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The more you interact with the upper-class, the more you perceive the majority of them, in spite of their apparent success, as struggling with their inner longing for the integrity of their character in order to have healthier and happier relationships with others. It happens because your career success is no guarantee that your co-workers, wife or children will appreciate and love you for what you are and not for what you apparently provide them.

In the 1960s, the Beatles have sung that ‘money can't buy you love;’ now upper-class psychologists and sociologists are following suit and sing that ‘money cannot buy you happiness.’

A study of college students from middle and upper income families, published by the American Psychological Association in the February 2001 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, concludes that money is the least desirable need on their priority list, materialization of which would supposedly make them happy and fulfilled persons. To that end, the overwhelming majority of students have believed they should make a priority list of their spiritual development as follows:
1) to learn how to be autonomous and competent (probably the reason why “Survivor” is a popular TV-show nowadays);
2) to acquire self-esteem and a sense of closeness with others (to be “compassionate” conservatives).

The least desirable factors that influence the realization of their happiness and well-being were popularity-influence and money-luxury. As K. Sheldon, a psychologist at the University of Missouri-Columbia and co-author of the study has put it:
"I like salary raises just as much as everybody, but I'm sure you can think of people [necessitated by family circumstances, VS] who have left fulfilling jobs to make more money somewhere else and regretted it". Sheldon adds: "People who value money, beauty and popularity more so than they value intimacy, growth and community contribution really look [among the upper-class snobs, VS] a lot less mentally healthy and are a lot more unhappy [from the point of view of those snobs, VS]. If you are really broke [financially, VS] and do not have what you need, then you should take care of that. But a lot of us [snobs, VS], we keep looking for more and more when we really already have enough and it should be more meaningful."

Before we continue to analyze the study of college students, we should define the distinction between the psychology of character and the psychology of personality: the former is based on studying ethics, and the latter – on studying aesthetics.

The word ‘ethic’ derives from Greek ‘ethos’ – character, custom, disposition, or trait. The word ‘ethnic’ derives from Greek ‘ethnos’ – a community of people, united on certain ideals and moral values, and living together for several generations. The word ‘aesthetic’ derives from Greek ‘aisthetikos’ -- a sense of perception. Ordered and legalized, an aesthetic often becomes etiquette.

Ethics is a moral philosophy, or a religion, or a system of moral values, or a stiff set of principles of right conduct. A communistic ethic stresses the service of an individual to the desires and economical interests of the majority of a community, while an individualistic ethic accentuates his service to his own desires and long run interests.

On the other hand, aesthetic is a good taste or a loose set of principles pertaining to beauty and style. The psychology of personality bet on a premise that an individual should first serve his own desires and short run interests.

An aesthetic rule draws upon one or two of our five senses, while an ethic rule draws upon the experience of all our senses. Ethics differs from aesthetics in the same manner as the content of a thing differs from its form; and as the form of a thing reflects its content, so does an aesthetic. The latter always reflects its underlying ethic, which, in its turn, permeates its aesthetic, even if the latter seemingly has nothing to do with the former. We usually feel or sense something aesthetically appealing, while we ponder or reason upon its ethical implications.

Do not get me wrong that aesthetic or personality is not important. A shell and a white are protective and nourishing parts of an egg, and as such, they are very important to a would-be chick while it is in its embryonic stage. However, after this relatively short period of the possible life span of a would-be chicken, the value of those parts diminish to zero and a fresh life bursts asunder the now worthless husk.

You can draw upon your personality or your vague aesthetic feelings while you are young, but you must work out your character, your certain ethic that is congruent with the ethic of the majority of your social class, in order to become a spiritually mature adult and citizen. Ethics breeds character, aesthetic – personality.

Many teenagers of the upper and middle class families keenly feel the hypocrisy of their previous generations and emptiness of their notions of “success” and “happiness”. Therefore, they try to do ‘what the elders say, not what they do’. However, having only the vague aesthetic rules or a personality, not yet settled into a certain ethical system and into a character, their rebellion often finishes in drug-abuse and sexual promiscuity. They often take Walter Scott’s sarcasm that, “One hour of life, crowded to the full with glorious action… is worth whole years of those mean observances of paltry decorum,” for its nominal value. However, such extreme moments in the life of an individual, when his ethic and character can shine to its utmost, are very rare, and even rarer in the life of a nation. The more the ethic of the majority of a nation approaches to the ethic of its middle-class, middle-income people, the less revolutions that nation has and happier it is.

As you have probably already noticed, the problems in studying the "subjective" character, which draws upon an objective ethic, led the psychologists of the past century to fixate their gaze on the "objective" personality, which draws upon the subjective aesthetics. And as you might remember, the word ‘personality’ derives from Latin ‘per sonar’ that means ‘through sound’ -- as an actor had sounded from behind a mask of a character in an ancient Roman theater. The misbalanced studying of human psyche is still going on American soil with the preference of shallow and husky personality over deep and juicy character. It continues because such “researches” are payable by the upper class, the long-lasting interest of which is to camouflage the real relations between social classes and the real characters behind the superficial personalities, because “it is easier to fish in murky waters”. That is why the majority of the modern psychologists are still snake-oil merchants and quacks who tend to follow the vast majority of the writers of the previous centuries, who, though they were concentrating their attention on studying a character, yet did not discern it as rigidly dependable on the social role or status its owner had. Neither Confucius and Plato nor Nietzsche and Freud discerned a person’s character or ethic as rigidly dependable on the social class of that person.

Those writers were rather synthetic than analytic sociologists; but without prior correct analysis and sorting out the apples by their size and quality, they could not yet synthesize the correct social theory. That is why they mixed up into an unmanageable pile of soul knowledge the upper-class character and its underlying ethic of integrity, fidelity, and courage with the middle-class ideals of simplicity, modesty, judiciousness, industriousness, and moderation, and with the lower-class inspirations of humility, patience, and compassion.

The modern searchers of the knowledge of the soul perceived that pile of knowledge as unmanageable, thus resolving to gather a new pile, which soon became equally unmanageable because they accentuated the personality, the public image of an individual, dismissing his social class allegiance. The modern psychology of personality stresses behaviors, attitudes, techniques, and skills that only lubricate and nourish the social interaction but are not the characters of a certain social class, which are the yolk of that interaction. That is why its precepts of positive mental attitude (PMA) look like stale clichés, such as ‘your altitude depends on your attitude,’ where the modern psychologists consciously omitted two words ('social' and 'political'), thus castrating their seemingly right precept. However, in fact, as individuals, we are what we are as the social beings by what we do for living, not by what we try to mask as our inability to comply with the survival requirement of a particular social class. By in large, the precepts of the personality psychology are incompatible with the ethic of a particular social class because they were designed to deceive and manipulate the members of other genders, ages, and social classes in the process of the survival of the fittest.

My study of perception led me to experience the difference between what I know as the definite truth (which I have got with the milk of my mother and through comparing the words and deeds of surrounding me people during forty some years) and what I only subconsciously feel as an indefinite and unidentified truth. I am not suggesting that you should throw a child out with the dirty water. Such techniques of personality psychology as training of the basic communicative skill and PMA can be beneficial in the student stage of your life, but may become useless and even harmful to you when your profession de foi, your credo of faith or ethic became definite and you are mature enough for the real citizenry. When you know your limitations and have already worked out your character, your ethic, in a snap of a finger you will understand to whom it is relevant when your guru, your political leader preaches a new “decency standard”.

