Chapter 17.                           (continued) 

Thus, we are now ready to ask: What are the values that enable humans to respond to entropy – the uphill struggle of life, the adversity that is a given for all things that live.

A whole array of values may be taught to young people to enable them and their culture to deal with adversity over generations and centuries. In order to deal well with adversity, a society needs large numbers of people willing to face exertion, exhaustion, struggle, and pain. In fact, a society proves most effective if its citizens take up the offensive against the relentless decay of the universe. Children taught to seek challenge become adults who bring new territories (one day, planets) under their tribe’s control, devise new ways of growing food and making shelters, devise technologies to do more work with less human exertion, and generally perform the tasks of survival more efficiently.

When we generalize about what these entropy-driven behavior clusters have in common, we derive two large, generic values that are found in all cultures: in English, the terms courage and wisdom roughly name these two ideas.

In different cultures all over the world, various versions of courage are instilled in the young, which is what we’d expect if the idea works. Honor and discipline are also terms that serve well in most contexts for this same cluster of values. Face adversity, kids. In fact, go at life. Tackle it head on.

Japanese samurai lived by bushido, their code. European nations by chivalry, right into modern times. Beyond the difficulties of translation from culture to culture, we see in all these varied values a common motif: they direct disciples to persevere through, even to seek, challenge. In ancient Greek myth, Achilles chose a brief, hard life of honor over a longer, easier one of obscurity. For centuries, the ancient Greeks considered him to be a model of a man, as do some people to this day in nations that admire the values of ancient Greek culture. Many non-Western cultures have similar heroes.

 

 

 

      The Triumph of Achilles (credit: Franz Matsch, via Wikimedia Commons)

                              

 

                        Photo believed to be of Apache leader Crazy Horse, c. 1877

                                                  (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

 

 

                               

                                                   Statue of Zulu leader, Shaka

                        (credit: Jacob Truedson Demitz, via Wikimedia Commons)

                                

                             Martial arts master and Chinese hero, Huo Yuanjia

                                             (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

 

Confucius said the superior man thinks always of virtue, while the inferior man thinks always of comfort. Nineteenth-century English writer K.H. Digby said: “Chivalry is only a name for that general spirit or state of mind which disposes men to heroic actions and keeps them conversant with all that is beautiful and sublime in the intellectual and moral world”.¹ 

The exhortation to seek adversity, and reject easy lifestyles, echoes through all societies. Young people everywhere are encouraged to tackle hardships, especially for the defense and promotion of their nations. We can sum up the gist of all of these values by saying that they are built around the principle that in English is called courage.

It is familiar and clichéd to push young people to aspire to courage. But clichés get to be clichés because they express something true. In the hard background of the physical universe, life seeks to create pockets of order. In the case of humans, it does so by programming into young people an entire constellation of values around the prime value called “courage”. Behaviors that aim to meet and overcome adversity enable those who practice them to move forward in knowledge and outward in space. Societies that value courage survive and spread better because of that value.

And now we come to a subtler insight. All of nature is pulled into its many shapes by balances of forces. Thus, the value society instills into its young to make them seek out and conquer adversity must be balanced with a second value that will cause the energy put into facing challenges to be focused so the individual will deal with challenges efficiently. Nothing is to be gained by teaching young people blind aggression; it will only run amok in its own society. Eager-but-directionless young people end up hurting themselves in car crashes, daredevil stunts, and street fights, dying young while accomplishing little or nothing in useful terms for their nations.

In English, the courage-tempering value is called wisdom, but knowledge and judgement are also terms in English based around this same value. Wisdom has the effect of focusing human actions to achieve objectives by behavior patterns that use energy efficiently. It is in the medieval knight’s code of chivalry and the samurai warriors’ code of bushido, both of which contain instruction on how a man may be both brave and smart. Warrior and diplomat/poet.

Note that the idea of balance is implied all through my model. Societies, like species, become extremely complex, internally and in their dealings with each other. An individual has to hold his internal traits and forces in balance in order to function. Thus, balance has become an ideal in all cultures.

Aristotle told his followers to seek moderation. For example, in his view, balance between foolhardiness and cowardice yields courage, a trait one must cultivate above all others. Stinginess must be balanced against extravagancy if we are to reach a prudent way of handling wealth; and so on for a list of virtues.

The religions of the East, like Taoism and Buddhism, go so far as to say that even the picture our minds have of reality as being made of opposite traits is illusory. Buddha and Lao Tse say reality is actually a single, seamless thing.

Our minds think they see separate entities like animal and plant, garbage and food, rich and poor, life and death, past and future, but in reality, there are no such things. The words only name illusions. We handle our suffering best, they say, when we let all our categories go and become one with everything. Then, with awareness of the true nature of reality, even the most tedious forms of work can be done with mindfulness and dignity. Scrubbing a pot, weeding a garden, or digging a ditch can all be dignified if they are done mindfully. 

A fascinating insight into how cultures teach this balancing of courage and wisdom lies embedded in myths. Myths were the life-guides for early tribes. The Greek mythic heroes Achilles, Jason, Perseus, Theseus, and Aeneas all needed Chiron, the wise teacher: courage plus wisdom. In myths of the early Britons, Arthur needed Merlin. In modern myths, Luke Skywalker needs Yoda; Dorothy, Glinda; Katniss, Haymitch. Courage tempered by wisdom.

                                                           

 

                                  

                                              Thomas Carlyle (artist, J.E. Millais)

                                                     (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

 

 

The familiar value that is a hybrid of courage and wisdom is our belief in hard work. Diligence and conscientiousness are two of its other names, as most of us are wearily aware. But the tedious, clichéd feel of this values cluster should not discourage us. Clichés, as I’ve said, like this one about the nobleness of work, become clichés because they express something that is universally true.

“I'm a greater believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.” (Thomas Jefferson)

“Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.” (Edison) 

 

Courage is good. Wisdom is good. We learn as children that if we want to achieve great things, we must learn both courage and wisdom. Be brave, but also smart. In practice, the combination of the two always means hard work.  

Thomas Carlyle distilled the idea well: 

“For there is a perennial nobleness, and even sacredness, in Work. Were he never so benighted, forgetful of his high calling, there is always hope in a man that actually and earnestly works: in Idleness alone is there perpetual despair. Work, never so Mammonish, mean, is in communication with Nature; the real desire to get Work done will itself lead one more and more to truth, to Nature’s appointments and regulations, which are truth.” ²

This is the moral realist view of how the profound, universal fact of entropy informs the values and behaviors of human societies. A lot of varied societies can emerge in real life, but all that last must teach some mode of hard work as a prime value. The giant picture we’re drawing here leaves plenty of room for variety in human cultures, but this varied picture of cultures is not without any constants, as the moral relativists would have us believe.