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
