The 7 Romantic Virtues: Wisdom: The Road to Happiness

I have been philosophically inclined my entire life.  I have always been curious as to how the world worked.  Why was it the way it was?  What is the point?  I found my early answers in religion, from Christianity to Paganism and back to another form of Christianity.   I had a general familiarity with other religions and a dabbling of proper philosophical training, but I was certainly not one of those philosophical types who could quote everyone in the bumper book of philosophy. 

My first serious study was Ayn Rand’s book, The Romantic Manifesto.  It was one of those books that you find rarely in your life that confirm and then expand upon what you always believed to be true but never quite conceptualised.  After years of studying Objectivism I completed the process of incorporating it into my mind to my satisfaction.

A few years back I asked myself, “What is the point?”  Why study all of this?  What purpose does it serve?  I have read explanations of philosophers as to why philosophy is of value, but they never really hit the point, in my opinion.  Then I came upon a Greek story about the birth of philosophy.  A man went to the wise man and asked, “What is the best way to live?”  Then everything fell into place for me.

So what’s the best mobile phone?  Well, the best for whom?  What’s the context?  How will you use it?  Where would you use it?  What is your lifestyle?  We need to answer these questions first. That’s the first step.  The second step is asking, “Are you sure about that?” 

Before you can answer the best way to live you need to know the context, the whole context, everything.  Then when you answer the question about everything you ask how you know that you are right.  These are the first two and most fundamental branches of philosophy because your answer to these questions determines the answers for the next two questions.

The next question is the one we came here for.  “What is the best way to live?”  Or we can say, “What must I do to be happy?”  I would argue that every belief, be it philosophical, religious, unconscious, conscious, rational, or irrational, is based on this singular question.

Humans are social creature living in groups of interdependent individuals.  So it is now not only my actions towards others but the actions within the social construct as a whole that relates to happiness.  Therefore we have our follow-up question.  “What must we do to be happy?”

Once you have answered all these questions, then its time to communicate your answers, either consciously or unconsciously through your creative works.  These creations reinforce our beliefs and fulfil a need to reconnect with our beliefs on daily basis and as a consequence also promote happiness and a sense of meaning.  In essence you are depicting your answers in action.

So that’s…

1. Establishing the Context
2. Are you sure?
3. What must I do to be happy?
4. What must we do to be happy?
5. What’s it all feel like in action?

These questions are the five branches of philosophy; 

1. Metaphysics:  What is the nature of reality?
2. Epistemology:  What is the nature of knowledge?
3. Ethics:  What is the right way to act?
4. Politics: What is the right way for society to act?
5. Aesthetics:  What is art and beauty?

Philosophy is simple.  It is all about answering those five questions; however the primary question is “What must I do to be happy?”  In that sense philosophy is nothing more than self-help or self-improvement.  Every philosopher, religious leader, proselytizer, guru, self-help peddler, or prophet who ever lived was selling his answers to those questions.  Buy what I am selling and you will be happy, either in this world or the next.

Everyone has a philosophy.  It can be great or small, logical or whimsical, rational or irrational, complex or simple.  It can be codified in stone, written on parchment, orally transmitted, or just felt.  It can be personal, cultural, social, or religious.  If you are conscious and cognizant, then you have a philosophy.  You also have a body.  You make use it, work it out, or you let it rot.  The choice is yours.

From a philosophical view point, there is no difference between adhering to a philosophy and adhering to a religion.  Both involve the five branches.  For example, a very simple lay-out of Christianity would look like this:

1. Establishing the Context: God created reality and sent his only son to save mankind from the wages of sin.
2. How do you know that?  God has revealed Himself to people through revelation predominantly as recorded in the Bible.
3. Then what must I do to be happy? Obey God’s will as per the Bible.
4. And so what must we do to be happy? As a people we must obey God’s will as per the Bible.
5. What’s it all feel like in action?  Our art must praise the glory of God and promote his will.

Despite there being no fundamental difference between a religion and a philosophy in terms of the ultimate goal and belief structure, the believers of the supernatural are given more social leeway.  Ever hear of someone being offended because something is against their philosophy?  Or demanding special treatment because of their philosophy?  Many atheists are offended by the term atheist.  Why should they mark on some form a label that defines them by what they do not believe rather than what they do believe?  On the last form I filled out I wrote “Aristotelian Objectivist” as my religion and on my Facebook page I wrote, “Romantic”. 

Philosophy does not have the same social status as religion because philosophy does not have the same social support structure as religion.  You can have your philosophical beliefs without attending a church service designed to intellectually, emotionally, and socially reinforce those beliefs.  As a result it is easier to stray from the path.

