Unpredictable Patterns #15: Rediscovering Temperance
On attention portfolios, using the boring as heuristic and sophrosyne as essential virtue
Dear Reader,
This has been a week. I managed to catch a hell of a cold, and have slept through most of it and so as I was turning to writing this note I was almost thinking I would take a break and leave it this week - and maybe that would have been a kindness - but then I re-read the Charmides, and it struck me that maybe there is a shorter note that could be interesting here. I hope it is - and it contains the seed about a discussion we may return to about sin and human failure modes.
Follow the boring
What is the most boring virtue you can imagine? The one that is least trendy and least attractive today? There is a good chance that you will agree that it is the fourth cardinal virtue, called ”temperance”. Not only does this immediately make us associate to diets and teetotalers, it also seems to paint the image of an individual who is so even keeled as to be imperturbable.
So this should make us curious. The very observation that something is looked down upon and dismissed is a clue that it probably deserves closer thinking; we live in a time that concentrates our attention in such a way that we are bound to miss interesting insights across a number of different fields.
This phenomenon, the power law distribution of attention, will in extreme situations turn us into a ”single story society” where we are all in thrall to a single narrative that dominates the global mind. That single story concentration in turn focuses our attention even more and reduces our ability to seek knowledge outside of the narrowing stage of the world narrative.
The past year, the pandemic has been the dominating story, and it has only been broken into by a few other narratives, never more than a handful playing at the same time, and often just. for a few weeks. The concentration of our attention, then, is observable in two different dimensions: in time and in a shrinking set of subjects that we are able to devote any attention to.
This is hardly a necessary fact; we can, if we just set our mind to it, seek out experiences that widen our horizons. The concept of an ”information diet” has been around for sometime, but it is flawed. What we want is an ”attention portfolio” - a conscious way to allocate our attention over things that can surprise us, and force us to update our beliefs.
And focusing on what is seen as boring is a good way to discover what is hidden in the shadow of our social attention spaces. The boring is, almost per definition, something we do not want to pay attention to - and so resisting that inclination is inverting the social pressures of attention and charting our own path.
Hence: temperance.
Re-reading Plato
Temperance is a one dimensional version of a much more complex and interesting term: sophrosyne. Sophrosyne is one of the Greek moral ideals, and we find it in several writers. Both Plato and Xenophon suggest that Socrates was a supreme example of it, and that it was the mark of a great man (or woman - but the examples form that time were, alas, mostly men).
The most in-depth treatment of sophrosyne in Plato is found in what is - interestingly - thought of as a minor dialogue, the Charmides. The Charmides plays out before Plato’s birth and Socrates is discussing this virtue with Charmides and Critias, relatives of Plato.
The choice of interlocutors is not accidental. A contemporary reader would find deep irony in these two gentlemen discussing temperance or self-restraint, as they both died in war at Piraeus, members of the infamous thirty tyrants. Clearly, Socrates did not succeed in inspiring in them the virtue they were said to hold.
The framing of the dialogue is carefully planned out, and as often when we read Plato we are reminded of what an extraordinary author he is, and how there is nothing accidental in the dialogues.
The dialogue starts, for example, with Socrates returning from a bloody battle where many of his friends have fallen. War, in all its forms, is the result of the break down of sophrosyne (the failure mode of virtues are key to understanding their value), and so he is fresh back from the horrors that can result when temperance is thrown to the wind.
He encounters Critias and Charmides, a beautiful young man who is praised by all in the company, and Socrates asks if - in addition to all his other virtues - he has a noble soul. Socrates is introduced to the young man, who has an headache, and the young man brashly asks him for the cure to his headache, and Socrates asks quietly if it will be taken with our without his consent? Charmides laughs it off, and says that it will only be with Socrates consent - but the reader immediately senses that this self-restraint may be very shallow indeed.
Critias then goes on to praise the boy and says that he is the most temperate of all - and Socrates asks if Charmides agrees. He demurs, refusing to answer the question, since agreeing would be proving he is not temperate and disagreeing would be an affront to Critias. Socrates agrees to explore the issue without asking the boy, and then digs into the regular socratic dialogue, exploring and examining the boundaries of the concept at hand.
They explore what look like necessary components: self-knowledge and self-restraint are discussed but found not quite right, and the dialogue ends in the classical aporia - unresolved, with everyone agreeing that they have not been able to define the issue at hand.
