Jill Konrath [14:56]: I have that quote written out here because I was going to ask you about it. “Don't be a weed. Don't ever even be a prized petunia.”
As you say, it's a garden of possibilities in the book, what should we really be? I mean, if we take it out of the garden and we look at this country that we've got, whatever country we're living in, and we've got these people fighting for power and control, what can we do in our little garden to make a difference?
Tom Morris [15:27]: Yeah, it's a great question. And by the way, you're mentioning that this applies to every country. One of my favorite fan letters about the book is from a 19-year-old young man in Bucharest, Romania, who said he, “I just read your book, The Everyday Patriot. It makes me want to be a better Romanian right away.”
And I said, “That's what I was looking for. That's what I was after.” And it's funny know, George Washington was worried about there being political parties because he was worried that people would affiliate with the party more than they did the nation.
Jill Konrath [15:59]: And he was right then, too. I mean, if you look at it, people have a tribe that they want to belong to.
Tom Morris [16:06]: That's right. Your tribe versus the other.
Jill Konrath [16:08]: Tribe is not good.
Tom Morris [16:10]: I know. And they think they're making their tribe stronger by being adversarial, by being critical of other tribes.
But when you understand the philosophy behind human flourishing, you understand that when you cut your tribe off from another tribe, you don't make it stronger, you make it weaker.
And your question about how we get beyond this adversarial mindset is such a great question.
So, when I turned 50—long, long time ago—I realized I’d not read a lot of great world literature. I was a philosopher focused on reading philosophy, but other stuff, like great novels, great poetry, I didn't read that kind of stuff. I’d never been interested.
But I’d seen a bunch of magazine articles where great writers, living writers, were asked, what's the greatest novel ever written? And a bunch of them said, Don Quixote. And maybe that was universal. They all said it.
Jill Konrath [17:10]: Really?
Tom Morris [17:11]: Yeah. A new translation had just come out, 900 and some pages. A reason I’d never read it.
Jill Konrath [17:19]: I have that translation.
Tom Morris [17:22]: I went and bought it and I read it, and I said to my wife, “Okay, I haven't read many novels, so I'm not in a position to know if these guys were right, that this is the greatest novel ever written, but I get it. I see why they said that.”
Then I read Moby Dick. And I kept reading. The Iliad and The Odyssey from ancient Greece. I’d been force-fed a little bit of each, like everybody else. But I went back, during the pandemic and read more.
In one year, I reread The Odyssey four times through cover to cover. It's almost as big as Don Quixote. And I reread The Iliad twice. So, between The Iliad and The Odyssey. That's six readings.
And I finally understood those two books for the first time in my life. Having heard about them and even having read them in school, I didn't understand them.
Jill Konrath [18:13]: Okay, so what did you learn from your reading? How does that apply to today? What went boom for you?
Tom Morris [18:18]: Two big things. The Odyssey. Is Odysseus trying to get home after the Trojan War? He's fought the Trojan War for ten years. He's trying to get home. That takes another ten years.
He's up against every obstacle and adversity imaginable—and he somehow gets through them all because of one thing— his strong sense of purpose. The Odyssey is about the power of purpose in difficult times.
The Iliad is about the battle that he was fighting at Troy right before he tries to get back home. And The Iliad is about the power of partnership. Partnership and purpose.
So, The Iliad opens with the leader of the Greeks, Agamemnon, and the greatest warrior, Achilles. They're supposed to be partnering together to defeat Troy, and rather than that, they get at each other's throats.
They, in a sense, have their own tribes, their own egoistic concerns. Agamemnon says, “You've got more than I have. I want more. I deserve more.”
“No, I do,” Achilles says. They start fighting each other, and then things start going badly.
But partnership is portrayed in a powerful, positive way all throughout the book.
Now, the most surprising—and this gets to the answer to your original question (which, by the way, as a philosopher, I can seem like I long ago forgot your question) but I know my favorite passage in The Iliad is in what they call Book Six.
On the plain outside Troy, where there are battles being fought here and there, across the horizon, two warriors come up against each other. One is Trojan and one Greek. And their job is that one of them has to kill the other one.
And the Greeks, I think it's the Greek who says to the Trojan, he said, “Whoa, whoa, wait a minute. Before we get into this, I got to ask you. I've seen you today. You're amazing. I've never seen anybody fight the way you do. You're probably going to kill me. I mean, you're like a god or something. I got to know who you are. Would you please tell me who you are?”
And the other guy says, “What are you talking about? I'm the guy who's getting ready to kill you.”
“Yeah,” says the Greek. “Tell me your background, please. Who's your father? Where'd you come from? What brought you here?”
And finally, the other guy says, “All right. Well, my father was so and so. My grandfather was so and so. He lived in such and such…”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” says the Greek. “Your grandfather was who?”
He gives the name of his grandfather.
And then Greek says, “My grandfather and your grandfather were best friends. My grandfather visited your grandfather. Your grandfather hosted my grandfather and was wonderful. And I grew up hearing stories about your grandfather. Look, we can’t fight each other. We've got too much in common.”
And so, they decide in the middle of this raging battle to take off their heavy armor and trade armor so their friends will think the friends of the other guy won't attack. They'll think, “This guy is Diomedes and this guy is the other guy.”
And they suddenly become friends because they’d discovered something they have in common.
Now, I've been telling people ever since the book came out that the secret sauce for partnerships is to discover the values you have in common.
Two guys in Wilmington, North Carolina, where I live, both working in a soup kitchen, one on one end of the political spectrum, one on the other end of the political spectrum. But they never had a chance to talk politics because they're busy getting the food ready for the people who are about to show up.
And they do this week after week after week, and they get to be good buddies. They're joking about basketball. They're joking about football, about baseball. They're joking about the other people working there. They just get to be good buddies.
Then one day, politics comes up, and they're really surprised that they're on opposite ends of the political spectrum. But it doesn't matter because they see each other as good guys. They have so much in common.
By that point, they're able to laugh off their differences and start listening to each other about why they believe what they believe, and they start moving a little closer together, like those guys on the plain outside Troy.