A rather interesting thought crossed my mind the other day, and it is consequential to my reading of Iain Banks' science fiction. The idea is that the soul is actually a variable part of the human, and that perhaps in me, a smaller part than I had considered. Consequently maintenance of it is proportional to the size of one's soul. A soul is like a mind. Some people abuse their minds, others expand their minds. Some have not much regard for the cultivation of their mind and yet are plenty smart for what they are called to do.
As a related aside, folks are considering the relative happiness of conservatives and liberals. Here's a basic outline of what I think. Conservatives are happy because they are skeptical that mankind can be perfected, and therefore don't seek utopia. Conservatives are amazed that anything works but knows no prescription for success. In fact, religious conservatives place ultimate happiness beyond the bounds of human life. Which is to say they find fulfillment through duty. It is through duty that one sacrifices. Conservatives order themselves by fidelity to maintaining bans on proscribed behavior. A minimum set of 'thou shalt nots' directs duty, and duty is to maintain that minimum negative ruleset at all costs. To violate those are to invite evil.
It seems to me that the liberal seeks an ever asymptotic approach to ultimate truth, which they know at some point might come to a clearer understanding. And it is that hope to know the ultimate truth that will cause them to overturn any established order, and so they question any duty not on the same path. The liberal path is scientific and requires experimentation. It requires a willingness to toss out conventions, like duty to maintain prohibitive rulesets. The assumption of course is that the greater truth will liberate one from suffering, that mankind will always find a way to convert greater understanding into greater happiness, that most of mankind's suffering comes from ignorance, and a presumption that those not on the asymptotic path are relatively ignorant and thus cannot be happy enough. A tempting assumption that has dangerous implications.
One who seeks an ultimate truth in the world must inevitably re-order the world to accomodate that truth, and defines suffering as the distance from the possibility of perfection. They cannot accept that those without possession of the truth and the means to approach it are not self-deluded.
But how can anyone who lived without knowing what we know possibly have been happy? I think there is a conceit that life of the mind delivers happiness divorced from the act of discovery. I think people misjudge the size of the soul and of the mind and presume that one can satisfy one or the other by living completely in them. But the mind and the soul are hungry and become jaded and self-serving. Happiness is found in balance. Balance requires discipline. To live entirely in the mind, or the soul, or the body are conceits.
The size of the soul, the spirit is under human control. I can decide to feel or to feel deeply. To merely empathize or to empathize deeply. To be patient with the sufferings of my fellow man or to make alleviation of that suffering my life's calling. Or I could shrink my soul, and to not feel, to reject empathy and to ignore suffering. I could instead decide to live the life of the mind, or the life of the body. In all of our choices, we require compensation. To be a great mind, we must sacrifice the other two, and if through some assistance we manage that, we might find balance. For one's own needs, one requires only so much mind, so much soul, so much body. As we are endowed and seek to improve on our endowments, we can exchange our surpluses to rewards from society. The athlete or soldier is rewarded for their physical feats. The great thinker thinks for others than himself. The woman possessed of extraordinary empathy is sought for her healing insights.
That humans are endowed with different amounts of brain, soul and body power is self-evident. But I observe that once upon a path to expand and perfect one's natural endowments there is a certain inevitable dissatisfaction. Surely a farmer who understands enough math to get a good price at market would not suffer himself to understand advanced calculus. Surely the mother who has given birth would not trouble herself to love another's child equally. But the mathematician is unsatisfied with farmer's arithmetic. A priest is unsatisfied with a parent's selfish love. A courtesan is unsatisfied with mere kissing.
I have only a passing understanding of the differences between the philosophers, but I can recognize there must be some distinction in their approach to the best way to live. One might say that life is best lived in pursuit of a robust disposition, one that is not particularly excellent but recovers best from life's inevitable slings and arrows. Another might say that life is best lived in pursuit of an ultimate achievement, one that evades all things which would compromise attainment of an excellence or perfection.
For what it is worth, I think the former to be a conservative disposition and the latter to be a liberal one with the presumption that once empowered, the achiever of excellence can share that knowledge and thereby improve the lot of every man. The farmer can be schooled, finally in advanced calculus, the mother can learn to love all children, and the farmer can too become a great soul as the mother a calculating mind. Surely all religious leaders would have their flocks expand the size of their soul in their lives and fill it with more godlike attributes.
Liberalism would have us all live like kings in our time, and would educate us to do so. And the imposition of institutions of education upon us is a boost to what we would naturally come to know from our own households and experiences. Liberalism would have us expand our minds, our bodies, our souls, and have us sacrifice so that more people might experience life in greater abundance. But I don't think liberalism affords us much guidance in disciplining our balance in this regard, nor in finding appropriate ways to distribute all of the surplus edifications of our minds, bodies and souls. And thus the modern problem is what to do with all that humanity has learned.
I think in the end, it is a matter of sustainability. And in that regard, unless and until we become a post-scarcity, space-faring species, that conservatives have the upper hand. Because liberals must always fight convenient or inconvenient memory loss. When the old man dies with the recipe for rayon and we have to go back to wool and cotton is that necessarily suffering? Whenever knowledge is destroyed the size of our minds must accordingly shrink, and accordingly fewer social structures are required to inculcate things for the general public. Is that dystopia? Only relatively. It depends upon how close we are to that absolute truth.
The world will always have a need for great men, but their greatness will always be determined by how well they manage the balance of the size of their mental, spiritual and physical development, in what they need for themselves and what they share with the people.
I have been thinking this way about the size of my soul in recognition of the fact that it is not nearly as large as that of my mother's. And I am humbled and impressed by the way in which it works for her. And I am constantly reminded of the alienation created between humans of different capacities and talents and how we need society to reward us according to our imbalancing talents and overproductions. And I am pleased to see how all of it can work. But related to the amount of happiness or suffering we can stand, I think it's a little greedy, ambitious and certainly troublesome to believe that we can all have great minds, souls and bodies.
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