4
4A HARVARD MBA TOOK A VACATION TO A SUNNY CLIME, WHERE HE HIRED A FISHING GUIDE NAMED JOE TO HELP HIM LAND A MARLIN. JOE WAS IN HIS FORTIES AND LIVED IN A MODEST HOUSE BY THE SEASHORE WITH HIS WIFE AND TWO CHILDREN. EVERY DAY, JOE ROSE WHEN THE SUN WAS WARM AND TOOK A SWIM IN THE OCEAN WITH HIS FAMILY. THREE DAYS A WEEK, HE ESCORTED CLIENTS OUT TO SEA IN HIS BOAT, AND THEY WOULD FISH UNTIL THEY HOOKED A BIG ONE. THE FOUR MORNINGS WHEN HE CHOSE NOT TO WORK, JOE WOULD SIT IN HIS HAMMOCK AND READ FROM BREAKFAST UNTIL IT WAS TIME FOR MIDDAY LUNCH WITH HIS WIFE. ALMOST EVERY AFTERNOON, HE PICKED HIS KIDS UP AFTER SCHOOL AND TOOK THEM ON “AN ADVENTURE” OR TO HIS WORKSHOP FOR HANDICRAFTS. AFTER A LONG DINNER, EN FAMILLE, JOE AND HIS WIFE WOULD WALK TO A NEARBY CAFÉ WHERE THE LOCALS GATHERED TO DISCUSS ISSUES FACING THEIR COMMUNITY.
AS THE VACATIONING MBA IMMEDIATELY APPRECIATED, JOE’S FISHING EXPEDITIONS WERE FIRST RATE: JOE WAS A SKILLED GUIDE, KNOWLEDGEABLE NOT ONLY ABOUT ANGLERS’ TACKLE BUT ALSO MARINE BIOLOGY, OCEANOGRAPHY, METEOROLOGY, AND OTHER SUBJECTS ABOUT WHICH VACATIONERS WERE CURIOUS. THE MBA SAW THE POTENTIAL FOR A BIG, PROFITABLE ENTERPRISE. HE EXPLAINED TO JOE THAT IT WOULD BE EASY TO PUT TOGETHER A GROUP OF VENTURE CAPITALISTS TO “BUILD YOUR UNDERPERFORMING BUSINESS.” INSTEAD OF INEFFICIENTLY TAKING ONE CLIENT OUT AT A TIME, JOE COULD HAVE A FLEET OF HIGH-TECH FISHING BOATS, EACH ACCOMMODATING A DOZEN OR MORE CLIENTS. WITH A LITTLE STRATEGIC ADVICE, HE COULD BRANCH OUT INTO RELATED BUSINESSES, PERHAPS BUILD A HIGH-RISE HOTEL ON THE BEACH. MOST IMPORTANT, JOE COULD GO ON TV AND BECOME THE MARKETING FACE FOR HIS BUSINESS, CREATING A BRAND THAT COULD BE FRANCHISED AT OTHER SLEEPY FISHING COMMUNITIES: “A GUY LIKE YOU COULD BECOME A CELEBRITY.” THE MBA THEN DELIVERED THE CLINCHER: “WHEN THAT HAPPENS, WE HAVE AN IPO AND YOU GET RICH!”
AFTER LISTENING PATIENTLY, JOE ASKED, “AND WHAT THEN?”
THE MBA QUICKLY ANSWERED: “WELL, YOU RETIRE TO SOME NICE PLACE ON THE BEACH, DO A LITTLE FISHING AND READING, AND GET TO SPEND SOME TIME WITH YOUR WIFE AND KIDS …”
The pursuit of happiness is hard work. If my own experience is a reliable guide, only those well disciplined should attempt the feat, and even they should be prepared to face setbacks in the process. Halfway through writing this book, it became clear that I kept defeating my own efforts to achieve happiness. I had been writing primarily because it made me happy to do so. I was regularly getting into “the zone,” spending blissful days pounding the keyboard while hours passed unnoticed and unlamented. I was engaged fully in reading Aristotle, thinking about what I was learning, and seeking ways to convey in simple words the complex things the Ancient had to say about planning the good life. By making a conscious effort to describe behavior that would make me happy, I was convinced I was internalizing the pattern. Virtue, I assumed, was starting to come naturally.
Then the market collapse of 2001 hit me with a vengeance. Caught flat-footed as my retirement account lost much of its value, I realized I would not be able to retire as comfortably or as soon as planned unless I earned more money and invested it more wisely than in the past. So I went into heavy production mode: consulting here, writing a commissioned article there, and picking up the odd honorarium speaking at the Elks’ Club. I became so caught up in those labors that it was some time before it dawned on me that I hadn’t added a word to this book in months. When I examined my calendar for the coming year, I saw that I had committed almost all my time to work for hire, leaving only a few scattered days for “leisure work” on the book. I had the discipline of a recidivist: I kept postponing the pursuit of happiness.
I told myself I was sensibly investing a little now to enjoy more later, as any practical person would do. But growing unease caused me to question that conventional wisdom. I found myself wondering how much I really needed to retire comfortably, and how anyone ever knew how much money he truly required. As I went back over the process by which I had done my retirement planning, I realized I had not asked those questions in a serious way. Instead, I had accepted the general guidelines in Charles Schwab’s retirement manual, You’re Fifty—Now What? Given the amount an individual desires in the future, Schwab offers advice about what investments to make in order to achieve one’s goal. In hindsight, I saw that Schwab dealt only with the easy, financial part of retirement planning. The harder part, I now realized, was philosophical: figuring out how much I really needed to support the contemplative activities that put me in the zone. Without such a clear reckoning, I would end up spending the rest of my life making money and never get around to writing the book!
Aristotle observes that most people postpone happiness, often until it is too late, because they become caught up in the never-ending pursuit of more. Many feel they have no choice. Although the gods can devote all their time to contemplation, there is no way on earth that humans can do so because, unlike gods, we have to eat. And in order to eat, we have to work. Hence, in this world of scarcity, the pursuit of happiness requires resources.
Aristotle, always practical, addresses our need for resources. He offers a list of necessary ones, including wealth, health, position, friends, children, luck, honor, and good looks, which he says are instrumental to happiness. Though not themselves constituent parts of happiness, these goods may be prerequisites. Having them won’t make you happy, but not having them may prevent you from becoming so. For example, good looks are not integral to happiness; if so, Marilyn Monroe would have been happy. Yet a truly ugly person might find it difficult to find friends or a partner to love and be loved by in return, which would limit his or her opportunity to be happy. Thus, Aristotle says good looks may be instrumental to happiness, although characteristically, he doesn’t tell us how good-looking we need to be. One of the clearest anti-Aristotelians in all of literature, Oscar Wilde’s voluptuary, Dorian Gray, thinks he not only needs to be the most handsome man in the world, he needs to remain handsome even in old age. The extremely handsome Gray dies unhappy.
