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

Wild and free

"In the beginning and the end, human beings are creatures of the wild"

Sam Keen - Fire in the Belly

 Sanctuary

http://fineartamerica.com/featured/sanctuary-lianne-schneider.html

It’s probably only logical and appropriate that this list of heroic virtues end with the virtue of wildness. Sam Keen makes the case that we are over-domesticated – probably over urbanized and at the mercy of increasingly complex technology, too, I’d add. Many of my literary heroes – Emerson, Thoreau, Whitman – wrote compellingly of the human need to be in touch with nature, to experience our own “wildness” and to escape the paralyzing conformity of contemporary society. That was 150 years ago and yet, Thoreau’s advice is more important than ever. “We need the tonic of wildness...At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and un-explorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, un-surveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.” [Henry David Thoreau, Walden: Or, Life in the Woods]

How many of us have in defending some resistance to formal religion at times, exclaimed, “But I experience the Divine best in nature?” Today, the virtue of wildness, the ideal and idea of wilderness are more important than ever for human beings to maintain our balance, find some outer peace to match the inner peace we strive for, and to preserve that legacy for future generations.

Rather than go on at length about my own feelings about the need for wildness and for preserving the wilderness, I am going to share the introduction to a free pdf essay by TinaMarie Ekker. I’ll provide the link for you to read it in its entirety if you wish at the end of this introductory passage.

 

The Idea of Wilderness

“Wilderness is Relationship. All cultures across history set places apart from the routines and common behaviors of daily life. The purpose of these special places is to reorient our focus and perceptions in a setting that is conducive to reflection. We approach such places differently than we do the usual places in our daily lives, and it is the restraint in this interaction that makes them special, enabling us to experience the unique values these places provide in nurturing the human spirit. Examples include shrines, memorials, and ceremonial sites. Wilderness also is such a place.

 

Like all special places set apart, Wilderness is not just a geographic location, it is an idea and an ideal. The “idea” of wilderness encompasses certain values that we as a society have chosen to protect. Congress enacted the Wilderness Act in 1964, with the singular statutory purpose of securing the benefits of an enduring resource of wilderness:

          

            It is hereby declared to be the policy of the Congress to secure for the American people

of present and future generations the benefits of an enduring resource of wilderness. For

this purpose there is hereby established a National Wilderness Preservation System.

            (emphasis added) (The Wilderness Act, Sec. 2(a))

The Wilderness Act intended that Wilderness would have meaning, that it would be protected for something, not simply be a place where certain activities, such as logging, do not occur. Although Wilderness may look similar to other undeveloped landscapes such as national park back-country, it is the way that humans interact with Wilderness that makes it different from other landscapes.

In preserving Wilderness we are essentially preserving an endangered experience, and an endangered idea — the idea that self-willed landscape has value and should exist. Wilderness offers the opportunity to experience a relationship between humans and nature that is increasingly rare in our modern world, a relationship in which humans do not dominate, manipulate, or control nature but instead immerse ourselves as a member in the larger community of life. 

What makes this possible is the authenticity of Wilderness. This authenticity offers us a window into a world other than the world humans have constructed and now dominate. It is the authenticity of Wilderness that gives it deep meaning, imbuing it with immense intrinsic value as part of the ancient fabric of the earth. 

What keeps Wilderness ‘real’ and alive in our world today is the attitude with which we approach and interact with these Congressionally designated landscapes. In this way, ‘Wilderness’ is not just physical geography, it is also a concept that must be protected and preserved if Wilderness - not just undeveloped landscape - is to continue to exist for future generations to experience and enjoy.” 

To read the rest of this exceptional essay on the value of wilderness (it’s well worth the time), please go to http://www.nuibooks.com/the-idea-of-wilderness-PDF-35225619.html 

 

As artists and writers we can make such a marvelous contribution to this virtue in our work…perhaps that is our great gift - that we are privileged to capture and preserve this ideal in paintings, photographs, stories and poems.