Going back to the observation of the above-mentioned study of the college students, I should say that surveyors quizzed hundreds of students in the United States and South Korea, looking for their most satisfying and unsatisfying college experiences. Consequently, Sheldon reported that, "There weren't many money experiences listed, but the few students who did list those… we asked about the moods when they had them; and the moods tended to be less positive." Thus, the surveyors concluded that the most satisfying experiences of students stemmed from fulfillment of their basic four needs of autonomy, competence, relatedness (compassion), and self-esteem and the most unsatisfying experiences corresponded to the lack of those needs. Popularity-influence and money-luxury were at the bottom of the list of necessities; and health, security, meaning and pleasure were ranked mid-way between the primary and secondary needs.

However, the problem with this sort of surveys is that most of them tend to study the average colleges with the population that nearly utterly came from the middle class. I would bet 95 bucks against your 5 that if such a survey would be done in a community college, the results would be reversed – money and popularity would prevail over privacy and compassion.

Sheldon reports that self-esteem was the paramount of needs among the surveyed American students, and relatedness was the paramount of needs among the Koreans. Again, I would bet 95 bucks against your 5 that the majority of the surveyed Americans came from the middle class and the majority of the surveyed Korean students came from the upper class who already have money, influence, and security, but lack self-esteem and compassion.

Sheldon claims that past studies, which have shown that while the upper-class Americans have been getting richer in recent decades, their emotional well-being has not improved, and that wealthier people generally are no happier as a group than the less well-off, also support his conclusion. He also claims that an October 1997 survey may support his idea that people need fulfillment from sources other than money, although he did not specify what the social status of those “people”. Sheldon also cited along with Nancy Bunn, spokeswoman for Burke Incorporated of Cincinnati, the contractor that conducted the March 1998 survey, published in the American Demographics magazine. That survey found that 42 percent of Americans would keep their current job even if they won at least $10 million in the lottery, and this percentage was even higher among the older than 45 respondents. It is a pity, but those surveys did not mentioned what class-jobs were those of those would-be the lottery winners. The surveyors conveniently ”forgot” to study if those jobs were “white-collar” or “blue-collar” jobs, because their conventional wisdom tells them they would not get paid for such a kind of study.

Sheldon admits that his new “study” is limited because it did not extend beyond college students, who often and by-in-large do not have extensive experience with personal finances and earning a living. That lack of life experience among those students, as well as their class-affiliation, raises questions even among the state bureaucrats, such as Margaret DeFrancisco, director of the New York Lottery, who points out that money often is connected to the other nine factors the “study” measured, including security and autonomy. She questioned such surveys, emphasizing her own experience with lottery winners:
"Don't they realize that having economic independence allows you to call more of your shots? What it gives them is a sense of financial security. Where you and I budget from month to month, they do not have to do that any more … they always know their bills will be paid."

DeFrancisco adds that on rare occasions the lottery winners do say they will keep their jobs, but it is questionable if they actually do that. DeFrancisco cites the case of a 26-year-old Brooklyn school-teacher who plans to keep her job despite winning $65 million on November 4, 2000. However, nobody has been reporting yet if she keeps her promise. DeFrancisco adds that, "For her, her job was going to keep her grounded, and it was about relationships and it was about comfort".

However, if the new level of comfort and aesthetic will outweigh the previous one, what will that school-teacher do? Has she a character, and will she insist on her teaching profession, and more importantly, for how long? That remains to be seen, as well as whether or not the upper-class psychologists and sociologists will gather their guts and study the real needs of the real people, who make their living in a class-society, not in a nitty-gritty, plain, homogeneous, and thus chameleonic, society.

The scarce economic and hostile political condition of ancient Greece compelled the Athenian upper class to rely on the common sense of commoners. Thus, the traditional model of social hierarchy on the city-state level of human social organization (which had embraced the late tribal experience of building the monarchical bureaucracy that drew its final authority from the divine power and right of kings) had been transformed into the “new” model of the republican bureaucracy (which had based on the early tribal experience of policy making, when the authority of bureaucrats had come of the people, by the people, and for the people). The republican form of bureaucracy had unleashed tremendous energy and ingenuity of the commoners, creating a new and higher standard of living in liberty for the majority of the Athenian aristocrats and commoners. However, the Athenian personality (its bureaucrats) had not matched the Athenian character (its commoners and slaves) on the national level of its organization when the former tried to transform selves into a Greek State. The combined energy of the aristocrats and commoners had proved to be not enough to outweigh the gravity of the combined external forces of the Spartan, Macedonian, and Persian aristocrats and the internal forces of slaves, who became the quantitative majority of the Athenian population.

The republican form of bureaucracy on the state level yet had to be developed on the Italian soil. It also raised the bar of living conditions of the Roman aristocrats and commoners comparatively with their Athenian counterparts. However, when they had dared to transform their republican bureaucracy into an imperial one, it had faded into a monarchical oblivion for 19 centuries. Only when the aristocrats and commoners of the United States of America had secured their quantitative and qualitative majority over the minority of slaves and the external foes after a civil war, their personality, their republican bureaucracy has managed to survive on the imperial level of human organization for nearly a century and a half, thus, helping to create a new and unprecedented standard of living of the majority.

What I am trying to say that you can look upon your government as on your (people's) personality, which is a fair reflection of your (people's) character. If you still do not have the faintest idea of what I am talking about, then, let me rephrase what I said previously, using the Socratic method. Imagine that you are witnessing a dispute between Plato and Aristotle in the modern garden of Academia.

Plato: I admit that my previous conditioning can influence my present perception, as some psychological experiments with children and student demonstrate. For instance, most children perceive a short but large glass with 200 ml of orange juice as a smaller one comparatively with a tall but narrow glass with 200 ml of orange juice (image 301). Moreover, if you have looked first at the image 302 for five seconds, then -- at the image 303, and compare your impression with that one of another person who have looked first at the image 304, then -- at the image 303. However, your counterpart should not see the image 302. It is more likely that both of your impressions from the image 303 would be different.

Those demonstrations show how deeply our previous conditioning affects our present perception and the following ideas. If five seconds of conditioning can have a dramatic impact on our impression, then what can do a life-time conditioning through family members, school and work associates and friends? But how deeply my environment can influence my ideas, my ethic and aesthetic, my navigation-map in my society? Have I the innate ideas at all? Or all of them provided by my nurturance, as you, Aristotle, contend?

My Theory of Ideas asserts that despite a certain affect of my environment on my aesthetic and personality, my innate ideas and character are the primary and the most important ones. Consequently, my attitude and behavior can hardly be changed by the external attitudes and behaviors of other people. We tend to think that we can be "objective" and "open-minded". However, our stand on an issue is largely predetermined by in what social class we were born.

When I describe the image that is in the middle, I describe it from my right prospective, but you can describe it from your left prospective. The 3D fact can have many facets, each of which by itself do not negate the fact in its entirety. However, you and me may interpret this fact with different facets and assumptions that depend on my or your experience that, in its turn, depends on my or your place and time of birth.

The more aware and literate we are of our experience and assumptions, the more we can take responsibility for our ideas or mental maps, the more objective we are, and the more we can examine and test them against reality. Thus, we get a larger and a far more objective view than those illiterate and subjective of us, who, being confronted with an opposite opinion, tend to think that something is wrong with the opponent and he should be delivered to a shrink or an inquisitor for a thorough evaluation.

