Ingenuity and Iniquity

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/24/how-creativity-connects_n_1450099.html?ref=religion&ir=Religion

Of the things one could connect to dishonesty, the characteristic of being creative is probably the last we’d even consider.  A study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology suggests that people who require more creativity in their jobs are more likely to engage in underhanded behavior at work. It’s commonly harmless or at least mitigated compared to tax fraud or such things, but the idea is that those with a tendency to be inventive also can find ways to justify their behavior. This is, however, highly correlation based. There are plenty of creative people who most likely don’t behave like this and many who aren’t creative that do. The inverse may be the case: doing immoral things may lead to more creative thinking in the future by virtue of going outside expected norms and laws. This could be a good thing, but the potential abuse still remains. If being creative is a quality of any person, the more they have, there is a higher chance they may have a habit of being unethical, even if it’s simple things like skimping on a tip.  These two relations pose a question of how our ethical behavior is related to creativity and vice versa. Are we ethical because we lack creativity or do we become more creative by breaking ethical norms?

Ethics could conceivably emerge from our ignoring creativity and seeing what is predictable and what is practical, benefitting the whole instead of the parts. This is not to say we can’t appreciate innovation, but it still has to be within boundaries of some sorts. Art schools won’t let a student just go anywhere with their ventures, especially when religion or politics are concerned. If you go too far with them, you’re threatening stability and offending people. While the former might be grounds for genuine ethical concerns, the latter is guaranteed with any endeavor in the arts or just in conversations. Someone will find your opinions unbelievable and strive to change your ways. So ethics, in this theory, serve as a safeguard against people breaking out of the limitations society implicitly places upon the arts, so as not to disrupt order. Of course there is the possibility that this isn’t ethics so much as tradition, norms and mores, all of which are prone to be shattered in one way or another and a common perspective is that these don’t really hurt the common good, since they aren’t automatically galvanizing people to action, but bringing things to the surface that were once hidden. In that sense, creativity and ethics can coexist in this model, which is hopefully what can be accomplished with the other.

Creativity may emerge from ignoring the mundane and seeing things in a new light, breaking down boundaries and limits we put on ourselves. In this context, creativity is more beneficial than ethics, at least in the sense that new things can aid us with time and experimentation. Of course with any such novelty, especially scientific discoveries, one should be careful, which is applying a sort of ethics to the process. But to prohibit new ideas because they threaten a status quo or the like under the guise of ethics or morals is where such things as censorship arise from. This is where creativity is good, but like ethics before, there is the potential for abuse in creativity for its own sake instead of benefitting society with discoveries in medicine, or even mere aesthetic appreciation in the arts. But to have some kind of message behind our creations is important as well even if it is simply observing something already presented by others. To put a new spin on it is where imagination can bring new vigor and awe to life that we became accustomed to. Those that are abnormal can many times have a view on things that is not damaging, but actually edifying and building us up more by bringing together so many myriad vantages and resulting impressions. This is not to say there isn’t a point where we cut off the genius from the insane, of course. But the potential for creativity’s abuse should not make us stifle it entirely for the sake of security either.

Creativity and ethics can coexist, but it remains difficult to focus entirely on one or the other without recognizing a need for both depending on context and circumstance. Being creative might be a way people justify their otherwise unethical actions or it might simply be a consequence of the imagination going wild and people motivated by their ingenuity to go outside the norm, which doesn’t always equal being immoral, but heterodox at best. Creativity has potential for corruption, but is not evil in itself. Ethics benefit us, as well as possessing potential for excess or deficit as with any good thing. And immorality is sometimes only judged as such, but is not necessarily evil at all, but merely pushing boundaries beyond stiff and resistant traditions and normalcy. Fundamentally, equity and moderation are necessary to maintaining a cohesive and dynamic whole person, which includes both being civil to other human beings, but also realizing that you can’t please everyone and someone at sometime is going to be offended by you and there’s nothing that can be done except move forward. Until next time, Namaste and aloha.

