3 Ring
Why Should I Care?
The Third Chapter,
in which you ask yourself:
“Why Should I Care?”
Preparation
Required Reading: Frieman, “The Desire to Fit In is the Root of Almost All Wrong-Doing” (Aeon)
Optional Reading: Hill, “Where Loneliness Can Lead” (Aeon)
Writing:
- Frieman’s key term is “servility.” How does he define it? Answer with paraphrase, not quotation.
- An argument is a thesis supported by one or more reasons. What is Frieman’s thesis? What reason(s) does he provide in support of his thesis? Paraphrase or quote briefly.
- What is your immediate reaction to Frieman’s argument? Agreement, disagreement, or something else?
- Respond to the following question by writing at least one paragraph: Maybe at other times it’s true that wanting to fit in is the root of evil, but in our times, isn’t it more commonly the desire to stand out, the refusal to put the common good before individual freedom, that causes problems?
Because You Want to Be Happy
So: you can ask the big ethical question about a specific situation (like the Trolley situation). Then you’re asking “what should I do?” But you can also ask the big ethical question about your general “situation,” which you call “life.” Then you’re asking “what should I do with my life?”
But didn’t we already answer that question? The answer is just: whatever it takes to be happy. Now, this sounds more like common sense than philosophy. But it’s also the answer that lots of philosophers have given, after thinking about the question for a very long time.
Aristotle, for example, was such a great philosopher that for a long time people just called him “The Philosopher.” As in, the only one you ever needed to read. The Philosopher said the point of doing anything, which includes “living life,” is just to be happy. He said everyone thought this, whether they thought so or not.
So maybe it’s a big question but it’s also an easy one. What should you do with your life? Same answer we gave earlier: whatever makes you happy. Obviously.
Think about it. Do you ever do anything in order to make yourself not happy? Sure, you do things that don’t make you happy. But you do those things because you think they’re going to lead to other things that will make you happy. Or because you think they’ll help you avoid things that are even worse. Either way, it’s always about being as happy as possible, after you add up the benefits and subtract the costs.
So you want to be as happy as possible. But: what if it were possible to be happier? The real question is whether the thoughts you have about what will make you happy are leading you in the right direction, or whether you might be happier if you thought differently.
The Bigger Question
When you’re doing philosophy, you’re always looking for the Bigger Question behind the Big Question. The bigger the question, the harder it is to see. The further down you go, the bigger the questions get, and the harder you have to look.
The Bigger Questions are harder to see because actually, you’ve already answered them. You just forgot your answer. It can be very hard to remember. Like a name on the tip of your tongue.
There is a term for these forgotten answers to bigger questions. They’re called hidden assumptions. When you’re doing philosophy, you’re trying to unhide your assumptions. You’re trying to go as far down the rabbit hole as you can. You’re trying to take nothing for granted.
Now remember, the Big Ethical Question is: what should I do about this? So: what Bigger Ethical Question lurks beneath that Big Ethical Question?
When you encountered the Trolley Situation, the question was: should you kill the one to save the five? Even though it was an imaginary situation, the question seemed like it really mattered in real life. It showed you that your answers to ethical questions can be a matter of life and death. And then the variations showed you that how you answer can be a matter of justice and injustice. The Trolley Situation showed you that it really matters whether or not you are a good person.
Or did it?
No, it didn’t. Think again. The situation did not show you that being a good person, doing the right thing, and is important. You assumed that. The Big Question was about what it means to be good in that situation. You got all caught up with that, because it was kind of hard to figure out. It was a dilemma: a fun puzzle. But there was a Bigger Question underneath it all, and you’d already answered it. You just forgot. The Bigger Question was:
Why should I be a good person? or Why should I do the right thing?
Kill the one, save the five; kill the five, save the one. The Bigger Question, the one you have to figure out now is: why do I care?
Now, remember what Aristotle said: the point of doing one thing instead of another, the point of living this way instead of that way, is because you think this way will make you happier than the other way. So there’s one answer to the bigger question. What’s the point of being a good person? What’s the point of doing the right thing? Well, it’s because for some reason, you think you have to be good if you’re going to be happy. You care about doing the right thing because you care about your own happiness, and you assume they’re connected. Think about it: would you bother to be good if you knew it would make you unhappy?
And remember, this doesn’t mean you always like being good. It doesn’t mean doing the right thing is always pleasant. It means that, for some reason, you figure being good, or not being bad, will lead to being happier in the long run. A lot of times you’d rather just do what you want instead of “doing the right thing.” But you accept the short-term pain for the long-term gain. Either you’re looking forward to a reward for being good, and that’ll make you happy; or you know you’ll be punished for being bad, which would make you unhappy, in which case, avoiding the unhappiness makes you happy. Either way it’s all because you want to be happy.