Among the panoply of instrumental goods needed to pursue happiness, the foremost and most morally complex is money. As a species, we are sometimes called Homo economicus because, without wealth creation, we cannot have food, clothing, shelter, and other necessities. And because humans are not beasts, we want to be comfortable, to enjoy good food, nice clothes, and a safe and secure home, not to mention a little decent wine and an occasional trip to Paris. Maybe even a nice vintage Cord auto. So work is a natural activity and, like the wealth it produces, is instrumental to a higher end: We work to live; we don’t live to work.
After confirming that there is no avoiding necessity and that we all want a few luxuries, Aristotle then asks, But is it enough merely to live, or even to live comfortably? He answers his own question: What we really want is to live well. And living well must mean doing things so blissful that we do them for their own sake, not for the sake of any extrinsic compensation. By definition, such activity is leisure, not work. This is tricky: Recall that Aristotle doesn’t categorize professional activities as work. Computer nerds are not working when they are hacking, scientists are not working when they are doing research, and professors are not working when they are writing because they all would do those activities even if they weren’t paid to do them. To Aristotle, such contemplative activities are leisure.
If we are not fortunate enough to have intrinsically leisurelike professions, Aristotle says we have to find a way to free ourselves from work/work in order to make time to contemplate. Ergo, we need money to afford the leisure time required to pursue happiness. To Aristotle, money isn’t the root of evil; instead, it is actually a good when it is instrumental to the higher end of creating the opportunity for leisure.
How much leisure time do we need? Obviously, the more the better. The trick is to free ourselves from as much work/work as practical to have as much leisure time for contemplation as possible. Here’s the rub: If more leisure requires more money to free up time away from work, only the relatively wealthy can be happy. Indeed, Aristotle says it is easier to pursue excellence if you are affluent, because you have less need to toil and more time for leisure.
Yet few rich people whom Aristotle knew took full advantage of the leisure time their wealth afforded them. Paradoxically, they wasted the opportunity to live well on acquiring yet more money, more than they needed to free themselves to contemplate. It’s like that today: A character in the Dilbert comic strip asks, “Can I trade my happiness for more money?”
However, Aristotle observes that some people who are not fabulously rich utilize their money well: They use their limited wealth to maximize their productive leisure time. Although Aristotle was denied the true happiness derived from attending a baseball game on a perfect summer’s day at Boston’s Fenway Park, I am confident that former Red Sox slugger Ted Williams personified what the Ancient had in mind when he spoke of using one’s money well. (At least during Williams’s lifetime. Aristotle was silent on the subject of the happiness of freeze-dried corpses!) At the time of Williams’s death in July 2002, his biographer, John Underwood, penned these Aristotelian words about the Splendid Splinter:
He was sensitive about his education (he barely made it through high school), but he could tell you in scientific terms how jet engines worked in the fighter planes he flew in combat in Korea, and exactly why the baseballs he hit with such frequency curved when pitched properly. He was always hammering (his word) at himself to improve: reading, inquiring, listening. Once when we were fishing off Islamorada in the Florida Keys, he announced he had just bought a set of the World Book Encyclopedia. He said: “I know I’m going to be in those books all the time. Every night I’ll be in those books.” He was fifty years old.
When Williams was a player, baseball stars didn’t earn the megabucks they do today, but Underwood says he made enough to “carve out for himself the idyllic, responsibility-free outdoorsman’s life.” A lifestyle much like the one enjoyed by the Internet’s fictional “fisherman Joe.” Because Aristotle had known people who behaved like Williams, he concluded that almost everyone is free and able to choose to live a good life, even if they do not have formal educations or oodles of money. Yet everyone needs at least some money.
Today we are faced with the same ethical question people have been asking themselves since the glory days of ancient Greece: How much is enough for me? Aristotle says this is the right question and offers the barest outline of an answer: We each need enough wealth not to worry where the next drachma is coming from. We need enough to free us from basic concerns about putting bread on our tables, clothes on our backs, and roofs over our heads. Further, we need enough to be comfortable and to have adequate savings, for without a sense of security, we won’t have the peace of mind needed to concentrate on higher pursuits.
Aristotle likens the pursuit of happiness to training for the Olympics. To get to the starting line, you need resources: a coach, income to support you while you train, good nutrition, and a well-equipped place to work out. But you don’t need an infinite amount of such resources. To decide which resources are most important, how much of each you need, and how you are going to obtain them, you must engage in a little analysis. To do that analysis thoughtfully requires a modicum of economic common sense and practical skills. Lacking those, some people who start off with the goal of making the Olympics never get past the stage of garnering the resources needed to support their training. They have to work so hard at fund-raising, they never find time to work out.
Aristotle views people with so little practical sense as unworthy of the big event. Still others raise the necessary funds but then get hooked on the money and lose sight of their original goal. That’s a prescription for unhappiness, even for those who appear to realize their dreams. When 1988 Olympic bronze medalist Kim Gallagher died of a stroke at age 38, her obituary did not read like an ode to a happy hero. Here’s how she had summed up her “successful” track career in her own words:
I needed to run for all the wrong reasons. I needed to run to keep my shoe contract. I needed to run to pay my bills. I learned a huge lesson. When I ran in the 1984 Olympics, I was going to be a star. I was going to make so much money, and I did. But it doesn’t last if you’re not devoted to what you are doing. I was not devoted to my running, and it showed. I don’t get a great joy from running or training or going out and doing all the work. Running is not something I love …
In Aristotelian terms, Kim Gallagher’s unhappiness stemmed from pursuing the wrong ends. Unlike Ted Williams, Gallagher never loved her sport. However, as her obituary writer, Frank Litsky, reported, “She liked what it bought, especially a Mercedes-Benz and a Malibu Home.”
In Aristotle’s day, the only material reward an Olympian could hope for was an olive wreath. Nonetheless, he warns that financial windfalls, in general, distract from virtuous activity because the responsibility of managing great wealth detracts from the time needed for contemplation and self-development. In sum: Too little money, and one is unable to train effectively; too much money, and one may become lost in materialism. Aristotle explains:
It seems to some people that good fortune is the same as happiness. But it isn’t. It is actually an impediment when it is excessive and, in that case, perhaps it is no longer right to call it good fortune. For wealth has a limit in its relationship to happiness.
In other words, wealth in the right amount supports the pursuit of higher ends, but more is too much. For example, large inheritances often discourage heirs from activities of self-improvement. Larry Ellison might take note of this. Because he will never spend all his billions, he says he plans to leave a fortune to his son, hoping to create a career in philanthropy for him. But would Ellison be doing his son a favor by leaving him filthy rich? Aristotle asks if children from wealthy families wouldn’t be better off in the long run if their parents nurtured them and encouraged them to get a good education, to develop their own talents, and, especially, to figure out for themselves what a good life means for them. Warren Buffet makes the same point, asking if it isn’t wisest to leave children “enough money so they would feel they could do anything, but not so much that they could do nothing.”
