What a gorgeous little book, promoting a teleology founded on care. Specifically: a caring for people and ideas which balances service and integrity, and which collectively span one’s capacities and interests thoroughly enough to order one’s life.
This perspective offers a new lens for me on some issues around coercion, particularly in schooling. It has somewhat less to say about self-coercion (e.g. Non-coercive productivity), but I do find it interesting to interpret Meyeroff’s advice through the lens of Internal family systems for intrapersonal issues.
Regarding self-coercion, I do find myself hesitant about this passage:
Obligations that derive from devotion are a constituent element in caring, and I do not experience them as forced on me or as necessary evils; there is a convergence between what I feel I am supposed to do and what I want to do.
This is a beautiful sentiment. And yet, in practice, I notice that even when I am (or think I am?) devoted to a person or idea, I do often experience tension between “what I feel I am supposed to do and what I want to do”, unless we’re willing to interpret “I want” very broadly. As Alec Resnick put it, my emotions often operate on different timescales than my thoughts. Complicating matters further, if I engage in the obligation despite a lack of want/should convergence, I’ll often become more convergent.
Another very interesting—and, I think, true—element of Meyeroff’s argument here is in self-development and self-transformation: “in finding and developing my appropriate others I find and create myself.” How beautifully put. Now: how exactly are people to do that?
Via Alec Resnick.
Q. To care for another person is…?
A. To help him grow and actualize himself.
Q. The antithesis of caring is…?
A. Simply using another person to satisfy one’s own needs.
Q. For Meyerhoff, how does a person live a meaningful life?
A. By serving others (people, ideas) through caring.
Q. Why is it impossible to care for a belief which one dogmatically clings to?
A. Too attached to examine it and determine its independent meaning/needs.
Q. What is “devotion” in the context of care?
A. Locally: being “there” for the other (not holding back or ambivalent); over time: consistency, persistence, willingness to overcome difficulty.
Q. Contrast “devotion” of caring to compulsion.
A. The former is experienced as “a convergence between what I am supposed to do and what I want to do.”
Q. In what sense is caring for a person recursive or fractal?
A. Helping someone grow involves helping them care for others, and for themselves.
Q. What is “learning” for Meyerhoff?
A. “The re-creation of one’s own person through the integration of new experiences and ideas.”
Q. Contrast “direct” and “indirect” knowledge.
A. Direct knowledge comes from encounter with the thing itself; indirect knowledge is information about a thing, often about a class rather than the thing itself.
Q. How might Meyeroff criticize the “caring” involved in schooling?
A. These institutions want to mold a child into what they think they ought to be, rather than responding to its needs and behaviors as an individual. (“Instead of trying to dominate and possess the other, I want it…”to be itself”, and I feel the other’s growth to be bound up with my own sense of well-being.”)
Q. How to reconcile the need to make decisions for a young child?
A. Those decisions should be firm insofar as one’s belief that they’ll strengthen the child’s decision-making capacity and future independence.
To be “{in-place}” in the world is to {have one’s life ordered by caring}.
Q. In what sense is patience an ingredient of caring?
A. Being responsive to the other means letting it grow in its own time, letting it be confused when necessary, rather than trying to force it onto some ideal timeline or process.
Q. How does caring relate to personal development?
A. “In finding and caring for my appropriate others I find and create myself.” In particular, one must become “the kind of person who can significantly devote himself to something for its own sake.”
Q. How does Meyeroff rationalize the desire to make unique personal contributions?
A. Unless your carings involve your distinctive gifts, they can’t significantly order your life: too many important elements are left unengaged.
^ (what about parents?)
Q. What are one’s “appropriate” others?
A. The things/people who, when cared for enough, enable you to be “in-place”, to draw on your distinctive powers and to order your life.
Q. What does “having direction” in one’s life mean for Meyeroff?
A. Something attracts us enough that we act on its behalf; these things are inclusive enough that focusing on them coordinates our activities and provides continuity.
Q. In what sense is “having direction” not the same as “living the meaning of one’s life”?
A. The objects of that direction may not be one’s “appropriate others”—i.e. they may attract us but may not need us, or draw on our distinctive powers.
Q. How would Meyeroff answer the question “is there some single, right purpose for each person?”
A. He’d say a given person could care for different sets of appropriate others, and still end up in-place.