But the even if the dialogue ends, the action continues - and in it Critias decides that Charmides will force Socrates to teach him, by violence if necessary. Socrates asks, pointedly
”And are you about to use violence, without even going through the forms of justice?”
Charmides replies:
”Yes, I shall use violence, since he orders me; and therefore you had better consider well.”
Socrates, again:
”But the time for consideration has passed, when violence is employed; and you, when you are determined on anything, and in the mood of violence, are irresistable”.
Charmides:
”Do not resist me then”.
And Socrates ends the dialogue saying:
”I will not resist you.”
This jostling is often read as innuendo, but in the context of the dialogue, where Socrates has just returned from war, and where we know that Critias and Charmides will descend into tyranny, I think it shows something else - it shows that they lack any self-restraint and self-knowledge, and that they turn to violence to get their way.
We are left with a silence that speaks more than the words in the dialogue itself, and the dialogue’s aporia frames an inversion of the virtue it explored.
Cultivating sophrosyne
Sophrosyne seems to have receded into obscurity even with Aristotle, who reduces the virtue to an ability to not overeat and drink too much, and limit one’s engagement in bodily pleasures (as ever a practical man). This is interesting, since it suggests that even Aristotle found this an almost boring virtue - although he spends some time discussing it in the Nicomachean Ethics.
But we have enough to dig further from Plato, here, and we can note that there is a really interesting connection between sophrosyne and a much more hyped concept in our own day and time: trust.
The tech industry, and a lot of academia, has spent a fair bit of time trying to measure and understand trust as a key concept in how our society thinks about technology and the technology companies - but the basis of this concept have usually not been thoroughly explored. Trust is a notoriously difficult subject, but we can make a very simple observation here: it is not possible to trust a person or organizations that does not exhibit sophrosyne — this complex combination of self-knowledge and self-restraint.
And rather than trying to engineer trust, it would probably be more powerful to try to grow a habit of sophropsyne - where you expand on both self-knowledge and self-restraint.
We can ask this about any modern organization - how well does it know itself? And how well is it able to restrain itself?
Self-knowledge requires an honest ability to look at yourself and ask not just what you have been, but also how you are changing. Honest self-knowledge includes knowing when you are no longer a startup, and when you have become a systemic actor in your own society, or when you are being looked to to solve complex social problems.
Self-restraint requires not just the ability to refrain from doing certain things, but also the ability to not do all things - something that is even harder. Self-restraint should not be confused with, well, being boring - but with a certain focus and ability to clearly carve out a space for yourself.
Failures of sophrosyne are - and this is crucial - often a form of violence that can be born from lack of self-knowledge or self-restraint.
So what?
Backing out then, what can we learn from this? There are a couple of different clues to explore in our discussion.
The first is about sophrosyne itself - and the complexity of virtues. Temperance is not a simple virtue, and I increasingly suspect that we have simplified discussions of virtues and vices to a point where we just brand them as ”ethical”. This is true of the idea that there is such a thing as ”ethical AI” - where the analysis is often shockingly thin. The building and construction of technology - the techne - and the expansion of scientific knowledge - the episteme - are complex human actions than need to explored through a full spectrum understanding of human behavior. To suggest that the technology alone is the subject of the analysis is to miss the mark. Far too much discussion about technology and ethics today reduce both.
The second is that we can do much worse than rediscovering the idea of cardinal virtues and - yes - the concept of sin. It is very, very unmodern - but provides us with an aggregate of a lot of human wisdom that otherwise will be reduced to flat discussions about biases and decision making. Sin is essentially reflective of the deep insight that most of human action unfolds in one of several ethical failure modes - we rarely manage to be virtuous, and so how we sin is a better proxy for thinking about how we use technology. I think it would be interesting to compare different theological concepts of sin here and work out how they relate to each-other (sin as missing the mark stands out in my mind).
The third, is to consider the failures of sophrosyne. Charmides is a dark dialogue, and made even darker by the break down of consent that it tracks in the shadow of war - both in the past and foreshadowed in the future by the choice of characters. Scenario analysis and future thinking has to be a part of how we think about being responsible - as we have noted in the previous note on responsible innovation.
Well, temperance, then should also extend to this note. I tend to write too long, and have been helped this week by being sick - a terrible cold - and so I have not had time to think as much as I would like. That may be a good thing, and the temperance in words may force me to engage in both a bit of self-knowledge and self-restraint.
That said, there is a real risk that I will relapse in verbose sin.
Thank you for reading and as always, let me know if you have any ideas or comments!
Take care!
Nicklas