Friendship: A Practice of Endless Meaning
Part 2 of the Friendship and Reconstructionism Series
You can read part 1 of the series here.
Our understanding of friendship is paradoxical because it is something that everyone needs and will have, but we can still struggle to define precisely what it is or the meaning of friendship. We have it, need it, and experience it, but if asked to describe it, we will probably struggle to articulate a definition.
The inability to clearly define and understand a vital part of our existence as human beings will clearly diminish the quality of our lives. Therefore, we must seek a greater understanding and clarity regarding friendship, so that we can enrich, nurture, and sustain our lives and humanity.
In this piece, I will not answer every question about friendship, but I will share some of my understanding of friendship and how it relates to my larger philosophical project. By doing so, I will also explain how friendship challenges a core philosophical theory within Western civilization and how Western philosophy makes us less friendly.
Additionally, in this piece, I will expand our understanding of Reconstructionism beyond the United States and the era of Reconstruction. In a nutshell, Reconstructionism consists of working to reconstruct our society into a good environment, and by “good” I mean “sustainable and nurturing,” so Reconstructionism should not be limited to just the United States. However, Reconstructionism aligns perfectly with the history of the United States because this nation has an era called Reconstruction in which we tried to reconstruct our society into a good place that could sustain and nurture Black life. Domestically, we need to focus on Reconstruction as a reservoir of knowledge and wisdom, so that Americans can implement Reconstructionism and continue America’s Reconstruction.
However, we must also remember that Reconstructionism can and should also exist beyond the United States because it is needed throughout Western Civilization and the areas impacted by the West.
Friendly Walks in the Neighborhood
Before I delve into the philosophical and historical understanding of friendship, I want to tell a brief story about how the United States has normalized being unfriendly and how my daily application of Reconstructionist practices challenges this unwelcoming norm.
Every day I walk my son to daycare and on our fifteen-minute walk, I end up chatting with or saying hi to multiple people. As we walk, I do not appear to be in a rush, I do not have my headphones in, and it looks like my son and I are having fun. Obviously, this is not the case every time, but this is how I try to be on our walks.
As a result of chatting with my neighbors on this walk, other people who I am not chatting with observe my son and me being friendly with other people, and eventually, these people decide to talk to us. It is pretty normal for someone to walk up to us and say something like, “I’ve seen you guys walking in the neighborhood, and I just wanted to say hi.” Due to this way of being, I know a lot of people in my neighborhood, but I do not know these people or allow myself to be approachable because I feel like I have an obligation to be approachable and friendly. There is no external force or social pressure that forces me to be neighborly.
Instead, I have consciously chosen to speak with the people in my neighborhood because living in and sustaining the shared space of our neighborhood and community helps all of us live safer, healthier lives. People in my neighborhood know my son and they greet him with a big smile. My son has a very joyful and exuberant disposition and I am sure that being greeted with smiles, high-fives, fist-bumps, and love by not just his parents, but his entire community has greatly influenced this. It is good for me, my son, my family, and my neighbors for us to talk to each other.
I view these conversations as a Reconstructionist practice of expressing a freedom with my neighbors. Even though I may forget someone’s name from time to time and they may also forget mine, our relationship manifests as an iteration of a type of friendship. However, this dynamic has not always been the case and I still have neighbors who hardly speak to me. As I am writing this piece, my next-door neighbors who hardly speak a word to us are packing up and moving. When they leave, it will almost be as if they were never here since they barely talk to anyone.
My neighborhood has gentrified a lot over the last ten years, and as more Black families moved out and white families moved in, the neighborly conversations started drying up. These new white neighbors are not rude or mean but their understanding of freedom is a freedom from and not a freedom with. Their homes exist as their sanctuaries from work and annoyances, but not as a domicile that is connected with the people and things around it. Additionally, their homes are normally considered to be financial investments where they want to surround themselves with a particular type of people so that their property values increase, but not so that they can form relationships and friendships with their neighbors.
This perspective results in people having a transactional relationship with their environment. They have a clear end goal in mind and the meaning of their actions is in relation to their end goal. If talking to your neighbor will not increase the property value of your house then saying hi becomes a meaningless action.
When I talk to people in my neighborhood it is because I want to cultivate a sustainable and nurturing environment, and I do not want this dynamic to end. I want to cultivate something that is endless and also evolves, therefore I cannot have an end goal. Instead, the meaning of my actions comes from cultivating and sustaining something that could be endless. This is also how friendships work because good friendships are never supposed to end and they can continue long after the friend has passed away.