There’s your hidden assumption. There’s your forgotten answer to the Bigger Question. “I care about being good because I care about being happy.” This is your Normal World.
Now, you’re going to do another thought experiment. The thought experiment comes from Plato’s Republic. It’s called “The Ring of Gyges.”
From Plato, The Republic, Book II
. . . to do injustice is, by nature, good; to suffer injustice, evil; but that the evil is greater than the good. And so when men have both done and suffered injustice and have had experience of both, not being able to avoid the one and obtain the other, they think that they had better agree among themselves to have neither; hence there arise laws and mutual covenants; and that which is ordained by law is termed by them lawful and just. This they affirm to be the origin and nature of justice — it is a mean or compromise, between the best of all, which is to do injustice and not be punished, and the worst of all, which is to suffer injustice without the power of retaliation; and justice, being at a middle point between the two, is tolerated not as a good, but as the lesser evil, and by reason of the inability of men to do injustice. For no man who is worthy to be called a man would ever submit to such an agreement if he were able to resist; he would be mad if he did. . . .
Now that those who practice justice do so involuntarily and because they have not the power to be unjust will best appear if we imagine something of this kind: having given both to the just and the unjust power to do what they will, let us watch and see whither desire will lead them; then we shall discover in the very act the just and unjust man to be proceeding along the same road, following their interest, which all natures deem to be their good, and are only diverted into the path of justice by the force of law. The liberty which we are supposing may be most completely given to them in the form of such a power as is said to have been possessed by Gyges the ancestor of Croesus the Lydian.
According to the tradition, Gyges was a shepherd in the service of the king of Lydia; there was a great storm, and an earthquake made an opening in the earth at the place where he was feeding his flock. Amazed at the sight, he descended into the opening, where, among other marvels, he beheld a hollow brazen horse, having doors, at which he stooping and looking in saw a dead body of stature, as appeared to him, more than human, and having nothing on but a gold ring; this he took from the finger of the dead and reascended.
Now the shepherds met together, according to custom, that they might send their monthly report about the flocks to the king; into their assembly he came having the ring on his finger, and as he was sitting among them he chanced to turn the collet of the ring inside his hand, when instantly he became invisible to the rest of the company and they began to speak of him as if he were no longer present. He was astonished at this, and again touching the ring he turned the collet outwards and reappeared; he made several trials of the ring, and always with the same result-when he turned the collet inwards he became invisible, when outwards he reappeared. Whereupon he contrived to be chosen one of the messengers who were sent to the court; where as soon as he arrived he seduced the queen, and with her help conspired against the king and slew him, and took the kingdom.
Suppose now that there were two such magic rings, and the just put on one of them and the unjust the other. No man can be imagined to be of such an iron nature that he would stand fast in justice. No man would keep his hands off what was not his own when he could safely take what he liked out of the market, or go into houses and lie with any one at his pleasure, or kill or release from prison whom he would, and in all respects be like a God among men.
Discussion
The story about the shepherd and the ring is a thought experiment that gives an answer to the big question about why you should care about being good. And the answer is: you shouldn’t. What you call “morality,” all your big ideas about right and wrong, all those rules your parents and teachers gave you, all their lectures about “being a good person,” all the inspiring stories about moral heroes — that’s all bullshit, and it’s keeping you down. It’s an illusion, a fantasy, a shadow on the wall. The truth is there is no right and wrong. (And remember: philosophy just wants truth!) If you want to be happy, don’t try to be good. Just admit it. Admit what you really want. Then learn how to get it. That’s happiness.
The story says yes, it’s true: you must change your life. But not by becoming a “better person.” There is no “better.” You don’t need to become a good person. You need to stop letting dumb ideas about “being a good person” get in the way of getting what you want. You need to become smart and strong enough to get what you want, and to keep other people from getting in your way. You need to become better at being a person, and being a person, the best person you can be, the happiest person you can be means getting what you want. Being “good” (in the sense of “morality”) keeps you from being good (in the sense of “ability”) at being a person.
In the story, the shepherd gets this power from the ring. He doesn’t have to do anything or learn anything. It’s magic. But there aren’t any magic rings in real life. There are no shortcuts. (That’s just another fantasy you’ll have to get over if you’re going to get what you want and be happy.) So, what’s the real-life version of the ring?
It’s philosophy, of course. Philosophy is the ring! It’s the axe that breaks through the crust of bullshit that keeps you down. It’s the hammer that breaks up the illusions and fantasies. It’s the fire that drives the shadows away. It’s how you see clear down to the bottom of yourself, past all sedimented muck of home and school and society, all the mud that hides your true desires from yourself. And it’s the tool for figuring out how to fulfill those true desires without getting caught.
Philosophy is how you discover your true self. At the same time it’s how you hide your true self from other people who wouldn’t be able to handle it if they could see it. They’d try to stop you from getting what you want, by making rules and passing laws and being judgmental. They’d say it’s because what you want is “bad,” but really it’s just because they’d be jealous. They’d do the same thing if they had a ring that showed them what’s really going on, and let them do whatever they wanted. That’s the point.