To Aristotle, a virtuous person recognizes the point at which he or she has too much of a good thing, whether money, power, or chocolate cake. That’s why Imelda Marcos’s insatiable love of shoes made her a poster girl of vice and self-delusion. Virtuous common folk know when they don’t need a new suit of clothes or an extra glass of beer, as virtuous business leaders know when they don’t need another company-sponsored celebration honoring their genius, don’t need a new corporate jet, and don’t need an extra million in order to be happy. The issue is the same for everyone; just the stakes differ.
In Aristotle’s view, “Happiness stands on its own without need of any other goods” and is “self-sufficient.” A truly happy person won’t say, “I’d be happier if I were richer (more powerful) (better looking).” In contrast, people who are hooked on wealth, power, or good looks are prone to unhappiness because there is always something missing in their lives. They always want more. And if their luck turns bad, they sorely miss the money, power, or beauty they once had. But when self-sufficient people run into a spell of misfortune, they are not as badly hurt because they do not value material things so highly, and they have a store of nonmaterial goods to fall back on, which fickle fortune can never take away. The once-rich Mohandas Gandhi and Leo Tolstoy found themselves without appreciable wealth in the waning years of their lives, but they didn’t miss the material things they once had in abundance. And when Galileo was imprisoned in Rome for the heresy of saying the earth revolves around the sun, he was not nearly as miserable as the powerless Napoleon was when exiled on St. Helena. Galileo, Gandhi, and Tolstoy were self-sufficient because they had contemplative resources to draw on in the absence of material goods. In contrast, when Dorian Gray lost his beauty, he felt the pain as Napoleon did when deprived of his power. Even though Gray and Napoleon had sufficient financial resources to live comfortably, they could not live well because they were not morally self-sufficient.
In answering the question, How much is enough? Aristotle warns us not to expect precise answers from philosophical inquiry. Ethical analysis is not scientific; it does not produce clear and quantifiable results.
Our discussion will be adequate if it has as much clearness as the subject-matter admits of, for precision is not to be sought for alike in all discussions…. It is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits; it is evidently foolish to accept probable reasoning from a mathematician and to demand demonstrative proofs from a rhetorician.
Aristotle tells us not to expect to find rules of right and wrong or definitive prescriptions in ethical analysis. Nonetheless, he believes that reasoning men and women can come to rough agreement on most broad ethical issues. But more important than the conclusions we reach is how we construct and think through such problems. When we answer the question, How much is enough? Aristotle doesn’t care what dollar amount we arrive at; what matters is that we engage in a disciplined moral analysis. To begin that process, he believes we must pose our question in an appropriate context. We should start with a definition of the good life and then ask how much leisure time we will need in order to achieve it. He says we always must keep the highest end in view in order to plan effectively.
Indeed, that concern distinguishes his ethical position from others with which it might be easily confused. For example, an ecologist or person dedicated to a life of material simplicity might mistakenly believe her philosophy is the same as Aristotle’s. In fact, Aristotle’s ethics of enough is not directly concerned with limiting wealth, production, consumption, or economic growth, per se. To make one’s life simpler by consuming less may be of ecological value, but that is not Aristotle’s aim (although in some instances, it may be a by-product). Instead, he says we should either increase or decrease our economic activity in light of what we need for living well. Sometimes we must earn more money to have enough to live well; in other circumstances, we need to earn less to achieve the same end. Hence, a good ecologist, who consumes little but spends all her free time channel surfing, surfing the net, or surfing the Pacific, is no more virtuous in Aristotle’s eyes than a millionaire who spends his free time making big-ticket purchases. It is what you do with the time not devoted to earning that counts.
Keeping the end in mind, Aristotle counsels us to employ a disciplined process in our individual analysis of what is enough. He suggests we objectively look at all sides of the question, trying to answer the logical objections of those who would disagree with our conclusions. In this way, we will be forced to be honest with ourselves. Aristotle believes that the one person we typically fool in moral analysis is ourself.
To help us decide how much is enough, Aristotle offers the general principle, We should all strive to live temperate lives. He proposes that moderation is good and that excess ought to be avoided in passions and actions. This ethical principle should not be thought of as a law. It is not applicable to the sins enumerated in the Ten Commandments because there is no virtue in moderate amounts of killing or stealing. His principle relates more precisely to the Seven Deadly Sins: gluttony, lust, envy, avarice, and so forth. In such arenas where the principle is appropriately applied, Aristotle suggests that there is a golden mean between an excess of a certain behavior on the one hand, and a defect, or shortage, on the other.
Fear and confidence and appetite and anger and pity and in general pleasure and pain may be felt both too much and too little, and in both cases not well; but to feel them at the right times, with reference to the right objects, towards the right people, with the right motive, and in the right way, is what is both intermediate and best, and this is characteristic of virtue. Similarly, with regards to actions there is also excess, defect, and the intermediate.
Thus, to fear everything is cowardly, and to fear nothing is foolhardy and rash. At the golden mean between the two extremes lies the virtue of courage. Another example: At one extreme, abstaining from drinking wine is insensible or unfeeling; at the other, not to limit one’s imbibing is self-indulgent. Temperance is intermediate, the virtue found between the defect and the excess. But because the measure of such things is imprecise, no one can say exactly where virtue lies on a continuum. Even brave men feel fear in a battle; and if you are at a party, you ought to have a good time! But too much fear or too much partying is never virtuous.
So where do we find virtue—the golden mean—on a continuum? The mean in a mathematical sense is a definable spot, computable by all who seek it. In distinction, Aristotle says that the intermediate in an ethical sense is “relative to us.” Two glasses of wine might be excessive for me, but you can handle four. (For an alcoholic, virtue is found in abstinence, not temperance. Again, Aristotle’s point of reference is the “normal” individual.)
Aristotle uses Olympic training to illustrate his point: If eating 41⁄2 pounds of food a day is excessive and 1⁄2 pound is too little, an Olympic coach shouldn’t necessarily order 21⁄2 pounds, the arithmetic mean, for all athletes at the training table. Although 41⁄2 pounds would be too much for almost anyone, Aristotle notes that it isn’t too much for everyone. He recalls the case of a heavyweight Olympic wrestler named Milo, who once ate an entire ox at one sitting! But there is a point of excess even for the likes of Milo (two oxen?). Aristotle says that the location of the ethical mean, virtue, depends on circumstances we must reckon for ourselves.
Aristotle uses art to illustrate why the golden mean isn’t found by precisely splitting the difference between extremes. A great work of art, he says, is one that cannot be improved by either adding or subtracting any element from it. But who is the final judge of that? The artist, Aristotle answers. He doesn’t say others can’t judge later; in fact, the definitive judgment of their works is usually rendered after artists have died. Similarly, Aristotle says others should not and probably cannot judge accurately the degree of our own virtue, a judgment of history best levied after we are dead. For the time being, the call is ours.