Moderate Beliefs Lead To Moderate Practice

http://themiddleway.net/?p=230

http://www.teosofia.com/midway.html

http://www.buddhanet.net/cbp2_f4.htm

http://thedailyenlightenment.com/2011/09/the-middle-path-between-nihilism-eternalism/

In Buddhism, one of the teachings most important to the praxis aspect of the system, the Latin word we get the term practice from, from meditation to mindfulness, is the Middle Path/Way. One’s initial instinct is to interpret it as total neutrality, which then leads to monastic isolation. But this isn’t the case, even if such practices still flourish in Buddhist countries and can be an edifying event even for laypeople to occasionally engage with devotees in. The middle path is most often characterized as Buddha’s advice to steer between asceticism’s self mortification of the body and hedonism’s disregard for self control in favor of pure sensual pleasure. But a better, more practical, way to explain it is the principle of balance and harmony between extremes. One shouldn’t be absolutely nonresistant pacifist, for instance, since it leads to unnecessary pain and suffering as well as death in some cases; but one shouldn’t be a strong martialist either, for this can lead to unnecessary violence and habits resulting from it in non combat situations. A mediation between the two is possible with the commonly associated training in martial arts, but only for the means of self defense or defense of others without excessive force. I’ll enumerate some examples in detail and then explain how it relates to the topic I’ll delve into in the next few weeks, the Eightfold Path.

Another important median the Middle Path advises is that intersecting nihilism and eternalism. Nihilism in this case refers to metaphysics, saying that everything is annihilated at its end. Eternalism, by its very name, gives us the contrasting idea that things are eternal in nature and persist on after death. Neither of these is technically true, though they have kernels of truth within each of them. Things are never permanent, that much is true, but there is always a sort of persistence in spite of the changing nature. Energy remains energy in one form or another, and matter remains matter, so to speak. A median point is the teaching of dependent origination, which I spoke about in “Neither Determinism Nor Destiny”. To summarize again, it is the idea that all things are dependent on other preceding or antecedent causes. While this could cause a philosophical issue of infinite regress, it is of practical benefit to focus on those things that can be observed and considered with reason as opposed to things that serve to stifle or stop thought entirely for servitude of the mind, e.g. a creator or afterlife. With belief in dependent origination, there is no need to reject evolution, for example. It is also complimentary to philosophical and scientific thought in general. Gautama advocated critical thinking, as evidenced by this quote attributed to him; “Do not believe in anything simply because you have heard it. Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many. Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders. Do not believe in traditions because they have been handed down for many generations. But after observation and analysis, when you find that anything agrees with reason and is conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then accept it and live up to it,” The middle path conforms with Aristotle’s Golden Mean, which said that the best state of virtue was between excess and deficiency. Confucius also taught something similar as well in his Analects, but was only hinted at and was interpreted later.

Another important dichotomy I’ve talked about is the wavering between wisdom and compassion, in “Heart and Mind, Loveand Wisdom”. If you focus entirely on love, you neglect the use of your reason and rational faculties. But if you only care about wisdom in an intellectual or knowledge based sense, you miss out on the fulfilling relationships with people that not only enrich your life, but give you understanding of others that can improve your wisdom in its own way. They are intertwined, in a sense, so this is both a matter of balance and synthesis, which Hegel advocated in his philosophy of dialectics. Albeit there are technical differences between the modern understanding and Hegel’s own writings on it, the similarities are intriguing. You have internal contradictions of any concept, in the same way that there is a sort of absurdity of our existence leading to our nonexistence. These are the thesis and antithesis aspects of the formula.  So to solve the absurdity, we posit that, instead of being or nothing, we are becoming. Herein lies the synthesis of the two previous counteracting forces. With love and wisdom, both of them in excess or deficiency is defective to our humanity, so we must moderate them and meld them together instead of concentrating entirely on one while neglecting the other.

A few pairs that I can’t elaborate on as much, since I’d run out of space quickly, are the conventional and absolute truths, which I discussed in “Two Truths, One Path” as well as the religious and secular, detailed in no small part by “A Synthesis of Sacredand Secular”. There are so many more of these relationships I could talk about, like sophia and phronesis, the physical and mental, leisure and business, the list goes on for a mile. The point remains that the middle path is central to Buddhism in a way that the Eightfold Path is as well, but for different reasons. The 8 different areas of life it confronts are divided further into three areas of wisdom, ethics and concentration. But they all affect one another in different manners, not unlike the dual sided perspective we commonly take every day. Think of the Eightfold Path topic as going into the triangular perspective we also utilize.

Fundamentally, the middle path is a balance between extreme views and seeking to be as objective as possible, acknowledging the relative nature of things, but also absolute qualities within the transient universe. To practice the middle way is something done over a lifetime and is only maintained through disciplined practice without being overly strict. It is a paradox, not a contradiction. It appears to collapse upon itself, but can be reconciled by a particular approach that takes things as they come, but also understands things in a past and future sense. It’s definitely not an easy thing to achieve, but an ideal that is workable in a gradient sense as opposed to simply having it or not having it entirely. Until next time, Namaste and aloha.