temperance
tem·per·ance
Moderation or restraint in action, thought, or feeling.
Welcome to Mount Temperance.
At the foot lay the pits of unexamined excess, where the directionless grasp at our ankles to stop us from climbing. Media goads us into tribal cesspools seething with frustration. Advertisers urge us that our sense of self-worth will be satiated if we just purchase this next socially desirable product. The internet constantly bathes us in comfort, our brief gasps for air between videogames or reality shows interrupted by endless feeding troughs of social media reels and decadent food deliveries.
Seen from below, the peak of Mount Temperance hides behind clouds of excess, and finding motivation can be tough when we don’t know where to go. Sometimes clouds drift in from our environment; we’re drawn to the excessive and extreme. Other times they come from within, simply because we’d prefer not to be temperate—refraining from hatred, arrogance, and indulgence sucks.
But indulgence, hatred, and arrogance suck the potential out of a pleasant and harmonious future. Despite being restrictive, temperance allows us to escape the valleys of destructive hatred, alienating arrogance, and myopic hedonic pleasure. Restraint can set us free.
And so, today we’ll be journeying towards the peak of Mount Temperance. The trek ahead will be difficult, requiring us to don the gentle fabrics of love and tap into our warm reservoirs of courage. During our adventure, prudence will protect against hedonic pleasure; forgiveness will protect against hatred; and humility will protect against pride and arrogance. As we ascend, we’ll leave behind the heavy clouds of excess to reveal the breathtaking view of what life truly has to offer.
I’ll be your Sherpa from here on out. Come along, let’s climb.
Prudence
Look Forth
For the world says: ‘You have needs, therefore satisfy them…Do not be afraid to satisfy them, but even increase them’—this is the current teaching of the world. And in this they see freedom. But what comes of this right to increase one’s needs? For the rich, isolation and spiritual suicide; for the poor, envy and murder. — Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1880
Prudence gets a bad rap these days. When we think of prudence, our mind understandably drifts to images of a prude, a term that (ironically) describes someone who is excessively modest. Or we’ll think of prudent behavior strictly in the financial sense, picturing an emotionally reserved investor responsibly allocating his funds for long-term growth. But prudence applies to far more than just the domain of economics. As we’ll discover, it applies to life as a whole.
The roots of prudence trace back to the Aristotelian ethic of phronesis (practical wisdom), which Thomas Aquinas later referred to as prudentia (farsightedness). Phronesis involves a type of judgment that expands our perspective forth, bringing us to consider the well-being of the relationships we may expect to develop along life’s journey. Aristotle thus considered phronesis a bridging virtue, requiring a mix of intellect and morality.
The prudent, as conceptualized by Aristotle and Aquinas, are considered to possess a rich sense of foresight coupled with a desire for what is good. Importantly, the purview of prudence is intended to apply to life as a whole, not merely economic contexts. By fostering foresight, we inevitably nurture a relationship with our future. The more intimate that relationship, the less likely we are to harm it by falling prey to frivolous desire.
Like other Aristotelian virtues, prudence strives for the mean: balance between extremes. One imprudent extreme involves the familiar impulsiveness: rash and myopic behavior that neglects future consequences. Examples of impulsiveness are endless, from indulging in calorie-rich fast foods to stimulus-rich online content.
At the less familiar extreme lies compulsiveness, marked by behavior too rigidly rule-governed to adapt to a changing environment. Examples of compulsiveness are more subtle. Instead of mindless attraction, compulsiveness manifests more as mindless avoidance. For instance, those who compulsively sanitize themselves and their surroundings due to fear of germs rob their immune systems of the resilience developed from mild germ exposure, ironically making them more vulnerable to that which they fear. Or consider perfectionism, a compulsive procrastination tactic that hides behind the veil of getting things just right.