In assessing our own behavior, the golden mean is a useful, albeit imprecise, metric. For example, in various degrees, the character trait of ambition is either a virtue or a vice. If we lack all ambition, we will never accomplish anything; if we have too much, we may use, perhaps abuse, people and behave immorally to achieve our ends. Too much ambition is excess; too little is defect. So we must ask ourselves, How much ambition is virtuous?
Aristotle says we must each determine the proper amount and form of our behavior by conscious moral deliberation in the context of our own particular circumstances and, then, discipline our actions with reference to the golden mean. For example, how temperate a wine drinker should be is a matter of moral deliberation in which the person, time, place, and circumstances are variables to be reckoned with, but excess is obeisance to animal appetite, and defect is ascetic denial of sensual pleasure. Similarly, when political leaders wonder how gutsy a stand they should take on an important issue, the moral question they are asking is, How much courage is virtuous? In general, the answer will be that the defect is cowardliness (and inaction) and the excess is foolhardiness (and rashness). But the exact amount depends on the leader and the situation. To Aristotle, we start our individual moral analysis with the general knowledge that virtue almost always lies between two faults along a continuum:
| DEFECT (VICE) | MEAN (VIRTUE) | EXCESS (VICE) |
 |
||
| COWARDICE | COURAGE | RASHNESS |
| INSENSIBILITY | TEMPERANCE | INTEMPERANCE |
| CHURLISHNESS | FRIENDLINESS | OBSEQUIOUSNESS |
| HUMORLESSNESS | WIT | BUFFOONERY |
| MISERLINESS | GENEROSITY | VULGARITY |
| SLOTHFULNESS | PHYSICAL FITNESS | FANATICISM |
| TIMIDITY | CONFIDENCE | ARROGANCE |
A self-confident person is virtuous. She neither thinks too highly of herself nor lacks appreciation of her own capabilities; her virtue of confidence lies between the defect of timidity and the excess of arrogance. And so it is with other virtues and activities.
Both excessive and defective exercise destroy strength, and similarly drink or food which is above or below a certain amount destroys health, while that which is proportionate produces, increases, and preserves both. So, too, in the case of temperance, courage, and other excellences. For the individual who flies from and fears everything, and does not stand his ground against anything, becomes a coward, and the individual who fears nothing at all but goes to meet every danger becomes rash; similarly, the man who indulges in every pleasure and abstains from none becomes self-indulgent, while the one who shuns every pleasure, as boors do, becomes insensible; temperance and courage, then, are destroyed by excess and defect, and preserved by the mean.
While reminding us that virtue is not exactly in the middle of two extremes, Aristotle nonetheless says we should keep in mind the principle of moderation: Do nothing to excess. To modern sensibilities, this may seem a bit quirky. Too much exercise? We ask how that can be. When he talked about athletic fanaticism, Aristotle had in mind a person like the one I recently read about who took early retirement to devote his life to training for Ironman triathlons. At last count, he was competing in his umpteenth such event (swim 2.4 miles, bike 112 miles, run 26.2 miles). He obviously has remarkable self-discipline to maintain himself at 6 percent body fat, but he has accomplished this at the expense of developing other, higher aspects of his being. When one is working out 4 or 5 hours a day and then recovering, one doesn’t have much time for serving on a school board. Indeed, a recent study by medical researchers confirms Aristotle’s suspicion, identifying excessive exercise as an addictive vice among 2 percent of college-age males. Those who were exercise-dependent, “put their obsessions first, often ignoring family, work, and their own health.”
So how much time should one spend on a lower-level, pleasurable activity? Again, Aristotle offers only general guidelines. The moral task for each of us is to define for ourselves how we should behave between a set of extremes. The process by which we arrive at our definition of virtue is through the application of humankind’s unique and most godlike faculty. The exact location of the moral mean must be determined by reason.
Here it may seem that Aristotle is all left-brained and rational, ignoring feelings and, thus, being out of step with modern psychology. In fact, his thinking about the mean anticipates the 20th-century work of psychologist Erik Erikson, who places behavior on a continuum with “maladaptive tendencies” at one extreme and “malignant tendencies” at the other. What Erickson calls “healthy” behavior is somewhere in between:
| EXTREME | HEALTHY | EXTREME |
|
||
| ISOLATION | LOVE | PROMISCUITY |
Erikson concludes that people need to make their behavior conscious, and in so doing, they can help themselves to become healthy. Aristotle’s language is different, but his intent is similar. To become fully human (“healthy”), he says we need to overcome our animal impulses (“malignant tendencies”). Building on this, Aristotle says the human virtues of courage, temperance, and generosity can be developed to overcome the “animal instincts” of cowardice, intemperance, and greed. Thus, each of the qualities we call virtues represents mastery over a particular vice or animal-like emotion. To become more virtuous, more fully human, “healthier,” we need consciously to discipline our animal impulses based on the guiding principle of the golden mean.
Since one must choose the mean and not excess or deficiency, and the mean is what right reason says it is, we need to define this. In all the states mentioned, as well as others, there is a certain target to which a person who has reason looks as he tightens or relaxes; and there is a certain place that we say lies between excess and deficiency, being in accordance with right reason. To say this is true but not precise.
Nor is it particularly helpful, unless we apply reasoning to understand it. Aristotle says we set our aim correctly by keeping in mind our ultimate end: a good life. That end should be the “target to which the person who has reason looks as he tightens or relaxes” while searching for the behavioral mean. Thus, there is a sweet spot between excess and deficiency, a place that practically wise people recognize as appropriate for them when they apply reason to the question, How should I behave if I want to lead a good life? You want greater precision? Sorry, you have to work it out for yourself! Just remember that Aristotle’s general rule is moderation: not too much food, wine, sex, power, money, chocolate, or exercise; but keep in mind that we can never have too much of intrinsic goods like virtue, wisdom, knowledge, integrity, and understanding. The rest, the details, are up to you.
A primary use of the golden mean is to help us answer the question at hand: How much money do I need to live a good life? To get us started, Aristotle offers a few general observations:
Solon, too, was perhaps sketching the happy man when he described him as moderately furnished with externals, but having done the noblest acts and lived temperately; for with only moderate possessions we can do what we ought to do. Anaxagoras also seemed to say that the happy man should not be rich nor a despot when he said that he would not be surprised if the happy man were to seem to most people a strange person; for they judge by externals, since those are all they perceive. The opinions of the wise thus seem to harmonize with our arguments.
When wise men and women ask how much it takes in order to be happy, Aristotle says they invariably answer, Not all that much. In the 18th century, John Adams came to a similar conclusion about the virtue of moderation in a letter he wrote to his daughter, Nabby, concerning what she should value in a potential mate.
