Living in Truth, Beauty, and Goodness

Values and Virtues

Jeffrey Wattles

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781498239721
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy of Religion

Truth, beauty, and goodness are more than traditional ideas--they are living realities bearing dynamic potentials for a future we can help create. As we grow, these supreme values increasingly guide our thinking, feeling, and doing. No matter what your philosophical, religious, or spiritual orientation may be, having a philosophy of living centered on these ideals will enhance your understanding and integration.Seasoned by the author's experience in leading thousands of students through experiential projects, Living in Truth, Beauty, and Goodness contains all the essential ingredients to help you develop your own personal philosophy. Your guides are Darwin, Socrates, Jesus, Bach, and other world-class pioneers whose strengths and insights can inspire you to develop a resilient and virtuous character. As you explore truths in science, philosophy, and spiritual experience; beauty in nature and the arts; and goodness in morality and character, you will be encouraged to transplant what is proposed here into the garden of your own concepts and then creatively to put the emerging meanings and values into practice.

Part I. Living the Truth

1

Facts, Causes, and Evolution

Charles Darwin and Scientific Living

The beauty of this vast, starry universe encourages us as we take up the challenge of living here. On our world, organisms have evolved with increasing powers of mind; now humankind is walking the earth, going through the life cycle, and beginning to take responsibility for the planet’s future. Our challenge is that the universe is a place where material forces tend to dominate. We may be potentially more spiritual than we realize, but we are also more material than we know, as science increasingly teaches us. We work with a mind that is intertwined with brain process; and our behavior is affected by genetic, biochemical, environmental, and social factors. We wonder how our best thinking is to gain the upper hand; but we may suspect that our problems conceal within them the call of destiny.

In response to our collective challenges, what one person can contribute is a life well lived. Such a life comprises several components, and facing the facts of our problems launches the first component, scientific living—acting in the light of the relevant truths of science. But when we look at our personal problems and the problems of our world, they can seem overwhelming. The hectic pace of modern life makes it hard to focus effectively. We are not taught while growing up how to live scientifically. And the books on harmonizing science and religion are mostly theoretical, not practical.

In response to these difficulties, we can observe virtues of scientific living that Charles Darwin developed in his life of pursuing truth and develop these qualities to the degree that is realistic for us by applying them in our daily lives. In this chapter, after an experience report on my own scientific living project, we will consider this challenge and then examine a four-step approach to scientific living. The last step pioneers ways to integrate science and religion in practice, with examples from cosmology, biology, psychology, and history.

From my journey

My recent venture in scientific living has sometimes been a wild ride, with magnificent discoveries and sobering disappointments. Once I retired, I realized that I had overplayed my religion card and my philosophy card—used these responses in situations that called for something else. Having often blundered by failing to give adequate attention to the material facts of the here and now, I came to the realization that I needed to give scientific living a new level of priority in my life. Focusing fully on the task in hand is the basis for excellence in scientific living, and I had a tendency to get lost in thought while driving, which I picked as my primary activity to work on. The effort to balance philosophical and spiritual interests with scientific living opened up a new phase of growth.

I was familiar with some scientific findings about attention.1 For example, we don’t pay attention to things we find boring (so I found ways to make driving more interesting); our attention span is limited (so I didn’t need to feel bad if my attention wandered a bit); multitasking interferes with concentration (it was easy to turn off the radio but hard to turn off the stream of philosophical reflection). I learned that effective focus does not mean fixing my gaze on the car immediately ahead of me; a policeman told me that it was better—and more relaxing—to look at the horizon on the road ahead, trusting that peripheral vision would alert me to anything important that was closer. He also recommended that I occasionally I sweep my attention from side to side. His suggestions gave me a sense of freedom of movement as I interacted with the scene unfolding around me, but I needed more than technique.

