, I contextualized the question in the frame of romantic relationships. Romantic relationships are based in our psychology. Our psychology is fundamentally tied to our evolutionary history. David Buss is the leading researcher on the evolutionary psychology of attraction and mating. Our relationships that have the property of romantic love will be founded upon these evolutionary instincts.
If we have attracted a mate, the philosopher Jean Paul Sartre discussed a concept of ‘object transcendence’ to explain the notion of being in love. Basically the feeling of love that we have for another goes beyond the object of their physical body. Our feelings transcend the object. The object, the physical person, is a representation of the thing that we are in love with. This can explain situations where people fall out of love or are in love with something that is unhealthy for them.
In the context of falling out of love, the person we are in love with deviates from the representation we have transcended. They may have not engaged in self-love and not taken care of themselves so we do not feel attracted or they can become emotionally unstable and that instability is not in line with the representation we transcended through the object of them. If the objective nature of the person deviates too far from the socialized predisposition of what we love in mind, then we will begin to fall out of love. An example would be, ‘He changed. She is not the same person I fell in love with. We grew apart.’`
The context where one is in love with someone who is not good for them, they are fixated on the transcended representation but not processing the difference of the objected person. For example, someone may be in an abusive relationship. The abusive part of the relationship would usually not be something they would report as what they have always wanted in the love of their life. However, holding on to the representation transcended, the ideal mental representation, but not including the real differences in the person loved, causes the situation of holding on to a toxic partner when a healthy one is just around the corner.
Self-love is fundamental to being able to hold the emergent phenomena of a loving relationship. I gave an analogy of two fires. Each person represents their own bonfire. We have to maintain our own flame by putting logs or fuel in our respected fire. A healthy relationship is when the base of the fires is independent but the flames mix together. To merge the logs into one fire would be a situation of dependency, symbiotic or parasitic relationships. What we are looking for is two independent people who are taking care of their physical, emotional, intellectual, social and ontological needs that decide to share time together. From this position of independent, self-care we can support a loving relationship with another. We can find someone who fits out pre established, socialized values and maintain healthy relationship habits for as long as we choose to be together. As long as your base is maintained, you will be in a position for a durable relationship with another.
If we do not meet our evolutionary instincts or psychological wellbeing, we risk many negative outcomes like divorce, breakups, cuckolding, cheating, abusive relationships and more. It is important we learn to love ourselves first, then create an environment where we can hold the space to love another.
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