No matter whether he is rich, provided he be independent … think of no other greatness but that of the soul, no other riches but those of the heart. An honest, sensible, humane man, above all with the littleness of vanity and extravagancies of imagination, laboring to do good rather than be rich, to be useful rather than make a show, living in modest simplicity clearly within his means and free from debts and obligations, is really the most respectable man in society, [and] makes himself and all about him most happy.
The notion that virtue—and, by extension, happiness—is found in moderation is still the dominant belief in America, even after the 1990s’ decade-long celebration of excess. Most people today are Aristotelians when it comes to answering the question, How much money do I need to be happy?
In 2001, the AARP commissioned a national survey to determine how mature Americans think about wealth and happiness. In the survey, the vast majority of respondents say they need money to provide for their families (74 percent), obtain good medical care (68 percent), and stay healthy (64 percent). But only 18 percent say they need money “to buy more stuff.” In proper Aristotelian fashion, most people make the distinction between what they need on the one hand, and what they want—more unnecessary stuff—on the other. At one level, the survey simply confirms what everyone knows: We all must work to earn and save enough so we and our families can lead long and healthy lives without undue concern about future rainy days.
The AARP survey also shows that a shortage of money can make us unhappy, because insufficient wealth prevents us from satisfying our basic needs. Not surprising, a lack of money has negative effects on family life, health, and education. According to the survey, too little money was cited as causing respondents to “delay or skip college” and to “limit school options.” To realize our potential, to develop our most human capacities, we need sufficient funds to free us of the necessity to work, exactly as Aristotle said 2,400 years ago.
Although too little money can make us unhappy, the survey revealed that a lot of money doesn’t necessarily make us content: Only 18 percent of those surveyed believe “money can buy happiness,” and only 23 percent think money leads to “self-esteem.” On the other hand, 71 percent of those polled believe money buys “freedom to choose,” and 68 percent say it brings “excitement” to the lives of those who have it.
But excitement isn’t what most mature Americans have in mind when they pursue happiness. Few people over 50 are observed riding roller coasters at amusement parks, and few put their life savings on the line with a thrilling roll of the dice in Vegas.
Moreover, most Americans see a downside to being too rich. Four-fifths of those polled say excessive wealth makes people greedy and leads to a false sense of superiority, and three out of four believe “insensitivity” is a byproduct of great wealth. We might interpret such findings with a touch of skepticism. Many of the people who say they don’t want to be rich are older folks who clearly missed their chance, who have realistically downsized their expectations, and who are engaging in ego-saving rationalization about both the root of all evil and the porcine character of those who root for it.
In sum, most people today share certain commonsense, Aristotelian concepts about wealth: Almost all make distinctions between wants and needs; most say happiness is more a product of who you are than of what you have; and nearly everyone views money as a necessary instrument to free up time from work in order to learn and to grow. And there is general agreement that money equates with having the freedom to choose how we will live.
Moreover, there is some consensus about how much wealth is necessary: More than half of those polled define sufficient wealth as about $500,000 in total assets (only 8 percent say they require a million dollars). As a professor of business, I find these numbers quite low, until I remind myself that the average annual income in the United States is about $35,000. For people at or around that level, a half million in assets represents a sum considerably beyond what they realistically can expect to accumulate in their lives. So their calculations are probably right. If people with average incomes were to accumulate that much wealth, they probably would be free to choose. They could get the education they desire and pursue opportunities to develop their potential.
In a casual way, we all make rough calculations of how much is enough. Recently, Ray Lane, Oracle’s numero dos, decided to leave the company. With some $850 million in the bank, the 53-year-old Lane opted for a more balanced lifestyle: “If I could simply eliminate travel and unproductive meetings, I’d get half of my life back,” he told the New York Times. He says he now wants to focus on his family and can do so because his new job “is ten minutes from my house…. I have no desire to get to the office before 9 A.M., and I won’t be taking any business dinners after 7 P.M.” Because Lane says he doesn’t want to be as rich as Larry Ellison, he has turned down lucrative offers to run big companies: “[But] if I had just a few hundred thousand dollars in the bank, then I’d probably take a CEO job.”
So how much is enough for Lane? All we know is that it’s more than “just a few hundred thousand dollars” but less than $850 million! How would he know where to draw the line? He doesn’t tell us, and it is unlikely he knows. Few people do. That is why we need Aristotle.
Aristotle is in the business of philosophy and not the issuing of moral commandments, so he doesn’t tell us exactly how much we need. Instead, he offers a framework by which we each can decide for ourselves. First, he says we must distinguish between needs and wants. He tells us we need a certain amount of money to pay bills and provide comfort for our families. But we do not need unlimited amounts of money to be free from worries about such necessities. Second, in deciding how much we need in order to live comfortably, we must avoid the defect of want and the excess of conspicuous consumption. We need incomes that cover the costs of necessities (food, clothes, rent or mortgage, utilities, insurance), of raising and educating our children, of leisure activities like travel that help us to grow throughout our lives, and of investments sufficient to provide income for our retirement. But we don’t need Brioni suits and original Picassos.
The precise amount one needs depends on such factors as age, interests, family situation, and place of residence. Older, single people who live in rural areas do not need as much as younger couples raising kids in Manhattan. Those who enjoy attending opera and those who engage in ecotourism need more than those who contentedly stay at home with a stack of library books. This is one ethical arena where relativism is appropriate. Personal situations and preferences are not only relevant, they are germane to the analysis. In doing our personal calculations, we must be realistic. Though “enough” for Aristotle was tasty food, a comfortable couch on which to recline, and a fashionable toga, even that minimum requires a few more drachmae today than in classical Athens. Let’s face it, a million dollars ain’t what it used to be; in the posh parts on the San Francisco peninsula, it barely buys a teardown. With such caveats and considerations in mind, we are ready to make our own calculations.
By coincidence, as I was writing this chapter, I received a phone call from an old friend who is a successful businessman living in Marin County. After inquiring about my health and my daughters’ latest adventures, he quickly got to what I assumed was the real reason for the call.
I’ve been offered the position of principal at ____ [a well-known prep school]. They are honest about why they want me: They think I’ll be an effective fundraiser. But that’s okay, since I’ll also work with the faculty to establish a new curriculum, and I’ll be a teacher myself in the math department. That’ll be easy for me, but, eventually, I have this passion to teach history. Sure, that’ll take several years of preparation and maybe a few college courses, but that’s okay, too.
So what isn’t okay? I asked.
He answered: “I don’t think I can afford to make the change.”
As my friend explained, the principal’s job paid less than a fifth of what he had been earning as an executive: “I’ve done the calculations, and I don’t see how I could afford to pay the mortgage and other expenses on such a low salary.” Because I was “in the teaching racket” myself, he asked if I had any advice to offer.
