Great Thinkers: Simple tools from sixty great thinkers to improve your life today (The School of Life Library)

by The School of Life

We should treat our parents with reverence Confucius had very strict ideas about how we should behave towards our parents. He believed that we should obey them when we are young, care for them when they are old, mourn at length when they die and make sacrifices in their memory thereafter.

We should be obedient to honourable people Modern society is very egalitarian. We believe that we’re born equal, each uniquely special, and should ultimately be able to say and do what we like. We reject many rigid, hierarchical roles. Yet Confucius told his followers, ‘Let the ruler be a ruler, the subject a subject, a father a father, and a son a son.’ This might sound jarring, but it is in fact important to realise that there are people worthy of deep veneration.

Cultivated knowledge can be more important than creativity Modern culture places a lot of emphasis on creativity – unique insights that come to us suddenly. But Confucius was adamant about the importance of the universal wisdom that comes from years of hard work and reflection. He listed compassion (ren) and ritual propriety (li) among three other virtues: justice (yi), knowledge (zhi) and integrity (xin). These were known as the ‘Five Constant Virtues’. While Confucius believed that people were inherently good, he also saw that virtues like these must be constantly cultivated like plants in a garden.

At fifteen, I had my mind bent on learning. At thirty, I stood firm. At forty, I had no doubts. At fifty, I knew the decrees of Heaven. At sixty, my ear was an obedient organ for the reception of truth. At seventy, I could follow what my heart desired, without transgressing what was right.

The Japanese had been drinking tea since the 9th century, the practice having been imported from China by merchants and monks. The drink was considered healthy as well as calming and spiritual. But it was Rikyū’s achievement to put the tea ceremony on a more rigorous and profound philosophical footing. Thanks to his efforts, which were both practical and intellectual, drinking tea in highly ritualised and thoughtful ways, in particular buildings that he helped to design, became an integral part of Zen Buddhist practice; as central to this spiritual philosophy as poetry or meditation.

In the West, we have a vague sense that poetry is good for our ‘souls’, making us sensitive and wiser. Yet we don’t always know how this should work. Poetry has a hard time finding its way into our lives in any practical sense. In the East, however, some poets – like the 17th-century Buddhist monk and poet Matsuo Bashō – knew precisely what effect their poetry was meant to produce: it was a medium designed to guide us to wisdom and calm, as these terms are defined in Zen Buddhist philosophy.

Bashō was an exceptional poet, but he did not believe in the modern idea of ‘art for art’s sake’. Instead, he hoped that his poetry would bring his readers into special mental states valued by Zen. His poetry reflects two of the most important Zen ideals: wabi and sabi. Wabi, for Bashō, meant satisfaction with simplicity and austerity, while sabi refers to a contented solitude.

It was nature, more than anything else, that was thought to foster wabi and sabi, and it is therefore, unsurprisingly, one of Bashō’s most frequent topics. Take this spring scene, which appears to ask so little of the world, and is attuned to an appreciation of the everyday: First cherry budding by peach blossoms. Bashō’s poetry is of an almost shocking simplicity at the level of theme. There are no analyses of politics or love triangles or family dramas. The point is to remind readers that what really matters is to be able to be content with our own company, to appreciate the moment we are in and to be attuned to the very simplest things life has to offer: the changing of the seasons, the sound of our neighbours laughing across the street, the little surprises we encounter when we travel.

Bashō suffered for long periods from deep melancholy; he travelled the dangerous back roads of the Japanese countryside with little more than writing supplies, and he spent some truly unglamorous nights: Fleas and lice biting; awake all night a horse pissing close to my ear.

Bashō’s poetry was a clever tool for enlightenment and revelation – through the artfully simple arrangement of words. The poems are valuable not because they are beautiful (though they are this too) but because they can serve as a catalyst for some of the most important states of the soul. They remind both the writer and the reader that contentment relies on knowing how to derive pleasure from simplicity, and how to escape (even if only for a while) the tyranny of being ourselves.

We’ve come to see ourselves as, each one of us, needing to invent our own unique way of life, governed by our instincts and what we most feel like doing in the moment. As for the idea of community, though it might cross our minds every now and then (especially when we contrast how fun it was at college and how rather arduous and lonely it might be now), nothing in modern capitalism enables us to imagine how we’d ever manage to make the group, rather than the ‘I’, the centre of things. Everything from domestic appliances to mortgages to romantic love enforces the idea of the lone or couple-based unit. We’re influenced by an ideology of personal freedom, where pursuing private ends is seen as the only path to happiness – though the results do not necessarily match the hopes. The joys of being part of a gang are simply not on the radar.