Aristotle: Most of your saying is quite right on the money. However, the main obstacle for me is -- how I can "objectively," "scientifically" measure the quantity and quality of the ideas I received through my genes (internally), and the quantity and quality of the ideas I have got through my environment (externally)? Would it be the same kind of measurements, with which our shrinks measure our IQs (Intelligence Quotients) today? Of course, such measurements always tend to be relative to place and time. However, if we would find a way to know the opinion of the majority of at least three consecutive generations of the peoples (without relation to nationality and class, though it is impossible today for the technological and political difficulties) on this matter, then, and only then, we would be close enough to say that one of the two cases is surely primordial; that is, beyond reasonable doubt or above 95% surety. Otherwise, we should continue to use the preponderance of evidence or the more than 50% of surety for such statements as, that "our innate ideas define our character" and "our nurturance or environment defines our personality, not character".

And even if we would be bold enough to make such statements, we should remember that from your perception demonstration follows that our navigational maps shift time to time, when someone suddenly sees a composite fact in non-collaborative, non-customarily way. The more an individual is bound by his initial perception, his prior experience, the more powerful the "Eureka!" experience he would have, discovering a new facet of the fact that would light it in a new direction and would enlighten him from a new prospective. It is as though a light were suddenly turned on the inside of him, necessitating his customarily ideas to make a quantum leap, breaking with an old tradition and starting a new one. Ptolemy, an Egyptian astronomer, summing up the experience of the ancient people about the earth placed this planet at the center of the universe. But Copernicus and Galileo looked at fact from a different prospective, lighting it brighter and more colorful, though, for a beginning, creating a chaos in the minds of the majority of the peoples and necessitating the latter to persecute those discoverers because it was, is, and will be easier to the majority than to change own customs. Although the majority could justify and comfort itself by saying that the sun in not the center of universe either but only the solar system, it would be a pity and pathetic comfort, because such a jingoism has little or no explanatory and predictive value of the facts of life that is necessary for the welfare, prosperity, and happiness of that same majority.

For two centuries, the Newtonian clockwork model of physical facts has been the basis of engineering, though it has been somewhat dull, boring, and incomplete, until physical science has been revolutionized at the beginning of the 20th century by Planck’s quantum theory and Einstein's theory of relativity, which have been much more explanatory and predictive for the happiness of the majority. In addition, until the germ theory has been developed, a high percentage of children have died during childbirth, because no one could explain and predict it. In the multitude of wars, more men have died from scratches and dysentery than from the serious wounds. However, as the germ theory has managed to show up to the majority of peoples its benefits, it has dramatically buttressed an old theory of minority -- to wash hands before dinner. Moreover, the federal government of the United States of America has been a fruit of the 18th century thinkers, who have re-considered an old idea of a republican bureaucracy in a State. This theory has been applied twice on the imperial or federal level of human organization, but has failed once nearly two millennia before, in the Roman Empire, and for the second time -- in the French Empire. Thus, a new facet of the theory of human organizations has been discovered, conceiving an idea that the imperial or federal bureaucracy can be republican, instead of being customarily the monarchical one. Nearly a century later, when this idea has developed and materialized into a federal bureaucracy of the people, by the people, and for people, then, the American majority has begun to taste the sweet fruit of the repulsive energy and ingenuity of the minority. Thereafter, the majority has proceeded, standing on the shoulders of titans, with a creation of a standard of life and liberty unequaled in the history of mankind. Imagine what would be the standard of life and liberty, when our progeny would manage to create a republican bureaucracy of a federation of empires of the Earth.

Although the pendulum of human development is moving back and forth, in progress and in regress, depending on the prosperity and happiness of the majority, the measurements of our prosperity and happiness still are a vague, caprice, and subjective trade of a handful of statisticians and their respondents, whose interpretations of the facts hardly can be labeled as the "objective" or "scientific" ones. Therefore, I would prefer, unless our indexing techniques would improve dramatically, to refer to the "nature vs. nurture" controversy as to an empty and scholastic one. In my book, both sorts of ideas (innate and acquired) have an equal influence on our character and personality, on our ethic and aesthetic.

Plato: Well, we are not living in an imperial empire and we do not have the precise instruments to measure our prosperity and happiness, but being on a low stage of our development does not mean that we ought to lie down and watch out while time is passing by and we somehow will be mellowed. Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, Planck, and Einstein had not those instruments, which the modern astronomers and physicists have; nevertheless, those handfuls have managed to level the ground of macro- and microphysics for the present multitude. So did Ham Mu-rabi, Moses, Buddha, Confucius, Soroaster, Solon, Socrates, Christ, Justinian, Mahommat, and several others, who have been leveling the ground of the external and internal psychology for the multitude of the contemporary psychiatrists, lawyers, and politicians.

Not all quantum leaps were progressive. Some of them were regressive, such as did the modern psychologists, who have jumped from the character psychology or ethics to the personality psychology or aesthetic and have drawn the rest of us away from the very roots that nourish our prosperity and happiness. However, whether those leaps are progressive or regressive, they move us from one way of perceiving the world to another. Moreover, those quantum leaps create powerful change in molding our role models and our navigational maps in a society, whether they are politically "correct" or "incorrect," because they are the sources of our attitudes and deep relationships with others.

Many people experience similar quantum leaps in thinking when they face a life-threatening crisis or when they suddenly necessitated to step into other people's shoe -- their priorities suddenly change and their life is colored in a different light. We could spend years laboring with the personality psychology, trying to change externally our attitudes and behaviors and still be unable to overcome our internal resistance, though those attitudes could be changed in a snap of a finger if the place and time are right. It is obvious to me that if I want to change my living conditions slightly, I can focus on my attitudes, on my personality. However, if I want to change them significantly, I need a quantum leap in order to work out my basic character.

Aristotle: Here we go again. Why do you muddle so stubbornly through those meaningless "primary," "fundamental," "essential," and "basic" words? A man should be handsome entirely -- by his soul or mind; by his body; by his cloth, shelter, and food; by his books and entertainment. Do you know what our problem is? We are talking in different tongues... conceptually and literally. You are using mostly Germanic and Latin words, while I am using English and Greek words. You based your analysis on studying a few exceptional aristocrats who have molded the upper-class people, while I am talking about the average commoners of the middle class.

Plato: But that is where we can find excellence.

Aristotle: That is so typical of you. If you are not a faithful Clintonoid, then, I assume you are talking about "moral excellence". But this kind of excellence can be found everywhere. I've already once said, that 'we are what we repeatedly do. Therefore, excellence is not an act, but a habit.' Your problem is that you are more a religious synthesizer than a scientific analyst, though you claim to be an impartial searcher of the truth. To this time, you cannot discern that each social class has its own standard of excellence. Bravery and loyalty are the moral paramount of the aristocrats, daring with deliberation and modesty are the moral paramount of commoners, and compassion and humility are the ethical standard of laborers. Or maybe you just want not to discern it, because you are bias to the aristocrats, because you are one of them, and because your synthetic mixture of all those characters is profitable to your class, because "it is easier to catch a fish in the murky waters"?! If it is not so, then, why did you laugh scornfully over Bush's "compassionate conservativism"? Only because it sounded grammatically incorrect? Or because it is contradictory in terms? Or because of both?

I regret this personal attack, but it was necessitated by your staunch unwillingness to leap onto the commoner's point of view; and if you can swallow your aristocratic pride, I will continue my analysis without such remarks.

Plato: My wish to go to the bottom of this matter is greater than my reaction onto your insinuations; so, please continue.

Aristotle: Of course, some quantum leaps can come naturally and effortlessly, and some -- may require hardy learning and working experience. If what you mean by the "innate and acquired" ideas, then, I would agree with you, because some quantum leaps we make to the "innate" ideas occasionally and by the will of another person (either man or Nature-God), and some quantum leaps we make to the "acquired" ideas through difficult and deliberate process, using our own will-power.

