Maverick Philosopher

How Much Bad Behavior Ought We Tolerate from Our 'Friends'?

The following arrived on Christmas Eve:

Apatheia, Ataraxia, and Holiday Spirit

I was wondering if you had any advice for those struggling to maintain their Stoic calm as Christmas approaches. Alas, I am one of those souls this year. I will not burden you with the details, but it seems the holidays also bring out many of our dear friends’ struggles with booze. To wit, a friend of nearly 20 years began a bender about a week ago that culminated this morning with his saying to me, this morning, some things that no self-respecting man could forgive in one to be labeled a friend, especially when one has had to forgive booze related outbursts several times before.

So, it seems the modifiers, not the nouns, are the functional words in phrases like “old friends” and this friendship will now be over. I have consulted Seneca on friendship and anger, and I recall Cicero’s advice, but I fear the philosophers offer little in the way of immediate comfort as I accept this loss (and also reflect on what the whiskey demons bring out in myself). I expect you must be inundated with mail this time of year, so know that I appreciate your reading this message. If you have any advice, or perhaps a reading suggestion, I’d appreciate the time you took to do so very much. Merry Christmas!

There are two main topics here, interpersonal relationships and the role of alcohol.

How you negotiate interpersonal relations depends on your psychological type.  I'm an inner-directed man in roughly David Riesman's sense, who knows what he is about and what he wants to achieve. So for me, cost-benefit analysis comes into play when I choose whom to associate with and whom to avoid.  Will contact with this person help me achieve my goals or will it hinder me? Any relationship with anyone incurs costs and provides benefits. So I calculate whether the benefits will outweigh the costs,  given my goals. To do this requires self-knowledge. So that is where you must start. Know thyself! But it also requires knowledge of the people you will be associating with.   Some people are trouble. You can't help them, but they can harm you. Why are you associating with them? For literary purposes? Because you foolishly overestimate your healing powers?  Christ hung out with sinners. But he had special powers, to put it mildly.

On the basis of the slim facts presented, I say that my reader ought to break off contact with his drunkard 'friend.' Break off a 20-year friendship? Well, was it a friendship of affinity or a friendship of propinquity?  I won't pause to explain what I mean; you should be able to catch my meaning.  If there was a deep bond, and the guy hit hard times and sought solace in the bottle, then that puts a different complexion on things. Maybe my reader should try to help his friend.  There is a difference between a heavy drinker and an alcoholic: every (unreformed) alky is a heavy drinker but not conversely.  If the friend is an alky, it would probably be best to deep-six him, even if he is 'on the wagon.' It's a good bet he will fall off.  As a general rule, people do not change. WYSIWYG! And will continue to get.  Schopenhauer spoke of the immutability of character, with only slight exaggeration. The italicized rule is a very important bit of life wisdom. For example, don't marry someone with the thought that you will change him or her. That way lies misery. To my reader, I say: There is no point in wasting time with some guy whose whole life is dominated by the project of climbing out of a hole he  himself freely dug with a cocktail glass. The same goes for those who dig their holes and graves with fork and spoon or syringe.

But again, it all depends.  Suppose the guy is not an alky. Is my reader single or married? If married, does he have children? Would you want your wife and children to come into contact with a drunkard? Presumably not.

And if you associate with drunks, are you not giving tacit moral approval to their immoral behavior? It is not morally wrong to to have a drink, but it is morally wrong to get drunk, even if you harm no one but yourself. I'll spare you the argument, but invite you think about it.  

My reader mentions Stoicism. Here is a brief summary of the Stoic attitude:

There are things that are in our power, and things that are not. The flood that sweeps away my house is not in my power; but my response to the flood is. I can make myself miserable by blaming other people, from the president on down; or I can limit my suffering by taking control of my own mind. Your insulting me is not in my power; but whether or not I let it affect me is in my power.

The Stoics had an important insight into the mind's power to regulate itself. When you really understand their point it can come as a revelation. I was once thinking of a dead relative and how he had wronged me. I began to succumb to negative thoughts, but caught myself and suddenly realized that I am doing it. I saw that I was allowing the negative thoughts to arise and that I had the power to blot them out. The incident was years in the past, and the malefactor was long dead. So the mental disturbance was my own creation. My sudden realization of this — aided no doubt by my reading of Stoic and other wisdom literature — caused the disturbance to vanish.

The Stoics discerned the mind's power to regulate itself and master its thoughts, rather than be mastered by them. They saw that, within certain limits, we create our own reality. Within limits, we can make ourselves miserable and we can make ourselves happy. There is an inner citadel into which one can retreat, and where a very real peace can be enjoyed -- assuming that one is willing to practice the Stoic precepts rather than merely read about them.

Stoic calm is not that hard to maintain as long as one avoids the near occasion of unnecessary vexation.  Here then is a further reason for my reader to break with his 'friend.'