Benedict was an intensely devoted Christian. But it’s not necessary to share his beliefs in order to recognise that his recommendations tapped into something fundamental about human nature. His insights into communities are – in fact – detachable from the particular religious environment in which they were originally developed.

Eating Rule 39: Except the sick, who are very weak, let all abstain entirely from eating the flesh of four-footed animals. Benedict was very concerned about eating the sort of foods that make you sluggish, self-pitying and slow. He recommended that one should consume modest but nutritious meals only twice a day.

Silence Benedict knew the benefits of silence. When you’ve got a big task on, concentration is key.

Balance Rule 35: Let the brethren serve one another, and let no one be excused from the kitchen service except by reason of sickness.

Early nights You have to go to bed early and get up very early, Benedict knew that. Routine is crucial.

Benedict didn’t think that good art and architecture were luxuries: these were vital supports for our inner lives.

Communal life can be much more enjoyable and less stressful than the nuclear family, with all its disappointments and pressures. We keep imagining that happiness lies in finding one other very special person (then rail against them for not being perfect enough) or else that it must be about becoming something extraordinary ourselves – rather than joining lots of other very ordinary people to make something superlative. We’d generally be so much better off joining a team.

Democracy turns us against authority Tocqueville saw democracy as encouraging strong ideas about equality, to an extent that could grow harmful and dispiriting. He saw that democracy encourages ‘in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to want to bring the strong down to their level’.

Democracy was, he thought, fatally biased towards mediocrity.

Democracy undermines freedom of mind Instinctively, you’d suppose that democracy would encourage citizens to have an open mind. Surely democracy encourages debate and allows disagreements to be resolved by voting, rather than by violence? We think of openness of mind as being the result of living in a place where lots of opinions get an airing. However, Tocqueville came to the opposite conclusion: that in few places could one find ‘less independence of mind, and true freedom of discussion than in America’. Trusting that the system was fair and just, Americans simply gave up their independence of mind and put their faith in newspapers and so-called ‘common sense’. The scepticism of Europeans towards public opinion had given way to a naive faith in the wisdom of the crowd.

There are about 35 countries where capitalism is now well developed. It probably works best in Germany, where Weber first observed it. But in the remaining 161 nations, it arguably isn’t working well at all.

Adorno pointed out that our real wants are carefully shielded from us by capitalist industry, so that we end up forgetting what it is we truly need and settle instead for desires manufactured for us by corporations without any interest in our true welfare. Though we think we live in a world of plenty, what we really require to thrive – tenderness, understanding, calm, insight – is in painfully short supply and utterly disconnected from the economy. Instead, capitalism’s tool of mass manipulation

Secure attachment is the (rare) ideal. If there is a problem, you work it out. You are not appalled by the weakness of your partner. You can take it in your stride, because you can look after yourself when you have to. So if your partner is a bit down, confused, or just plain annoying, you don’t have to react too wildly. Because even if they can’t be nice to you, you can take care of yourself and have, hopefully, a little left over to meet some of the needs of your partner. You give the other the benefit of the doubt when interpreting behaviour. You realise that maybe they were just busy when they didn’t show any interest in your new haircut or insights into the news. Maybe they had a tricky time at work, and that’s why they are not interested in your day. The explanations are accommodating, generous – and usually more accurate. You are slow to anger, quick to forgive and forget.

Anxious attachment is marked by clinginess: calling just to check where the other is and keeping tabs on what they are up to. You need to make sure that they haven’t left you – or the country. Anxious attachment involves a lot of anger because the stakes feel very high. A minor slight, a hasty word, a tiny oversight can look – to the very anxious person – like huge threats. They seem to announce the imminent breakup of the whole relationship. Anxiously attached people quickly become coercive and demanding and focus on their own needs – not their partner’s. 3.

Avoidant attachment means that you would rather withdraw, and go away, than get angry with or admit you need the other person. If there is a problem, you don’t talk. Your instinct is to say you don’t really like the other person who has hurt you. Avoidant spouses often team up with anxious ones. It’s a risky combination. The avoidant one doesn’t give the anxious on...

Palladio held that architecture has an important purpose – above and beyond the provision of floors, walls and ceilings. He thought that we should build in order to encourage good states of mind in ourselves and others. In particular, he thought architecture could help us with three psychological virtues: calm, harmony and dignity.

The task of architecture is to provide us with the environment that continuously reminds us about – and encourages us to become – who we really want to be.

