Special Nostos : Thu Sep 5 2024

Bike Letter Follow-Up:

Aka How to Read Philosophy at Odyssey

 
 

Dear Friends of Odyssey,

Did you see the special letter I wrote to our community yesterday? The one about our neighbor and my red bike? Two points of clarification:

I sent that to our entire Odyssey email list. It was an open letter to all of us. Some of you were confused, thinking I sent it only to you! One of you was so concerned that you called the shop (!) at 6:45PM while I was preparing for Civic Quest: "Joey, it wasn't me, I swear! You must have the wrong person!"

The letter is a philosophical, literary event. Do you see how we used an otherwise nasty incident as an opportunity to think hard about human ethics? The point of the letter was to explore possible bases on which I might reasonably plead with you not to run me over. There is universal application in the specific moment.

  1. I started with certain communal aspects of me: I give you a coffeehouse.

  2. I then addressed certain familial traits of me: I have a wife who depends on me, I'm a father, etc.

  3. I tried to appeal to your shared sense of human fatique at a day's end.

  4. I spoke about exercise, hoping you might feel sympathy.

But all these reasons turned out to be unconvincing as a strong basis for treating me kindly -- especially in light of one, very high, very beautiful reason.

Be sure to read all the way to end of the letter where I make my final appeal to "my neighbor" not based on some changing aspect of my personal life but on a transcendent, unifying truth about every single human being on the planet. Can you find it?

If you read carefully (and have read your classical literature), you'll hear echoes of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, of Seneca, the NT, and Aquinas.

There is a place inside every one of us, often very deep, often quite hidden, that desires to love and to be loved in return (by an eternal something), and to share that love with each other in human bonds.

The point of the letter is to say, "If I can keep this truth at the forefront of my mind all day, how does that change the way I respond to everyone else, even when they're yelling at me and cursing me off the road in my own town? Always underneath the cursing is a desire for transcendent love. Always."

Thank you for making our Odyssey community such a beautiful place to explore the highest things over a cup of coffee (or while wearing spandex on Central Avenue).

To that end we work,

Joey