Had he ever come to the right place! In my wildest dreams, I couldn’t have imagined a more sterling opportunity to put Aristotle’s ideas to a practical test. Not wanting to frighten him off—and wanting to appear tough-minded and modern—I concealed the ancient source of the advice I proffered. I suggested that he and his wife should draw up three lists:
One, things they truly need (as opposed to want)
Two, little luxuries they truly would feel deprived of not having
Three, things they now have that, in fact, they really wouldn’t miss
Once they were confident they could defend the placing of each item on each list, I suggested they make a dollar estimate of the annual costs of each. “Before or after retirement?” my friend asked. I hadn’t thought about that, so I winged it. “Well, make up two lists and see if they’re different.” He agreed to try the exercise and call me back to tell me if it was useful.
A week, then two, passed and my friend didn’t call. After I had pretty well forgotten our conversation, he phoned to say he was now principal of the school. He was clearly excited about the prospects. But he didn’t mention the exercise I had given him. After a while, I couldn’t stand not knowing if he had tried it, so I stealthily asked how he had come to be able to afford to take the job. He answered, “As we started thinking about it, we realized we didn’t need a four-bedroom house now that our kid is grown and off on her own. And, as I thought about it, my buying a new car every other year seemed a bit excessive; you know, I don’t really like cars all that much. Finally, my wife looked at what she spent every year on clothes and jewels and decided she’d be overdressed at faculty parties. So, all and all, there are going to be fewer pricey presents at Christmas, fewer trips to Europe—and by coach, not business class—and a general downsizing. But it’ll be okay; we’ll manage.”
But how did he finally decide? What tipped the scales in favor of taking the new job? “Well, after 30 years in business, I saw that I was bored, burnt out, and not growing. I decided that I couldn’t afford not to make the change, no matter how much it cost!” After he hung up, I found myself wishing he had said something more profoundly Aristotelian, perhaps along the order of “We saw that we had become full-time materialists devoting our lives to consumption. Through careful analysis of our needs, we realized that possessors ultimately become prisoners of their possessions. So we decided to free ourselves to find happiness.” I would have settled for some acknowledgment that my exercise had been useful! Still, I was proud of my friend.
And what about me? I ran the numbers for myself and discovered that the amount I thought I needed for my retirement was, in fact, excessive. Because I had never enjoyed anywhere near the income to which my friend had become accustomed, the exercise was less painful and the sacrifices less dramatic for me than it had been for him. Over my life, I had bought a new car, on average, once every decade. Though the magnitudes differed, the effect was nonetheless the same. When I drew up a list of things I really needed, it dawned on me that my assumptions of future requirements had been based on current levels of expenditures. Because I recently had enjoyed a nice income, I had gotten into the habit of buying CDs I seldom, if ever, listened to and videos I could have rented. My wine expenditures bordered on the embarrassing; the golden mean was a useful guide in right-sizing my consumption. I put my contributions to the opera association on the list of “nice but not necessary” expenditures. The “generous” charitable contributions I had been making were really bribes to get better seats, and the money went to subsidize an activity that, on the whole, benefited people more affluent than me. In distinction, I kept my annual donations to the local food kitchen and homeless shelter on the “needs list” (more on this in chapter 10). Finally, some expenditures that I could do without ended up on my list of wants. For example, my wife and I had been going to a lot of restaurants; when I thought about it, most of the time I actually preferred to eat at home. We concluded that we would enjoy dining out more if we did it less. All the above were, perhaps, little things; but when I added them up, the exercise had the same effect on me that it had had on my friend the principal. I hemmed, hawed, resisted, backslid, and, when I finally ran out of excuses, decided there was no alternative but to pursue happiness. So I bowed out of a consulting gig and went back to writing this book.
What lessons should others draw from these experiences? Implicit is the conclusion that a great many more people can afford to start pursuing happiness now than are currently doing so. But does that mean everyone should spend less time earning and more time learning? In general, should members of the baby boom generation—at least those who have invested wisely—now say that they have accumulated “enough” and devote the rest of their lives to Aristotlean philosophy and politics?
It seems to me that there are two reasonable objections to moving from the particular (what is good for my friends and me) to the general (what is good for everybody). We have touched on the first, but it bears repeating: Some, perhaps many, people are perfectly happy pursuing more and prefer their material goodies to the (nonexistent for them) benefits of contemplation. In this vein, author James B. Twitchell caused a stir in 2002, when he offered this contrarian view: “Let’s give happiness a rest. Consumption of the new luxury is about far more interesting sensations.”
I don’t know if he has his tongue in cheek, but Twitchell offers an interesting twist on the old idea that the things money buys compensate for the emptiness in our lives. He says going shopping is as therapeutic as psychoanalysis: “The solution to modern angst, to filling up the self, happens both at the psychologist’s office and down at the mall.” In Living It Up: Our Love Affair with Luxury, Twitchell claims, “In the psychiatrist’s office you are offered a choice of therapeutic personalities, and at the store you are offered an equally varied choice of adaptable lifestyles.” Choice is Twitchell’s operative word. It is also central to Aristotle’s ethics, but the Ancient feels that not all choices are equal. For example, he says that a luxury is of less moral value than a necessity is. But to Twitchell, those who advance such value-laden judgments are, in fact, offering expressions of preferences for “those things that you have that I think you shouldn’t have.”
Twitchell thus applauds expenditures that an Aristotelian would label as excessive consumption. He believes that America’s democratic consumerism, in which even the poor participate, is the prime indicator of the success of our system. He believes it’s a sign of social progress that members of today’s middle class enjoy consumption the way only the wealthy could a few generations ago:“The act of wanting what we don’t need is indeed doing the work of a generation of idealists.” Finally, he accuses those with Aristotelian leanings of hypocrisy:
You are thinking that this may be an interesting subject but that it really doesn’t pertain to you. You are certainly not buying all this stuff. You don’t like luxury, let alone love it. You are not duped by advertising. You can be perfectly happy without most things. In fact, all you need is a few good books, a few interesting ideas, a few friends, a few good conversations, a few sunsets, and you are content.
To those who think such Aristotelian thoughts, Twitchell says, Horse-feathers, you are in denial. That is how you want to think about yourself but, in fact, it is what money buys that makes you and everyone else happy.
About the time Twitchell’s book was published, the New Yorker ran a cartoon that summed up his anti-Aristotelian argument: An old man on his deathbed confides to his grandson, “I should have bought more crap.” In his day, Aristotle met people with views similar to Twitchell’s, and he agreed with them on the point that everyone should be free to pursue happiness as he or she defines it. Nonetheless, he felt a moral obligation to warn them that they wouldn’t find it where they were looking. He concluded that all one can do with people like Twitchell is to try to reason with them.
The second objection to Aristotle’s views is more substantive and complex. This is the macro version of Adam Smith’s micro belief that individual unhappiness breeds productivity. Realists, cynics, and economists say Aristotle is naïve to assume there is a limit to the amount of wealth people should accumulate. They ask, What would happen to the economy if everyone reached a certain dollar amount and said, “That’s enough”? Wouldn’t growth and innovation stop, jobs cease to be created, and the economy collapse?
