Oak Boat: So why do we need this crap? Well, according to Dewitt T. Stame’s introduction to the Proverbs or Adages of Erasmus, proverbs and maxims (and maybe adyanta) are useful in four ways:
(1) to promote the understanding of philosophy, (2) to strengthen argument, (3) to add ornament and gracefulness in speech and writing, and (4) to clarify the meaning of some of the best authors.
And Stame also warns: “Erasmus cautions, however, that proverbs serve not as food but as condiments. They are not to be employed to weariness but for gracefulness.” [1]
Newt Monk: The world has too many condiments these days; it’s choice anxiety that will bring us asunder.
Oak Boat: Well, it’s always a good idea to remember that tent stakes are not condiments.
Newt Monk: Welp. And after Erasmus came Montesquieu:
With regard to mores, much is to be gained by keeping the old customs. Since corrupt peoples rarely do great things and have established few societies, founded few towns, and given few laws; and since, on the contrary, those with simple and austere mores have made most establishments, recalling men to the old maxims usually returns them to virtue. [2]
Oak Boat: Welp. And after Montesquieu came Rousseau (echoing ancient Solon):
The more you multiply laws, the more you cause them to be despised: and all the overseers you institute are nothing but new lawbreakers bound either to share [their bounty] with the old ones, or to do their plundering on their own. [3]
Newt Monk: Welp. And before them all was Emperor Aurelius, telling us, and telling himself, that: “You will never be remarkable for quick-wittedness.” [4]
Oak Boat: Welp. And before Aurelius came Confucius, telling us, and telling himself, that: “The superior man wishes to be slow in his speech and earnest in his conduct.”[5]
Newt Monk: Welp. And before Confucius came the end of the Third Age, where in the Red Book of Westmarch readers of this age are told that what we want to call a maxim (but can’t), and that thing that might be something between a catena and an adyanta, might once have been called a riddle. For:
In one thing you have not changed, dear friend,’ said Aragorn: ‘you still speak in riddles.’
‘What? In riddles?’ said Gandalf. ‘No! For I was talking aloud to myself. A habit of the old: they choose the wisest person present to speak to; the long explanations needed by the young are wearying.’ He laughed, but the sound now seemed warm and kindly as a gleam of sunshine.[6]
NOTES
[1] Dewitt T. Starnes, “Introduction,” Proverbs or Adages by Desiderius Erasmus Gathered Out of the Chiliades and Englished (1569) by Richard Taverner, (Gainesville, FL: Scholars Facsimile & Reprints, 1956), pp. viii, x.
[2] Baron de la Brède et de Montesquieu, De l’esprit des Loix (The Spirit of the Laws) (1748), trans. and eds. Anne Cohler, Basia C. Miller and Harold S. Stone, (Cambridge UP, 1989), (V, 7), p. 49.
[3] Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discours sur l’oeconomie politique (Discourse on Political Economy) (1755) in Rousseau: The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings, ed. and trans. Victor Gourevitch, (Cambridge UP, 1997, 2003), p. 14.
[4] Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, trans. Maxwell Staniforth, (New York: Penguin, 1962), (V, v).
[5] 孔子 Kong Fuzi (Confucius), 論語 (Analects) in The Complete Confucius, (ed.) Nicholas Tamblyn, trans. Tamblyn (?), (Melbourne: Golding Books, 2016), (IV), p. 11.
[6] J. R. R. Tolkien, “The White Rider,” The Two Towers in The Lord of the Rings, (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1954–55; 50th Anniversary Edition, 2004), (III, v), p. 496.
So, just horsing around, not really meaning anything by it, I told myself I was tired of old lessons from old books—lessons most people never followed anyway, which is why we are where we are now, right? Still, I told myself:
The Perfect is not the enemy of the Good.
But seeking the Perfect may lead one to bypass the Good. One bypasses the forest in search of the perfect tree. How many good books have been passed over in search of the Perfect Book?
Give me the imperfect. If the Tower of Pisa were plumb, its remarkability and marketability would diminish to some great degree.
At some point, the pursuit of the Perfect requires tunnel-vision. It requires putting up unnatural barriers to blind one from so-called distractions, digressions, and other sundry paths one fancies. For the winning horse always wears blinders, and always stays in its designated lane.
Yes, if one is hyper-focused on an object or goal, one may feel lots of feelings while focusing––but, in that moment of focus, one will always be too busy focusing to instead take the time to reflect on those feelings which occur while one is focusing.
