PSYCHOSCAPES: Can we live a good and dignified life in these chaotic and uncertain times?

Max Ernst, The Fireside Angel (1937)

This has been a traumatic week for our country with the killing of conservative icon Charlie Kirk, the latest in an escalating series of violence against our political leaders from both sides of the aisle.

The core of a democracy relies on our ability to participate in politics without fear of violence. Alarmingly, we may be on the brink of losing that. Some predict a return to the political violence of the 1960s when MLK, JFK, RFK, among others, were killed. Others warn of a second Civil War.

By chance, I am reading a book by Steven Batchelor that suggests a solution, “Buddha, Socrates, and Us: Ethical Living in Uncertain Times.” Batchelor is a Buddhist whose focus is on how to live a good, fulfilling life in the here-and-now, not angling for a faraway, promised land called nirvana.

The seeds for Batchelor’s new work germinated when he decided to study the roots of Hellenic Greek philosophy because of similarities he discerned with Buddhism. While I knew the Buddha’s revolutionary teachings transformed Asia and Socrates laid the foundations of Western philosophy, I had no inkling that the Buddha and Socrates both walked the earth at the same time.

Both these exemplary thinkers play a prominent role in his new book because, although they never met, each addressed “in a radically new and surprisingly similar way the core questions of how to lead a good, just, and dignified life amid turbulence and violence.”^⁠1

Both men shared a commitment to an ‘ethics of uncertainty and focused on how to lead a good life in this world, by questioning everything and embracing productive doubt. Both men stressed that “[t]o embark on a path of human flourishing requires the creativity to imagine another way of living in this world…creativity was not a quality that some gifted people possessed and others did not; it was available to everyone. Creativity is the art of solving problems.”^⁠2

It is these qualities of creativity and imagination – often dismissed as squishy by hardheaded pragmatists - that are critical to living a moral life. It is precisely these attributes that enable us to empathize with others, envision the consequences of our actions, and picture potential futures.

Batchelor shows us how these facilities are crucial for an ‘ethics of uncertainty,’ allowing individuals to envision alternative ways of living and respond in ways that are appropriate, principled, and peaceful.^⁠3

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The Buddha and Socrates lived during turbulent, violent, and deeply uncertain times, much like our own. Philosophers and religious teachers emerged to explore ways of responding to the novel situations in which people found themselves. “The philosopher Karl Jaspers coined the term “axial age” to describe this fervent and creative moment in human history.^⁠4”

Today, who can doubt that we now live in a new “axial age,” marked, once again, by rampant uncertainty, violence, and unrest? During the last axial age, philosophers and religious leaders stepped up. That won’t be enough today. This time, it will be necessary for us all to step up and put our shoulders to the wheel.

A good role model is Spike Lee, and the example he sets in his new movie, “Highest 2 Lowest.” It is about a movie mogul who risks everything by choosing to make caring, ethical choices in a life-or-death situation, rather than succumbing to the mandate of today’s selfish, cut-throat culture.

The entire plot is structured around this central moral dilemma, with the film's climax and ending reinforcing the importance of integrity over profit. We need to do more to reward such virtuous models.

Charlie Kirk said it all: “What we as a culture have to get back to is being able to have a reasonable disagreement where violence is not an option.”^⁠5

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