It never really occurred to me as an Australian that there are some perfectly ordinary words which we use differently to the rest of the world. That's only to be expected when you have an isolated prison island hidden in the summer for a million years; which although was outward looking, up until recently was still quite culturally backwards.
One of those words is 'lovely'; which is mostly used in the United Kingdom in a sarcastic tone, and underused in the United States, where having used it in normal conversation I was accused of sounding old-fashioned for using it. In Australia though, 'lovely' is a perfectly normal word which is used to describe something which is pleasing, pleasant, and agreeable.
Again, probably due to the fact that we live in a summer paradise for at least half of the year, it follows that as we have the environmental enemy of the weather trying either to freeze you to death or thrash you with rain, being mostly absent, that what follows is a higher degree of friendliness. Having said that, there still are very racist elements in the country and it does not help that we have a pretty dominant right-wing trashmedia controlling most of common discourse. The art of being lovely is practiced far more by the general public than the political and popular press would have you believe.
In thinking through the fifth element of eudaimonia, we find what the Greeks sort of called Prosfile (προσφιλῆ); which comes from the two components from 'pros' (the preposition which means 'for') and 'phileó' which is one of the four general categories of love; which we might consider friendship, both between people and between people and the state.
There is kind of a preemptive sense of manners about this. The point of manners and etiquette is not as is sometimes presumed meant to regulate a set of behaviour for the mere sake of doing so but rather, to draw down the minor barriers for other people. Virtues like patience and kindness aren't just inherently virtuous but actually useful. If we think of other people as having some kind of intrinsic value, even if they may actively want to harm us, then this tends to promote of more peace-motivating set of conditions. If we then in principle attempt to deliberately forget any record of wrong committed against us, what we are left with is a sense of hope which tends to endure through hard circumstance.
To reclaim a term used by the right-wing trashmedia, 'virtue signalling' is actually a good thing that aught to be done. Signalling in both the economic and psychology sense, means that an actor has indicated either through words but mostly through action that these are the things that they would like to receive and/or purchase. Since the biggest set of signals which exist in economics are the rational decisions that people make in buying and selling goods and services, then signalling is the end point indication that the various actors and the market generally would like more of a thing. Or perhaps metaphorically, putting your money where your mouth is because money talks. More generally, virtue should be signalled and even better practiced and demonstrated, if we want more of it to occur.
This sounds suspiciously like the very old saw 'do to others what you would have them do to you'; for good reason. In general, the great moral philosophers, by they Hammurabi, Aristotle, Plato, Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, et cetera, are all going to arrive at roughly the same conclusion because that would indicate that at least some kind of common and general morality exists and to be perfectly honest, no new general morality is likely to be discovered or invented beyond 'be nice to people' and 'don't be a knave' because no moral philosopher ever invents a new kind of morality ever, do they?
If you are patient with other people, then what cause do they have really to be impatient with you? If you are kind to other people, then what cause do they have really to be unkind to you? To actually reach the point where it is justified to be impatient and unkind to someone, must mean that you have already crossed some boundary where a bond is severed and you have decided to unperson them. The state of being indecent, unlovely, and unpleasant, is at best disagreeable and and worst a state of war. Competition for riches, power, honour, and position, are in fact the most likely causes which places competitors into a probable position of indecent, unlovely, and unpleasant, because the prize of winning those things is calculated in the minds of the competitors as being worth entering a state of disagreement and of war.
Prosfile as practiced, assumes that the other person is valuable enough to be considered as being a person; which means that even if there are things such as riches, power, honour, and position, that they should either be shared for the mutual benefit of all, or that one thinks so highly of the other that one is willing to surrender one's claim in preference to the other.
Prosfile in the secondary sense which is used far less in ancient Greek, is in the consideration of that which is aesthetically pleasant, what is beautiful, what is nice. Plato's suggestion of "the forms" which says that there is a theoretical perfect version of a thing somewhere at least hints at the idea that prosfile is a concept which can be obtained. I would like to think though, that in addition to the physical beauty of objects, places, and people, that the intangible beauty of things such as a pleasant afternoon, those fleeting moments of absolute joy, and those temporary moments of glory, if they are not included in prosfile are at least adjacent to the concept.
It is lovely to be lovely.
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