The immanent transcendent self
The attraction of the good life and the selfish life
The wild horses
I often find my mind drifting back to the Irish myth, retold by Martin Shaw, about the warrior and the two horses pulling in opposite directions and how reconciling the tension between them, by generating a third option, was a sign of wisdom and hence potential leadership capability:
to become a sovereign you had two wild horses attached to your chariot, setting out in different directions. Your task was to create, between the warring directives of each, a third movement, forged from the tension of both wills. If you could thrive under that discord, stay upright in the unknowing, make play from the tension, then you had the capacity to be a sovereign. And it wasn’t just a case of bullying the horses but making a kind of alchemical covenant between the two: you rode the counterweight and something new was birthed. That requires patience and a certain amount of discomfort.
The myth points to the challenge of leadership, and the need to find creative ways to resolve dilemmas, rather than merely trying to reconcile warring parties. This is the way of leadership. All of the CEOs with whom I work face a constant challenge to “stop the executives from hurting one another,” as one client said, using even stronger language.
Even when you lead a great team, you will still have competing egos and competing agendas. It is usually a too simplistic response to choose one over the other, because both almost always have valid insight and both have some disposition toward the good of the organisation and the people. The executives, however, have competing needs for (say) resources, or outcomes, or impact.
The challenge facing the CEO is to find a third way that shifts the attention from getting one’s own way, to following a new way.
The horses within
The same thing is going on inside us. There are two—and probably more than two—horses competing for our attention. Each wants to dominate. It’s the tension between head and heart, reason and emotion, fact and feeling.
I’m sure you are familiar with that inner argument that goes something like this:
Anthony's head: “Yes, I know that is the right thing to do ...”
Anthony's heart: “But, I like doing this thing that I am doing, and don’t want to change”
The dialogue of course does not end there. It continues within.
This reminds me of Plato’s analogy, recounted in the Phaedrus (264a), of the charioteer of the human soul driving two winged horses, one striving for the heavens and one wanting to run away with its passions.
one of the horses is noble and of noble breed, but the other quite the opposite in breed and character. Therefore ... the driving is necessarily difficult and troublesome
The first horse, says Plato,
is a friend of honour joined with temperance and modesty, and a follower of true glory; he needs no whip, but is guided only by the word of command and by reason. The other, however, is crooked, heavy, ill put together, his neck is short and thick, his nose flat, his colour dark, his eyes grey and bloodshot; he is the friend of insolence and pride, is shaggy-eared and deaf, hardly obedient to whip and spurs.
Do you ever feel like that ... torn between competing desires? I sure do.
There is that part of me that ‘is a friend of honour’, that is temperate and modest, a ‘follower of true glory’, who is guided by reason, and who chooses wisely and well in accord with what is true and just and good. It sounds lovely, does it not? That is who I want to be all the time.
But alas there is another horse prancing around inside me, and that horse is something of a beast, ever ready to lunge forward in a drive for self-satisfaction. It is a ‘friend of insolence and pride’, who is deaf to reason, and responds not to any form of command or cajoling.
The good life or the selfish life
This tension exists in all of us: between the head and the heart, reason and emotion. It is the tension between what the philosophers call the eudaimonic and the hedonic: the good life and the selfish life.
Which do you choose? Surrender to the short term and the passions, or rising to the voice of reason and the true the beautiful and the good? It’s far easier to write the question than to act out the answer.
Will I seek fulfillment beyond myself, in what is good and noble, or will I seek fulfillment within myself, in that which provides immediate pleasure? While the former gazes to the heavens, in an ever expanding vision that knows no limits, the latter falls into a black hole, in an ever collapsing, ever decreasing, spiral of despair.
In classic terms, this is the tension within each of us between transcendence and immanence. Our capacity for transcendence is revealed in that desire to go beyond ourselves, to become someone, to live out our lives in keeping with some great and noble purpose. Immanence, on the other hand, is revealed in the capacity to know oneself, however it becomes distorted when we live an immanent life, living inside ourselves, seeking always to satisfy and satiate whatever feeling arises in any moment, unable to delay gratification.
These point to the dualism of the human condition: we are both body and soul, head and heart, reason and emotion. Both are essential, and both seek our attention. I understand that black horse of passion. It wants to rule my life and ignore reason.
Integrate reason and emotion
The challenge is to integrate the head and the heart, to reign in the horses and ensure they serve you, not drive you. How do we balance these often competing aspects of ourselves in a way that accepts and acknowledges our humanity—for this is indeed living our humanity—rather one that denies it?
How can we live with that: to live with myself, to not be bound down by the passions but to rise to the heavens, and yet not to rise so far to the heavens that we are no earthly good?
It’s ok to be passionate, but to be passionate in the service of something beyond yourself, rather than in service of yourself. It’s human to experience desire, to want something that may not be ultimately fulfilling. Despite my best attempts to be my best self, there is a part of me that actually enjoys being selfish. Let’s not beat ourselves up over that, but rather acknowledge the reality of the human condition. It's a lifelong project to overcome our self-centredness and serve others with no expectation of reward.
there is a part of me that actually enjoys being selfish. It’s part of being human
I am, however, highlighting a major question, a key question for our lives: “how do we reign in the black horse?” and “who do we choose to become?” As Shaw points out, the challenge is to forge a covenant between the two horses, and that will almost certainly involve some discomfort.
The next post will pick up on this, and look at how we can resolve that tension in a healthy manner. In the meantime, if you have a moment, please comment below: do you recognise this tension within ... and what are your practices for finding a balance between head and heart? How do you live with the discomfort?
Anthony, It is so interesting to observe your skilful resurrection of deep and meaningful ideas born of the greatest philosophers and in the process hold a mirror through which we can catch glimpses of ourselves and give us much needed perspective on how we live our polar lives.The avalanche of of real-time information can paralyse the 86 billion neurons neatly compacted into the 3 pounds of matter neatly positioned between our ears. About the same size as Plato's and Aristotle's actually. The need to stop, and think is obvious. In hindsight that is. Not so easy in our nanosecond multi platform always on world. Your beautiful article points us to that breathing space where we can recognise that maybe we are not that smart after all. Those old boys got a lot right without knowing the difference between a megabite and a kilowatt, nothing artificial about their intelligence. Thank you professor!