Chapter 13        Part F 

         Some societies, and some individuals, of course, don’t balance courage with intelligence very well; excesses result. But the overall movement, in spite of the pain, or more accurately, guided by the pain, over time, is toward a social ecosystem of ever greater vigor, wisdom, tolerance, and diversity. On this Earth, on Mars, and on outward. Nothing living sits still; we evolve or we die.

         Freedom, as a value programmed into kids, also is really useful to society. It drives us all, but the young especially, to develop talents and to live motivated lifestyles. But if it wasn't complemented and tempered with love, freedom as a social value would beget cliques and sub-cultures, then prejudice, then strife, then chaos. Brotherly love solves this dilemma for society. Love seemed so crucial to Jesus that he exhorted his disciples to aim to live by love above all other virtues. Over and over, he said it was the one thing that he had taught them that they must not forget. Implicitly, he was saying that all other values – even courage and wisdom, and their benefits – accrue from this one value alone.       

               

    one graphic way of representing systems theory 

        Thus it is that humans sustain and spread their societies by testing and practicing lifestyles that seem paradoxical to anyone who looks for all phenomena to be reduced to simple parts. Our behaviors and the values that drive them are set up using the balance principle of their prototype: the ecosystem of this Earth. A culture is a self-monitoring and self-regulating system that always responds to reality within strategically set limits or parameters: the values that it teaches to its citizens. Our lives are not run by principles that are contradictory. Rather, opposing principles, by their constant interactions create dynamic equilibria. This is basic systems theory. We couldn’t survive long in this uncertain material reality, as individuals or societies, if our lives were otherwise.

   Furthermore, to pursue this line of thought, we know that the matter in the universe itself is pulled into its shapes, in fact, into its existence, by balanced sets of opposing forces. The earth in its orbit is being pulled in toward the sun by gravity and flung away from the sun by centrifugal force. In this dynamic state, our planet orbits through a band of space fit for the thing we call “life”. The nuclear strong force and weak force alternately tend to crush matter out of existence or dissipate it into nothingness. In balance, they pull the nuclei of all the atoms around us into their shapes. Electrons are held in their orbits by a balance of forces, like the planets and stars. In finding ways of balancing courage with wisdom, and freedom with love, human societies only mirror the universe itself.

  We need internal tensions in our communities. Pluralism is an indicator of a dynamic, vigorous society. Societies that aim to be monolithic and homogenous in design and function lack vigor and resourcefulness. A democracy may seem to its critics to be ennervated by the energies its people waste in endless arguing. But in the long haul, in a universe in which we cannot know what surprises may be coming in the next day, year, and century, diversity and debate are what make us strong. Indulging in self-deluding, wistful thoughts of solving uncertainty and its attached anxieties leads us away from real love for our neighbors. Therefore, love is not merely "nice"; it's vital. It has brought us this far, and it is all that may save us.

   

      homeless man in Florida 

     A basic Buddhist truth is that life is hard. Another is that only love can drive out hate. Jesus' number one command to us all: love one another as I have loved you. These codes have not survived because a bunch of old men said they should; they have survived because they enable their human carriers to survive. In short, our oldest, most general values have survived because they work. 

   

Socrates talking with an Athenian woman

           (Monsiaux) 

    In another digression, I feel that I should mention that estimating hour by hour where the most efficient dynamic balances for society lie and will lie should be what society's philosophers do. Studying values and projecting what their real consequences for real people will be is the whole point of the activity called “Philosophy”. Trying to define "the one and the many", how all levels of reality ultimately work in other words, was what philosophers before Socrates did. As Cicero said, Socrates called Philosophy down from such pursuits and set its focus onto the issues and problems of real life. (4.)

      Today, it is scientists who are revising our models of material reality constantly, as they should and must be. Philosophers, meanwhile, informed by Science, work to increase the public's understanding of moral values and how they function so that all citizens can see more clearly what principles should underlie the activities of all citizens – including those of scientists, business people, military and political leaders, and ordinary folk. Society deeply needs philosophers, people who spend their lives examining the ways in which the community not only functions, but the ways in which it could and should function, if we are to maximize our probability of surviving and flourishing now and on outward into all of space and time.

      The philosopher's first purpose in the community ought to be to examine and analyze prime concepts like courage, wisdom, freedom, and love, along with hybrid values like diligence, responsibility, and honesty in order to judge how they are functioning in our time. The philosopher's second purpose is to provide constantly updated analysis of how these values may be translated into timely, strategically designed sets of actions to be done by real people living real, daily lives.

    In a modern democracy, a philosopher's main purpose ought to be to explain to his or her fellow citizens what virtues like courage, wisdom, freedom, and love really are, how they should be practiced in our time, and why they ought to be our guides in all that we do. The philosopher who is really good at Philosophy explains the virtues – courage, wisdom, freedom, and love – and how they work in ways that are powerful, direct, logical, clear and engaging for her/his fellow citizens.

    Courage is the human answer to the (entropy) adversity of this reality. Wisdom guides courage. Freedom is the human response to (quantum) uncertainty. Love guides freedom. Diligence, responsibility, and humility and many other values are hybrids of the four prime ones. They show their real meta-value only on a huge scale, as the daily actions of millions of people, over thousands of years, in social ecosystems of greater and greater internal dynamism, keep evolving and getting results. But values are not merely nice theories, and they are certainly not trivial preferences, like preferences for specific flavors of ice cream or brands of perfume. They are large scale, human responses to what is real.

In the meantime, in this milieu, the third and largest purpose of philosophers is to give ordinary folk such clarity of understanding – by precept and example – of what "right" is that people feel renewed and inspired enough to get up and try again. 

Notes 

4. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ancient-political/#SocPla