Hi Everybody,
Hope all is well with you. Since I managed to write 2 number 32's, this one gets to be 34! We're in the middle of Chapter 6, talking about about how our values and the choices that we make affect those around us, and we've introduced this brilliant sociologist Nicolas Christakis from Harvard who'se done some groundbreaking work on what you might call emotional or value networks. So let's dive straight in.
' Very briefly what their research has revealed is that values and patterns of behaviour in our life spread, or percolate perhpas is a better word, naturally and easily throughout our network of friends and family and colleagues, without any conscious effort or activity on our part, or even without our being in the slightest aware that such a process is going on. That is to say, we may not set out in any way with the intention of spreading these qualities, which include fundamentally important things about us such as our integrity, and our respect for others, and our habitual life states such as our optimism or our pessimism, but nevertheless the spreading or the percolation goes on.
Moreover, and this is perhaps the most surprising thing, the research has revealed for the first time, the extraordinary extent of these emotional networks, if I may call them that. Because the sociologists argue, this ripple effect doesn't stop at our own network of friends and colleagues as we might expect. It goes on, they suggest, to have some effect on their network of friends and colleagues as well, and even beyond that to their friends and colleagues as well. They talk of what they call three degrees of influence. It is in my view a truly surprising result, but it has been established as valid in repeated studies , to become acepted as a wholly new insight. Because these scientists are telling us that who we really are, what values we really hold, what behaviours we demonstrate, has an effect not just on our close friends, but on their friends as well, and beyond that, to the friends of their friends. People that is to say, whom we personally may actually encounter only very rarely, possibly never, or only at second hand through accounts and stories of friends and work colleagues, and even if we are entirely unaware that we are transmitting and receiving these influences in any way.
So clear are the results of their repeated research that the sociologists have actually chosen to borrow a metaphor to describe them, so they talk about these qualities, these values and these states of mind being infectious, as if we can actually transmit our basic respect or disrespect for others, our optimism or our pessimism, to other people across a quite widely spread network.
So this issue that we are talking about, to which we happen to give this slightly forbidding name of ethics or morality, cannot be just a private or a personal issue, as it is so often presented. Of course it starts with individuals, but it's not essentially about individuals. It determines the effect that we have on those around us, and further out into society, and of course beyond society into the environment, sinc eit is becoming increasingly clear that our survival as a species depends so closely on how we, as individuals and as communities, choose to behave in relation to everythign else on the planet.
It's important to take note I think, of the extraordinary clarity and modernity of Shakyamuni's perception, all those centuries ago, of our fundamental need as human beings, to live in such a way as to create harmonious and balanced relationships within these three dimensions, or these three concentric circles as they are sometimes described, that make up our lives, with ourselves first of all, and then with the extensions of human society around us, and then beyond, with the wider environment. And it is extraordinary to observe how some of the very latest offerings from today's scientists and philosophers, take up these same themes, and express remarkably similar views. '
I think that's enough for one swallow don't you. Trying to slice a fairly complex argument into digestible bite-sized chunks isn't easy. I tend to think that less is more, but where to stop and still make sense aint easy. Anyway, hope you read to here, and hope sincerely tha tit makes sense!
See you next time,
William
The Case for Buddhism is doing well on Amazon UK
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