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Citizens of the Republic,
A fourteen-hour workday turns into a seventy-hour work week. The coffee has long since turned cold, but we are still drinking it. No exercise. No downtime. Microwave dinners. Family time negligible – to nonexistent. Wondering if we will ever have time to find a partner? Wondering if our partner is going to leave us – because let’s be frank, we never have time for them. Vacation time is nonexistent. Quality of life, nil.
Burnout ensues. The house of cards collapses and then we are left with a shell of our former selves.
Sound familiar? Many of us have been there. Particularly in a society, which is out of balance with itself.
In my last blog post in this series, Part I Virtue: Let’s Find Balance, we discussed that for Aristotle, virtue is a mean condition/an intermediate condition between excess and deficiency (between two opposites) and discussed how eating too much, or eating too little, both had negative health consequences. Please, see my disclaimer on professional advice.
Yet to understand this model of virtue further, there are three things that we need to bear in mind:
- We can live in an extreme and fail to recognize it. Going back to our prior example on the seventy-hour workweek – plenty of us have done it. Plenty of us have worked longer hours than that. We know we can do it. In fact, we have done it for weeks, possibly months. We get used to living in that condition, we get used to operating in that extreme. But it isn’t sustainable in the long run – which I believe for Aristotle goes back to his definition of virtue, as a mean condition, between excess and deficiency. We cannot live in excess for the rest of our lives, the toll it takes on us, on our family, on our society, becomes too much. Until at last, the house of cards collapses.
- The only way to recognize that you are living in an extreme is to do a comparative analysis. I like to call this the ice cream model. Imagine a town where there is only one ice cream parlor, and it sells only one flavor. It may work for us; it satisfies our need for ice cream. But at the end of the day is it the best flavor? To answer that we need to try other flavors. In our prior example, it is like working in a toxic work culture. If that is all you know, then what else is there? To get ourselves to the point that we recognize that it is unhealthy, we must do a comparative analysis. There are two ways to achieve this: (a) Firsthand knowledge (trying different ice cream flavors), and (b) secondhand knowledge, educating ourselves about different models (learning about different flavors). In sum, ask your friends in different industries about their work-life, or read up on different industries to get a fresh perspective regarding the industry that you are working in.
- The polar extremes, shame those in the middle ground (those who are seeking the mean, the intermediate condition) to be more like them. This is something I encountered as a litigation attorney, and it goes something like this: “You need to put in a twelve-hour workday to show us that you really want this job.” “You can’t take a vacation because hardworking attorneys don’t do that.” Sound familiar? Those who live in an extreme environment try to shame those who are seeking an intermediate condition, to be more like them. As Aristotle discusses in book III, of the Ethics, the cowards will tell those in the intermediate condition that they are too brave, whilst the reckless, or rash, will tell those in the intermediate condition, that they are cowards: “…so the extreme characters push away, so to speak, towards each other the man in the mean state; the brave man is called a rash man by the coward, and a coward by the rash man, and in the other cases accordingly.” See, Aristotle, The Nicomachean Ethics, Book II, Chapter VIII. In sum, those on the polar opposite ends of the spectrum will try to shame those people who are in the middle, to be more like them.
Overall, Aristotle’s view of virtue, of finding this intermediate condition (for long-term health and sustainability) begins with us:
(a) Recognizing that we might be operating in an extreme state,
(b) Doing a comparative analysis to confirm that, and
(c) Recognizing that those on the extremes will try to shame us into becoming more like them.
Only by plotting the human experience along a spectrum between excess and deficiency, can we find the elusive middle-ground, the intermediate condition.
If you are interested in learning more about Aristotle’s definition of virtue, and how it can be used to reframe the conversation on polarization, so that we, as a society can find balance (i.e., a healthy state of being), please check out my talking points on the subject: “Taking on Polarization: Moderately.”
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