A June 2004 Wall Street Journal op-ed piece by Daniel Akst takes this position. Akst advises young people to reject the calls to “do good” that they hear at graduation ceremonies. Instead, he argues that new grads should dedicate their lives to “doing well,” specifically to making as much money as they can. Because “capital is the life blood of the economy,” he says it is the “moral obligation” of everyone to create as much of it as possible. In so doing, he says society prospers and civilization progresses. He even claims that moneymaking is far more “socially responsible” than such “selfish” or self-indulgent activities as teaching, social work, and art, all of which are economically less productive than business and, ergo, less useful. Much as Machiavelli advised leaders that they “must learn how not to be good,” Akst counsels young Americans to reject the high-minded advice they hear at graduation time about “public service” and “following their dreams” and, instead, simply “create and amass” wealth.
Four days later, on the New York Times op-ed page, David Brooks took the argument a step further, writing that people who devote themselves to making money are most in touch with the masses of Americans and, therefore, possess the essential virtues most needed for leadership. In contrast, people who are “overly intellectual or narcissistically self-reflective” are “decadent elitists” in the eyes of practical men and women and, hence, unfit to govern them. In essence, Brooks and Akst divide the world neatly between, on the one hand, a class of hardworking people who are moneymaking machines (if a bit mindless) and, on the other, the ilk of unproductive pointy-heads who disdain the very system that allows them the luxury of intellectualization and self-reflection.
Aristotle is not interested in class warfare. Like Brooks and Akst, he is firmly on the side of the establishment. He doesn’t disdain wealth and doesn’t condescendingly argue that the rich should be social workers instead of entrepreneurs. But Aristotle is not interested in ingratiating himself with the rich by endorsing their life choices; instead, he wants to help those who are well off also to live well. He sees no reason that a practical-minded businessperson can’t live a full life, indeed every bit as full as the intellectual’s. To that end, he argues that it is a mistake for people who have the option to do otherwise to unnecessarily foreshorten their horizons, limit their activities, narrow their experiences, and use only a part of the potential they were born with. In this construct, the professor who churns out narrow technical articles year after year is no more leading the good life than is the businessperson who spends an entire career focused on the pursuit of wealth.
It might be argued that people who dedicate their lives to making money already are leading full lives, and, thus, Aristotle is a condescending elitist to say otherwise. Though it is true that Aristotle has a clear set of values, and he thinks those values are superior to others, he is not trying to impose them on anyone. Instead, he is responding to what he heard from wealthy and powerful people in his era who asked, Is this all there is?
Of course, not all of them asked that question, but a significantly large number did to warrant his trying to help them find a disciplined way to answer it for themselves. In response, he suggests to all those capable of doing so to consider what it would mean for them to live a fuller, more interesting life. That is, what it would be like to be more interested in science, art, politics, history, and economics and what it would mean to spend more time with family and friends and enjoying nature and exploring the great world around them. He thinks it would be useful if everyone were to consider the potential joys of curiosity and learning, activities they can fully engage in throughout their lives. He asks everyone who has the means to do so to take time to consider those possibilities, because he worries that too many bright, hardworking people will miss out on the greatest joys in life because they get caught up in the pursuit of the material goods that Twitchell, Akst, and Brooks say we should desire.
Let’s be clear: Aristotle says the issue isn’t material goods versus the free “best things in life,” and the struggles that matter aren’t those between those who are rich and those who are not, or between practical people and intellectuals. Instead, the real struggle is within each of us about how we will live. Aristotle might ask which of two wealthy businessmen, both founders of Sun Microsystems, is living the good life: the hard-driving Scott McNealy, who, in his sixties, remains as narrowly focused on accumulating power and wealth as he was in his twenties, or Bill Joy, who, once having made a fortune, stepped out of the daily grind at Sun at age 49 in order to pursue various and multiple interests, often for the sake of merely exploring, and to spend time with family and interesting people who have nothing to do with his work. In Aristotle’s eyes, what separates these two similar men is not their wealth or profession but their curiosity. McNealy’s interests extend to the world he already knows: the computer business. Joy’s expansive horizons include serious study of a gamut of subjects ranging from government regulation to the risks of biotechnology. Joy, who has been called “the Edison of Silicon Valley,” is constantly engaged in a multifaceted process of self-development. Significantly, he renews and revitalizes his primary technology skills in the process.
Some will argue that McNealy, the “businessperson” at Sun, doesn’t have the same freedom as does Joy, the “creative guy.” Though true in the extreme, Aristotle says there is no end to the rationales that people can offer for postponing living a full life. There are always reasons for needing to make that million more. But in midlife, Lalita Tademy, a former VP at Sun, chose to forgo her years of highest income to develop her research and writing skills. Upon discovering papers relating to an ancestor who had been a slave in the 18th-century South, she spent fruitful years uncovering and re-creating her family’s past, the story of which was eventually published as the critically acclaimed Cane River.
Aristotle assumes all humans are like Bill Joy and Lalita Tademy in that they “desire understanding.” Obviously he is wrong. What he probably means to say is that all people ought to desire understanding. Indeed, he recognizes that some people do not because they cannot. But others, like McNealy, who are obviously capable of living a fuller life, nonetheless choose not to do so. Brooks and Akst argue such people are doing the morally right thing to focus on wealth accumulation. That is their free choice and their contribution to society. Aristotle agrees it is up to the likes of McNealy to choose to live as they wish; however, because he respects their intelligence, he feels an obligation to show them they have other alternatives and to make the case that they at least should reflect on where they are and where they are going.
In so doing, Aristotle does not propose that entrepreneurs and corporate executives should sacrifice their own good for the good of others. In Aristotle’s realistic philosophy, selflessness is not a virtue. Instead, the sign of virtue is to act consciously, choosing one’s ends rationally and from the “proper disposition” of seeking excellence. The key to virtue is “to deliberate well.” Virtuous people are introspective, self-critical, rational, and curious—the acquired characteristics Brooks and Akst call decadent and unproductive. But Aristotle thinks practical people also possess and benefit from those traits; he even doubts they can prosper in their business affairs without them. He says virtuous, practical people ask tough questions about what is right for themselves and for others. When they do so habitually, he believes that not only do they come to understand what is right for themselves, they also do what is right.
Aristotle doesn’t say what that right thing is for everybody; he says only that habitually deliberative people are more likely to hit on what is right for themselves, their families, and their communities. Here is his point: If you assume that garnering socially prized goods is what leads to happiness, then it is socially prized goods that you will pursue. But he asks us to consider if the highest goods in life are, in fact, those things that are fashionable. He asks us to at least consider if the biggest social prizes—second homes in Aspen, expensive cars, the power to make decisions that affect other people’s lives, attending social events with the beautiful people—are, in fact, the things that would truly make us happy. If we answer yes, he pities us but defends our right to pursue the goods we choose. If we answer no, he asks, “What, then, is the good?” He offers some guidance as we attempt to answer that question, by suggesting that we may be more likely to find what we are looking for if we learn to distinguish between those goods that are socially prized—wealth, fame, sensual pleasure—and those goods that are universally praised—honesty, justice, moral courage, and integrity. Although he tells us what he thinks the good is not, he never defines what it is. That is for us to discover.