Our ideas are inseparable from our character and personality. Being is sensing and reflecting the external and internal worlds, and reacting onto those perceptions and reflections from within. And what we perceive is highly interrelated to who we are to the external world, and how we react is highly interrelated to what we are internally. We haven't much latitude in changing our perception without simultaneously changing in our reactions. Our certain ideas (theories or navigational maps of the internal and external worlds) are the powerful lens through which we see those worlds. The power or freshness of a quantum leap depends on whether that change of our theories has been made through the external and unsuspected force or through the internal and suspected energy. The former one we usually describe by the adjectives: spontaneous, extemporaneous, impromptu, genuine; and the latter -- by the adjectives: deliberate, contemplative, meditative, rationalized. The former comes through our hearts, and the latter -- through our reasons. Together, our hearts and reasons comprise our souls, or spirits, or minds. A soul is a spirit, or a psyche or a mind. Those words mean the same. These words are different only because they were borrowed from German, Greek and Latin. To express my idea of that non-physical world, I prefer to use word "soul" as more Celtic and feminine; you might prefer word "mind" as more masculine and Germanic; but we can still understand each other. So, a soul comprises of a reason and a heart. Reason comprises from acquired ideas, which came from without (through environment). Heart comprises from innate ideas, which came from within (through genes).

Plato: That has been the easiest part to compromise with, but my Ethic is based on my Theory of Ideas, which is based on a fundamental idea that there are the principles of the psychic world that govern human effectiveness and excellence. Those principles are natural laws that are just as real, just as unchanging and unarguably "there" as the gravity law is in the physical world. An idea of the reality (and the impact) of these principles can be captured in a mental quantum-leap experience as told by Frank Koch in Proceedings, the magazine of the Naval Institute.

Two battleships assigned to the training squadron had been at sea on maneuvers in heavy weather for several days. I was serving on the lead battleship and was on watch on the bridge as night fell. The visibility was poor with patchy fog, so the captain remained on the bridge keeping an eye on all activities.
Shortly after dark, the lookout on the wing of the bridge reported, "Light, bearing on the starboard bow."
"Is it steady or moving astern?" the captain called out.
Lookout replied, "Steady, captain," which meant we were on dangerous collision course with that ship.
The captain then called to the signalman, "Signal that ship: We are on a collision course, advise you change course 20 degrees."
Back came a signal, "Advisable for you to change course 20 degrees."
The captain said, "Send, I'm a captain, change course 20 degrees."
"I'm a seaman second class," came the reply. "You had better change course 20 degrees."
By that time, the captain was furious. He spat out, "Send, I'm a battleship. Change course 20 degrees."
Back came the flashing light, "I'm a lighthouse."
We changed course.

Aristotle: Before you continue to search the truth with the helping hand of anecdotes and platitudes, I should notice that the word 'principle' from Latin means the same as 'arch' from Greek, and both mean 'first, oldest, or main'. If your psychic world based on many principles, then, it is based on many laws. Therefore, you had better pick a "fundamental" law among those "principles" of yours, in order to convince me that the "reality" might be "physically" separated into two worlds -- physical and psychic, and that such a separation can be possible "outside" of our subjective minds. Only then, it would constitute for me the "objective" or "scientific" proof of such existence.

As to your anecdotal captain -- he should take a course in communicative skills. Leaving their kindergartens, most children leave their egocentric notions behind. They already understand that if one would imagine that he is the Captain Hook, he would not be in charge for an entire school situation, because there, somewhere is the Peter Pan. If that captain, instead of commanding, would ask that lighthouse guardian -- "We are on a collision course, can you change course 20 degrees?" -- the explosive situation would probably be diffused at that point. And in reality, it probably was; but Mr. Koch imagined another and more laughable twist to the situation, in order to sell the story to the magazine.

Plato: Very well, Senior student. I see you become quite knowledgeable in foreign tongues. However, as you can see from my example of mental quantum leaping, that captain has had a limited perception at that place and in that time. His mental map of reality did not match with the reality and therefore was overcome by the reality. Principles are like the lighthouses of reality. They are natural laws that cannot be broken. Someone said that, "It is impossible to us to break the law. We can only break ourselves against the law."

Aristotle: Apparently not all of us see the laws of the spiritual world in that way; otherwise, O. J. Simpson and Mr. Clinton would be happily resting in a prison by now, as did the majority of commoners and laborers who committed the same kind of crimes. But because those two clowns were among the rich and famous who wrote those laws for others, not for themselves, they could break a law or two and got away with it. If, of course, your "the law" is not the same as my "a law". However, it would the smallest problem around here. The biggest problem is hidden in your comparison of the captain's mental map with the mental-physical reality. Your "principles" are not "like" the "lighthouses of reality". The former are only the pale and blurred picture of the reflections of the latter, because the "lighthouses of reality" are the unity of physical (structures and instruments) and mental (people, who can maintain those structures and operate those instruments). But the principles are only the mental maps, whatever degree of clarity they are. Of course, we can argue until the Greek calends about the meaning of the word "like," because of the subjective nature of any comparison; but such arguing would lead us nowhere.

Plato: E-u-key, I admit that most of the people consider their individual experience and conditioning as the base for the building of their knowledge, for their mental maps of the territory on which they live and operate, forming their mental abilities into their principles, which are necessary for the speedy and effective operation of that territory. But those mental maps of their territory are not the territory itself. Those maps are a "subjective reality," only an attempt to describe the territory. Whatever degree of accuracy our mental maps of the territory have, they are the "subjective reality," and they do not alter the existence of the territory itself. The latter is the "objective reality," which is composed of "lighthouse'' principles that govern human growth and happiness -- natural laws that permeate every civilized society throughout history and comprise the roots of every family and institution that has endured and prospered. The reality of such principles or natural laws becomes obvious to anyone who thinks deeply and examines the cycles of social history. These principles surface repeatedly, and degree to which people recognize and live in harmony with the principles moves them toward either survival and stability or disintegration and destruction.

These principles are not mysterious or specifically religious and esoteric ideas, but they are the crux of nearly all enduring ethical systems, social philosophies, and religions. They are self-evident and can be easily validated by any individual, because they are part of the human consciousness and conscience. They seem to exist in all human beings, regardless of social conditioning and loyalty to them, even though they might be submerged or numbed by the particular social conditions. One of such principles is the idea of fairness, out of which the concept of equity and justice has been developing. Little children seem to have an innate sense of the idea of fairness even apart from opposite conditioning experiences. There are vast differences in how fairness is defined and achieved, but there is almost universal awareness of the idea.

Another fundamental principle would be integrity or honesty, which create foundation of trust which is essential to cooperation and long-term personal and interpersonal growth. Another fundamental principle is human dignity. The form of this concept was thus molded in our Declaration of Independence -- "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Another important principle is service, or the idea of contributing. Another important principle is quality or excellence. Moreover, there is the principle of growth and potential, the idea that we are embryonic and have potential to grow and to develop more and more of our abilities, of our talents. The latter principle is usually accompanied by such principles as patience, nurturance, and encouragement.

Principles are not practices. A practice is a specific activity or action. A practice that works in one circumstance will not necessarily work in another, as parents who have tried to raise a second child exactly like they did the first can readily attest. While practices are specific to each situation, principles are fundamental truths that have universal application. They apply to individuals, to marriages, to families, to private and public organizations of every kind. When these truths are internalized into habits, they empower people to create a wide variety of practices to deal with different situations.

Principles are not values. A gang of thieves can share values, but they are in violation of the fundamental principles we are talking about. Principles are the territory. Values are maps. When we value correct principles, we have truth -- knowledge of things as they are.