So, both impulsion and compulsion can produce lastingly sub-optimal ways of being. They can also co-exist. Think of the urge we sometimes have to hole up instead of attending a gathering. Rigid compulsion leads us to avoid the discomfort in straying from familiar habit; loose impulsion lures us into the comfort brought by vegging out on the couch and being spoon-fed information. However, by doing so we nourish ourselves at the expense of our relationships, and relationships are what will be there for us in times of need.
Alright, so prudence strikes balance between flexibility and moderation. Flexibility to escape the rigidity of compulsive adherence to ossifying rules; moderation to temper the chaos that unravels downstream from impulsiveness.
Speaking of which, balance characterizes the last requisite of prudence. Notably, the aims and aspirations to which we work towards must cohere, co-exist, and harmonize, requiring careful consideration of the trade-offs contained within the pieces we wish to fit in our futures.
Take the following example. Say we exercise prudence by deciding to stick it out at an excessively demanding job, but to cope with the stress we develop a slow-drip-dependence on inhaled nicotine or comfort foods.
We may rationalize these dependencies, telling ourselves it allows us to support those we love and our future with them. Depending on context this could be reasonable. But, rolling the clock forward, smoking leads to lung disease and regular consumption of comfort foods lead to cardiovascular disease. On the one hand, we and our loved ones may be financially taken care of. Again, this could be enough.
On the other hand, by coping with the present we burden our future, a burden that places preventable strain on ourselves and our relationships. When we’re unable be present and aware of what we truly love because we’re too busy gasping for breath after years of personal neglect, we’ll tragically fall short of the future which we dream of.
So, take stock of everything you do. Consolidate it. View it as an organic system, like a body. Do you know where this body is taking you? Do you know where you’d truly like to go? Is it equipped to take you there? Are there parts weighing you down that can be discarded or replaced? Is it flexible enough to adapt and durable enough to hold itself together?
Look forth and find out.
Forgiveness and Mercy
Let go
Forgive them father, for they know not what they do. — Jesus Christ, 0BC
Socrates once said, “There is only one good, knowledge, and only one evil, ignorance.”
What does this have to do with forgiveness?
Well, this Athenian philosopher seemed to believe that amathia (ignorance, dis-knowledge, un-wisdom) lies at the root of evil. Amathia can vary in degree, from confused and clumsy thought to false values and beliefs sown by bad upbringing and education. Meaning, we can exhibit intelligent stupidity, possessing specialized intellect while being generally foolish. Amathia is this general ignorance.
Anyway, the point is that blame is misguided when placed on perpetrators themselves. What we should really be blaming is ignorance, and fortunately ignorance has a cure: gnosis (knowledge). Epictetus believe that “if one shows this [knowledge], a man will retire from his error of himself; but as long as you do not succeed in showing this, you need not wonder if he persists in his error, for he acts because he has an impression that he is right.”1
Moving on to the Abrahamic traditions, followers of Judaism forgive because God forgives them and demands they do the same for their transgressors; though, given their traumatic history, forgiveness is only obligatory if their transgressors repent. Christianity follows suit, however, without forgiveness depending on repentance. Christians take a page out of the Athenian book by implying that transgressors can be ignorant of the harm they cause, receiving particular emphasis by being Jesus’ final words on the cross. Islam emphasizes forgiveness so that Allah might forgive followers for their own sins, and, although retaliation is permitted if proportional to the harm caused by the transgressor (also known as qisas), forgiveness and mercy earn considerably more theological attention.
Shifting to the East, Buddhist tradition celebrates forbearance and compassion. Forbearance relinquishes resentment and compassion transforms anger into tenderness. Buddha claimed anger was like an arrow with a “poisoned root and honeyed tip,” implying that, sure, anger feels good in the moment, but it leads to long-term rot and regression. Instead, he urges us to do the unthinkable when our blood is boiling: be kind and forgive. The Eastern concept of karma also encourages forgiveness; holding on to resentment and hatred may cause one to be viewed resentfully and hatefully in the future. In Hindu traditions, karma is of likewise relevance alongside other divine rituals that familiarize followers with forgiveness. Varuna, the guardian of moral law, forgives those who humbly admit their sins. And Vishnu's wife, Lakshmi, plays an intermediary role to those asking Vishnu for forgiveness, even in the absence of repentance.