Look a the story again. At the beginning, where is the shepherd?
He’s in Normal World. His normal world is hills and sheep and stable ground. In Normal World, he knows what’s true and false, right and wrong. And then what? Well, something happens: something breaks in, shakes things up. An earthquake. All the sudden the ground beneath his feet, the stuff he took for granted, it shifts. Something opens up. A hole in the ground, a hole in his world. A rabbit hole. He goes down that hole and he finds something. He doesn’t know what it is, exactly. But he takes it back with him. Back to Normal World, back to being a shepherd.
And then, he’s sitting around with the other shepherds, the other normal people, and he finds out what it really is, what he really brought back with him. As soon as they can’t see him anymore, he can see them for what they really are, the thing they can’t see for themselves. They think they’re good because they care about being good; but really they’re good because they’re too afraid to be bad. Really, there is no “good” or “bad.” Those are empty words, echoing in their heads since childhood. And seeing this changes his world. Nothing around him is different; but he’s different, because he sees his world in a different way.
What he realizes is that, back in his normal world, he was a prisoner who didn’t know he was in prison. He was a slave who didn’t know he was enslaved. He was the prisoner of nonsense; he was a slave to morality. That’s what was keeping him where he was: not knowing where he was.
But now that he knows he’s been in prison, the walls that kept him there fall down. Now that he knows he’s been a slave, the chains fall off. He learns how to use the ring to see through it all. And once he can see through it all, he can move around the world exactly like he’s always wanted to, and no one can stop him because they can’t see what he sees. That’s how he gets out.
So what does he do then? He kills the king and takes over the kingdom. The prisoner takes over the prison. The slave becomes the master. Once he sees that it was always all about the power to get what you want, the way is open for him to get the power to get what he wants.
You are the shepherd. You’re in Normal World. But you find a ring, a kind of magic called philosophy. If you learn how to use it, you’ll see that your world was a prison of the mind. If you can see it, you can escape it. And where will you go? You’ll go where you’ve always wanted to go. You’ll go for the throne. You’ll get everything you ever wanted. And you’ll be happy.
Look at the story again. The bigger question was: why should I care about being good? The story says you shouldn’t. Why does it say that? Because you don’t. That’s the argument. You never actually cared about being good. You just care about not getting punished for being bad, or getting rewarded for being good. You care about rewards and punishments: but what are rewards and punishments? Stuff you want, or want to avoid. See? It’s always been about getting what you want. You’re full of desires. You live in a world full of obstacles to your desires. You don’t act on those desires, and you tell yourself it’s because you’re moral. But actually it’s just because you’re afraid to break the rules. You’re afraid people will judge you, or you’re afraid of getting punished. Or it’s because you want people to like you, or you want to win points in the game. So what if you weren’t afraid any more? And what if there were no rules? What if you could get away with it?
Now maybe you’re thinking something like this: even if there were no consequences, even if no one ever found out, I’d still feel guilty. And if I felt guilty I wouldn’t feel happy. Right. Maybe you would. Ok then: here’s a variation on the scenario. What if the ring doesn’t just get rid of external consequences, the rewards and punishments other people give you? What if it gets rid of the internal stuff too? After all, you think “guilt” isn’t part of that “sedimented muck of home and school society”? You were taught to feel guilty. And isn’t philosophy all about unlearning what you’ve been taught? Changing the way you react to situations by changing the judgments we make about them, like Epictetus? If philosophy can dissolve all the bad ideas you’ve been taught to believe, why couldn’t it dissolve all the bad feelings you’ve been trained to feel – including the feeling of guilt?
So that’s the real thought experiment: what if you ever got punished, and you never felt bad, either?
Yeah. That’s what I thought. You’d use the ring. You’re the shepherd. We all are. But only some of us become kings.
Still there’s no shortcut to your kingdom. In the story it’s magic, but in real life it’s hard work. You’ll have to train your mind till it’s sharp enough to cut through anything the “good people” in Normal World try to throw at you: all the ideas they use to lock you in, all the feelings they use to chain you up. You’ll have to get to the point where you are “beyond 
good and evil.” (That’s a line from Frederich Nietzsche: a very, very dangerous philosopher. You probably shouldn’t read him.) And then — well, then you’ll be truly free. You’ll live in a world where the normal people don’t own you. A world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible.
Is that enough to make you want to do the hard work of philosophy? The promise of freedom from all the pressure, all the expectations, all the fear and guilt? The freedom to do what you want, and the ability to get away with it, by making your true self invisible to everyone?
Is this what you expected from philosophy class?
Good.
Reflection
- Is the shepherd happy in the end? Write at least 250 words.
