Will Durant is a pleasure to read, and it has largely to do with the succinct way in which he expresses complex thoughts, be it in history or philosophy. In The Lessons of History (by him and Ariel Durant) I found this idea particularly thought provoking –
Very intuitively, I have always thought the ideas of freedom and equality as ends which are allied. But a bit more thought, and helped by the Durants’ arguments, and it is quite evident that they aren’t. This reminded me of something I’d written about five years ago on happiness vs peace of mind. (read the very interesting comments by Surekha on it)
On a relative scale, I feel happiness has a shorter shelf life than peace of mind. To put it another way, we expect the worldview, attitudes and behaviours that give us peace of mind to be more permanent than the things that give us happiness. To stretch it further, arguably happiness is based on change, and peace of mind on familiarity.
It’s probably because my work domain is marketing, and performance marketing is increasingly an unavoidable part of it, that I thought of this in the context of optimisation. I could optimise for happiness or optimise for avoidance of suffering. I cannot think of a meta outcome that can cover the optimisation of both simultaneously. When I observe my own life, I notice the trade offs, and it’s usually absolutes, just like freedom and equality.
Does an understanding that they are non parallel lines help me get closer to an intersection, or does it force me to optimise for one as the paths lead away from each other? Much as I admire the Buddha, I think a middle path is possible only if I see it as a series of individual points and not as lines. That is, live in the moment. I think that’s what he said too, and he also said that the path to do so is something each of us have to figure out ourselves. There is no spoon feeding! And what’s more, if I live in the moment, I cannot optimise because that would mean using the past to hypothesise future scenarios and courses of action. C’mon man! 😐