Buildings are Palladian when they are devoted to calm, harmony and dignity on the basis of rules that can (and should be) widely reused. It’s then they display the same underlying ambition of which Palladio is a central exponent and advocate: that it should be normal for buildings to present us with a seductive portrait of our calmest and most dignified selves.

One of the fundamental things artists can do for us is turn the spotlight of glamour in the best – and most helpful – directions. They can identify things that we tend to overlook but that, ideally, we should care about a great deal. And by the tenderness, beauty, skill and wisdom with which they portray these things, we too can come to see their true worth.

Yet the painting is curiously – and pointedly – out of synch with its status. Because, above all else, it wants to show us that the ordinary can be very special. The picture says that looking after a simple but beautiful home, cleaning the yard, watching the children, darning cloth – and doing these things faithfully and without despair – is life’s real duty.

One of the unexpectedly important things that art can do for us is teach us how to suffer. It can do so by evoking scenes that are dark, melancholy or painful, and that normalise and lend dignity to the suffering we may ourselves be experiencing in isolation and confusion. They reveal – with grandeur and technical skill – that grief belongs to the human condition.

taciturn,

Teutonic

Instead of solitude being something to evade (with business, drink or sexual fantasies), Friedrich suggests it as a state that brings us into contact with our deepest possibilities. He also believed that the harshness of nature could put the sorrows of the human condition into a consoling, redeeming perspective.

Works like Moonrise Over the Sea make us aware of our insignificance, exciting a sense of how petty man’s disasters are in comparison with the ways of eternity, leaving us a little readier to bow to the incomprehensible tragedies that every life entails. From here, ordinary irritations and worries are neutralised. Rather than try to redress our humiliations by insisting on our wronged importance, we can – through the help of a great artwork – endeavour to apprehend and appreciate our essential nothingness.

Hopper discovered that – even when others love us very much – some essential part of us is always alone. It is this recognition that makes his paintings so compelling. And indeed, it is by addressing loneliness that art can be most therapeutic: consoling us and reassuring us that estrangement and sorrow are normal, that we are neither very strange nor very shameful for experiencing them.

A side effect of coming into contact with any great artist is that we start to notice things in the world that the painter would have been receptive to.

To adopt a more sympathetic approach (which can be useful and fair), we need to go back to first principles and ask: what’s so good about not showing what things look like? The central intention in abstract art is to get directly to emotion and to bypass representation. Like music, abstract art is best interpreted as echoing, or giving a form to, certain of our inner states or moods. Some might be relatively straightforward, like ‘calm’ or ‘anger’, and others will defy easy definition in language. It is therefore not very helpful to say: this painting doesn’t look like anything. It is true that it doesn’t look like anything in the outer world, but that’s because the intention is to represent the inner one. We should be asking: what does this work feel like? Does it evoke any of my emotional states? What piece of mankind’s inner landscape is being summoned?

He is trying to get us to practise a mental habit: feeling that the things we do in our daily life are interesting and worthy of note. Warhol wants us to realise that we are already living an appealing life – to stop being down on ourselves, and ignoring ordinary experiences – filling up a car with petrol, dropping something off at the dry cleaners, microwaving a premade meal … We don’t need to fantasise about other places. We just need to see that the things we do all the time and the objects around us have their own merits and are enchanting in their own ways.

Art has generally not been able to live up to this ideal of being good and widely distributed. Artists make a few things, and only a few people get to own them. Andy Warhol tried to counteract this. One day, after reading that Picasso had made 4,000 masterpieces in his lifetime, Warhol set out to make 4,000 prints in one day. As it turned out, it took him a month to make 500. But he believed that art should be mass-produced and widely distributed. ‘If the one “master painting” is good, they’re all good.’

The value of simplicity Rams wanted to reduce everything back to just a few things that matter most.

Simplicity is so satisfying because our lives are cluttered, and the experience of having too many options is a constant drag on us.

Being simple can make you feel vulnerable. But simplicity is really an achievement – it follows from hard-won clarity about what matters.

a principle of modesty that Rams lives by, and that goes back to the Roman poet Horace: ‘the art lies in concealing the art.’

Modesty is the opposite of being showy. It is part of a broader ideal of service – which is a central ideal of good capitalism.

True modesty comes from confidence. Modesty is a lack of anxiety about being ignored.

One of Rams’s principles is that an object should be easy to live with, and easy to encounter for the first time. His objects communicate how to use them, not via an instruction manual, but by the way they look. The ability to create a welcoming experience for another person is a great skill. Not

Rams was classic, which means he tapped into things that don’t change.

We have a Romantic ideology, which tends to emphasise what is new. Rams, in contrast, is interested in what is permanent.