(a) that waiting is just part of life, and so there's nothing particularly virtuous about waiting without losing your head.However, I don't know whether either of these interpretations really, fully works. The quip looks more like a complaint: "waiting sucks." Indeed. And presumably it sucks even more if one lacks patience or if what one is waiting for isn't really worth the wait. If there's any truth in the attempts to redeem the complaint, it's that it can clearly be condescending and show a kind of bad faith (in a master-slave sort of way) for someone to tell another, who is being forced to wait unreasonably or unjustly, that since patience is a virtue, he or she should not complain. So I can see the legitimacy of something like this complaint when "patience" is invoked as a means of controlling others. But what's requested by the "master" in such cases is not patience so much as servility. And so the problem here isn't that genuine patience is not a virtue.
(b) that "virtue" is the language of the privileged (or the bourgeois), and part of being a member of the privileged class is that you usually don't actually have to wait in the ways that the underprivileged do. (The privileged don't wait for the bus.) To think that patience is a virtue is the result of a narrow understanding of what life is like for most people, which connects this interpretation to the first one.
Friday, May 04, 2012
Patience & Privilege
My wife drew my attention this evening to a Facebook post by a friend of hers which read, "Whoever said patience is a virtue never had to wait for anything." At first, this struck me as pseudo-wisdom. (Cf. Bo Derek: "Whoever said money can't buy happiness simply didn't know where to go shopping.") But then it occurred to me that perhaps there are two possible redeeming interpretations:
Thursday, May 03, 2012
Gratitude Toward Nature: A Brief Sketch and Defense
Part of a work in progress:
To learn from nature is to have our own lives enriched. In this way, the lessons of nature benefit us—nature, as it were, does us good. And this good comes to us free of charge, as a gift. One might say that we pay in the currency of time, we must pay for these lessons with patience, but the practice of attention and the silencing of the self so that others may speak is itself a benefit rather than a cost. The “price” of learning from the natural world is simply the price of cultivating intellectual and moral virtue. Thus, we not only learn from nature in a first-order sense, but also learn how to learn. And what is the proper response to these gifts but gratitude? Some will ask: “But who shall we thank?” But I do not see why it is inappropriate that we simply direct our sense of thankfulness to the tree, or the mountain, or the bird, or the sea. If it is not incoherent to feel gratitude toward a deceased family member who leaves us a fortune, then the problem cannot be that nature cannot say, “You’re welcome.” Neither can our loved ones who have passed. Some will say: “But nature has no intention to teach us.” But this is often true of the people from whom we learn, whose accomplishments or efforts or ideas inspire and improve us, though they do not know who we are or that we even exist. If their example benefits us enough, we are nonetheless filled with gratitude, and no one would find it strange if we thanked a stranger for the good they have unintentionally contributed to our own life.
To learn from nature is to have our own lives enriched. In this way, the lessons of nature benefit us—nature, as it were, does us good. And this good comes to us free of charge, as a gift. One might say that we pay in the currency of time, we must pay for these lessons with patience, but the practice of attention and the silencing of the self so that others may speak is itself a benefit rather than a cost. The “price” of learning from the natural world is simply the price of cultivating intellectual and moral virtue. Thus, we not only learn from nature in a first-order sense, but also learn how to learn. And what is the proper response to these gifts but gratitude? Some will ask: “But who shall we thank?” But I do not see why it is inappropriate that we simply direct our sense of thankfulness to the tree, or the mountain, or the bird, or the sea. If it is not incoherent to feel gratitude toward a deceased family member who leaves us a fortune, then the problem cannot be that nature cannot say, “You’re welcome.” Neither can our loved ones who have passed. Some will say: “But nature has no intention to teach us.” But this is often true of the people from whom we learn, whose accomplishments or efforts or ideas inspire and improve us, though they do not know who we are or that we even exist. If their example benefits us enough, we are nonetheless filled with gratitude, and no one would find it strange if we thanked a stranger for the good they have unintentionally contributed to our own life.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)