Often, even if we cannot prevent something from happening, we can do something about how it will happen.  I think Alexis de Tocqueville had the right idea about this.

The particular spectacle that held him in a trance of fascination was the world-wide disappearance of the old social order with its inherited social ranks, and its replacement by a new social order with equality of social ranks.  We democratic souls are hard on the vices of the old order, and nearly blind to those of the new.  With a clearer vision of the virtues and vices of both orders, Tocqueville was tempted to nostalgia for what was passing.

Yet he thought it would be both futile and impious to seek the old order’s preservation, because he believed that for reasons obscure to us, God had ordained its demise and replacement.

What then?  Did he say, like the Stoics, that we are helpless to choose what happens, free only to choose our attitude toward it?  No, Tocqueville was a Christian.  He reasoned that although we cannot prevent disappearance of the aristocratic social order even if we wanted to, it does lie within our power to decide which form the new order will take:  Whether we will pursue our desire for equality of ranks by pulling down the high, or by raising up the low.

Extend that thought.  In every age of society, known goods and evils are disappearing, while new and perilous potentialities are arising.  What emerges from these chances, for good or ill, is not fixed.   It is always possible to choose the pure, the true, and the beautiful.  And though more difficult, it is always possible to refuse complicity in their opposites.

I have a half-baked theory that people in different disciplines are attracted to different kinds of jokes.  Physicists seem to be especially fond of limericks:

There was a young lady from Bright,

Whose speed was much faster than light.

She set out one day

In a relative way,

And came back on the previous night.

Perhaps philosophers too.  For what it’s worth, here is one of my own coinage:

To a Cartesian thinker named Duzz

There came a most fabulous buzz:

"For I not only think,

But I also have thought.

So I not only am, but I was."

Are there any Thomistic limericks?  There ought to be.  The angelic doctor staunchly approved "words or deeds wherein nothing further is sought than the soul's delight," saying "man's mind would break if its tension were never relaxed."  I know a near-limerick by St. Thomas himself.  In a prayer of thanksgiving he wrote for use in Mass, the middle sentence asks “May [the sacrifice] purify me from sin, do away with my evil desires and passions, bring me charity and patience, humility and obedience, and strengthen me in all virtue.”  The great Catholic apologist, Msgr. Ronald A. Knox, pointed out in 1925 that this uplifting petition has a limerick’s pattern of rhymes -- though not quite a limerick’s rhythm (which would have sounded cheeky in a prayer!):

Sit vitiorum meorum evacuatio,

Concupiscentiae et libidinis exterminatio,

Caritatis et patientiae,

Humilitatis et obedientiae,

Omniumque virtutum augmentatio.

If you do know any Thomistic limericks, let me know.  There are only two rules:  They have to be funny, and they have to scan.

First freedom meant our noble power of rational and moral self-direction.

Then it meant the mere absence of restraints on our will, so long as we were not violating moral law.

Then it meant the absence of any restraints whatsoever.

Finally it meant the sheer power to act immorally and irrationally, even if the power of rational and moral self-direction were taken from us.

Insofar as this is an illness of the mind, even to recognize its progress is to begin its cure.  Insofar as it is an illness of the heart --

Here the manuscript breaks off.

If you want to win murmurs of approval, quote Anatole France:  “The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of young minds for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards.”  If you would like to evoke little gasps of admiration, follow up with Albert Einstein:  “It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.  It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry.”

The problem is that the curiosity-as-holiness line is carelessly undiscriminating, and at best half-true.

Here is the true half: In itself, the knowledge of truth is good.  Aristotle says philosophy begins in wonder.  John Paul II says everyone wonders, and in that sense everyone is a philosopher.  Thomas Aquinas says it is man’s natural vocation to seek truth, especially the truth about God.  We are made, among other things, to know, as no other animal is made to know.

But the way one goes about pursuing knowledge may be right or wrong.

For example, some seek knowledge for the sake of doing evil, like the military scientists who study how to “hack” the brains of soldiers so they will be unable to disobey orders.

Some seek it for the sake of pride, like the clever fellows at the company Biotransplant who implanted the nuclei of cells from a human fetus into the enucleated ovum of a sow.

Some even seek it for the sake of morbid pleasure, like the witty biologists some years ago who cut off the heads and tails of centipedes and stitched the stumps together to see if the hapless creatures would run in circles.

If you would rather not pick on scientists, pick another profession, say, journalism.  There is plenty of guilt to go around.

Mere curiosity is to the tender love of truth as voyeurism is to marital love.  That is why the ancients made distinctions.  They accounted wonder a natural inclination, and the humble pursuit of knowledge to be a high virtue.  But they reserved the word curiositas for seeking knowledge in ways it never should be sought.

Bonus Link

Sympathy is merciful compassion for the other person; empathy is feeling what the other person feels.  These two are often confused.  How often have you heard the cynical remark that Mary’s sympathy for Clara is superficial or insincere just because she doesn’t feel what Clara feels?

But she shouldn’t feel what Clara feels.  For what if Clara is paralyzed with sorrow?  Would it really be praiseworthy for Mary to feel just the same?  She could do Clara no good if she were paralyzed too.  Or what if Clara is longing to have her drug habit satisfied?  True compassion is in the service of Clara’s good; in this case it longs for Clara not to be satisfied.

As these examples show, not only are sympathy and empathy different things, but they may even be enemies.  The former is a virtue; the latter isn’t.

Among other things, this refutes the Impartial Spectator theory of ethics, which holds that we ought to act as a universal empathizer would act – someone who perfectly feels everything that everyone else feels and then acts the way that makes him feel best.

It also explodes the notion so prevalent in our culture that cruelty is denying other people what they feel they must have.  Such attitudes destroy friends, undermine love, and even disorder the law.