One breakthrough I’ll never forget: On long trips, my wife and I usually take turns driving two-hour shifts so that no dangerous fatigue sets in. But one morning, I had to drive to Chicago, six and a half hours from our home in Ohio, and Hagiko was in Japan; and I enjoyed what was for me an unprecedented sustained focus on the road. Fatigue never threatened; distraction was almost nonexistent. I was immersed in spiritual love. And I needed only one break to eat and enjoy an hour of profound rest. One thing that helped was to take advantage of the little opportunities to communicate with other drivers along the highway—for example, flashing my high beams at truckers to let them know that they had passed me completely and it was safe to pull back into the right lane. I sent love to each driver who came near, and when I arrived in Chicago, I was exhilarated.

Peak experiences underscore broader truths, in this case about the interweaving of practical and spiritual dimensions in the everyday reliable driving that I have finally attained, thank God. This ongoing project has led to improvement in other areas. In general, I am gradually getting better at being faithful in big and little things. Cosmically, I find increasing power in the idea of a friendly universe. Biologically, I am finding it more meaningful to maintain healthy habits. Psychologically, I’m growing in listening and adjusting my communication to people’s receptivity. I recognize more quickly when my unbeautiful emotions are rumbling and my brain is getting its energies out of balance; and responding to these situations as they arise allows me to let go of ugly thoughts, mobilize truth, invite a new divine invasion, and cleanse the inner life. And I have a sharper sense of what I can contribute in the current phase of history.

Darwin’s hunger for the truth of fact

This biographical sketch of Darwin, like others in this book, makes limited claims. No one person exemplifies every virtue connected with scientific living, and I don’t know to what extent Darwin practiced his virtues as a scientist in the rest of his life. Nor do I aim to give a balanced estimate of Darwin’s character or to suggest that he was a solitary genius without substantial debts to others. I do not take sides in the controversies about Darwinism beyond the limited use made of his ideas here. Our brief glimpse into Darwin’s life is designed simply to help us grow. Above all, we should not let his achievements, or those of anyone else profiled in this book, lead us to form unreasonably high expectations of ourselves.

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) became a great scientist thanks to his extraordinary gifts, a fine scientific education, decades of experience in research—and because he developed the virtues of scientific living to a world-class level. Fortunately, we do not need his gifts, education, and experience to approach those same qualities.

Darwin understood that science is an activity to which nonscientists can contribute. He encouraged Navy officers to assist in his research, and found that with only a little preparation and equipment, they could make systematic observations of the causes of geological change. They could observe “sedimentary deposition, erosion of cliffs, icebergs, coral reefs. . . . They should collect dust that settled on the deck, and, ashore, concentrate on fossils, volcanoes, and coal samples.”2

Darwin had been well trained and educated in the skills and knowledge of geology and biology, but went beyond academic norms in his voracious and innovative pursuit of facts. In search of evidence of biological mutation, he “followed up hearsay stories of exceptional hounds, silkworms, hybrid geese, feral and farm animals in the colonies—anything in fact on selection, inheritance, and breeding. . . . He looked anew at the gamekeepers’ familiar fare: agricultural shows, animal husbandry, farmhouse lore, and the Poultry Chronicle. And he began quizzing those who knew most about breeding and inheritance: fanciers and nurserymen.”3 Darwin found that through a profession or hobby or just keen observing, persons without any specialized academic background might acquire knowledge of scientific value.

In science, one quality rises above the others: hunger for truth. Truth is the value whose wholehearted pursuit is the main scientific virtue. Human motivation is rarely single, but it is hard to avoid the impression that a most diligent passion for truth spurred Darwin on, from his early studies in Edinburgh and Cambridge through his voyage on the Beagle to his later prodigious researches. In his autobiography, after modestly acknowledging his limitations, Darwin set forth his strengths: “noticing thing...

Table of contents

• Foreword
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part I. Living the Truth
• Part II. Walking in Beauty
• Part III. Participating in Divine Goodness
• Acknowledgments
• Bibliography