Okay, wow, forgiveness receives quite the traditional endorsement. But…why? Why should we forgive?
It may be better to approach this question by rephrasing it.
Why shouldn’t we hate?
“Those unable to forgive can be found anywhere that sustained hatred simmers.”2 And once our blood boils it becomes exceptionally difficult to turn down the heat. The resentful ruminate, a habit that drains the wells of forgiveness. When we ruminate, we attach ourselves to an internal drama divorced from reality. Lacking a vent, our dramas feed off themselves to produce ever-formidable foes for whom forgiveness becomes unthinkable.
We inflate what we hate. We pity those who have it worse—hating them would be pathetic. It’s more virtuous and impressive to hate a formidable foe. We pity the beggar who asks for money on the street; we hate the greedy executive who exploits his workers.
But the formidability we prescribe to our foes implies a subtle admiration; those we hate often have some impressive privilege which we wouldn’t mind having. We don’t want to be the beggar, but we wouldn’t mind having the executive’s fancy car. We therefore mold ourselves in the image of our hated oppressors. The same occurs to groups as well. Soviet Russia hates capitalism; becomes a capitalist monopoly. Some social group viciously fights against close-minded discrimination; ends up exclusive, close-minded, and discriminatory.
Alright, so hatred doesn’t really lead us to a promised land. Instead, it goads us into perpetual cycles of degeneracy. Hatred no bueno. Then, why can’t we seem to shake it off?
Hatred often stems from a “desperate effort to suppress an awareness of our inadequacy, worthlessness, guilt, and other shortcomings of the self.”3 The moment we grasp onto the illusion that the “unforgivable” are deserving of hatred and unworthy of love, it’s incredibly difficult to relax our grip. To forgive would mean opening the door to self-contempt for hating someone unworthy of hatred, and self-contempt is exactly what we’re trying to escape. Yikes.
Furthermore, hatred thrives and forgiveness dies when transgressions are perceived to be severe and intentional. Judgment of severity is vulnerable to the beforementioned inflation. Victimhood, for instance, predicates itself upon the inflation of severity of oppression. Nevertheless, some transgressions are undeniably harmful. We don’t always lie to ourselves about severity.
But we always lie to ourselves about intention.
Let me backpedal a bit. Clearly there seem to exist varying degrees of intention; forgetting to do the dishes is different than making the conscious decision not to even when we should. It’s thus sensible to delineate between the two, the latter prompting more concern.
But let us recall the advice from the Athenians (“one evil, amathia”), Jesus (“for they know not what they do”), and Buddha (“ignorance leads to suffering”). This theme seems to suggest that harmful behavior doesn’t arise due to deliberate enactment of evil; it arises out of stupidity. Under this lens, what separates forgetful omission from deliberate act is the depth of entrenchment of stupidity. Consider this response from Hannah Arendt, a Jewish-German philosopher who (fortunately) managed to flee Nazi Germany, when asked to comment on the atrocious behavior of a Nazi official comparing starving Russian prisoners of war to cattle:
[He] was perfectly intelligent, but in this respect he had this sort of stupidity. It was this stupidity that was so outrageous… There’s nothing deep about it [the ignorance] — nothing demonic! There’s simply the reluctance ever to imagine what the other person is experiencing, correct?4
So, sure, forgetfulness and deliberateness prompt correspondingly different responses: more entrenched stupidity requires more intensive weeding. But importantly, blame needn’t be placed on some innate evil. Recall the dishwashing example. On the one hand it’s forgetfulness. On the other hand, it’s blinding pride that renders transgressors unable to embody the consequences of their actions (we’ll unpack pride in a moment). Sure, they may be conscious of their fault, cognitively empathizing to cleverly predict the emotional responses their actions provoke. But they lack embodied empathy. This emotional ignorance means simply can’t feel the consequences, for if they truly did, they would have refrained. Either way the transgressor is simply acting with an absence of information.