Coming back to the question of self-knowledge, I recommend that my reader consult Karen Horney (pronounced like horn-eye, not like whore-knee). I don't know if she is much read these days but her books are well-written and full of insight. Here is a taste:

Interpersonal Strategies of Defense

According to Horney, people try to cope with their basic anxiety by adopting a compliant or self-effacing solution and moving toward people, by adopting an aggressive or expansive solution and moving against people, or by becoming detached or resigned and moving away from people. Healthy people move appropriately and flexibly in all three directions, but in neurotic development these moves become compulsive and indiscriminate. Each solution involves a constellation of behavior patterns and personality traits, a conception of justice, and a set of beliefs about human nature, human values, and the human condition. Each also involves a "deal" or bargain with fate in which obedience to the dictates of that solution is supposed to be rewarded.

I would only add that while healthy people are able to behave in all three ways (compliant, expansive, detached) as circumstances require, one can be psychologically healthy and favor one of the interpersonal strategies over the other two. Those of us who resonate to the Stoic teaching are most likely to favor the detachment strategy and move away from people when their bad behavior erupts, by either minimizing one's contact with them, or cutting them off entirely.  I have done both. Pre-emptive measures are also to be considered. We were invited to Christmas dinner and to a New Year's Eve party, get-togethers in both cases organized by my wife's friends. I told the wife  I would attend one event but not both.  I thereby limited the threat to my apatheia and ataraxia.

Finally, having just revealed myself as an introvert and an advocate of detachment (better: non-attachment), I now say to my reader that he should consider who is now giving him advice and factor that in when considering how much of it he should take.

Post-finally, here is a short video clip from Tombstone in which the bad behavior of Johnny Ringo is excused by Curly Bill on the ground that it is the booze in Johnny that is talking.  The relevance to my reader's problem is obvious.

Political Parsimony

Do not multiply enemies beyond necessity.

William of Ockham: Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.

William of Alhambra: Inimici non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.

Enemies are worse than friends are good. The enmity of the enemy is more to be feared than the friendship of the friend is to be desired. But show me a man with no enemies, and I'll show you a man with no character. We of the Coalition of the Sane and the Reasonable are distinguished by our enemies, in two senses of 'distinguish':  we are set apart from them and we are set above them.  A man is judged by the nature of his enemies — and by the nature of his friends.

How Many Friends Have You Lost Over Politics?

I have lost about a half dozen. How about you? I am interested in your stories, but even more in your analysis.

Austin Ruse bemoans friendships lost. His piece ends:

Maybe my friend is right. Maybe we can’t be friends right now, maybe never. For me, though, that would be unspeakably sad. Message to my old pal: my door is always open. 

Unspeakably sad? I see things differently. People who lost their minds over Trump, people too stupid to see past the man's obnoxious style and credit his ideas and numerous positive accomplishments; people who refused to see Biden for what he is, a fraud, a phony, a brazen liar, an empty suit rooted in no principle, morally corrupt, physically feeble, and non compos mentis; people who donned useless masks out of ovine fear, people who went along, to get along, with wokery and trans-delusionality and the celebration of thugs and criminals and every manner of loser -- such people were never worthy of my friendship in the first place. They were false friends from the start and I am glad circumstances made them show their true colors.  Good riddance!

Some say Trump is the Great Divider. Nonsense. He is the Great Clarifier.

Friendships Superficially Satisfying

Top o' the Stack 

Best Friend, Worst Enemy

In your practical life, be your own best friend; in your spiritual and intellectual life, your own worst enemy.

Why We Get Along

I'm reasonable; she's sweet and agreeable.

Enemies Have Their Uses

You may do your level best to hide your faults and defects, but others will expose them. Even if they do so maliciously they perform a service to those who are open to correction. An enemy is sometimes to be preferred to a friend in tacit collusion with one's moral complacency.

Of Friendship and Expiry

Some friendships have expiration dates, typically in very fine print illegible to the eager eyes of the newly enamored.

Friendships

Some are of propinquity, others of affinity. The best are both.

Superficial Acquaintances

We need them, but we need to keep them superficial. Two reasons. First, if you try to go deep with the superficial, you will only frustrate yourself. Second, superficial relations hide faults and  allow for idealization.  Ignorance aids admiration.

I Introduce Two New Friends to the Superstition Mountains

One of the great boons of blogging is that the blogger attracts the like-minded.  Below are two medical doctors I had the great pleasure of spending the day with in a satisfying break from my Bradleyan reclusivity. Dave K. found me via this weblog and initiated correspondence, so I knew he would be simpatico. I didn't know about his wife, Barbara C. , but she turned out also to be a member of the Coalition of the Sane, a Trump supporter, and one charming lady of Italian extraction.