So one shouldn’t look for a perfect trip to Europe. A good trip can be good enough. For there is no perfect plan for a good trip. Why, just yesterday didn’t 孫子兵法 (Sun Tzu) (~544 BC–495 BC) warn against the totalitarianism of perfect planning? Didn’t he say:
When the front is prepared, the rear is lacking, and when the rear is prepared the front is lacking. Preparedness on the left means lack on the right, preparedness on the right means lack on the left. Preparedness everywhere means lack everywhere.
(孫子兵法 (The Art of War)(c. ~500 BC), trans. Thomas Cleary, (Boston: Shambhala, 1988),“VI. Emptiness and Fullness,” p. 108)
Nor can I write the perfect novel; though I would like to write a good one. I can’t play the perfect song on guitar, but I will try to continue to go farther in my playing than from where I’ve been before. I will try to remember that 孔子 (Kong Fuzi a.k.a. Confucius) (~551BC–479BC) wasn’t that interested in perfection:
The Master seldom spoke on profit, on the orderings of Providence [divination?], and on perfection.
(論語 (Analects) (475 BC–220 AD) in The Analects: or, the Conversations of Confucius with His Disciples and Certain Others, trans. William Edward Soothill, (Oxford UP, 1910; 1955), (IX, i), p. 80)
(“Think Again!” Harvard Magazine 4 (April 1858), [pp. 100–105] in The Writings of Charles S. Peirce: a Chronological Edition. Vol. I: 1857–1866, (Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP, 1982), p. 24)
Still, can such proverbs be rendered into protocols? Who dares to maximize the maxims of the past? Was Don Quixote the only one who dared to not only read and recite dichos, but actually apply them? Is this what 老子 (Lao Tzu/Laozi) meant by:
The way to use life is to do nothing through acting, The way to use life is to do everything through being.
(道德经 Tao Teh Ching (The Way of Life) (c. ~500 BC), trans. Witter Bynner, (New York: Putnam, 1944; Perigee 1986) XXXVII, p. 64)
PART II. SOME INGREDIENTS FOR PREPARING TO COUNTER PERFECTIONISM; or,
Truth may perhaps come to the price of a pearl, that sheweth best by day; but it will not rise to the price of a diamond or carbuncle, that sheweth best in varied lights. A mixture of a lie doth ever add pleasure.
Doth any man doubt, that if there were taken out of men’s minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations, imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds of a number of men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves?
(“Of Truth,” Essays or Counsels Civil and Moral (1625) in Essays, ed. Brian Vickers, (New York: Oxford UP, 1999), p. 3)
I have always believed that scientific research is another domain where a form of optimism is essential to success:
I have yet to meet a successful scientist who lacks the ability to exaggerate the importance of what he or she is doing, and I believe that someone who lacks a delusional sense of significance will wilt in the fact of repeated experiences of multiple small failures and rare successes, the fate of most researchers….
(Daniel Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow, (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2011), p. 264)
*****
You should know that correcting your intuitions may complicate your life.
A characteristic of unbiased predictions is that they permit the prediction of rare or extreme events only when the information is very good.
If you expect your predictions to be of modest validity you will never guess an outcome that is either rare or far from the mean.
If your predictions are unbiased, you will never have the satisfying experience of correctly calling an extreme case.
You will never be able to say, “I thought so!” when your best student in law school becomes a Supreme Court justice, or when a start-up that you thought very promising eventually becomes a major commercial success.
Given the limitations of the evidence, you will never predict that an outstanding high school student will be a straight-A student at Princeton.
For the same reason, a venture capitalist will never be told that the probability of success for a start-up in its early stages is “very high.”
No conclusive disproof of a theory can ever be produced; for it is always possible to say that the experimental results are not reliable, or that the discrepancies which are asserted to exist between the experimental results and the theory are only apparent and that they will disappear with the advance of our understanding.
(In the struggle against Einstein, both these arguments were often used in support of Newtonian mechanics, and similar arguments abound in the field of the social sciences.)
If you insist on strict proof (or strict disproof) in the empirical sciences, you will never benefit from experience, and never learn from it how wrong you are.)
(“Scientific Method,” (1934), Popper Selections, ed. David Miler, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1985), p. 137)
Scientific theories are accepted as useful hypotheses to suggest further research, and as having some element of truth in virtue of which they are able to colligate existing observations; but no sensible person regards them as immutably perfect.
(“Philosophy and Politics,” Unpopular Essays, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1950, 1969), p. 18)