This perspective allows us to melt away the suffocating illusions of evil that embalm forgiveness. The formidable foes once conjured fizzle into what they truly are: babbling idiots. This may sound patronizing but remember that we are all vulnerable to ignorance. Importantly, when these illusions dissipate our admiration dwindles, making us less likely to imitate the stupidity that fuels our inadequacy that fuels our hatred that fuels our stupidity that fuels our inadequacy and so on and so forth. Our hatred towards others (and ourselves) dissolves into pity, revealing the potential for reconciliation and progress.
The deeper the depths of perceived intentionality of harm, the further forgiveness drowns. Conveniently, these perceptions are deep towards Them and shallow towards Us. We must have misbehaved by accident; excusable. They must have misbehaved on purpose; unforgivable! Evil is shorthand for misbehavior on purpose, but misbehavior never occurs on purpose. Misbehavior is produced by ignorance; therefore, ignorance is to blame. And we can forgive ourselves for being dumb.
Let us all recognize the value of forgiveness. Forgiving isn’t weak; it takes much more strength to forgive than to continue stewing in hatred. Do the difficult thing!
Let go.
Humility
No, Seriously, Let Go
Humility is the most difficult of all virtues to achieve; nothing dies harder than the desire to think well of oneself. — T. S. Eliot, 1927
While hatred yields a readiness to give excessive blame to someone for their transgressions, pride yields a readiness to take excessive credit for our successes. We saw that the seeds of hatred are fertilized by ignorance. As we’ll discover, ignorance emerges from the slime of pride.
Preliminary concession: life wouldn’t exist without pride. Inherent in the act of consuming another organism, plant or animal, is the implication that consumer feels more deserving of life than prey. Same goes for the prey evading consumption, “Don’t eat me! I’m more deserving of these calories and nutrients than you are.”
To thrive, organisms need pride. Life is a competition, and prevailing in this tournament requires competitors to feel more deserving of the rewards. And so, stronger groups of cells will attempt to exploit weaker groups of cells; weaker groups of cells will attempt to evade exploitation. Foxes will chase hares; hares will evade foxes.
Concession aside, we’ll henceforth be discussing pride in the messy spheres of human relevance, while keeping in mind that temperance is about moderating against excess, not eliminating.
Okay, moving on.
Like hatred, pride receives considerable traditional attention. Traditions are akin to adaptive social technologies, and those preserved until present will likely have been those who have discovered how to tame the pride of their constituents. Pride generates communal strain; those who are quick to take undue credit nourish personal gain at the expense of the group and breed collective resentment. Social stability depends on the cooling effects of within-group humility.
Consider Christianity, where pride stands at the forefront of the seven deadly sins and, depending on the tradition, is viewed as the source of all sin. I am greedy when I feel more deserving of charity; wrathful when I feel more deserving of kindness; lazy when I feel more deserving of rest. Senses of entitlement towards energetic and material resources, sexual resources, and social resources lead to the respective sins of gluttony, lust, and envy. A sense of “I am more important” undergirds all sin.
Pride inflates the self, which Buddhists suggest is an illusion. Buddhist philosophy sees the world as continuous: no thing exists separate from other things and everything is always changing. A tree is in constant exchange with energy from the sun, gases from the atmosphere, water from rain, and soil from earth. It is also in constant exchange with past and future. When do the surroundings become the tree? When does the tree become its surroundings? Are they separable?
Without its surroundings, there would be no tree. And, like the tree, the self is in constant exchange with its spatial and temporal surroundings. Without these surroundings, there would be no self. We can then ask ourselves, if the self utterly depends on its surroundings, can it exist separate from them? And if there’s no boundary separating the self from its surroundings, doesn’t the self just melt away and simply become…everything?