Born of Propinquity, Dead of Distance

Most friendships are born of propinquity and die the death of distance.

Why is Friendship So Fragile among Intellectuals?

A certain commie and I were friends for a time in graduate school, but friendship is fragile among those for whom ideas matter. Unlike the ordinary non-intellectual person, the intellectual lives for and sometimes from ideas.  They are his oxygen and sometimes his bread and butter.  He takes them very seriously indeed and with them differences in ideas.  So the tendency is for one intellectual to view an ideologically divergent intellectual as not merely holding incorrect views but as being morally defective in so doing.

Why?  Because ideas matter to the intellectual.  They matter in the way doctrines and dogmas mattered to old-time religionists.  If one's eternal  happiness is at stake, it matters infinitely whether one 'gets it right' doctrinally. If there is no salvation outside the church, you'd better belong to the right church.   It matters so much that one may feel entirely justified in forcing the heterodox to recant 'for their own good.'  You will recall that Galileo Galilei was shown the instruments of torture by the functionaries of the Inquisition.

The typical intellectual nowadays is a secularist who believes in nothing that transcends the human horizon. But he takes into his secularism that old-time fervor, that old-time zeal to suppress dissent and punish apostates.  It is called political correctness.

And as you have heard me say more than once: P.C. comes from the C. P. 

...............

The above is excerpted from a longer entry, A Red-Diaper Baby I Once Knew: Anecdotes Illustrating Leftist Illusions.

A certain commie and I were friends for a time in graduate school, but friendship is fragile among those for whom ideas matter. Unlike the ordinary non-intellectual person, the intellectual lives for and sometimes from ideas.  They are his oxygen and sometimes his bread and butter.  He takes them very seriously indeed and with them differences in ideas.  So the tendency is for one intellectual to view an ideologically divergent intellectual as not merely holding incorrect views but as being morally defective in so doing.

Why?  Because ideas matter to the intellectual.  They matter in the way doctrines and dogmas mattered to old-time religionists.  If one's eternal  happiness is at stake, it matters infinitely whether one 'gets it right' doctrinally. If there is no salvation outside the church, you'd better belong to the right church.   It matters so much that one may feel entirely justified in forcing the heterodox to recant 'for their own good.'  You will recall that Galileo Galilei was shown the instruments of torture by the functionaries of the Inquisition.

The typical intellectual nowadays is a secularist who believes in nothing that transcends the human horizon. But he takes into his secularism that old-time fervor, that old-time zeal to suppress dissent and punish apostates.  It is called political correctness.

And as you have heard me say more than once: P.C. comes from the C. P. 

...............

The above is excerpted from a longer entry, A Red-Diaper Baby I Once Knew: Anecdotes Illustrating Leftist Illusions.

Distance Permits Idealization

Propinquity diminishes what distance augments. Among friends, mutual respect is better served by distance than by close contact. Distance permits idealization. Is it an unalloyed good? No, inasmuch as idealization typically falsifies. But falsification in a world that runs on appearances can be life-enhancing. One skilled in the art of life knows how to apply 'cosmetics' to the ugly faces of people and things. One so skilled even knows how to play cosmetologist to the cosmos and put a pretty face on the the whole kit and kaboodle.

Prandial and Post-Prandial Pleasures

With Brian B. and Mike V. at Los Locos Gringos, my favorite local Mexican eatery. There is nothing better than a good meal and good conversation with like-minded friends. After Mike sped away on his iron horse, Brian and I spent the rest of the afternoon playing chess at Gecko Espresso. Mike, on the right, is one sharp-dressed man these days. Me? I am still of the '60s sartorially speaking. 

 

 

 

 

 

The Trump Friendship Criterion

If you are still friends with X after November 2016, X is a true friend. If not, not.

Trump has proven to be quite the catalyst of clarification. Preternatural is his power to cause people and parties to show their true colors.

Friendship and Enmity

One difference between the two is that friendship is mutual: A and B are not friends unless A is B's friend, and B is A's.  Not so with enmity. It suffices for A and B to be enemies that just one party be the enemy of the other.

Friendships Superficially Satisfying

I had known him for years. Our friendship was an acquaintanceship that remained on the surface. Never having gone deep, it never drifted toward the hazards the deep waters hide: the differences that most truly define and distinguish us, but also oppose us to others. And so when he died I could not bring to mind a false word, a sarcastic expression, a competitive tension, or a joke that hid a jab. Not one unpleasant memory sullied my recollection.

Such superficial friendships are perhaps perfect for an imperfect world in which there is more of seeming than of being. We do well to value the surfaces in a world of surfaces.  The surfaces are sure; the depths are dubious. On life's surface those who meant little but brighten memory count for more than those who meant more but haunt and disturb from a past their presence makes dark.