Series:
Essay #5:
Synopsis:
Ends & Means
Go Vertical
When two moral positions clash, look for a higher unity above both, where you and me can trust in our mutual ability to trust
When two people pursue different highest goods, their jealous gods come in conflict. Which makes sense when I consider how important a highest good is to my identity; it’s the story that makes my life coherent. My highest good is my north star and it shows me that it’s the best in every aspect of my life, to the point where I can’t imagine any other good being higher. Of course, I want you to share it too, because it’s so great. And you feel the same about yours. How are we supposed to agree on anything?
Back when I was a lawyer, I used to joke that I learned all my negotiation skills from my wife. We negotiated everything, and we used technique. Each of us would take an extreme position to start, then we’d demand red herrings that we didn’t really want, all for the purpose of having ammunition for the give-and-take to come. The problem was that my wife had her position and I had mine. She stood on her rights and I stood on mine. We made it work, and I guess it was better than the alternative, but each of us walked away unsatisfied. That’s the nature of settlement: it creates a zero-sum game where both sides fight over a fixed amount; every point I win, you lose.
My wife and I are lucky. We share a highest good, which I call “keeping our sh-- together,” and by that I mean keeping our marriage and family together. I wonder if our marriage would’ve survived had we pursued different highest goods, had we seen the world differently.
There’s got to be a better way. There’s got to be a higher unity, an Aristotelian form, in which two people can participate, and in which we find our combined true nature. And before you laugh at me, understand that this stuff is real. The biologist, Stephen Talbott, talks like this when trying to understand how an organism works. He said, “To see the principles of regulation governing any set of parts, we have to step back, or up, until we can recognize a unity and harmony that operates, so to speak, between the parts, becoming visible only from a more comprehensive, relational vantage point.”
We must go vertical. I’m not talking about moving to ever more general categories. I’m talking about getting to higher unities that exist in reality. What might a vertical jump look like? Maybe Yes. In my late teens I got the Nietzsche fever. I fell in love with Nietzsche’s “Yes!” - which is the willingness to live exactly the same life, in all its details, over and over for all eternity. Nietzsche wanted to say yes to every personal weakness and every bad act, to love it, even if he had to do it again an infinity of times. Yes became my vertical jump. It forced me to accept reality, including the reality of a defective me, without compromise and without a wish to remake it. Saying yes helped me love what I otherwise would fear and hate, what I formerly would say no to and deny. You see, by saying no, I create separation between me and that which I fear; I exclude it. Saying yes brings the feared thing inside, it’s a necessary part of me, no longer feared but loved. And by loving it I make it irrelevant; the fear dissipates taking the defect with it. I still carry a latent Nietzsche virus to this day. I shout “YES!” when my wife asks if I want beef or chicken.
In saying yes, a higher part of me took the lower part on a vertical jump. Saying yes transcended my lower space, which was fearful and self-centered, to a higher space. The same works between people. Here’s our problem: we get locked into our rights and demands, defending our territory, and thereby we create zero-sum deadlocks where no one gives an inch, and we seek revenge for every inch torn from our cold, cadaverous hands. Here’s the solution: go old school vertical. The teachings of Christ elevate us into that higher space, into the common space of I-and-Thou. In this space, I’m not afraid. The smaller me with his fear and grasping nature is irrelevant. I want more now, and I can trust that you want more too; I can trust that we can trust each other. In the words of Dr. Charles Taylor from A Secular Age, going vertical is “to overcome fear by offering oneself to it; responding with love and forgiveness, thereby tapping a source of goodness, and healing.”
You say to me, “That’s all well and good, Mr. Pie-in-the-Sky, but life here on the streets is war.” I accept that life is frequently petty and that I mustn’t let others take advantage of me. Still, I can be careful, and at the same time open myself to the good that’s in everyone. The 1927 poem by Max Ehrmann, Desiderata, says it well: “Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.”
My wife and I recently are talking about the giving that goes beyond tit-for-tat reciprocity. We’ve noticed that we must give to get, and the more we give, the more we get. We give like this to our children. What’s more, we’ve noticed that even within the marriage, when we give out of love without thought of return, we get everything we want and more without ever having to ask. It’s a marvel to us, and I hope we can continue this way. Maybe someday we won’t know the difference between giving and receiving: to give will be all the return I need. What a wonderful surprise it is to receive unexpected gifts. And what a wonderful discovery after 30 years of marriage!
Essays in this Series, Ends & Means: