There’s something I really love about stealing words from other languages. Of course there’s nothing new about that – much of the English language consists of pilfered Greek, Latin, French and German, with a dash of the more exotic for occasional flavour. Some words, however, aren’t in the common parlance but really should be, as the words we translate them to turn out to be tragically inadequate to express what they mean. Sometimes you can’t just choose a roughly equivalent word and expect a reader to understand what the author or speaker truly meant. The best foreign words are the ones I find in the translators notes of books, where a language nerd unpacks its meaning in pages instead of a ten word dictionary definition. The ancient Greeks had a handful of words I really like, and I always found the translators notes in books by philosophers like Plato and Aristotle particularly interesting, because they can unpack it to such a degree! There is so much meaning in many of the words wielded by the ancient greats, meaning we often take for granted when speaking in our own language.
Language is a fascinating thing. Words are just noises or symbols – they only mean anything if the person you’re talking to understands them; And if there’s something potentially more dangerous than someone not understanding what you’re saying at all, it’s someone misunderstanding what you’re saying. I learned a very interesting thing about my grasp of English when I was interacting with people where English isn’t their first language – I would be asked what a word I used meant, just for me to flounder at actually explaining it in other words. Many people effortlessly use words they can’t define, because they still intuitively know what it means. This often turns out to be quite accurate, but the trouble with it is that it’s meaning very often built upon many inferences made throughout our life – we often learn these words after hearing them used in certain contexts, rather than actually having them concretely defined. With words like ‘Stop’ it’s usually pretty straightforward, but other words, like ‘Justice’, ‘Beauty’, and ‘Happiness’ are loaded with so many assumptions, both personal and cultural, that misunderstanding is almost inevitable. I’ve seen many discussions between many intelligent people go completely nowhere due to misunderstandings on the meaning of a single word. Two people can experience the same conversation, speech or book and yet understand it completely differently. Sometimes it feels like language is a complete crapshoot, and it kind of is, but you can at least play the odds.
A good communicator knows their audience. The most precise technical terms in the world won’t do you any good if you’re talking to a seven year old, and talking to your doctor like they’re a seven year old might not get you too far either. I know both a doctor and a physiotherapist, and they both have told me how challenging it is to get meaningful answers on things like pain. “It hurts a lot” doesn’t really tell you how or how much it hurts, yet pain is such an oddly subjective thing that it’s often hard to express it. How do we normally do it? By analogy. Does it feel like a spider bite, or like someone drove a knife through your hand? This quick comparison is often more useful to express your meaning than the most technical description of the pain you can manage, so long as the listener can relate to the comparison. The ability to identify that this is like that is fundamental to our understanding of the world, it’s one of the best tools we have to learn, because it can capture so much so quickly. Me telling you that my sister’s French bulldog is ‘like a goblin’ – affectionately, of course – is probably all you need to hear to understand that creature. Saying ‘that class was hell’ is useful even if the listener has (probably) never visited the underworld, because it makes use of a reference to something we commonly understand to be a completely miserable place. Translations are not unlike analogies. Some translations are one-to-one, perhaps a dog is a dog is a dog, but what about a loyal dog? In many cases it boils down to Word A is like Word B. We need to be aware that is like does not mean equals, and this is often a danger of reading translated texts. We read them in English almost like they were written in English, and not only do we first interpret the text through the translator’s assumptions, we then make our own assumptions based on the words the translator selected. If you’ve ever run a phrase through google translator and then translated it back into English, you’ll realize that this can be a complete mess. Having just said how much I like words in other languages, maybe I’ve framed translations in a bit of a critical light; but consider it a warning rather than a criticism, especially because I’ll be unpacking some words shortly and it’ll inevitably be laced with my own interpretations and assumptions. Allow me, after hopefully making you wary of taking words to granted, to dive down a bit of an etymological rabbit hole.
There are many ways to describe that sensation of making a sudden realization or discovery – insight, epiphany, revelation, the ‘eureka’ moment where things just seem to click. The Latin ‘Genius’, which we often attribute to particularly inspired and intelligent individuals, in fact referred to a deity or spirit which watched over a person or place, a sort of guardian angel. The ancient Greek equivalent was the Eudaimon. The state of having a Eudaimon was, simply enough, referred to as Eudaimonia, commonly translated as ‘happiness’ or ‘flourishing’ in English. I found this to be a wonderful idea, this guardian deity, this genius, this font of inspiration and insight. I don’t believe in supernatural spirits, but I admit I have a soft spot for these mythological and supernatural metaphors, even if they may well be purely psychological. If, like me, you don’t believe in demons, consider the daimon an aspect of yourself – your conscience, your intuition, your beliefs and your motives. And perhaps, as well, your subconscious. The metaphorical view of certain behaviors and beliefs as a demonic force can be elucidating – a daimon can lead you to bliss or misery, it has a will of its own, and understanding yourself is vital if you do not want to be led astray. Marcus Aurelius, the Roman Emperor and stoic philosopher, remarked in his Meditations that “Failure to observe what is in the mind of another has seldom made a man unhappy; but those who do not observe the movements of their own minds must of necessity be unhappy.” Stoic thought leaned heavily on the idea of the logos, which operates both on a universal and personal level. On the personal level it is generally seen as our faculties of reason, wielded by our hegemonikon or “that which guides”, our conscious intellect or our will – but I will go into greater detail shortly that our hegemonikon may not be as influential as we might hope, if not utilized cleverly.