Okay, mind-bending Buddhist philosophy aside, even if you don’t bite on the illusion of the self claim, pride certainly has a self-inflating and divisive aspect to it. The larger the inflation, the less likely we are to acknowledge the supporting cast (family, friends, society, food, water, sun, etc.) that produced our achievements. Self-inflation deflates gratitude. In reaction to some wonderful achievement, “Things are, how great is that?” turns into “We did that, how great are we?” turns into “I did that, how great am I?” The smaller the scope of consideration, the more outrageous the error.
So, what?
Well, errors imply stupidity, and stupidity produces misery.
Every conflict on this planet sprouts from the soil of ingratitude, within which lay feelings that one side deserves more than the other side. Recall the discussion on prudence: imprudence manifests as a feeling that present you is more deserving of pleasure than future you (& co.). Recall the previous section: choosing not to do the dishes stems from you feeling more deserving of relaxation than do your housemates; an unwillingness to forgive stems from a feeling that we deserve more pity than the transgressors.
Excessive entitlement manifests as narcissism, an addiction to the self that narrows focus and neglects the bigger picture. Narcissists live in states of perpetual vigilance while desperately clinging to their sole sense of purpose: themselves. Since they worship themselves, anything that threatens self-esteem demands divine retribution. Narcissists thus waste away in inadequacy, tragically unable to acknowledge deficiencies while being psychologically and emotionally exhausted by the constant need to defend self-image from threat.
Unfortunately, belonging to a group doesn’t spare us from hubris. In fact, submitting oneself to a larger whole offers the potential to relinquish responsibility, giving freedom to “hate, bully, lie, and torture without shame or remorse.”5 Canadian residential schools provide a recent example, wherein spiritually bankrupt nuns would torture and indoctrinate indigenous children on behalf of “God” while intoxicated by religious pride. Let us remind ourselves that these nuns are worthy of our forgiveness. They weren’t evil; they were ignorant.
Addictions to the self manifest hierarchically, meaning groups can be narcissistic too. In the case of the residential schools, the Catholic church and the Canadian public overstepped, even if they meant well, because they couldn’t see past their pride. These ignorant decisions produced needless misery. This example is one of many. Every social conflict is borne from hubris. Local pride, and thus restricted humility, produces global ignorance.
Humility needs room to breathe. More room makes us seem small, so letting go of pride is intimidating. However, doing so makes more room for others, deepening the reservoirs of meaning we can draw from. Living in sole service to oneself is shallow and miserable; living in service to others is profound and fulfilling. What were once puddles grow into oceans of meaning. And meaning is what makes life worth living.
The antidote to pride and ignorance is humility: a willingness to acknowledge things beyond yourself. We’re only aware of what we allow ourselves to see. As hubris (selfish love) transforms into agape (boundless love), more information becomes available to us. Information is the raw material of gnosis (knowledge) and sophia (wisdom), thus humility reveals the building blocks needed to transcend amathia (general ignorance).
Speaking of which, knowledge and wisdom form the next consilient virtue of the series. As opposed to temperance, intelligence sticks out as an obvious virtue, seemingly defining what it means to be alive. Next, we’ll explore the strengths that nourish our nervous systems: creativity, curiosity, open-mindedness, love of learning, and perspective. Stay tuned.
Discourses, II.26, Epictetus
Character strengths and virtues: A handbook and classification, Christopher Peterson and Martin E. P. Seligman, Strengths of Temperance
The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements. Eric Hoffer, 1951, Chapter 14: Unifying Agents, Hatred.
Hannah Arendt: The Last Interview: And Other Conversations (The Last Interview Series), Hannah Arendt
The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements. Eric Hoffer, 1951, Chapter 14: Unifying Agents, Hatred.