The Meaning of Friendship: Friendship vs. the Telos
Since Plato and Aristotle, Western philosophy has professed a teleological understanding of the world that proclaims that meaning comes from the end, end goal, or Telos. The West’s teleological perspective also shapes Western religions and Christianity.
According to Plato, meaning came from the Forms (or Ideas) and the Forms were a perfect, universal, and static iteration of existence that lived beyond existence. Our lived existence was imperfect, not universal, and constantly in flux, so Plato’s professed end goal was for human beings to pursue the goodness and perfection of the Forms. The meaning of life became the pursuit of the Forms.
Plato’s concept of the Forms is utterly ridiculous because it is impossible for him to prove that the Forms exist or how they exist. How can he proclaim what the Forms’ perfection looks like without experiencing it and if we do not know what the perfection looks like, how can we pursue it? The Forms was Plato’s idea, and he proclaimed that pursuing his idea usurped life itself and also made life meaningful. Deriving meaning from the Forms equates to articulating that the meaning of life consists of pursuing a delusion.
Also, Christian theology follows a similar teleological perspective in that the meaning of life is supposed to be the pursuit of heaven and then obtaining access to heaven in the afterlife. Achieving the end goal of eternal happiness in heaven is supposed to give our actions on earth meaning.
A teleological worldview proclaims that meaning comes from pursuing or obtaining your end goal, and that our actions become meaningful due to this pursuit. It is a philosophy of the end justifying the means. Teleology can easily justify terrorism if terrorism can help achieve the end goal. If one’s end goal is to obtain wealth, a teleological perspective would justify slavery and worker exploitation so long as those actions save money. Once slavery and exploitation cost more money than paying one’s workers, a teleological individual will decide to pay their workers.
Teleology has been the backbone of Western philosophy since Plato, and unsurprisingly this philosophy results in the undermining of friendships and the cultivation of unfriendly people. In the West, the meaning of friendship has been openly discussed since Aristotle, and the quote “O friends there are no friends” has been attributed to him.
I believe that the West’s confusion about friendship stems from the fact that friendship is not teleological. The meaning of a friendship does not derive from the end or the end goal. The end does not justify the means for friendship. Instead, the means is what makes friendship meaningful, and by constantly cultivating meaningful means we hope to create friendships that never end.
Teleology encourages us to view people as merely tools to help us reach our desired ends. Our relationships become transactional and we struggle to justify the importance of friendship since there is no end goal. Instead, we choose to be “friends” with people based on what they can do for us and not how we can nurture and sustain each other.
Having a clear understanding of friendship will not only make us better people and friends, but it will also challenge more than 2,000 years of Western philosophy while also giving us the communal support and friendships necessary to reconstruct the world into a better place.
Reconstructionism, Friendship, and Philosophy
In my book The Crime Without a Name: Ethnocide and the Erasure of Culture in America, I needed to describe what “good” meant in an experiential as opposed to an essentialist (or idea) sense. When I set out to write the book I did not anticipate needing to provide this definition, but due to the United States and the Westernized world adhering to a teleological worldview, I realized that “good” always existed as a pursuit and as an end goal. Good and goodness existed as an idea, or essence, but not as something that we live, create, and experience.
My definition of “good” was “sustainable and nurturing,” and I used the example of a good friend to highlight this point. Good friends sustain and nurture you, and that is what makes them good. Within my work, goodness and friendship are interwoven, and neither of them can be teleological. Friendships are not supposed to end, so their meaning cannot come from an end or end goal. Similarly, we also do not want good things to end, therefore their meaning cannot come from an end or end goal. Goodness and friendship are both meaningful because of the means.
To be a good person, you need to cultivate sustainable and nurturing practices, and as these practices interact with other people and the world around you, you will cultivate friendships. These friendships also are not limited to human-to-human interactions. Sustaining and nurturing a pet or plant, stewarding land and nature, or maintaining a cherished group are also expressions of friendship.
Friendship can exist as small practices that we do every day, just like when I am taking my son to daycare, but these small, micro-practices can also expand into macro and large-scale change. Authentic friendship requires empathy and, to use Robert Putnam’s terminology, creates “bridging social capital.” The cultivation of bridging social capital can radically change America and has been foundational in American Reconstruction. On an even bigger scale, friendship challenges and prompts profound questions about the values and principles of Western civilization.
If we are to reconstruct our world into a better place we must understand the meaning of friendship and the endless possibilities that friendship brings.