To think of genuine friendship...

I have had great cause to think of what friendship truly is in the past weeks...to reexamine its nature and fundamental character. I was provoked to extreme depth of thought about it by a question that occurred to me after a discussion in a public forum. The discussion forced me into the recognition of some diametrically opposite views that reflected such radically different values and beliefs than mine that I was left shaken by the discovery that my "friends" could think the way they do. Perhaps I'd guessed that we were on different sides of the aisle politically but in the past, that hasn't affected the friendship that I thought existed between us. With a few people - those for whom their political views are not a major priority - I've simply agreed to disagree and we've left all discussions of that nature out of our "friendship" equation and confined our public comments towards each other to our artistic endeavors. But what does that actually mean in terms of the nature of that friendship? 

I struggle with this issue even within my family and among people I know personally rather than just on the internet. [That's not to say internet friendships can't be or are not "real." I believe they are]. But I've realized that what I'm calling friendship in most cases is no more than casual acquaintance or what Aristotle called relationships of utility or pleasure rather than the extremely rare "true friendship." I do not believe that it is possible to truly call someone a friend whose views and values are completely antithetical to my own. I'm not speaking about political views in an election year - I'm speaking about the fundamental values reflected in the memes we share or the political comments we make. I'm speaking about the basic philosophy represented by our political statements. My political leanings arise from my fundamental world view on human rights and human dignity, on justice and injustice, on communal rather than individual rights. In other words, I cannot separate my political philosophy from who I am as a person and in likewise fashion, I cannot separate another person's political statements and philosophy from who he/she is as a person. I cannot disassociate those statements from another's fundamental character. That brings me back to friendship.

Aristotle in his monumental "Nicomachean Ethics" discusses friendship at length. He "divides friendship into three sorts: friends for pleasure; friends for benefit; and true friends. To the former belong those sorts of social bonds that are established to enjoy one’s spare time, e.g. friends for sports or hobbies, friends for dining, or for partying. In the second are included all those bonds whose cultivation is primarily motivated by work-related reasons or by civic duties, such as being friend with your colleagues and neighbors." (philosophy.about.com) But true friends are virtuous friends, seeking the good of self and other and growth in virtue and such friendships assume an existing level of virtue in one's own character and in the other. Genuine friends, says the great philosopher,"serve as human mirrors in which one can better see one's own virtue...they are a single soul dwelling in two bodies." They are indispensable to self-knowledge and that is necessary for growth in virtue, the definition of the "good life." Or as Cicero put it, "A true friend is a second self." 

Why, then, would one seek a "friendship" with a person who is so completely opposite to the person one believes himself/herself to be or wishes to be? More importantly, why would a person whose values are so opposed to my own wish to be my friend in the first place? For utility? Does that person gain something by association with me? For pleasure? Do I entertain, share jokes with, or pursue similar activities? It is important that I recognize which of the three kinds of friends a person might be so I do not feel so betrayed when I see that person for who he/she really is. The sudden realization that one has been totally wrong about another person smashes that "mirror" and causes us to doubt our own virtue, asking, "how could I have mistaken that person for someone I could admire or wish to have as a friend?" How could my judgment have been so flawed?

That is not to say that one has to cut off all ties with friends of utility or friends of pleasure. It's just that one must be honest enough to identify those relationships for what they are. I can continue with those "friendships" but only to the point where to do so would compromise my self-knowledge and virtue or damage my true friendships. True friendship is the rarest of all forms of love - certainly rarer than romantic or physical love. So it stands to reason, that in one's lifetime, one might have only one or two true friends. Absence, distance, time have little effect on true friendship unless one of the friends undergoes some radical change in beliefs and values. Genuine friends continue to grow in those qualities deemed most significant and virtuous and to encourage that same growth in the other. When I look at my friend, I see the kind of person I want to be and I strive for that kind of goodness. 

Emerson said there were two elemental criteria for genuine friendship - truth and tenderness. He wrote, in his essay on friendship, said, "A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him, I may think aloud. I am arrived at last in the presence of a man so real and equal that I may drop even those undermost garments of dissimulation, courtesy, and second thought, which men never put off, and may deal with him with...simplicity and wholeness..." He decried the superficiality and self-promotional ego-stroking, "the chat of the markets or the reading room," that he considered "an injustice against true friendship," long before social media made such things the basis for pseudo-friendships. Truth does not mean that friends think exactly the same about everything. There is ample room for some difference of thought.  "Emerson points out that the most valuable friendships don’t spring from a filter bubble of like-mindedness but, rather, from the perfect osmosis of shared values and just enough discrepancy in tastes and sensibilities to broaden our horizons" (Popova, Maria. Truth and Tenderness: Ralph Waldo Emerson on Friendship and Its Two Essential Conditions, 8/13/14)  

These differences, therefore, enable us to reach for the next most virtuous position we might achieve, to look more deeply into a value, an event, a point of view, and so share even more closely the values of our friend. To maintain a relationship in the face of too great a difference between you, however, is not the mark of friendship. While culturally I might have to accept and respect that each person has the right to his/her own opinion, I do not need to class as true friends those persons who have no respect for truth or whose own views reflect positions that I believe philosophically are detrimental to civil and virtuous society. To do so would be to violate my own sense of integrity. We are known, as the old adage goes, by our "friends." I do not want to know myself or be known as holding views that to me seem abhorrent simply because I want to keep calling someone friend or to add another person to my list on some social media site. Nor would I want others to call me friend who find my views abhorrent or a violation of their own ethical code. Instead, I will be ever grateful for the very few rare souls I know to be genuinely friends - and those are few and rare indeed. Charles Darwin said, "A man's friendships are one of the best measures of his worth" and Thomas Fuller even more adamantly argued, "If you have one true friend, you have more than your share." I count myself rich indeed and know that in my few really close and genuine friendships I have had and have far more than my share, for that kind of friendship is more precious than jewels. I am more than content to have my worth measured by those friends. 

River Reflections

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/river-reflections-lianne-schneider.html

Heroic virtue #2 - Empathy and Art

Empathy is "seeing with the eyes of another, listening with the ears of another, 

 and feeling with the heart of another." 

 Alfred Adler

Pieta 2

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/pieta-2-lianne-schneider.html

 Yesterday I spoke of philosopher Sam Keen’s book, Fire in the Belly: On Being a Man, and mentioned that in it, the author lists 10 heroic virtues one must possess in order to complete the sacred quest to ignite the flame in one’s heart. And although Keen was writing to men about how to do that in today’s society, he was actually outlining for all of us the qualities we need most desperately to live “heroically” through difficult times. The first virtue he named was wonder – that opening to mystery that I spoke of in yesterday’s post. I hope that I left you curious about the rest of those virtues and how each might apply to art/artists.  

The second heroic virtue mentioned by Sam Keen is empathy – defined at Dictionary.com first as…the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another.  Psychologists Arthur Ciaramicoli and Katherine Ketcham explain, “When we move out of ourselves and into the other person’s experience, seeing the world with that person, as if we were that person, we are practicing empathy.”

But it’s the second definition of empathy that applies particularly to art…“the imaginative ascribing to an object, as a natural object or work of art, feelings or attitudes present in oneself:  By means of empathy, a great painting becomes a mirror of the self.” In fact, the first use of the word empathy in 1904 was used in discussing a concept of art appreciation.  

Even before the actual use of the word, in 1897, Leo Tolstoy described the quality as “infectiousness” or “contagiousness” in his book “What is Art? "Art," he said, "is a human activity consisting in this, that one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected by these feelings and also experience them…” Furthermore, Tolstoy claimed that no matter how interesting a supposed artwork might be, it isn’t a work of art unless it creates a sense of union and shared emotion and the work itself arises from the artist’s own inner need to express his feeling.

In other words, the primary purpose of art is to evoke not just feeling but empathy, the heroic quality that Sam Keen equates with being “spiritually available” and open to others. Empathy makes it possible for one to give oneself to others and to live vibrantly without concern for possessions or self-image. One does not have empathy – rather, one IS empathetic and good art evokes that response by encouraging the viewer to feel the feelings the artist experienced in creating the work. Art is not art unless it is a two way street that engages the emotions of both the artist and the viewers/readers/listeners. That emotion can be awe, sadness, grief, joy, wonder, tenderness, a sense of poignant remembrance…any reaction by which the viewer “catches” the feeling the artist had when creating the piece. Some artists evoke a unique combination of emotions that draws the viewer into the image immediately – like this image (and many others in her portfolio) by Trudi Simmonds.

She tells a story with each piece she does and her reverence for and appreciation of horses in particular not only engages me but evokes such poignant memories or dreamlike worlds that I honestly can’t explain it…I can only step into the world she created and feel it. She accomplishes what Tolstoy required of art – an empathetic response – because her own emotional involvement is evident in each work. 

Clearly, empathy is essential to a true work of art…are you an empathetic artist? Are you evoking an empathetic response to your work? If you aren’t creating because you simply HAVE to and because you have something you feel compelled to share, then probably not. But if you are creating from your own empathetic virtues, then chances are your viewers can feel that too.