I have the right kind of education to pass among the wealthy, if I wanted to do so enough to dress and act the part. I was trying to decide why I don't want to, not only not for the occasion but not in general. I think it's normal to aspire to rise in social class, or to maintain the highest one you could aspire to join.
When I was young I spent the last two years of high school at a private school because the public school told my parents they couldn't challenge me, and my parents took that seriously enough to find a school that could. It was my first exposure to many things, including both wealth and serious education. I took to the latter, pursuing it as far as it goes. I turned out not to be interested in the former. I met some very nice wealthy people, at least one of whom took an interest in me and wanted to encourage me to go into something lucrative like stocks or finance. He even bought me a subscription to the Wall Street Journal so I would begin to learn about the language and thinking of that world. I had forgotten about that until just now.
In the end, I appreciate the education far more than is common, but the class that can afford the time to become educated not so much. I enjoy erudite discussions with fellows, but the wealthy never join volunteer fire departments. What I find there is not people who have read Kant, Aristotle, or even Plato; I can't have the same sort of conversations with them. They are, however, the ones who are living the Aristotelian virtues.
This reminds me of what Marcus Aurelius said: "Waste no more time arguing what a good man should be. Be one."
Ultimately that is the fruit of the tree of philosophy, and frankly one rarely finds it among philosophers -- or, at least, among those highly educated in philosophy. One finds curiosity, kindness, insight, alert minds and often a sharp sense of humor. I like them; I enjoy them. Nevertheless, I spend my time among the people who have never read those books and among whom I never mention them because I wouldn't want them to feel alienated from my company. They are the ones who work a full day, even a twelve-hour shift, and then get up in the middle of the night or go off and spend a day of their weekend because an alert goes out that someone is in need -- and they do it for free, just because it is the right thing to do.
They could have learned that from Aristotle, but they did not. Somehow they learned it from the parts of the culture that no longer remember having even been informed by him and the other great thinkers and traditions of the West, but which retain the lessons truly. Those who have spent more time with the books have only rarely achieved Marcus Aurelius' distinction.
Philosophy has many fields beyond ethics, beyond moral philosophy in general. Still and all, somehow that chiefest lesson is one that rarely conveys into the practice that Aristotle rightly identifies as the real nature of virtue.
4 comments:
I had a mixed background as well, though I think we were somewhat reversed. I spent some time poor, but more among the rising, though not the wealthy. That only started happening to the family as I was leaving it.
I worked low-status jobs for a decade and not much better for the two decades after that. We didn't need much and I was fanatic about time with the children because of my own parents' divorce. I mixed with all groups at work because I liked them all, with the possible exception of the advocacy lawyers and top administrators from out of the building. For socialising at home, it was people from church, with strong emphasis on people who were focused on childraising and education. Varied status and income.
It's still varied, though I think the science and engineering guys outnumber the others. Sort of back where I started in highschool, really.
Gives rise to the thought that right/wrong is imprinted on man from conception, no Aristotle needed, just like the Church says.....
Aristotle thought he was describing reality, so in a sense of course you'd expect anyone describing reality accurately to be capturing the same thing; no one particular descriptor should be necessary, although some might be more thorough than others.
In another way, though, it's very difficult at this point to disentangle what the Church teaches from Aristotle. You could do a Protestant-style 'back to the Bible' approach, but Catholic theology was fully and consciously braided with Aristotelian thinking by St. Thomas Aquinas and others. You might say that the major project of the Summa Theologiae was to re-explain Christianity in Aristotelian terms.
Somehow I suspect that those who bridge the divide usually do like to spend time with the non-elites more than the elites. Certainly I do, Raised upper middle class, but in a mixed with lower middle class upbringing (church, public school), and son of first-to-go-to-college parents, who I think felt similarly (I should ask them). I suspect this is at least partly because we know just how much most of the 'elites' are faking it most of the time.
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