We had our meeting last night on the topic of "Everything in moderation, is there a universal standard for moderation?"
First thing I learned from Shula was that Aristotle and possibly Buddha were thinking of how to be virtuous with the Aristotelian mean and Buddha's "middle way". This may be different from our everyday life approach to decision making where we may be more thinking of how to be successful in a particular endeavor or just living life in general.
Second thing that Shula pointed out was that especially in the case of wanting to be successful, we first have to know what we are aiming for and defining what success is. Thereafter, we can figure out what are the elements that contribute to that success and the way to get there.
Richard thought moderation suggests mediocrity, uninteresting and boring whereas we seem to be drawn towards excellence. However, we may admire the achievements of an Olympian athlete in their achievements but we likely do not want to live the life of the athlete dedicating all their time to training for the sport.
Maybe moderation is about doing more things well than doing one thing remarkably well. So renaissance man like Di Vinci who is good in art as well as science deserves more admiration than someone dedicated to one narrow field.
While I started off thinking that "everything in moderation" is an aphorism that is mostly used in hind sight and not much use going forward, Shula's second point about having a goal is illuminating.
It is such a simple thing, that we cannot take a journey efficiently unless we know where we are aiming for. Thereafter, my engineering background kicks in to define the optimization process of what to do depending on the priorities of saving time or energy to get to the destination.
Yet in life, it is not so simple to always know what destination we are aiming for. We change our target with new information or experiences. Our priorities also change making an optimization master plan not always that productive.
"Everything in moderation" is a form of hedging our bets to handle the vagueness in our goals and our lack of complete understanding of the world.
It results in less efficiency towards a particular goal but makes some moderate progress towards a number of broad areas that we may change into later on.
How else can we handle decision making when we have insufficient information?
So "everything in moderation" perhaps should be "most things in moderation except when you are an expert"
If we are expert in a particular area and our goals are quite firm, then there is no point in moderation. Just take the best path to the goal.
But then, when are we ever that sure?
Do experts know all there is to know about a subject to justify this type of confidence?
How do they know what they don't know if they don't know what they don't know?
Nosce te ipsum~ Know thy Self.
ReplyDeleteThe first priority is to know ones self, and others can be included in that too. There are virtues for the Self and Virtues for others.
A person cannot obtain a broad goal unless they know themselves enough to determine whether or not they may be successful.
Although its possible for an athlete to discipline themself enough to win a race, they may find themselves later on becomming a poet or shoe maker, if they were disciplining themselves only to win the race, or because somebody else told them that running was the only way to obtain virtue.
Truly good athletes or professionals, of any sort do it cause they know they can, and its something they want to do. Whatever they are doing needs to also be accepted and therefore virtuous in the public eye. But in my opinion, while virtue is of self and others, it cannot be obtained by following rule or obediance.
Methods get results but only for so long.
In very tough situations I employ method acting....its a very highly underated skill...But it helps in situations when I have to be incredible virtuous....
VTS
I often wonder when we will know when we have reached the state of "knowing ourselves". I agree with the concept but in practice it can go on forever. Or, should we just chalk it up to changing our minds if we think we have known ourselves but later on find things to be different?
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