“Circumstances does not make the man - it reveals him to himself”
Jack Whittaker, the largest lotto winner in history, winning $314.9 million came from my old home state. He used to be to be in the news a lot, just like any other rich and famous celebes’s life is put under a microscope. Jack was robbed at an adult strip bar a while back. Another report on the news had charges being brought up against him for threatening the life of a bartender after being banned from the bar for being unruly. Then he was picked up and arrested for DUI.
We can also see this same phenomena in the news with Mel Gibson’s latest episode of drunk driving and anti semitic remarks. They said Mel made 30 to 40 million dollars from his Jesus movie. I guess it wasn’t enough for him to ‘buy’ some peace. I am not writing about Jack or Mel to badmouth them or break their anonymity, since all this is public record and on the news. I am writing about this topic to underscore the facts that as James Allen tells us in “As A Man Thinketh” - “Circumstances does not make the man - it reveals him to himself” As such, money cannot buy happiness and it especially can never buy peace and serenity. Many of us put our happiness and hopes of peace on hold until we would come into a windfall, maybe not as extreme as Jacks windfall, but we put things on hold none the same and cannot find happiness and peace where we are at.
The branch of philosophy that deals with such questions goes back to the early Greek philosophers and the study of virtue and ethics. Some authorities define virtue as ‘excellence of the soul’ or moral excellence. (Although the Greeks thought of ‘soul and form’ in different terms than say Christians think of soul. For example, the soul of an eye would be its ability to ‘see’ and whether this ability was good or bad would decide whether the soul of an eye had ‘virtue’ or excellence.) The concept of understanding virtue can be told in a story of the ‘Ring of Gyges’ or ‘Myth of Gyges’. This story was taken from Plato’s Republic and recounts how the shepherd Gyges finds a ring on a hand extending from a crack in the earth and removes the ring from the hand and puts it on. Gyges discovers the magic ring gives him powers to be invisible at will and then uses these powers to kill the king, rape the queen and take over the kingdom.
In readily understandable terms we can define virtue for us from this story of Gyges and ask ourselves the question, “What would we do if no one was looking or we knew we would not get caught?” No heaven, no hell, no karma, no police, nothing but us and our virtue? Would our actions promote our inner peace as well as the inner peace of others or would our actions destroy our peace and the peace of others? Take away the fear of pain of karma or hell and you have a different person? A truly virtuous life remains the same irrespective of such fears and is not based on them
Virtue is not learned from the classroom, other than memorizing definitions. Remember, a fool can only say what he knows ~ it takes a wise man to know what he says. How do we become a success at living a virtuous life and really know what we say? As a lecture on Aristotle mentioned: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” We develop it by practice. Practicing ‘excellence of the human soul’ is how
“Circumstances does not make the man - it reveals him to himself”
V (Male)
For free access to my earlier posts on voluntary simplicity, compulsive spending, debting, compulsive overeating and clutter write: vfr44@aol.com. Any opinion expressed here is that of my own and is not the opinion, recommendation or belief of any group or organization.