Aristotle believes that the process of deliberation will cause more people to act like Bill Joy than like Scott McNealy, but he is not an extremist, and he is more than realistic. When he concludes that deliberate men and women will choose to limit their wealth production, he does not mean that entrepreneurial activity should cease or that millionaires should give up their fortunes and join ashrams. His point is not that wealth creation is bad, but, instead, that moderation is good.
It is simply unrealistic to assume a doomsday scenario in which all people quit producing and head to the library. Here’s an example of how Aristotelian virtue manifests itself in the real world: Dan Lynch, a noted venture capitalist, told a friend how he once bet an entrepreneur which of them would become a billionaire first. They were neck and neck for a while, but, thanks to Lynch’s investments in CyberCash and InfoSeek, it appeared he would be the first to make the grade. Then, as Lynch tells the story, “One day I called my friend up and said, ‘I’m out. I don’t want to play any longer.’” What made him come to this? “I saw myself cramming people for a point or two, but what did a point or two mean to me at that stage?” Translation: He was squeezing the percentage of the action that founders of businesses got as their share of an IPO he was financing. He realized he had enough when he saw that he was making money solely for its own sake and was willing to hurt others in the process. He then moderated his behavior accordingly. And Lynch’s contribution to the economy wasn’t missed when he later pursued other, less-macho investments.
Will the economy collapse if more mature business leaders behave like Dan Lynch and Bill Joy, choosing to spend more time with their children, more time working on the problems of their communities and society, and more time becoming fully aware and multidimensional human beings … and, of course, less time trying to be the richest, most powerful men in the world? Only if one believes that there aren’t plenty of other ambitious young people in the queue who are qualified and anxious to do more to keep the economy growing, when 50-somethings like Lynch and Joy decide to spend less time doing the same. Let’s not forget that there are plenty of people so hooked on wealth accumulation that the economy will keep humming even if a few affluent people take a step back and start asking about the quality of their lives, in addition to worrying about their standard of living. And more than a few zillionaires will choose to continue rolling merrily along making themselves unhappy, adding to the GNP, and covering for you and me as we slack off a bit, earning less but learning more.
To Aristotle, there is nothing wrong with making more money unless doing so eclipses other, morally higher concerns. In fact, the issue isn’t economic. We all aren’t going to quit being Homo economicus. The issue is that we are also social, political, and philosophical animals. So Aristotle asks us to consider how we might spend our time in useful and rewarding ways in addition to making money. Balance and moderation as a way of life may be out of the question for a few driven souls, but is it beyond the reach of the rest of us who now have just enough to ask if, indeed, we have enough?
Most of the examples cited in these pages are males because, historically, men far more than women have been conditioned and expected to sacrifice other goods for wealth, honor, and power. Since before the time of Aristotle, the highest material prizes in Western societies have gone to men or have been reserved for men. This is now changing, and, as a result, there are growing numbers of Aristotelian and anti-Aristotelian women. For example, Hewlett-Packard’s CEO, Carly Fiorina, has much in common with her peers in the corporate world in terms of her focus on power at the expense of other ends. Based on her many public pronouncements, the anti-Aristotelian Fiorina is an extremely capable and successful leader who casts every issue in terms of marketing. Indeed it is a positive sign of gender equality that there is a growing number of examples of women executives who behave in the traditional ways established by men.
Although the behavior of professional women is as diverse as that of their male peers, some of the best illustrations of contemporary Aristotelianism concern choices made by women. In the 1980s, Sue Bender was a successful commercial artist in New York, juggling two careers and two children the way so many professional women do. She valued accomplishments and results, and got them living a frenzied, fragmented life of “frantic energy,” starting each day with a lengthy “to-do” list, and measuring her success by the number of items she had ticked off by midnight. Then, one day she asked herself, “Success at what cost?” In her book, Plain and Simple, she recounts how she then set out to answer the question, Is there another way to lead a good life? Her hard-won answer was to stop doing what “everyone said” successful people do. She got off the frenetic merry-go-round, but, importantly, she didn’t abandon her career, her family, or New York. Instead, she describes how living with an Amish family for a few weeks helped her to quit trying “to be a star,” to quit trying always to achieve “more,” to quit engaging in “busyness” for the sake of busyness, and to slow down and take in the full richness of life, deriving happiness from the intrinsic pleasures of artistic creation instead of from sales and praise. In sum, she chose Aristotelian moderation and balance.
In The Last Gift of Time: Life Beyond Sixty, author Carolyn G. Heilbrun (aka, mystery writer Amanda Cross) offers a series of insights that led her “to choose each day for now, to live.” Opting to move away from a successful university career while at the top of her game (because of poisonous faculty politics and the narrowness of academic life), she chose something other than retirement: a fuller life. Unlike those who find nothing to do after a lifetime on the job, she discovered leisure/work that needed to be done and an array of valuable ways to invest her time:
It is not easy to decide what to undertake, what endeavor or activity will reward the devotion of one’s hours in learning a new skill or acquiring new knowledge. Sadly, in our society there is a grievous need for individuals willing to dedicate their time and energies in a serious manner. There are the dying in hospices, the hungry in soup lines, the homeless in shelters, battered women and their children, the newborn abandoned to exist as “boarder babies,” desperately—for their life may depend on it—in need of company, affection, being touched or talked to. There are numerous opportunities for tutoring and teaching, projects that require patience and skill. And for those whom “social” work does not appeal there is politics, the grass-roots politics, the work in local elections, on school boards and other important bodies. There is time now to read, in a serious, organized way—all of Shakespeare, novels of a single century or country, the works of a single poet or novelist. I have a friend who at the age of sixty took up playing the piano.
She argues that one needn’t be rich to do any of the above, only “comfortable.” In proper Aristotelian fashion, she says, “I am fortunate in that I have seemed never to wish for what I could not afford.”
A summer 2004 issue of Fortune contained a retirement guide promising “Retire Rich: How to Get Set for Life.” In it, the editors claimed to provide a method by which readers could calculate “The Number,” the exact amount they would need in order to retire in style. A few weeks later, reader Rhoda Blecker wrote the following contemporary Aristotelian words to the magazine’s editors:
Despite having an MBA, I have always tried to live by the Talmudic precept that states a rich person is one who treasures what he has. I have always saved rather than acquired, because it is the way I was brought up and because my self-image is not tied to a bigger house, an upmarket car, or Ferragamos. When my husband retires next year, I will still work, not for financial reasons but because I believe I can be of value. For those who need more and newer possessions, there may never be enough money; there may never be a “number.”