Principles are guidelines for human conduct that are proven to have enduring, permanent value. They are fundamental. They are essentially unarguable because they are self-evident. One way to quickly grasp the self-evident nature of principles is to simply consider the absurdity of attempting to live an effective life based on their opposites. I doubt that anyone would seriously consider unfairness, deceit, baseness, uselessness, mediocrity, or degeneration to be a solid foundation for lasting happiness and success. Although people may argue about how these principles are defined, manifested, or achieved, there seems to be an innate consciousness and awareness that they exist.

The more closely our mental maps or models are aligned with these principles or natural laws, the more accurate and functional they will be. Correct maps will infinitely affect our personal and interpersonal effectiveness far more than any amount of effort expended on changing our attitudes and behaviors.

Aristotle: Wow-wow-wow! That was a huge stream of consciousness or, should I say, "subjective reality". Halt your horses; otherwise, we will fall into another trap. Firstly, the plural subjectivity (the subjectivity of many people) is not the same as the individual subjectivity. When the mental maps of the majority of living and breathing New Yorkers are congruent and are published by their government, a traveler can conclude that those maps of New York are reasonably correct and "objective," because with 95% or more probability they would match with the territory itself, and thus, would lead him to the Pen-station on certain time. On the other hand, if such a traveler has no money to buy a commonly used map, he can find a long-time resident of New York and ask him for direction. Then, the traveler might be sure with 50% of probability or more that he would be at his destination on time. But if he would prefer to be guided by an old book with a Lipshoviz's map of New York of 1889, then he would hardly be in that place on time. In the last scenario, the traveler would act on a "definitely subjective reality". Forget for a while about "surety," I will return to it later, when I will dissect your "fairness" and "trust".

Secondly, both of your "subjective and objective" realities are abstractions and have no separate from each other existence, except as in our minds, which are the "subjective reality," though attached to the "objective reality" of our bodies. Therefore, not the "lighthouse'' principles govern human growth and happiness but the humans, who have those principles, govern themselves, and govern either toward "growth and happiness" or toward degradation and misery. To say that -- 'natural laws permeate every civilized society throughout history and comprise the roots of every family and institution that has endured and prospered' -- is to say a platitude, because the "natural laws" are the "subjective reality," which is an inseparable part of the reality. As well as the "civilized society" is the "objective reality," which is another inseparable part of the reality. And because these parts are inseparable, they necessarily permeate each other.

Thirdly, once again you mixed up those principles into a garbage pile, which I have to separate and put those principles in order by their allegiance to a certain social class. Integrity, courage and excellence are the ideals of the aristocrats; human dignity, modesty, deliberation, and effectiveness are the paramount of the commoners; patience, nurturance, and compassion are the values of the laborers. When an aristocrat told you that something or someone "demoralized" his soldiers, he actually meant that something or someone made his soldiers coward and disloyal. When a commoner told you that something or someone demoralized him, he meant that he could not be judicious and productive at that moment. One class acknowledges passively the presence of principles of other classes but acts mainly on its own ideals. Probably that is why those few ideals are called "principles". Only fairness seems to belong equally to every class; though, as you admitted "fairly," each class defines it differently. What is "fair" for an aristocrat might be not so fair for a laborer, and vice versa. However, the universality of the idea of fairness permits all social classes to cooperate with each other and enables some members of one class to evolve into another one. Probably that is why out of the ideal of fairness the concept of equity and justice has been developing.

Fourthly, "principles are not practices," you said; and it is another platitude. Of course, they are not, because they are a cumulative effect of those practices. Principles are the "subjective reality" that could become the "objective reality," but still would be abstractions. However, practices are the reality itself, and the reality is specific, although it can include abstractions into itself as the final product of its own reflections. Reality is the moving matter that creates a particular space and time. Abstraction, on the other hand, is unmovable, and therefore, spaceless and timeless. Probably that is why a few abstract principles can be helpful in a multitude of particular circumstances and be applied "to individuals, to marriages, to families, to private and public organizations of every kind". However, when these "truths" would be applied habitually, they would help their owners to be more effective, but they would not "empower people to create a wide variety of practices to deal with different situations," because people do not "create" any situation only by their own wills but just resolve or reform it more or less effectively. Unless, of course, your "empowering" is one and the same as my "to be effective".

Fifthly, you said that, "principles are the territory, and they are not values, because the latter are maps;" but I respectfully disagree. Principles are values, and both are the mental maps, which are abstractions. If you say that my values somewhat different from my principles -- values would be condensed after three years of practice, but after six years of practice they would turn into principles; then, I am asking -- why my values could not turn into my principles in the forth or fifth year of my practicing? Hmm? Therefore, principles are values, and both are abstractions. However, the territory is the reality, which can include those abstractions in self, but only as a puny part of itself. You said that, "a gang of thieves can share values, but they are in violation of the fundamental principles". However, the written history, from Moses’ gang of thieves and thugs to the Marxist gangs of thieves and thugs, shows time and time again that when those thieves and thugs could managed to capture the bureaucratic apparatus of a State and became the newly-minted aristocrats, then, their values would become the prevailing principles of that new society; even though the originators of those principles would be a tiny minority.

You say that, "when we value correct principles, we have truth -- a knowledge of things as they are," and this saying could be a truth if you would define -- who, when, and how would define the "correctness" of those principles?? Does it mean that you, as the "wisest", will define the "correct principles" for me, or I can do it on my own? Then, what would be the criterion of "correctness"? Who, where, when, and why would be "incorrect"? Principles are abstractions, and as such, they are the condensed portraits of a gazillion of the past reflections of the reality; therefore, they are rarely if ever match precisely with the new situations. You can say that the general features of a particular situation could be resolve by applying a certain principle, but some particular details would be the flavors of that situation, which require new techniques in order to enjoy them. That is where we can find the difference between an innovation and an invention. As you said, "Principles are guidelines for human conduct that are proven to have enduring, permanent value." However, here, you contradict your previous statement that "principles are not values". So, what are they? Moreover, to whom and how the durability of those principles should be proven?

You said that, "Principles are fundamental. They are essentially unarguable because they are self-evident. One way to quickly grasp the self-evident nature of principles is to simply consider the absurdity of attempting to live an effective life based on their opposites. I doubt that anyone would seriously consider unfairness, deceit, baseness, uselessness, mediocrity, or degeneration to be a solid foundation for lasting happiness and success. The more closely our maps... are aligned with these principles or natural laws, the more accurate and functional they will be. Correct maps will infinitely affect our personal and interpersonal effectiveness far more than any amount of effort expended on changing our attitudes and behaviors." Speaking in plain English, it means that the more my personal principles would be match to the principles of the majority of the people, the more effective and happy I would be. However, the written history shows that most majorities of the peoples have considered those own members as "heroes" and as "excellent and politically correct," who have been unfair, deceitful, and grave toward the internal and external "enemies" of the majority of a people. Suddenly, after all, not even the "Ten Commandments" are so self-evident, as you try to picture them. Nevertheless, the most important for me question is -- what social classes comprise that majority, which defines my personal effectiveness and happiness?

Plato: Yeah! I would like that too, but right now, my ideas are circling about one place. So, in order to be effective for the rest of the day, I have to visit a men's room.

Aristotle: So, your "objective reality" necessitated you to interrupt our conversation. Did it look like a "lighthouse"? By the way, how are you?

Plato: Thank you. I am fine now and eager to wrestle with you again. While I was relieving myself, an idea came up to me that the massive appeal of the present day psychology of personality and its glittering aesthetic that took over the majority's minds derives from its recommendation of a "get rich quick" scheme -- an easy way to achieve a high quality life (personal excellence and deep and meaningful relationships) without hard working. However, trying quick fixes to get high quality results with the techniques of the personality psychology is the same as using pills of the snake oil merchants instead of habitual diet and working out, and both of these techniques are as much effective as trying to get the treasure of captain Drake (which he could not find himself) using his four century old map.

