Are there really “laws of life”?

Reading David Brooks’ The Road to Character with high school students this summer, I find some of them can’t quite get their mind around the distinction between “moral realism” and “the ethics of authenticity.” The distinction is important, because Brooks’ argument is in favor of the former and in opposition to the latter. In various ways, he makes the point that part of living well is to respond to what’s out there–that some ways of life work better than others because they are are better fitted to reality–to things as they are.

The argument for authenticity usually assumes that what’s most important is that a person “be true to the self,” that we find the right way to act by consulting our passions and feelings. Brooks doubts that, arguing that it’s often more important that we restrain and control our passions and feelings. In this he follows ancient traditions–most notably Aristotle. For Aristotle, it’s possible to judge some societies as better than others, because it’s possible to grasp principles by which societies can be judged. This cannot be the case if whatever a culture deems is right is right, so that if Southerners thought slavery was moral, then it was okay “for them.” Not judging is central to the deconstructionist project.

Aristotle argued that the pursuit of truth is the attempt to align one’s thinking and acting with reality, which assumes there is a reality independent of people’s opinions. One can have the opinion that lying to get what you want is okay, but reality dictates that if you keep doing that others will figure out that you are dishonest and stop trusting you, which will reduce your power–your ability to get what you want. So “honesty is the best policy” is not just something some societies teach. It’s a moral reality that nobody can change.

Students keep drifting back to the idea that morality changes as society changes; therefore, there are no universals. So they don’t really follow the points Brooks is making. It’s okay to disagree with him, but an educated person should be able to understand him.

The idea of moral realism might be glimpsed in the traditional bits of wisdom encoded in proverbs and folk sayings. They are time-tested understandings of how things are, perceptions of wisdom–what John Templeton called the “Laws of Life.” There’s the “law of the harvest”: you reap what you sow. This is also described as “what goes around comes around” or summarized by the rule that “as ye judge ye shall be judged.”

Humanity has collected thousands of them:

It is better to love than to be loved.
Success is a journey, not a destination.
Enthusiasm is contagious (and nothing important is achieved without enthusiasm).
The borrower is a servant to the lender.
We find what we look for (good or evil).
Every ending is a beginning.
The way to fix bad things is to create good things.
Love is stronger than everything else.
You can’t solve a problem at the same level as the problem. You need to get above it.
The truth will make you free.
To find gold you need to search where the gold is.
Habit is the best servant, the worst master.
People are punished by their sins not for them.
Make yourself necessary and the world will feed you.
Luck favors the prepared.
Defeat isn’t bitter if you don’t swallow it.

These might be understood as descriptions of how things are rather than as social rules. This is familiar to people knowledgeable and the Biblical faiths. The Bible makes little distinction between wisdom and righteousness. Frederick Buechner once pointed out that

…the Bible is not first of all a book of moral truth. I would call it instead a book of truth about the way life is. Those strange old scriptures present life as having been ordered in a certain way, with certain laws as inextricably built into it as the law of gravity is built into the physical universe. When Jesus says that whoever would save his life will lose it and whoever loses his life will save it, surely he is not making a statement about how, morally speaking, life ought to be. Rather, he is making a statement about how life is. [Quoted by Alvin Plantinga]

Moral realism suggests simply that nature, including human nature, is governed by patterns that the perceptive observer can discern. To discern these patterns and to live in accordance with them is wisdom, according to Brooks and Aristotle. The philosopher Alvin Plantinga said, “Wisdom is a reality-based phenomenon. To be wise is to know reality, to discern it. A discerning person notices things, attends to things, picks up on things. He notices the difference between tolerance and forgiveness, pleasure and joy, sentimentality and compassion.”

Such people “accommodate themselves to reality,” said Plantinga. “They go with the flow. They tear along the perforated line. They attempt their harvests in season. Ordinary people proceed with such a program no matter whether they have derived their wisdom from scripture or from more general revelation.” Plantinga suggests we may pick up such truths from Proverbs or from paying attention to the world around us or possibly from a wise grandparent. But, he says, wherever we get them, the wise do what Brooks is suggesting–they adjust to reality, changing their own character to be more effective in the world as it actually is. They live by truths such as these:

The more you talk, the less people listen.
If your word is no good, people will not trust you and it is then useless to protest this fact.
Trying to cure distress with the same thing that caused it only makes matters worse.
If you refuse to work hard and take pains, you are unlikely to do much of any consequence.
Boasting of your accomplishments does not make people admire them. Boasting is vain in both senses of the word.
Envy of fat cats does not make them slimmer, and will anyhow rot your bones.
If you scratch certain itches, they just itch more.
Many valuable things, including happiness and deep sleep, come to us only if we do not try hard for them.

Reposted with revisions from The Good Place