To the question, “What must I do to be happy?” there is an answer.  That answer demands a habitual behavior, or virtue.  If you fail to exhibit those virtues as demanded by the answer, then you will not be happy.  The best way to keep on track is to have a support group, or church, to intellectually, emotionally, and socially reinforce your faith in the answer.  People may do this naturally by reading books that educate them in their philosophy, meditate on the philosophy, and surround themselves with people who share their worldview.  However this requires an active involvement in one’s philosophy.  This is the virtue of wisdom.

One final thought on the subject of philosophy.  Many people see philosophy as complicated or beyond them.  When they look at the subject they see a vast canon of unpronounceable names spouting complex ideologies that all seem to contradict.  The layman just wants to know how to be happy.  He did not ask for some vast metaphysical or epistemological treaties.  Philosophers often get caught-up in their own ideas and forget the question.

Fortunately philosophy has a tool called a razor used to cut-away vast layers of intellectual bullshit.  The most famous is Occam’s Razor which states that the simplest answer is usually the correct one.  Another is Rand’s Razor and this one requires a bit more explanation.

Basically this states that any concept that cannot be reduced to a concrete is false.  We often refer to someone caught-up in their own subjective reality as having their head in the clouds and in need of grounding.  In Scotland we speak of people as having “all brains and nae sense”.  Likewise we might tell George Lucas to “get off the ranch” or an academic to “leave the ivory tower”.  A recent book on the subject called them “intellectual morons” – people so mentally self-involved that they have lost touch with reality.

According to Rand’s Razor all concepts build on each other, like the floors on a skyscraper.  Each concept is dependent on the floor below it all the way down till we reach the concrete foundational concept, or irreducible primary.

For example, we may look at the concept of “friend”.  Friendship may be defined as a type of human relationship characterized by mutual knowledge, esteem, and affection.  This concept does not stand on its own.  To understand friendship you must first understand the concepts “human”, “knowledge”, “esteem”, and “affection”.  What do they mean?

Let’s take “esteem” as our next concept.  Esteem is an appraisal of something as having value.  So what is a “value”?  It is something that we act to gain or keep.  This implies judgment, free will and purpose.  Now we are on the perceptual rather than conceptual level.  We can observe people pursuing things in line with their chosen purposes according to their judgments of value.  For the final concrete we can point to those things and say, “I mean this.”

According to Rand’s Razor, if someone says, “I do not believe in free will, but I do have friends” he is mistaken because without the concept of free will, then values are not chosen, therefore people are not esteemed, therefore friendship does not exist because the concept “friendship” requires all these other levels to exist grounded to the foundation of objective reality.

Any concept that cannot be reduced to a concrete is deemed false according to this razor.  Once cut away by a razor a philosophical construct should be thrown away.  But like all the junk we keep in the closet for sentimental reasons, many philosophies that should have been discarded ages ago are still taught in universities and many are now endemic to our modern culture whether you are aware of them or not.  This makes matters all the more confusing for the average person thus alienating them from much needed philosophical council.

The result is that philosophy now belongs to the intellectual elite.  This is silly.  We all have a worldview, and therefore a philosophy, but we lack the necessary tools to mould that philosophy into a viable path to the happiness we crave.  So enter the self-help industry to fill the void.

Victorians were big fans of self improvement books.  They wanted to make life better and they were willing to learn from wiser men the best way to live – to be happy.  The first great self-improvement book was called Self Help by Dr. Samuel Smiles in 1859.  This book remains once of those must read Victorian books that fell out of social and political favour in the Twentieth Century, alongside books like Autocrat At the Breakfast Table by Oliver Wendell Holmes which was once required reading in schools.

Dr. Smiles was a great intellectual and reformer who sincerely wanted to help people.  These days anyone can write a self-help book.  The self-help section in most bookshops seems at first glance to be filled with rows upon rows of snake oil sampled year after year by the desperate and the weak.  However, there are gems there as well.

There is not much money to be made in philosophy; however there is a fortune to be had in self-help.  Every self-help guru whether they are peddling their psychology or New Age religion are all selling their philosophical solution for happiness.  This is modern philosophy for the masses.

There are those who say that philosophy is the pursuit of wisdom.  I say that wisdom is the path to happiness.  Wisdom is simply knowing how the world works and adjusting your behaviour so that it is consistent with reality.

So what is reality?  That’s the big metaphysical and epistemological question.  What is reality and how do you know that?  In the broadest sense we can split all philosophy into two camps.

TEAM 1	TEAM 2
Aristotelian	Platonic
Realist	Idealist
Objective	Subjective
Scientific	Mystic
Rational	Emotional
Masculine	Feminine
Definition	Meaning
Natural Law	Social Law

These two teams have been fighting for over a millennium and every human belief can be charted somewhere between these two opposing points to varying degrees.  For example, the self-improvement books of the Victorians were based on Aristotelian principles that promoted right action, whereas the modern Platonic self-help books emphasise right feeling. Both approaches are valid given your orientation to reality.  If you believe that the objective is paramount then you go with Aristotle and if you believe that the subjective is more real you follow Plato.

