“Plato is my friend, but the truth is dearer,” said the ancient sage, and we often quote these beautiful words to emphasize that principles play a paramount role in our life.
However, the logical consequence of this statement is the ability to easily sacrifice friends, family, one’s own inner integrity in the name of certain principles, and finally … In other words, the more expensive the truth, the cheaper the friends. However, the reverse option is no better: for the sake of friendly (option: family, party, corporate) relations, one does not reckon with one’s principles (truth, law, justice). Choosing between good and bad is not an easy task, but how do you decide between two true values?
Of course, the principles are different — as, however, and friends. If a friend cannot understand our desire to be consistent (even if our principles are doubtful or obviously wrong), then is he a friend to us? But the price of principles that put abstract ideas above living people is low. If only because, in the end, ideas serve people, and not vice versa.
Ideas serve people, not the other way around. and the price is low for principles that put abstractions above living people
Beliefs, principles, values are very important to us. They give inner support in themselves, help to maintain stability under the storms of life, a sense of one’s «I». However, in order to grow, to change (and this is sometimes necessary for adults as well), we have to get out of the old belief system that restricts movement and breathing and develop a new one — according to a new measure. And often it is the conflict of beliefs with loyalty to friendship that serves as an impetus for such growth and change. It is not so important how this conflict will be specifically resolved — the potential for growth lies in its painful experience and awareness (although there are not always unambiguous solutions).
The Polish psychologist and psychiatrist Kazimierz Dabrowski revealed the inevitability and even the necessity of positive disintegration — the destruction of old structures in order for new ones to take their place*. However, disintegration becomes truly positive only at the moment when, without a new level of understanding, we cannot solve an important life task.
Hence the paradox: you can give up principles just when you feel that it is impossible. And if this is a genuine sacrifice for the sake of something more important, it is not destructive to our personality, rather the opposite. But serene opportunism, when it is easy and pleasant to compromise principles, is dangerous. After all, no one is immune from the fact that one day we can only find support within ourselves. Unless, of course, she went to the exchange …
* K. Dabrowski «Positive Desintegration». Little Brown & