Excellence vs. Perfection: Dante, The Greeks, and Men Without Chests!

Excellence

Many people tend to equate perfection with excellence.  Perfection is defined as “freedom from fault or defect; flawlessness.”  Excellence is defined as “a virtue, transcendence, or eminence.”

Perfection is so much easier to understand, mostly because all of us know we don’t possess it. When it comes to imperfection, we’re all in the same boat. But what, exactly, is excellence?

Excellence finds its roots in virtue (another word for truth), in transcendence (meaning to go beyond, to exceed, to surpass), and eminence (meaning high repute).  Excellence relates to a person’s moral compass, not whether he or she lives perfectly.  Excellence is about being whole.

The Ancient Greek View of Humanity[i]

The ancient Greeks believed humanity consisted of three components.  The first part was cerebral man.  This was the mind of man, the logical, thinking element of humanity.  The second was visceral man.  This was the gut of man, the animal nature of humanity, or instincts.  By cerebral man, humanity is spirit.  By visceral man, humanity is animal.  But the third element of man, according to the Greeks, made humanity unique.  This third element was the place of grace (or love); it was the compromising element between humanity’s logical and animal nature.  It was the place where emotions rested, emotions taking the middle ground between a purely logical and a purely animal existence.  This was the heart of man.

What the Dante!

Dante Alighieri’s Inferno[ii] establishes a view of hell we might find odd today.  Dante based his entire work in large measure on Aristotle, the Greek philosopher.  The Greek view of humanity figures prominently in Dante’s taxonomy of hell.

We might assume murderers would inhabit the deepest part of hell, but Dante places murderers somewhere in the center of hell.  He places those who succumbed to sins of passion, like adultery or gluttony, in the upper levels of hell.  Why?  Because these were sins of passion, of visceral man, of the gut, of humanity’s animal nature.  Dante places the sins of malice and fraud in the very lowest levels of hell.  Why?  Because these were sins of cold, calculated, premeditated thought, of cerebral man, of the mind of humanity.

In Dante’s view, those in hell were out of balance.  They weren’t whole.  They failed to listen to their heads and their guts, and find a compromise in their hearts.  It’s easy to see why Dante would place a glutton or adulterer in hell.  We get the idea of letting your selfish proclivities overtake you, ending up in ruin, but we may not understand in our modern era the dangers of listening solely to intellect, for intellect alone fails to take into account the deepest of values: love, compassion, and mercy.           

            Instead, what we find in our world today are what C.S. Lewis called men without chests.[iii]  According to the ancients, the two greatest teachers are pain and love, and often those two great teachers accompany each other.  And where do these two great teachers reside?  In the heart.

We all probably know someone who has escaped from pain through such things as alcohol, drugs, sex, and entertainment, things of visceral man.  We understand that idea.  But perhaps an even more insidious way to avoid the pain of the heart is the escape of cerebral man, the intellect, which detaches any emotion to whatever causes our pain.  This occurs far more often than we may be aware.  Why?  Because intellectualizing a problem allows us to believe this illusion: We have conquered the problem causing us pain. We are in control of the pain and the problem.

We build a fortress around our hearts, using escape and control.  We escape to our gut, using alcohol, drugs, sex, or entertainment (the list goes on and on), or we avoid our emotions by running to our heads, trying to control the pain of our hearts.  Either way, when we face obstacles, struggles, or painful moments, many of us either run to the gut or the head to escape the heart, winding up imbalanced, unhealthy, and un-whole.  We are literally broken in pieces.  Not being whole is our form of personal disconnection.

Like the caterpillar we must struggle to become great.  We must embrace our struggles and pain.  We must go through, feel, and learn from them.   If we don’t, we end up paralyzed by them, stuck in a moment we cannot escape.  Any struggle we face where we do not listen to our hearts will continue to haunt us.  All the alcohol in the world will not drown the issue.  All the intellectual analysis in the world will not control the issue.

Only through listening to and embracing the heart, experiencing the mental anguish, crying the physical tears, receiving the lesson of the moment, and going through the struggle will we emerge transformed and whole.  We must go through it to grow through it. We come to a full understanding that escape and control bring paralysis, and what we resist will persist.

When the Greeks said follow your heart, they did not mean, do whatever you feel like!  I’m ok.  You’re ok.  The Greeks meant find a compromise between your head and your gut.  Don’t let one rule the other.  Let them dance with one another to the music of the heart.  Only in this way can you be one, a whole person, a person of excellence.

Ice Cream

            It had been a particularly hard year of teaching.  On my way home from school I was feeling sorry for myself.  I decided to stop off at the local supermarket and pick up a gallon of ice cream, not the cheap, generic knock off stuff.  No!  The expensive, soft and smooth, absolute-perfection ice cream:  Chocolate Chunk Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream!  Oh yah!  A little touch of heaven!

            I purchased the ice cream, arrived home, put the ice cream in the freezer and greeted my wife and kids.  Later that evening after dinner together, I was ready to drown my sorry teaching life in absolute delight.  I headed for the fridge, opened up the freezer, and proceeded to dole out a huge, I mean huge, bowl of Chocolate Chunk Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream.

I looked at my wife across the counter who was staring with wonder at the bowl I had just overfilled and asked, “Would you like some?”  She said, “No thank you.”  I put the ice cream away and walked to the couch to sit down and flip on the TV, remote at the ready and ice cream in hand.  It was going to be a grand escape from the struggle, pain, and obstacles of, well, the school year!

            I ate that ice cream with absolute delight.  By the time I had finished the bowl, I was alone on the couch.  My wife and kids had gone upstairs.  I looked at the bowl, the empty bowl.  The bowl begging me to lick it clean.  I heard visceral man say, You know you want more. Go on . . . go get another bowl.  You deserve it.  It’s been a rough year.  You know you want it.  Then I heard cerebral man: Don’t do it.  You’ve already had too much.  If you eat more you will regret it tomorrow, if you know what I mean!  It’s not going to feel good tomorrow.

            I slowly got up, crept over to the kitchen, opened the freezer door and doled out another giant bowl of Chocolate Chunk Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream.  I sat back down, ignoring cerebral man’s advice, holding hands with visceral man while I downed a second bowl of deliciousness.

And once again, the voices were back.  More?  Visceral man:  Go ahead!  Why not!  Cerebral man: “You seriously must stop!  You will be a disaster tomorrow!  What to do?

            I scraped out the last of the ice cream from the container from the fridge into my bowl, threw the ice cream container away, and sat back down on the couch.  One gallon gone!

Then, the real fear began.  I heard footsteps on the stairs.

            I knew it was my wife coming back downstairs.  I stared at the television screen, remote in hand, pretending to be watching, but all the time praying, Please, please, please don’t go to the freezer!

I heard her footsteps on the hardwood floors of our house that led to the kitchen.  I heard her footfalls stop.  There was a pause and I prayed, Please don’t open the freezer door!

I heard the freezer door open.  There was another pause and I prayed, Please don’t look for the ice cream.

From behind me I heard, “Hey, Honey, where’s that ice cream?”  Sheepishly and as matter-of-factly as I could I said, “Oh . . . umm . . . I thought you said you didn’t want any.”

            I had been caught!  I had listened to my gut, and I had been caught!  Cerebral man said logically you should not eat all that ice cream because it is not good for you and you will regret it when all that lactose and chemicals get into you, but visceral man won out, and I lived to regret that decision the next day, if you know what I mean!

            I had not listened to my heart. I did not compromise.  I was out of balance.  I was not a whole person in that moment because I ignored cerebral man and failed to listen to my heart.

When mind (cerebral), body (visceral), and heart (soul) all work together to find what will serve all of me best, then I experience wholeness.  Then, I practice excellence.  I may not be flawless.  I may not be perfect.  But if I unite my head and my gut in the heart I practice excellence.

Celebrating Excellence

When we do listen to our head, our gut, and finally find a compromise in our heart we must celebrate those moments.  When we experience a moment of excellence, we must celebrate our success with an appropriate emotional response.  Celebrate when you accomplish something in your Greatness, and let go of negative emotions attached to failures.

Successful people define failure as an outcome that differs from what they thought would happen.  Through process and protocols, Thomas Edison discovered ten thousand ways to not make a light bulb, but those ten thousand ways taught Edison how to make the ten thousandth and first way matter.  I am certain Edison celebrated the ten thousandth and first way.  And he got there by letting go of the negative emotions of the previous ten-thousand ways!

            

            Neuroscience tells us memory is six parts emotion and one part information.  This explains why childhood memories filled with sensations and feelings remain vivid and reading a dry, laborious textbook doesn’t stay with us.  If we hang on to the negative emotions of events and downplay the positive emotions of successful events, association will not serve us.  We must let go of the negative emotions, remember the lesson, and celebrate excellence, moving towards our callings.

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[i] C.S. Lewis spends extensive time discussing the Greek view of humanity in “Chapter 2 Men Without Chests” in The Abolition of Man.  Lewis, C.S.  The Abolition of Man.  Harper One, 2009. Print.

[ii] Alighieri, Dante.  Inferno. Trans.  John Ciardi.  Signet Classics, 2009. Print.

[iii] Lewis, C.S.  The Abolition of Man.  Harper One, 2009. Print.