U NCOMMON V IRTUES #2: A RISTOTELIAN F RIENDSHIP

THE FRIENDSHIP OF YOUNG PEOPLE

 "...the friendship of young people seems to aim at pleasure; for they live under the guidance of emotion, and pursue above all what is pleasant to themselves and what is immediately before them; but with increasing age their pleasures become different. This is why they quickly become friends and quickly cease to be so; their friendship changes with the object that is found pleasant, and such pleasure alters quickly.”  – Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
 
***
 
AN OASIS IN A DIGITAL-ERA DESERT
 
Finding Aristotle, for me, was like finding a cool and clear oasis in the desert – when on the verge of dying of thirst.
 
The type of writing in the ascent in America is so much trivia; at the high end of society, you have detailed investigations of… nothing. Of trivia. The most banal, useless, pointless stuff is teased apart and put together with fancy and flourishing prose.
 
The poorer elements of society get a different type of writing: whereas the rich and educated are fed banal distraction, the poor are force-fed shovelfuls of nonsense; miracle cures, miracle ways to earn money without any skill developed or value created; “achieve XYZ Big Thing in just 10 minutes!”
 
It would be riotously entertaining – if were not so tragic.
 
But gradually, if you dig deep into humanity’s archives, you can find clear and lucid thought – pointed straight at the heart of what’s most important.
 
Aristotle is not the only thought of this type, but he is probably the most wide-ranging.
 
***
 
AN IMPORTANT QUESTION
 
Have you ever sat and asked yourself, “What is friendship?”
 
Why not?
 
Clearly, choosing who we share our lives with is one of the most important questions.
 
You don’t get to choose your parents. You have only some say on choosing who your children turn out to be. You can choose your work colleagues, and should choose them well, but it’s likely your work will often demand mixing in with certain people regardless of your views of them.
 
But your friends – these are perhaps the most important thing to choose in all of life. These become the people you go to for counsel and guidance, who you share your triumphs with, how you plan to overcome your struggles, and – if you’ve chosen well – the people that salve your wounds after bitterest defeats.
 
More importantly, you’ll become like them, inadvertently, inheriting the ways they talk about and see the world. The people you choose as your friends have one of the largest bearings on how your entire life on this planet turns out.
 
Friendship is one of the highest of virtues for me – when I think about everything that we can choose in life to celebrate or disdain, what we can live for or against, I think living celebrated friendships with admirable people is paramount.
 
If you get this one aspect of life right, cultivating excellent friendships with excellent friends, being an excellent friend – just about every other aspect of life improves.
 
It’s really important.
 
So I ask again – have you ever sat and asked yourself, “What is friendship?”
 
***
 
UNCOMMON VIRTUES #2: ARISTOTELIAN FRIENDSHIP
 
We led with the most fundamental of virtues, Mere Competence . Competence – in this day and age, such an unheralded but critical thing.
 
Let us turn our attention, now, to friendship. Specifically,
 
1. We’ll discuss the three origins of friendship Aristotle identified in Nicomachean Ethics.

2. We’ll discuss the current understanding of friendship in modern American culture. (I find it, unfortunately, to be in a very sorry state of affairs.)

3. We’ll explore how to make better friends, be better friends, bring out the best in our friends, and encourage them to bring out the best in ourselves.
 
***
 
FRIENDSHIPS BASED ON PLEASURE
 
Aristotle identified two types of friendship that are largely inferior to the highest type of friendship: friendships based on pleasure and friendships based on advantage.
 
Come back to our opening excerpt from Aristotle:
 
"...the friendship of young people seems to aim at pleasure; for they live under the guidance of emotion, and pursue above all what is pleasant to themselves and what is immediately before them; but with increasing age their pleasures become different. This is why they quickly become friends and quickly cease to be so; their friendship changes with the object that is found pleasant, and such pleasure alters quickly.”
 
In this type of friendship, it is all about being entertaining, engaging, witty, charming, pleasurable. These are drinking companions, or carousing companions, or companions for dining at nice restaurants, and things of that nature.
 
Who doesn’t like pleasure? Pleasure is of course pleasurable.
 
But is an eminently unstable ground to build on.
 
Pleasures change. We get bored and tired of one form of entertainment. Friendships built on pleasure and enjoyment typically do not endure if one of the friends undergoes a major life transformation.
 
When I was younger, from age 17 to 19 or so, I had a friend who was a nice guy, but whom practically our entire relationship centered around drinking, playing video games, and eating junk food.
 
We played lots of Soul Caliber, NFL games (Blitz and Street), and sometimes co-op strategy games. We drank lovely fancy craft beer and ate lots of pizza and really decadent fancy glazed chicken wings.
 