I believe that Eudaimonia warrants more unpacking than just to say ‘It is like happiness’, not least because so few of us have a solid definition of what it is to be happy. Did you know, for example, that before the enlightenment, happy was merely the adjective form of the noun “hap”, which meant an event or a situation. Happenstance, mishap, halpless, haphazard. Happy was simply something that fit an event – a happy chance. Over time it became what it is today – whatever that is. As noted before, in a way it simply means that you are fortunate enough that your daimon is good – you are well-advised by your conscience, so to speak. The next hurdle to overcome in our quest for Eudaimonia, then, is how do we know when we are well-advised? This is a debate that has spanned centuries, and smarter thinkers than me have filled volumes on it – it’d be arrogant to presume that I have the answer to what will grant you a good and happy life. I can, however, offer some pretty simple mental shortcuts that I find helpful. They may seem obvious, but useful ideas often are!
One difference between mere introspection and genuine reflection is the difference between being able to think inwardly and being able to apply that thinking outwardly. A useful tool is often to view yourself in other terms. Take some time to really think about who you admire, who you dislike, and most importantly why. Once you have done that, take the time to honestly consider which of the admirable traits you embody and which of the deplorable ones. For example, that I was very easily irritated by people who complain a lot, and admired people who seemed able to cheerily carry on even in harsh circumstances. Yet I was totally blind to the astounding frequency I, myself, managed to bitch. This is a very similar philosophy as the ‘do unto others’ mindset – behave as best you can in the way people you like behave, and try not to be someone you’d hate if you met your double. If you do not like someone else for doing something, why should you like yourself for doing the same? Another useful piece of reflective advice is delivered by Seneca, another stoic philosopher: “It is, indeed, nobler by far to live as you would live under the eyes of some good man, always by your side.” A similar piece of advice are the common Christian refrain, “What would Jesus do?” Another that I like is thinking what you’d advise your best friend to do in your circumstances. I find people often hold themselves to different standards than their closest friends and family – is that out of greater self respect than respect for your friends and family, or less? These are all important things to understand about yourself, and many people do not give it as much thought as perhaps they should.
A second important thing to recognize is that your hegemonikon, your conscious mind, the self, is not as influential as you might hope. Some, such as the Buddhists, believe it is altogether an illusion. Modern science still hasn’t come to truly understand consciousness, but cognitive scientists and psychologists have certainly become better at understanding why we do what we do. Neuroscientist David Eagleman’s fascinating and at times disturbing book Incognito illustrates that most of what we say and do is not under our conscious control. He uses the metaphor of the brain as a nation, and your conscious mind as a man reading the newspaper. At best, perhaps you are the president, with only some high level control over (and limited knowledge of) the many independent moving parts that compose the machinery of state; some of which listen, some of which don’t, some of which are squabbling amongst one another for your attention and some of which are quite content to get along pretending you don’t exist at all. There are some parts of yourself you will probably never be able to wield conscious control over – you will likely never be able to merely will your stomach to digest faster, or injuries to heal quicker, or your toenails to stop growing. What you may do, however, is to intelligently harness your will to the ends you can control.
Jigoro Kano, the founder of Judo, premised the martial art on a guiding principle of Seiryoku Zenyo, which is often translated to “Maximum efficiency, minimum effort” or “Best use of one’s energy”. In Judo itself this means capitalizing on the weight, momentum and balance of your opponent to move them rather than trying to do it with brute strength. A skilled Judoka can throw a man twice his weight as if he didn’t weigh a thing, because he had no need to use his strength to throw him. If your hegemonikon, whether he’s John Smith reading the news or Mr President, is wrestling the entire nation at every step, he will lose. If he understands where it moves, how it’s balanced, and how to tilt that balance, he might wield incredible influence over nearly every aspect of its function that’s important to him. To fight with raw willpower – brute strength – the united power of every instinct you have will exhaust you. To win the fight, the hegemonikon must understand the daimon, and act accordingly. Know thyself, as it is written atop the oracle in Delphi.
Works Cited:
Aurelius, Marcus. Meditations: A New Translation. Translated by Gregory Hays. 1 edition. New York: Modern Library, 2003. – Amazon Link
Eagleman, David. Incognito: The Secret Lives Of The Brain. Toronto: Penguin Canada, 2012. – Amazon Link
Kano, Jigoro, Yukimitsu Kano, and Naoki Murata. Mind Over Muscle: Writings from the Founder of Judo. New York: Kodansha International, 2013. – Amazon Link
Rose, Todd, and Ogi Ogas. Dark Horse: Achieving Excellence through the Pursuit of Fulfillment. San Francisco: HarperOne, 2018. – Amazon Link
Seneca, and Robin Campbell. Letters from a Stoic. Reprint edition. Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics, 1969. – Amazon Link
