Better Living Through Reflections
How our snap judgments are ruining our happiness
Mind Candy is a newsletter on practical philosophy and human flourishment—aka how to live “the good life.” Each month we tackle a new theme.
This month we’re exploring the theme of happiness and flourishment.
Few of us ever stop ourselves from immediately applying a judgment to the events we encounter in life.
Much of our relationship to the world is based upon experiences passed down to us by those we most associate with, namely, our friends and family. Outside of their experiences, we ourselves have our own which, as our parents and friends, warp our perception of experiences.
But by taking a conscious effort to examine the judgments we’re making as we encounter experiences and instead work to understand how we react with the world based upon these assumptions, we’re not only better equipped to handle events that unfold, we set ourselves up for more happiness.
Historically, judgments were there as guides. Our fight-or-flight response kept us safe when away from our tribe and our ability to be skeptical of others helped ensure our survival.
But while judgments are still critical today, they’ve evolved and have been hijacked by our culture.
Today, we’re inundated with what it means to “live in today’s world.” We’re overly reliant on cultural-norms to guide our judgments. We’re told on television, shown in movies, and advertised to how the culture thinks we should act. In turn, we’re all copying and following different forms and styles of survival in today’s world but hardly stop to ask if they’re right for us, for our situation, for what we want out of life.
When we allow these external forces to tell us how we should respond, and when we ignore our own values, or worse, never give ourselves permission to explore what our own values are, we set ourselves up to be tossed around on the waves of life, and in turn, lose out on true happiness for ourselves.
Speaking of what it means to discover the true essence of something, the philosopher George Santayana once remarked that it is life’s rapid nature that forces us to run with it rather than stop and think about our own thoughts toward the thing or event.
“Living beings dwell in their expectations rather than their senses. If they are ever to see what they see, they must first in a manner stop living; they must suspend the will, as Schopenhauer put it; they must photograph the idea that is lying past, veiled in its very swiftness. This swiftness is not its own fault, but that of my haste and inattention; my hold is loose on it, as in a dream; or else perhaps those veils and that swiness are the truth of the picture…”
Santayana himself was inspired by the Ancient Greek skeptic Pyrrho who once remarked, “The chief good is the suspension of the judgment, which tranquility of mind follows like its shadow.”
Pyrrho, in a display of his beliefs of suspending judgment, once scolded fellow passengers of a boat as they were tossed about in a storm. Standing and pointing to a pig who was nearby eating, Pyrrho exclaimed,
"See there, that little pig? He goes on eating, no matter the conditions, with no sense of concern or suffering. This is the kind of freedom from worry that we should cultivate through philosophy, if we don't want to be disturbed by the things that happen to us. We should all take that pig's example, and act that way, too."
The first thing we do to change how we judge our experiences is to first and foremost question the experience itself. Socrates was famous for getting into debates with anyone who would talk. The gadfly, as he was known, sought to show people the illogical nature of their thought patterns so as to find the truth.
Next, we must work to suspend our ego and attempt to free ourselves from previously held assumptions. Allowing ourselves the ability to hold two opposing thoughts is how we allow those thoughts to fight it out and explain their case. The stronger judgment should find its home.
As Socrates once said, all he knew is that he knew nothing. Likewise, the philosopher Michel de Montaigne stated “I consider myself an average man except for the fact that I consider myself an average man.” Relinquish the ego and allow the ideas themselves to be the guide posts.
And finally, learning to focus on present experience at hand rather than previous experiences help us to suspend judgment in the moment.
“We have no way of knowing what's to come. In fact, we cannot really judge what's happening right now,” said Pyrrho, explaining to his fellow shipmates that rather than jump to conclusions about the storm they were in, they should stop and ask if it even is a storm. “Or is it just a gust of air and a spot of water, about to stop momentarily? Is this ship safe or in danger? Let us keep our passions in check, since we can never be certain!”
As Soren Kierkegaard pointed out, life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.
“It is really true what philosophy tells us, that life must be understood backwards. But with this, one forgets the second proposition, that it must be lived forwards. A proposition which, the more it is subjected to careful thought, the more it ends up concluding precisely that life at any given moment cannot really ever be fully understood; exactly because there is no single moment where time stops completely in order for me to take position [to do this]: going backwards.”
By withholding judgment and knee-jerk reactions to life, we better provide ourselves the ability to experience happiness. This in turn allows us to live emotionally resilient lives.
And it’s when we put thought behind how we’re living that we can in fact live thoughtful lives.
Before you go…
If you enjoyed the above article, you may be interested in the below one to continue your journey:
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Until next time,
D.A. DiGerolamo
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