Some people in every era don’t want to really study the past. That might lead to change. They resist change as automatically as they breathe. They want to stay with what they were raised to because it feels secure. But if we don’t learn from the past, if we don’t constantly strive to grow, change, and adapt, then always, in a while, the universe comes for us. Famine. Plague. War.

Change is the one constant in this universe. This is very scary for many people. So many paths, so many hazards. We don’t want to be this free. But we have no other choice.  

An implicit assumption of this book is that we can’t hide from change. We must go at life, hard, or go under.  

Freedom, as a value programmed into children, is vital to society. It drives us to develop our talents and live motivated lives. It pushes us to handle change. But, if it weren’t complemented with love, freedom would beget cliques and subcultures, then prejudice, strife, and anarchy.

Brotherly love, as a widely accepted basic value, solves this dilemma for society. In Roman times, for example, love seemed so crucial to Jesus that he told his disciples to aim to place love above all other virtues. He said that it was the one thing he’d taught them that they must not forget. Implicitly, he was saying that all other values – even courage and wisdom and their benefits – accrue from love.

“A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another as I have loved you. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” (John 13: 34-35)

Thus, humans sustain and spread by practicing lifestyles that may seem paradoxical to anyone who looks for all phenomena to be reduced to simple parts. Freedom must be balanced with love because in balancing these values in our daily lives, we mirror the balance principle of the ecosystem of the earth.

This is basic systems theory. We couldn’t survive long in this uncertain reality, as individuals or societies, if our lives were otherwise. And the balances are tricky to find and maintain, but who really expects easy? Freedom is a precious, beautiful thing. If the price of it is maintaining a loving attitude and standard of conduct as we deal with our neighbors, there is a deep sense of symmetry to that picture. A good way of life for an individual or a society takes constant work. Attention. Adjusting. It is hard create and sustain. But it’s not impossible.

Therefore, we need internal tensions in our communities. Pluralism is an sign of a vigorous society. Societies that are monolithic and homogenous lack resourcefulness. A democracy may seem to its critics to be enervated by the energy its people waste in endless arguing. But over time, in a universe in which we can’t know what hazards may be coming in the next day or century, diversity and debate make us strong. Wishing to escape uncertainty and anxiety leads us away from love for our neighbors, from pluralism and from freedom. But love is not just “nice”: it’s vital. It has carried us this far; it is all that may save us.

A basic Buddhist truth is that life is hard. Another is that only love can drive out hate. Jesus’s prime 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 the real universe. In short, our oldest, most general values have survived because they work.

   

                 The Debate of Socrates and Aspasia (by Monsiau) (credit: Wikimedia Commons)

Now let us sum up this chapter: courage is the human answer to entropy, the adversity of the universe. Wisdom tempers courage. Freedom is the human response to (quantum) uncertainty. Love guides freedom. Diligence, responsibility, humility, and many other values are hybrids of the four prime ones. They are not easy to see in action; they show their value only on a huge scale as the daily actions of millions of people over thousands of years keep evolving and keep getting, for the truest values, good results.

But values are not trivial theories or arbitrary preferences, like preferences for specific flavours of ice cream or brands of perfume. They are large-scale, human responses to what is real.

Notes

1. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra: A Book for All and None, Part XXXIV, “Self-Surpassing” (1883; Project Gutenberg). http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1998/1998-h/1998-h.htm#link2H_4_0004.  

2. Kenelm Henry Digby, The Broad Stone of Honour; or, The True Sense and Practice of Chivalry, Vol. 2 (London: B. Quaritch, 1976). https://archive.org/details/broadstoneofhono02digbiala.

3. Thomas Carlyle, Past and Present, Chapter 11 (1843; The Literature Network). http://www.online-literature.com/thomas-carlyle/past-and-present/34/.