Freeform Monday

Shit, I missed it! I had a lot going on Sunday and Monday and let this slip. I’ve had some very obnoxious family in town, and some I don’t know if I’ll ever see again….

Sometimes in life, we have relationships that are far from ideal, granted those ideals are self-defined, and I’ve always wondered if there is an ethical obligation, albeit weak at best, to maintain these connections. I actually learned the answer to that very early in life through my parents’ abuse; to this day, we don’t speak.

I’m going to keep the rumination on this topic short for Freeform Monday because I’m going to start a more long-winded essay on the ethics of interaction. For this, I’m going to keep it to practical advice on how I believe a moral and virtuous person should navigate interpersonal relations.

Determine Your Feelings Confidently & w/o Bias

This simply falls under understanding yourself, very typical advice. Where it should be taken a step further than traditional, trite Dove chocolate wrappers is to take a minute to think about Seneca: “We suffer more often in imagination than in reality,” and try to remove your own self from the understanding of yourself. You are an imperfect creature with only partial knowledge at the best of times; undergoing an examination of your internal beliefs and external reality and reconciling the two halves, I have often found, gives me confidence that my beliefs & feelings do or don’t match reality.

Commit To Being Wrong

We can all be wrong, we all have failings, none of us are perfect, and, most of all, you are not better than anyone else. In life, you must commit to living in a wrong manner, that is, understanding that you are likely wrong the vast majority of the time. You’ll go the wrong way, you’ll eat the wrong things, you’ll say the wrong words; to quote the greatest American president, “The only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything.”

This is doubly true in the world of social relations because everyone can be and will be wrong. Does an ant have the mind to insult you over a misunderstanding? No. Can you, however, take undue issue with someone for the way they looked at you from across the room? Yes. Commit to that yes and examine yourself on equal footing.

Drive Straight to The Answer

Maybe this is my Ukrainian ancestors talking through me: don’t take a lazy, winding road when the highway is right there. Lazy drives are nice for warm summer days and cool breezes, but they’re odious at best when the rain starts to fall and the sky becomes as gray as slate.

When something serious occurs, you need to be brave and comfortable with being uncomfortable; whoever you’re interacting with deserves that. They don’t deserve to get dragged along on your tour of the forests and mountains because you can’t stand to see a clouded sky. They deserve to be given clear directions and brought to their destination. You’re not a pleasure cruise; for some trips, you’re an Uber X.

Acknowledge w/o Compromise

You don’t owe anyone a relationship; you don’t owe them attention. What you do owe people is common decency and an acknowledgment of their person. It’s so easy nowadays, when the world is packed to the brim and we can isolate ourselves in a busy room, to just let people fade in and out without ever paying any mind to who they are.

To be a virtuous person, you must resist that temptation and instead hold yourself to account. Don’t create unnecessary suffering for other people merely to protect your own comfort, ego, or preferred image of yourself. If you’re not in danger or being harassed, you can give someone the decency and directness of saying yes or no. Be firm in that answer.

Keep Clean Buckets

Aristotle talked about three types of friends (utility, pleasure, and complete), and it is important to reject a blurred delineation of any of these relationships. You, as a virtuous person, must understand how each of your relations fits into this type of structure.

I’m not saying to bogart Aristotle’s ideas, but instead to use them as a mold to define your own system of categorization for relationships. What needs to be avoided is letting others live under the presumption that they exist in one category for you when their real placement is somewhere else. That turns into using them.

Letting someone live under the delusion that the relationship is two-sided or predicated on different conditions than reality dictates is abuse, and you are not behaving in a moral manner by practicing that manner of relation.

Keep Few but Accept Many

My dad used to say you listen to a thousand books to hear one speak. That’s true in relations, probably even more true than in his somewhat shallow book example. The old adage that if you don’t try, you’ll never succeed is true. I think when you’re young, you think, “Well, duh, stupid,” but when you get older and trying becomes harder, it becomes more and more important to remember.

In this regard, give everyone a chance, maybe give ’em two. There are obvious exceptions, like Kanye or Asmongold, but most people are good people and love to tell you who they are and feel seen. Give ’em a chance, but be honest about who really aligns with your life. Don’t throw them away when you’re done; place them back with care and dust off their heads.

In conclusion, those are my most important pieces of advice. I’ll write something longer on the ethics of interpersonal interaction, but until then,

Ciao