Skill is a Prerequisite to the Good Life
To exit our present stagnation we may need to swallow our pride and pursue some normative skills.
This is the third essay in a series spurred by the ideas of Mòzǐ, an under-appreciated Chinese philosopher from the period of the ‘100 schools of thought’ (诸子百家). You can read the first essay on the concept of “Promoting the worthy” here and the second on the need for universal care' here.
Zhì Túyú and Xiàn Zǐshuò asked of our master Mòzǐ, ‘In practicing righteousness, what is the greatest duty?’
Our master Mòzǐ said, ‘It is analogous to building an earthen wall. Those capable of building the frame, build; those capable of filing in the earth, fill it in; those capable of shovelling up the earth, shovel it; and then the wall is completed. Practicing righteousness is like this. Those capable of discussing and disputing, discuss and dispute; those capable of explaining documents, explain documents; those capable of undertaking tasks, undertake tasks; and then the work of righteousness is accomplished.
One of the themes that runs throughout the Mòzǐ is that right action and right outcomes are tightly coupled1. If you wish to have a well-ordered state you need well-ordered leaders and the best test of whether your leaders are well-ordered is how well-ordered your state is. In simple terms you could say that for Mòzǐ it is hard for a thing to be good if what it produces is not good2.
In this passage Mòzǐ argues, via the analogy of the craftsmen building a wall, that if we are to achieve the good the greatest responsibility for each person is to do what they are capable of. For every person there are certain things we can do well and others that we cannot. The best outcomes come when we can each practice our particular skills in concert with one another.
But, if we don’t have any skills to offer can we act in concert?
Aristotle deploys a similar analogy, albeit from a very different angle, to discuss the nature of what is good in the Nichomachean Ethics. For Aristotle every art has some good outcome that it is aimed at. Pottery aims to create a good pot, archery to shoot an arrow well and so forth. In this way each of the arts participates in seeking the good as such. The Ethics argues that by looking across the arts and virtues at the way the good is sought in each we will be able to learn how to live well in general.
But if we no longer have any skill in these arts is it possible for us to discover the good?
Modern Western societies are experiencing serious economic and cultural stagnation3. To the degree that these societies have for the last few hundred years represented the cutting edge of technological and social progress it is incumbent on all of us to try and find out why this might be the case, and what we might be able to do about it. It is not immediately obvious who will take up the mantle to continue the human path towards a brighter future. There is a real risk that this stagnation is the end state for everyone.
One of the theories for the cause of our predicament is that we have run out of ideas.
The more dismal version of this is that we have ‘plucked the low-hanging fruit’ of science, technology, and culture and there are no more ideas to be had. This seems unlikely. The world does not have a fixed amount of reality that simply needs to be circumscribed within a particular set of theories. The truth is that as our science and technology has developed the adjacent possible of new ideas has only grown.
Given this a more optimistic, but perhaps also more damning version of the “no new ideas” theory argues that we have become too rigid and authoritarian, stifling the ideas before they can form. This latter story often centres on how our institutions have abdicated their responsibility to cultivate new ideas in favour of gatekeeping a set of orthodox narratives.
There are aspects of this story that are compelling but overall I find myself skeptical of this view as well. Yes, it is true our these institutions have, especially in recent years, been ideologically captured by particular tribes. It is also true that there is a creeping authoritarianism in public discourse, especially on social media. However, at least for now, ideas - even ideas that are anathema to the most powerful groups in society - appear to still be able to flourish as evidenced by our constant condemnation of opposing groups for various flavours of wrong think.
Moreover, many of our problems really have nothing to do with whether we can find new ideas. It’s not because of a lack of global know-how that New York can’t build subways. Across the world many places are able to create new subway networks consistently and effectively. New York itself was able to build its first subways more than a hundred years ago.
My alternative hypothesis is that we are no longer developing the kind of skilfulness that is needed to progress. As we become incapable of doing what we, at least theoretically, already know how to do we also lose our ability to effectively explore the adjacent possible of what we could do.
Being capable of building a well-ordered society is hard. Our predecessors strived for generations to try and figure out how to do it. They made huge sacrifices in terms of what their lives could have been to make sure they maintained it. You cannot put two decades into learning how to effectively manage your city’s existing government if you are constantly looking into alternative forms of governance. Today we would prefer to question what is normative rather than develop the capabilities to actually do what is already normative.
Pablo Picasso grew up an artist. His father was a painter and a naturalist and began to train Picasso in the craft when he was 8 years old. By the time he was 15 he was painting realist masterpieces. By the time he was in his twenties he started making huge leaps that would transform the art world exploring scandalous themes, offering devastating critiques of war, and literally adding new dimensions to the canvas. In later years he would say that “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.”.
This statement is darker than it appears at first glance.
It was undoubtedly the case that the great skill that Picasso developed allowed him to profitably explore new avenues and expand the world of art and visual representation. It was also the case though that in his explorations he created a lot of junk.
Beginning in the mid-20th century there was a strand that developed in our culture that placed ‘innovation’ and ‘newness’ regardless of skill as one of the highest values. You can see this most clearly in things like post-modern architecture, modern music styles like dubstep, or art movements such as the Young British Artists whose members Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin express aim was to use “shock tactics” to make their art ‘different’.
Today it seems like this strand may have been cultivated for so long that there are parts of our culture that actually question the very notion of skilfulness as such. Developing the capabilities to actually do something is hard. Is it any wonder we’re stuck if we aren’t sure it’s even a good idea to try?
There is nothing beautiful or good about exploration for explorations sake. If you have real skill and have developed into a person capable of doing something then maybe, just maybe, through a little exploration you may come across something new and worthwhile. Getting there though is never easy.
It is rare indeed to have these needed skills as a teenager and for most people even if they dedicate a good portion of their life to it they will never develop it at all. Nonetheless, having real skills may be the only platform that will allow us to build a worthwhile kind of progress. If we want to escape the great stagnation we may need to swallow our pride and pursue some normative skills.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
Mood
This quality led Chris Fraser to dub the Mohists “The First Consequentialists”.
Do men gather grapes from thornbushes or figs from thistles? Even so, every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore by their fruits you will know them.
I am going to avoid laying out the arguments for stagnation here. If this is a new idea to you this essay is a good place to start. If the idea seems preposterous then review this data. If you want to push back on stagnation you need to be able to create a compelling argument about these stats that somehow paints a different picture. At the very least I can say that I personally am worried about this because even the ‘expert’ consensus is that the country I live in 🇨🇦 is set to stagnate in a big way even when it comes to simple topline numbers.
Wise words, thanks for sharing