In the last blog we ended by connecting empathy, Aristotle’s ethics and Whitehead’s organic philosophy, The conclusion was that we, as human beings, fit ourselves to situations in both a calculated and intuitive way. Empathy is how we connect ourselves to situations and determine how best to fit into situations. This blog discusses the limits of trying to adopt third way optimal effects, where situational awareness is brushed aside in favor of one size fits all approaches.
We’ll begin by returning to our running example of virtue. Aristotle (2019) argued that we need to proportionally fit virtues to the nuances of the circumstances we find ourselves in. In other words, we need to scan an environment, gain a gist of what is going on. Based on this initial understanding, we act accordingly, and then pay attention to how effective (or not) our actions are (See Gibson, 1977).
Kindness and honesty are two potentially opposing virtues in the sense that we cannot be completely honest and completely kind at the same time. It is empathy which connects us to situations and provides us a sense of the psychological circumstances of the people around us (Thompson, 2014). Empathy is how we determine how kind to be in relation to how honest we should be given how we make sense of the situation. For example, is the person distressed or does the person seem to be ignoring the facts of the matter? The first instance might leave us sensing a need to be kinder, the second instance a sense that we need to be more honest.
Western thinking has been drawn to read the above and interpret it as- well, I’ll just stay in the middle. The third way, the middle ground, is seductive in the sense that it provides an answer to every question. However, the third way is as equally a paradox as every other idea (McGilchrist, 2021). If the third way offers the best of both worlds, then it must also offer the worst of both worlds too. Played out in reality, the approach would work very well in some circumstances and catastrophically in others. Recovering from an avoidable catastrophe frequently leads to over correction, and the proverbial throwing out of the baby with the bathwater. The result is cycles of feast and famine, boom and bust. There is an alternative.
This is what Aristotle (2019) seems to be suggesting, that we need to fit the optimal proportion of virtue to the situation and continually refit the proportion as the situation develops; it is an organic process not a static one. The result is that we cannot approach situations with too many preconceived ideas and rules in place, such as—I’ll just go straight down the middle. Instead, we need to pay attention to the situation empathically, and stay tuned to the cues we receive from our intuition (McGilchrst, 2021).
Whitehead’s (2010) organic philosophy provides further perspective. Life has two poles which are always in operation. It is not possible to engage with anything without also engaging with it’s opposite. For example, if you are completely honest, the spectre of unkindness will haunt the proceedings; it cannot be wished away. Life happens between two poles and it is better to acknowledge this. Sometimes we misjudge situations, and we are overly kind or overly honest, it is part of existence.
The problem arises when the chance to learn from the experience of moving between the poles is shut off. Allowing ourselves to encounter movement between the extremes, develops our knowledge of what works for who, when and in what circumstances. If we are open to this, learning and novelty can take place because we are gaining access to limits and possibility (Whitehead, 2010). Attempting to stay in the middle not only reduces access to novelty but also reduces learning. If things go wrong from the middle, it is a major strategic blunder without attention, and not a moment by moment tactical one conducted with empathy.
Paying attention means that we can use the experience of eternally navigating opposites to develop our participatory knowledge. In practice, this means intuitively sensing how things are going and imagining how to effectively participate from moment to moment. This requires empathy and an appreciation of nuance. The alternative is to try and fit preconceived ideas into organic situations. There is only one outcome for this approach, a shutting down of empathy, intuition and imagination followed by frustration and over correction.
Reading
Aristotle, A., 2019. The ethics of Aristotle. BoD–Books on Demand.
Whitehead, A.N., 2010. Process and reality. Simon and Schuster.
Gibson, J.J., 1977. The theory of affordances. Hilldale, USA, 1(2),
Thompson, E., 2014. Waking, dreaming, being: Self and consciousness in neuroscience, meditation, and philosophy. Columbia University Press.
McGilchrist (2021) The Matter with Things. Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World. Perspectiva.