Our friendship got stressed and strained when I started trying to eat healthier.
 
That sounds so silly and trivial, doesn’t it? And yet, that was one of the three pillars on which our friendship was based – we’d always order pizzas or chicken wings when we played games.
 
It was aggravating when I started eating healthier, because I still liked hanging out, but every time we hung out, I found myself eating like junk inadvertently. And when I tried not to, it seemed to dull the proceedings we had together. He was happy with his dietary choices (and luckily for him, his metabolism was such that he could eat immense amounts of junk food and not get pudgy). So if he was ordering a couple pizzas and I said, “Wait, just get a salad for me” – it was like ruining the buzz.
 
As my tastes changed and I became more achievement-oriented, there was no common ground left. I eventually quit drinking and largely quit video games – what did we have in common after that?
 
Nothing.
 
It had been pleasant to share drinks, games, and pizza together; in absence of that pleasure, nothing was left and our association was gone. I barely remember the time we were friends and barely remember him; writing this piece is the first time I’ve thought of him this decade.
 
Pleasurable shared activities can certainly be a bonus to a friendship – I’ll scubadive, shoot guns, or play board games with my friends these days, certainly – but it’s an inherently unstable basis for a friendship.
 
***
 
FRIENDSHIPS BASED ON ADVANTAGE
 
“Now those who love each other for their utility do not love each other for themselves but in virtue of some good which they get from each other. … [and] the useful is not permanent but is always changing.”
 
Due to the nature of the different fields I work in, I have acquaintances and friends across the political and religious spectrum, and I have acquaintances and friends who operate with very different levels of risk in their profession or business.
 
In material terms, I’ve seen people go up in the world very quickly, and I’ve seen people go down in the world very quickly.
 
While I wouldn’t have planned for my life to go this way if you gave me a choice, I think being 24 years old when the Financial Crash hit in 2008 resulted in some very useful lessons about human nature.
 
At that stage of my life, all my friends were older than me. It was… remarkable watching some of them get largely deserted by the majority of people they knew, once their power and prestige and wealth declined.
 
I don’t mean “remarkable” as a synonym for good or great; I mean, it’s worth remarking on.
 
Doing business transactionally is fine; sometimes you want to buy what someone is selling, and you’ll have no regard for them after that. This is fine and necessary at times to do.
 
Where you get into trouble is being mixed in with people who you think are your friends, but for whom the friendship is based on potential advantage.
 
As Aristotle says, what’s useful is not permanent and is always changing.
 
Thus, when I see a young person achieve an inordinate amount of success early, before having developed very solid friendships on firmer ground, I feel for them to some extent. They’ll now be surrounded by people who want the advantages, power, and prestige that comes with associating with them.

This can be very hard to ascertain, especially during glories and triumphs – the great unifier of Japan, Tokugawa Ieyasu, said: “After victory, tighten the straps on your helmet.”
 
But it’s hard to do; it’s easy to get lax and lose vigilance during successful times, and to assume everything will continue as-is. And it’s easy for people to associate with others who are very successful and can mutually help each other.
 
And yes, it’s easy to not see this is going on.
 
But very few positions of power or advantage are permanent; and with them, friendships based on advantage or power are impermanent.
 
***
 
ARISTOTLE’S PERFECT FRIENDSHIP
 
“Perfect friendship is the friendship of men who are good, and alike in virtue; for these wish well alike to each other qua good, and they are good themselves. Now those who wish well to their friends for their sake are most truly friends; for they do this by reason of own nature and not incidentally; therefore their friendship lasts as long as they are good-and goodness is an enduring thing.”
 
And that – that was an oasis in the desert for me. 
 
What is friendship?
 
Friendship, Aristotle’s perfect friendship, is loving and admiring what is good in another person, and having the feelings reciprocated.
 
This stands apart from pleasure and advantage; mutual genuine admiration of a person’s character is a much firmer ground to stand on.
 
***
 
ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT FRIENDSHIP IN MODERN AMERICA
 
When I listen to the talk and assumptions about friendship in modern America, I find the whole arrangement – sadly lacking.
 
You’ll no doubt have heard things like, “You should love your friends for their faults.” Or things along the lines of, “Yeah, he gets drunk and makes a mess of it sometimes, but he’s a good guy deep down.”
 
I perhaps underrated friendship when I was younger due to hearing statements like these and many similar variants.
 
On the surface of it, it doesn’t make sense.
 
“You should love your friends for their faults” – what?
 
What?
 
It doesn’t make sense.
 
Under that line of thinking, accepting someone as a friend of yours means accepting their flaws and inviting the defective aspects of their character and behavior into your life – and then, just abiding it.
 
This is not what I want from my friends, and not what I want my friends to want from me. To the extent I’m screwing up, I want my friends to help me correct the screw-ups.
 
It’s almost hard to write this line of thinking down, because it’s so obvious.
 
Why is it superior to be healthy than to be sick?
 
Because… it so obviously is, no? It can be surprisingly hard to argue in favor of things that are so obviously true.
 
Aristotle’s idea of perfect friendship is loving the virtue – both in character and behavior – of your friend, and vice-versa.
 
This gives us the opportunity to improve each other’s character and behavior over time… to learn from each other, to evolve together, to improve together.
 
I was happy to just dispatch with the idea of “loving someone for  their flaws” – this seemed just silly – but perhaps it bears more examination on where this comes from.
 
***
 
CONTRA SYMPATHY
 
And eventually it hit me – those prescriptions, to love someone for  their flaws, is prescribing acceptance  as a foundation for friendship; or, looked at differently, sympathy  as a foundation for friendship.
 
This seems incredibly defective.
 
Sympathy, to a large extent, presumes weakness and flaw.
 
If someone is excellent in every single way, there is no need for sympathy.
 
But likewise, if someone is on the path to excellence in every way, there is likewise no need for sympathy.
 
Empathy has its uses – “I can relate to where you’re at” – this is useful.
 
Sympathy is pity, it’s soothing, it attempts to make a person feel better for their defects – rather than correct those defects.
 
As I looked at it more closely, I came to realize that this is not a unique class of reason for friendship, friendship built on sympathy , but rather another form of friendship built on pleasure .
 
If someone loves you for your flaws, and then you correct your flaws, what happens to that love?
 
***
 
SYMPATHY AND OVERCOMING
 
Not to pick on any particular tradition, but merely to give you a jumping-off point if you want to do research – as far as I can tell, friendship-built-on-sympathy is post-Christian thought.
 
Christianity, which can be wonderful and I’m proud to be friends with a number of Christian friends and acquaintances – Christianity has a fundamental idea to it that we’re all sinners and flawed.
 
This isn’t a bad thing, by itself, because in traditional Christian thought, it could be overcome by becoming closer to God, either by cultivating faith (the Protestant interpretation) or by doing works (the Catholic interpretation), and otherwise working for one’s salvation. Both traditions emphasize community and doing exercises to become more godly and pious.
 
The premise that we’re flawed and sinners worked adequately in Christianity when combined with a vigor of fighting against that.
 
The post-Christian thought in America seems to have kept the premise that we’re flawed, but seems to have discarded the overcoming of flaw.
 
***
 
INTENT AND ACTION IN FRIENDSHIP
 
Aristotelian friendship – Aristotle’s “perfect friendship” – is built on virtue, recognizing virtue, and deepening friendship over time through action.
 
It’s hard to do; Aristotle says as much –
 
“But it is natural that such friendships should be infrequent; for such men are rare. Further, such friendship requires time and familiarity; as the proverb says, men cannot know each other till they have 'eaten salt together' ; nor can they admit each other to friendship or be friends till each has been found lovable and been trusted by each. Those who quickly show the marks of friendship to each other wish to be friends, but are not friends unless they both are lovable and know the fact; for a wish for friendship may arise quickly, but friendship does not.”
 
On my first reading, that line struck genuine awe in me –

“Men cannot know each other until they have ‘eaten salt together’.”
 
It resonated immediately – to build strong friendships and truly develop those high levels of resonance and magnificence, you need to endure shared trials, campaigns, and work together to do things worth doing.
 
***
 
GUIDANCE FOR PERFECT FRIENDSHIP
 
This all suggests a few very practical actions if you want to develop really wonderful friendships.
 
1. Update your search criteria for who you associate with to primarily be based on virtue and fantastic character and behavior in the people in your life.
 
2. Plan campaigns, projects, work towards improving the world and improving each other’s lives and character together with people you meet who you see initial sparks of virtue and want to get to know closer.
 
3. Be very careful about not accidentally building your friendships on purely pleasurable grounds; in fact, shared hardships for worthy causes tend to lead to more understanding of each other and stronger friendships than mere pleasure.
 
4. (most controversially) Discard sympathy. Ask for none of it and give none of it to your friends. Empathy – yes. Shared trials – yes. Support during hard times – yes. But desire for your friends to overcome their struggles, flaws, and challenges. Don’t love them for their flaws – desire for them to conquer and subjugate their flaws, for the greater good.

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Friendship is so very important – nothing would thrill me more as a writer than knowing that I got you to carefully thinking through what you want out of friendship, and who you associate with.

It starts there: thinking through it.

Next chapter, we'll get very deep into cause and effect and aim to become more far-sighted in life.