Probably that is why a contemporary average American behaves like a robot, not knowing or understanding himself. He thinks, he knows own ideal, molded not critically after a celebrity. But when that actual celebrity fails in a personal excellence or in a deep relationship, then, the not critical imitator begins to panic, replaces his genuine laughter with a sarcastic one, and falls into a dull despair, feeling no genuine pain or joy.

All earthly beings have sequential developmental stages that progress and regress during their life-span. A child learns to turn over, bores with it, finds a more interesting occupation -- to sit up; engages into it, bores with it, finds a more interesting occupation -- crawl; engages into it, bores with it, finds a more interesting occupation -- to walk... and so forth. Each stage of development is important and each one takes time; no one can be skipped without serious consequences. It is true in all developmental stages of any life-form, in all areas of our occupation, whether it be learning how to operate a plane, or on a brain, or with a state bureaucracy. It is true with individuals and with organizations. We know and accept this principle of the progressively-regressive process in the physical world, but to understand it in the psychic world is less common, and even more difficult to accept it and to live in harmony with it. Consequently, the majority of us tends to look for a shortcut, expecting to skip some of these vital stages in order to save time and effort and still reap the desired fruit. But what happens when they attempt to shortcut a natural process of our development?

If you reach only a mediocre level in cooking but decide to open an A-grade restaurant in the heart of Manhattan, what would result? Would your positive thinking and clean and fancy entourage of your restaurant enable you to compete effectively against those, whose meals are tastier than yours? The answer is obvious. The external cleanliness and orderliness is important, but you should not forget about the internal orderliness, the main reason why people attend your restaurant -- the quality of your meals. It is impossible in the long run to violate or shortcut this development process of learning how to be the best cook or whoever. It is contrary to the nature of any occupation, in any social class; and attempting to seek such a shortcut only results in disappointment, frustration, and the "Moon landing". A Chinese would say that, "a thousand-mile journey begins with a single step;" and each step is important and necessary if you want to reach your destination. The same can be said about our learning process -- admission of ignorance on a subject is the first step in our education. If you do not allow your teacher to know at what level of knowledge of a subject you are (by questioning and thus revealing your ignorance), he would be unable to help you to learn.

To learn effectively how to be the best cook, husband, friend, associates, or boss, you should learn before else how and what you should listen. Effective listening is a main feature of character that involves patience, openness, desire to understand, and most of all -- selectivity. What you are listening to should be relevant to the goal of your life. Our level of development is fairly obvious in such family-businesses as cookery, where it is impossible to pretend for a long time. But it is not so obvious in such occupations as a corporate leader or an employee and a political leader or an appointee. It's so much easier for a bureaucrat to operate with low emotions and high reasoning in order to "pose" or to "put on" for a client or an associate, because the bureaucracy tends to be partitioned by vertical and horizontal levels of governing. That is why he can pretend for a long time. He can deceive our entire world that his men landed on the Moon. He might even deceive his wife and himself; yet, I believe that sooner or later most of us realize the truth of what we really are on the inside. Will such realization come through self-critique or through a public critique depends on how fast and orderly an individual can buttress own character. Thus, an attempt to shortcut the character development of a corporate leader, for instance, leads him to try to improve productivity and quality of his corporation's products and services by using such externally-internal techniques of the personality psychology as smile training and "motivational" speeches about new "corporate morale" or such externally-external economic techniques as mergers, acquisitions, friendly and unfriendly takeovers. A political leader can skip some developmental stages of own character building by mimicking the corporate managers by trying to "motivate" people to accept blindly a new "standard of decency," or by re-districting his constituents and doctoring their votes, or by shuffling his staff and renaming their chairs and offices. But both, corporate and political, leaders would still ignore the low-trust climate produced by such manipulations. When those cheating techniques don't work, such a "challenged" leader would look for other "quick fix" techniques that would work in the short run, but would ignore and violate the natural process of his development in the long run, on which a high-trust culture is based.

Aristotle: Well, here I have little or nothing to argue with, except saying that although ' the "normal" heroes always go in roundabout routes to their destination ', we are going to ours probably in a too crooked way. Aren't we?

Plato: Well, a boxer ring has to be built before boxers can show to a large audience their skill on it. So, you have to give me some breathing space, some lee-way in arranging our dispute in order that not only we alone would understand what we are arguing about.

Aristotle: Very well. Contributing something into the building process of that stage of our "fighting," I would like to tell you how I violated the principle of sequential development and high-trust. Being at the age of puberty and learning a few pranks in a boy-scout camp, I've decided to check them on my younger brother, who was seven years old at that time. When our parents left us alone for the whole day, I told my hungry brother that I would cook macaroni. "The problem is," I explained to him, "that the moth put its eggs into macaroni; so, you should blow them off of each macaroni from this 5 lb bag." Then, I've got outdoor and played a soccer with my friends for three hours. When I've got back home, my brother was still blowing at that macaroni. I made fun of my brother for about a half of an hour, then, told him that I was kidding. I took a handful from that pile of macaroni, from which my brother had diligently blown off the moth eggs and cooked them; we ate them in silence, and I forgot about this prank. I've continued to protect my brother from the older boys in school and in our court-yard; however, his respect and friendliness toward me had gone. I've tried many ways, including bribes, to de-freeze our relationship, but without success; because I have not understood the underlying reason, until two years ago my brother and his daughter have come from Moscow to visit me in New York. Tired from the long voyage, he quickly became drunk during the dinner and became aggressive toward me, threatening me, and calling me names. When the dust settled after our short scuffle, the hidden spring of his anger toward me came out. As you probably already guessed, it derived from that macaroni monkey-prank of mine. Even after thirty something years, he still kept a grudge for me; probably because before that prank, he had believed to every word of mine. Thus, my own ignorance and bold attempt to become "smart" overnight, as those "older guys," turned my high-trust relationship with my brother into a low-trust one, on which we have managed to build only a few muddy huts, instead of building a new and shiny Empire State Building.

Plato: I impressed with your sincere self-pitying, but I am better off analyzing others than myself. Therefore I am about to tell you one accident of my son, who was back then a three year old kindergartener. One day I returned home and my mother-in-law told me that my little son stole some toys from his kindergarten, and now defiantly does not want to return them. My mother-in-law asked me to teach him a lesson for such a selfish display. I was embarrassed because I felt some expectations of my wife and in-laws, and mostly because I thought that it was my guilt of kleptomania that passed through genes to him. In my youth, I often cleared the pockets of the suits of my father, because we rarely spoke to each other, because my parents lived like a dog and cat; my mother has learned only after my birth that my father had been previously married and had a daughter from that marriage and now paid alimony to her mother. So, it was easier to my mother and me to steal the change from my father than to ask him for allowance money.

Meanwhile the atmosphere in the room was really charged -- my son was vehemently refusing to give up on those toys. I said to myself, "Certainly I should teach him not to be selfish and to return those toys to the kindergarten. The value of sharing and trusting is the most basic thing I believe in." Thereafter, I first tried a humble approach -- "Son, would you please return your friends the toys you took from them?" "No," he replied insolently. I changed tactics a little bit and used reasoning -- "Son, if everyone would steal toys from the kindergarten, then, when you would be there, you would have nothing to play with." Once again, I heard a contemptuous "No!" Obviously, I was having no influence on him. Then I tried to bribe him. Softly, as I could, I said, "Son, if you return them, I'll give you a chocolate bar." "I don't want chocolate!" he cried furiously. Now I was becoming impatient and resorted to fear and threat -- "You will stay in the corner until you return them!" "I don't care!" -- he cried. "These are my toys. I don't have to share them with anybody!" Finally, I was exhausted mentally and resorted to physical force, taking the toys from him and giving them to my mother-in-law.

