For the next 17 weeks until the end of the year, I plan to memorize a small quote or poem and write my reflections every Friday. The first quote I chose is one attributed to Socrates:
The best way to live with honor in this world is to be what you pretend to be.
I chose this quote because I am often better at thinking, planning, and philosophizing than following through with those thoughts and plans. As a kid, I was often all talk and bluster. I exaggerated and bullshitted, and was always anxious of being found out to be less than the big image of myself I was trying to paint. This strategy ran right into a brick wall when I joined the Marines out of high school. While Marine Corps boot camp is often hilarious in its unnecessary over the top nature, it was really the exact right place for me at the time. First of all, there was no space to talk myself up or talk my way out of things when responses other than “yes sir” or “no sir” were a recipe for some extra special drill instructor attention. Second, effort mattered much, much more than results. Lastly, no one cared how smart or well read I was- they cared how disciplined I was, how much I was a team player versus an individual (a dirty word in Marine boot camp). I was faced with a major choice in how I wanted to live. I could either keep slacking and getting by, but give up on wanting to be seen as a good, competent person, or I could work hard, harder than I’d ever worked before, and try to earn respect based on my true actions, not my empty words. I slowly started shutting up and working hard, and that forced shift has become a major part of who I am today.
I identify strongly with the effective altruism (EA) movement, which I will write about much more in later posts. EA is often defined as two joined projects- here’s from Giving What We Can:
Effective altruism has two parts:
Using evidence and careful reasoning to work out how we can do the most good with our limited resources.
Taking action based on what we discover
And here’s from the EA Forum:
Effective altruism is a project that aims to find the best ways to help others, and put them into practice.
It’s both a research field, which aims to identify the world’s most pressing problems and the best solutions to them, and a practical community that aims to use those findings to do good.
I think this distinction is really helpful. There’s the thinking and debating about what to do and how to do it, and there’s the doing. Socrates is probably one of the most famous thinkers and debaters of all time, always able to cleverly point out flaws in unexamined arguments, but here he is recognizing that when clever words can hide a lot; ultimately, being what you pretend to be is his answer for how to live with honor.
Moral philosophy is often focused on how an individual moral actor can be good. While I think this can lead to some important blind spots and pitfalls, ultimately we all have immense control over how we try to live when compared with out ability to manipulate anything else outside of ourselves. We want to be good people, and being who we are pretending to be is a great place to start.