 The reason for this on-going conflict is that humans exist in three realities: the Objective, Subjective, and Artificial and each person perceives one to be more real than the others and orientates themselves accordingly.

Objective Reality is the real world governed by the laws of science, reason, and cause and effect.  Subjective Reality is our perception of Objective Reality as filtered through our feelings, interpretations, and beliefs.  Artificial Reality is the man-made world of the material and social that can only be created and maintained through human time, energy, and skill.  Artificial Reality is real, but only as long as it can be maintained.  We live in the real world and exist within the realm of our perceptions.

The central debate between these two camps is which reality is more real, the Objective or the Subjective.  As an Aristotelian, I would argue that the Objective takes precedent over the Subjective and therefore wisdom is found in aligning the Subjective and the Artificial to the Objective as best as cognitively possible.

The wild card here is the Artificial.  I can prance about in my undershorts in the middle of winter inside my centrally heated flat.  Does the warmth of my flat mean that it is not cold?  The objective reality is that it is snowing but within my artificial construct it is nice and warm as long as I have the time, energy, and skill to make money and pay the gas bill.

I am anti-socialism because it goes against natural law, however should I loose my job and cannot quickly find another then my choices are to either go into debt with the bank or take advantage of “free” money from the state.  The latter is the wise choice even though it goes against Objective Reality because that Artificial Reality does exist.  However, as Margaret Thatcher said, “Socialism works until you run out of other people’s money.”  Like my heated flat, the Artificial Social Reality created by socialism only exists because of the human time, energy, and skill used to sustain it.  I may be against it, but it would be foolishly against my self-interest not to take advantage of it.

In wealthy societies it is easy to loose touch with Objective Reality.  We live in our subjective artificial constructs and believe it to be reality.  For all intents and purposes it may be, but not for long.  The academic may postulate all sorts of theories that seem sound in his mind, but when afforded the opportunity to put them into practice everything falls apart.  This is called working in theory but not in practice, however if it does not work in practice, then the theory was flawed to begin with.  The source of the flaw is its inconsistency with objective reality.

Here’s an example of the dangers of taking Artificial Reality for granted.  During the 1970’s the British coal industry was heavily subsidized.  Developments in the global coal market made it cheaper to buy imported coal than to buy it from the local mine, so keeping the mines open was a massive drain on the British economy. 

Eventually matters reached a point where the mines could not be kept open and mass lay-offs and riots ensued.  Capitalism is of course blamed, but the real culprit was socialism.  If market forces were allowed to operate there would have been a gradual decline in employment over decades.  Instead socialism maintained employment at an artificially high level, so when the money ran out there was a sudden drop instead of a gradual decline.  The Artificial Reality created by socialism was taken for granted therefore no one was prepared when that bubble could no longer be kept inflated, so the miner’s reality came crashing down as Objective Reality reasserted itself.

In order to be happy you must first understand the nature of reality (all three of them) and how you can know and prove your conclusions to be true.  That is a pretty tall order.  Reality is really really big and very very intricate.  Not only that, the rules can also change.  This means you have to be on your toes and never stop working towards understanding.  This is why wisdom is a virtue, a positive habit.  It involves constantly realigning yourself to reality and acting accordingly.

For the Romantic wisdom is not only part of the dedication to the value of Truth, but also the means to achieving competence and efficacy in life from how he manages his reality to how he interacts with the people in it.  In the Victorian tradition it is all about making life better.

As with most things the Golden Mean applies here.  If you devote too little time to wisdom then you will be a fool, a person whose subjective perception of reality is not aligned with objective reality.  If you devote too much energy in the pursuit of truth, then you become a pursuer of truth, define yourself as such, and therefore remain in a perpetual quest that never succeeds.

I once engaged a neo-pagan in a debate and she accused me of being close minded.  I spent eight years of my life as a pagan studying it, living it, and believing it until finally I concluded that it was all bullshit.  Can I still be called close minded?

I’ve touched on my metaphysical beliefs concerning the nature of reality.  My epistemological belief is that all knowledge comes from the scientific method.  Have an idea and then try to prove yourself wrong.  If you fail, then invite your friends to prove you wrong.  If they fail, then you are most likely correct until some new evidence comes along.  If it does and it proves you wrong, then adjust your course with reality and full steam ahead. 

In other words, be a skeptic.  This is not always easy to do because human nature is to have an idea and then try to prove yourself right.  Learning to think like a true scientist instead of a true believer is part of developing the virtue of wisdom.

As for happiness, well it’s different for different people.  That’s for you to discover through your wisdom.  According to Epicurus the three requirements for happiness are: Friends, Freedom, and Contemplation.  That’s good enough for me.