Perhaps my son needed the experience of possessing the toys before he could share them with others. In fact, unless I possess something, can I really share it or give it away? Probably he needed my support in establishing himself as a proprietor.

But at that moment, I hadn't the faintest idea about trust and property because all things and people (including myself) belonged to the State. It meant that I had to rely my judgment entirely on the opinion of surrounding me elders, who supposedly knew better how my son and my relationship with him should be developing. Because I was in agreement with the elders, I concluded that I was right -- he should share right away, and prolonging his "unlawful possession" would only prolong our mutual agony. Perhaps I tried to impose on him my own ambition and aspirations because I was immature, and because ' the sage likes to learn, the fool loves to teach '.

I was unable to be patient with him, yet I expected him to be patient to his friends and to share the toys with them. In an attempt to compensate for my deficiency, I borrowed my authority from the external social forces and forced him to share those toys and to dissolve his proprietorship over them. However, borrowing means living dependently; and prolonged dependency builds weakness in the borrower because it reinforces dependence on the external forces to get things done while suppressing intrinsic energy of the borrower. This internal weakness leads to slowing down the development of independent thinking, growth of morale and self-discipline.

A man who builds his relationships on his internal weakness builds a castle on the sand. In such a case, fear of death in isolation replaces joy of life in cooperation, and mutually distrusted people grow gradually more capricious and defensive. That is what happens when the source of moral strength is borrowed from an external force, be it social status or bureaucratic authority.

Had I been more mature, I could have relied on my own intrinsic energy (my understanding of sharing and possessing) and allowed my son to work out his will as to what, when and how to possess, and what, when and how to share. Perhaps I could have left him alone with those toys for a day or two so that he could learn that the joy derived from interacting with friends around those toys, not from using them in isolation. When he would get a sense of real possession, he would share very naturally and spontaneously.

My experience has been that there are times to teach my son a lesson or two, and then, let him go on his own for a while, until another occasion to teach would come naturally and he would seek my advice. When a relationship is strained and the air charged with the emotions of many, an uninvited attempt to teach is often perceived as judgmental, rejecting, and taking sides. But teaching my son man-to-man, without the emotions of outsiders and openly discussing the "difficult" problems, seems have much greater impact on both of us. Probably at that time, I lacked the moral maturity to be patient, because I did not have intrinsic control and possession of myself. Perhaps my own sense of possession of him and sharing him with the world needed to come before I could teach him genuine sharing. Many people, who compelled by the external forces to give up or to share things in their marriages and other social organizations, may never have a sense of possessing, which evolves in a sense of identity and self-esteem.

Really helping our children to mature and to work out their own wills-to-take-and-to-give (to take what they need and to give away what they do not need) may involve being patient enough to allow them the sense of possession. After that, teaching the value of giving and providing the example ourselves would be much easier and more rewarding. Because the process of learning never really stops, I am recommending to the grown-ups to remember that any recommendation you make will reflect directly on you. If you recommend a good quality product or service that is reasonably priced, your listeners or clients will continue to trust you and be interested in your future advice or recommendation. If your listeners or clients have a bad experience with your advice, product, or service, they will likely hesitate to act on any new advice or offer you give them.

So, be sure that you do your homework before recommending anything to your listeners or clients. Try the product or service yourself, and experience the consequences of your advice on yourself before you give it to others. Study the product or advice, feel it with your own five senses; talk to other people who have experienced and bought it. Make sure that you are recommending a high quality advice or product that comes from you or your associates who offer great advice or service. Following through your advice or service for ten years may result in conditions when your reputation or moral authority will work for you and your progeny for two hundred years. Thus, spending your intrinsic energy in a simple arithmetical progression would provide you with the extrinsic force in geometric progression. Therefore, do not ever promote something that would hurt your reputation!

Aristotle: I will try, but the majority of people are not accustomed to live their entire lives on high principles, though they are intrigued and awed by the good things happening in the lives of certain "exceptional" individuals and organizations that were promoting those principles. They admire such personal strength maturity, such family unity and teamwork, such adaptive organizational culture. And their immediate request is very revealing of their basic model of living. "How did you accomplish that? Teach me the techniques." What they are really asking for -- "Give me some quick fix advice or solution that will relieve the pain in my present situation". And they would find the snake oil merchants who would teach them that all the pain derives from the external things. In a short run, skills and techniques might appear to work, cosmetically eliminating some of the acute problems through social placebo. However, the underlying chronic intrinsic condition remains, and soon, acute symptoms would re-appear and the pain would become unbearable. The more people concentrate their attention on their acute pain and its quick fix through the external things, the more that approach contributes to the underlying intrinsic condition. The majority of the people perceive the majority of their problems as coming from the outside; and this way of perception is one more problem for them. Thus, the impact of preferring Personality over Character takes its toll on all organizational levels of humankind -- in a family, in an institution, in a State, and in an Empire.

Plato: What you just said is even more precise that I wanted to say. Look at some letters of my prospective disciples -- they all pointed in the direction, you just described so clearly.

--My marriage has gone flat. We don't fight or anything; we just do not love each other anymore. We've gone to counseling we've tried a number of things, but we just can't seem to rekindle the feeling we used to have. The propagandists of the personality psychology tell me there must be some new book or some support group where people get all their feelings out that would help my wife understand me better. Or maybe that it's useless, and only a new relationship will provide the love I need. But is it possible that my spouse isn't the real problem? Could I be empowering my spouse's weaknesses and making my life a function of the way I'm treated? Do I have some basic model of life with my wife in our different stages of development, and how our age influences our mutual love and understanding?

--I've taken course after course on effective management training. I've tried a half a dozen different planning systems. They've helped a little bit, but I still don't feel I'm living the happy, productive, peaceful life I want to live. The aesthetes and personality psychologists teach me there must be something out there -- some new planner or seminar that will help me handle all these pressures in a more efficient way. But is there a chance that efficient time-table is not the answer to my problem? Is getting more unappreciated things done in less time going to make a difference or will it just increase the pace at which I react to the people and circumstances that seem to control my life? Could there be something I need to see in a deeper, more fundamental way -- the goal of life that affects the way I see my own nature, my time, my life, and my surroundings? I expect a lot out of my employees, I work hard to be friendly toward them and to treat them right. But I don't feel any loyalty from them. I think if I were absent for a week, they'd spend most of their time chatting at the water fountain. Why can't I train them to be independent and responsible -- or find employees who can be? The motivational speakers teach me to take some kind of dramatic action (shake things up, make heads roll) that would make my employees shape up and appreciate what they have. Or that I could find some motivational training program that would get them committed. Or even that I could hire new people that would do a better job. But is it possible that showing apparently disloyal behavior, they are really questioning whether I act in their best interest? Or may it be that they feel like I'm treating them as robots? Is there a chance the way I look at them is part of my unhappiness?

Aristotle: Can you see how fundamental are our goals of life, on which our characters depend? They are essential because they affect the very way we see our problems as well as the way we attempt to solve them? Whether the majority of the people see it or not, many of them are becoming disillusioned with the empty promises of snake oil merchants. As I mentioned previously, the majority of industry captains are simply turned off by the personality psychologists and "motivational" speakers who have nothing more to offer than entertaining stories mingled with platitudes and clichés.

Do not take my last invective on your own account. You are focusing on the principles that, if harnessed correctly, may bring long-term happiness; but I am speaking against those quacks and shamans who used to use social placebo to solve our chronic intrinsic problems. A fundamental problem cannot be solved on the superficial (either on ego- or super-ego-centric) level of thinking. I need a deeper level of thinking that based on my goal of life, on my principles that accurately describe my territory, in order to solve the deep concerns of mine and of the people who surround me. This quantum leap of thinking is a balanced character-personality, "outside-in and inside-out" approach to social and individual effectiveness and happiness. "Outside-in and inside-out" approach means to start studying first from society, then turn on studying self, then repeating the process several times for correcting your mental map (your principles), and only then trying to apply those principles to the reality in order to change the reality.

However, to address the past wrong-doing of the personality psychologists, you, of course, would promote the development of character or "inside-out" approach to social and individual effectiveness and happiness. And it would mean to bend a crooked stick into another, and also extreme, direction. But extremism of any kind cures one rarely if ever, more often it kills.

To be an effective and happy individual, start from studying the society and its levels of governing in order to work outside-in your personality and ambitions. This process of studying should be intertwine with the inside-out studying of own desires that would sharpen your ambitions into your goal of life and into your character. Thus, if you want to be a happily married person, find a spouse whose goal of life (character and personality) would be congruent with yours, and be the kind of person who balances negative energy and positive gravity of your family. If you want to be a trusted political or economic leader and to have more freedom in your work, be more responsible to your constituents and keep your promises, be more demanding to yourself and a more helpful to others.

The outside-in and inside-out approach to social and individual effectiveness and happiness based on a premise that private success goes along with public success, that making and keeping promises to ourselves go along with making and keeping promises to others. Here again, you would say that private success goes before public success, but how would you rectify this intertwine process. It would mean that we would mire again into the scholastic chicken-egg controversy. Therefore, my approach is based on a premise that it is futile to put either personality or character ahead of each other while trying to improve relationships with other people, on which our effectiveness and happiness depend.

The outside-in and inside-out approach to social and individual effectiveness and happiness is a continuing process of reflection of the life renewal that leads some individuals to discern the natural laws that govern the universe, including human upward and downward spiral progress. This process of reflecting the reality and discerning its laws is the same kind of a modeling process that guides a sculptor while he is cutting out the superfluous material of a stone that would-be a sculpture. However, his sculpture would not be alive. And also the outside-in laws of the followers of the personality psychologists would be the dead laws, unless they were taken in and adopted into a character by someone, and applied to the objective world -- only then, they become the living and breathing laws of that someone.

I have had the opportunity to work with many talented people who have longed to achieve success and happiness. I have worked with scientists, businessmen, and politicians, but I have never seen long-lasting solutions to problems, long-lasting personal happiness and social success that came either from the only outside-in or from the only inside-out approach -- either from economic necessity and political force or from monastic loneliness and asceticism.

Those of them, who have tried either extreme, felt either being victimized by the surroundings or being immobilized by the intrinsic emptiness and ignorance. Some of those unhappy people were focusing on the objective reality, on the weaknesses of other people and circumstances they felt were responsible for their own unhappiness. Thus, in their unhappy marriages, they have wanted that the other spouse would change. The result was that either of them tried unsuccessfully to confess the "sins" of the other and to shape up the other while leaving intact own ego. As Mark Twain once said, "Nothing so needs reforming as other people's habits". I have seen union and party disputes where people were spending tremendous amounts of repulsive energy trying to create legislation that would mandate the intervention of the external political bureaucracy into the internal economic affairs of the people as though the the latter really entrusted the former to do so.

Some of those unhappy people were focusing on the subjective reality. However, this approach led them to the extreme skepticism, negation of any kind of worldly success and happiness, and negation of the real world itself while preferring the imaginary world. Recall the first rule of Buddha -- "Life is suffering". But it is also joy. And because life is not only suffering, the followers of subjectivism (or "inside-out" approach to social and individual effectiveness and happiness) immobilized themselves, and thus, could not joy with this world.

Plato: Well, by propagandizing mediocrity and slavish prudence, you are making it harder to find out what beauty, heroism, and excellence are.

Aristotle: Not at all. As usual, you are approaching to the matter at hand from the aristocratic prospective, with its snobbish attitude toward "mediocrity and slavish prudence," which is not the same as my "common sense and daring with necessary deliberation". We are what we repeatedly do. After all, the real, common sense beauty, heroism, and excellence are not a short lived show or act, but the habitual showing and acting in a certain way. Our character and personality grow and harden with the qualitative and quantitative increase of our habits. Compare, for example, the beauty of Elizabeth Tailor in her twenties and what left of that beauty by now, after nine marriages and a dissolute life. Someone said that, "by sowing a thought, you will reap an action; by sowing an action, you will reap a habit; by sowing a habit, you will reap your character; by sowing your character, you will reap your destiny". The same can be said about personality, and its constituents -- the beauty and heroism that are the feminine goodness and masculine virtue. Although goodness or virtue by itself is sufficient for happiness, by maintaining your beauty, you grow your personality; by grooming your personality, you create your starry destiny. Habitual discipline and prolonged observance of your spiritual and material food will necessary lead you to the common sense excellence and will produce your social effectiveness and individual happiness.

As Euripides once said, "When virtuous men die, their virtue does not perish, but lives; though they are gone. As for the bad guys, all that was theirs dies and is buried with them". Considering the other side of the problem, John Locke noticed that, "Good and evil, reward and punishment, are the only motives to a rational creature -- these are the spur and reins whereby all mankind set on work, and guided". However, a question arises -- what are the common senses of Good and Reward? And I think they are what the numerical majority of the people habitually exercises, not what your tiny aristocratic minority thinks.

Pascal once said that, "Habit is a second nature, and it destroys the first". But I disagree with the second part of his statement, because it implies the notion of Rousseau and Nietzsche that the wild man is somewhat purer and better than the civilized man. Although Rousseau and Nietzsche emphasized the importance of character, the natural goodness of human beings, and the corrupting influences of their institutionalized life, they did that at the expense of personality and social needs. That approach led to both world wars and necessitated the 20th-century personality psychologists to turn their attention 179 degrees off from the disciplining of the character. That is why in my book, a steady and socially approved habit is a learned nature, and it improves an unlearned.

Because the deeply ingrained habits have tremendous gravity force and repulsive energy, more than most people realize, breaking them in order to be personally happy and socially effective involves appropriate willpower and adequate changes in our lives. Lift off of a spacecraft takes a tremendous energy, but once it breaks out of the strong earthly gravity and not yet arrives into the zone of the strong solar gravity, its inertia takes on the rest of a journey. Like any natural force and energy, the earthly force and energy can work for us if correctly harnessed or against us if otherwise. The pull force and push energy of some of our habits may currently be keeping us from going where we wish to be. But in fact, it is balancing the pull force and the push energy that keeps the families, the societies, the planets and the galaxies together; and it keeps them in a certain order. Habitually balancing is the real power; and if we use it effectively, we can use the potential force and energy of our habits to create cohesiveness, smoothness, and orderliness in our lives that are necessary components of our personal happiness and social effectiveness.

Plato: You habitually emphasize constancy and habits as an indispensable element of your moral system that would lead each of us to personal happiness and social effectiveness. But without quirks and jerks there would not be any innovation and any progress -- talents would not be appreciated, mediocrity would be in charge, and such a society would inevitably be dissolved through a war, a revolution, or both. So, please, define your "habits," that we can progress in our search for the truth.

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Victor J. Serge created this page and revised it on 04/10/03