Nudge, Epicurus and egoistic friendship
By Mark Vernon on Wednesday, July 20 2011, 07:23 - In the news - Permalink
Talking about Epicureanism at The Idler Academy last night, I was encouraged that people responded warily to Epicurus' attitude towards friendship. It is radically self-interested. Though he can celebrate friendship 'dancing around the world' announcing blessedness, and he wrote a moving letter to a friend on the day he died, his friendliness is as egoistic as his hedonism: value your friends only insofar as they can help you.
Is that really friendship, individuals worried? Isn't it rather using others for your own good? Well yes, I replied, but don't think that is so unusual.
Yesterday too, a report on 'nudge' and behavioural change was published. Nudge is radically Epicurean when it comes to using others. Are you obese? Ditch your fat friends and take up with thin ones: that's more effective than any diet. Do you smoke? Shun smokers - yes, particularly those in your family. Or more generally, do you want to enhance your wellbeing? Cross to the other side when approached by anyone who doesn't smile.
And in the process, the world fills up with self-interested, happiness maximisers who are as cruel and calculating as a News of the World journalist. 'Love' others and secure your own needs, it teaches - in the name of making the world a better place. It fails to add, and watch your supposed friends ditch you for not satisfying their own egoistic concerns.
Emerson, for one, had a much better plan. If you want to have a friend, he advised, be a friend.
Comments
I don't know much about the background to Emerson's statement, but it seems right to me.
As for the psychological egoism bit, this is a tricky one, because there does seem to be a lot going for it when used as a conscious strategy. Hanging out with the grumblers at work *will* bring you down. And it is good to be aware of your own needs when faced, for example, with the problems of intense infatuation, or even affection towards those who are indifferent towards you.
In Buddhism there is a series of stories about the ongoing (rather fraught) relationship between King Pasenadi and his Queen, Mallika. At one point, they both acknowledge in a moment of insight that there is nobody they value more than their own selves. But because they are open about this, and see that the other feels the same, they are able to get along in honesty and mutual love.
"Though in thought we range throughout the world,
We'll nowhere find a thing more dear than self.
So, since others hold the self so dear,
He who loves himself should injure none."
'nobody they value more than their own selves' - I'm tempted to say that I've generally been working on the assumption that it is only western Buddhism that inclines towards self-obsession.
But the grumblers point is interesting. The question I'd want to ask is why a grumbler gets you down? What is it that bugs you? It seems to me that the grumbling must resonate with a part of yourself for it to have that effect. So, then there's a further question: do you want just to bury that part of yourself, by avoiding it in yourself and others, keeping your fingers crossed that life will carry on swimmingly regardless? To self-interest add denial.
Yes, Westerners in general tend towards self-obsession in a lot of what they do. But there are lots of canonical discussions about whether the Dhamma is essentially selfish in intent, and they are well-known in the East. Ultimately, we are reminded that the interests of self and others are so finely balanced that they are inseparable. This does relate strongly to your second point, as for most of us it is a brute fact that the mind veers off in search of selfish satisfactions given half a chance; and here is where avoidance of denial is crucially important.
As for the grumblers, yes, you are absolutely right. I fear the resonance: that I will get drawn in and put myself in a bad mood because I have merely suppressed my dislike of the situation a bit more effectively than the habitual grumbler. I don't want to bury that part of myself, but often avoidance is a skilfull means of dealing with it at the time (i.e. at work). Sometimes it is inappropriate to ask an angry person to look at their anger, and this extends to myself.
Again, a canonical reference.
"There are fermentations to be abandoned by seeing, those to be abandoned by restraining, those to be abandoned by using, those to be abandoned by tolerating, those to be abandoned by avoiding, those to be abandoned by destroying, and those to be abandoned by developing."
This is from the extremely rich and practical Sabbasava Sutta. (MN #2). It is all about training oneself in knowing which things are fit for which sort of attention, and when.
The smoker abandoning their smoking friends to be with non-smoking friends only works if they somehow carry the attractive power to be the centre of the universe. Otherwise, from the non-smoker's perspective their smoke-free influential circle has the risk of becoming polluted with this itinerant smoker who may negatively affect them.
Such selfish approaches to friendship only work when considering one side of the relationship. When all such relationships are considered, it feels like the image of Victorian society's perpetual motion of people running away from each other- trying to avoid associating with people of a lower class and trying to associate with people of a higher class (and by doing so making them associate with people of a lower class they are trying to avoid).
Isn't the grumblers point related to your earlier post on virtue ethics?
http://www.markvernon.com/friendshi...
Whether hanging out with negative perspectives releases your own supressed negative perspective, or starts and develops one is hard to conclude. If it wasn't there before, it is therefore previously unexpressed; if by suppressing it the perspective is unconscious, it is equally previously unexpressed. Either way it looks like an previously unfelt or unexpressed emotion subsequently develops out of nothing simply because of the association with one's colleague.
Surely in both situations (health and grumbling outlook) -ve and +ve influence may work in both directions. In which case what is the strength of the infuence and why? Is a grumbler more likely to become positive if in a room of positive people, or a positive person more likely to become a grumbler if in a room of grumblers?
I've never met anyone who was negative all the time or positive all the time, just degrees of either mode. In long-term relationships, whether with friends, family or partners, there seems to be a necessity to constantly adjust one's own emotional/intellectual barometer to that of the other person: if you're in negative mode, I must either humour you, sympathise with you, argue with you, ignore you or avoid you. And you must choose similar options when confonted with my negative modes. Many relationships collapse under the strain of such a delicate balancing act. Some are better at it than others. Some choose to become hermits rather than engage in the struggle.
Isnt the trick not avoid aelf interest, but to combine self interest and the pursuit of the good?
It seems that epicurians pursue a good, but just a lower form than what socrates or plato might advocate.
After all, one must return to the cave even though it is the largest and most deceitful of shadows.
The physical and low is necessary.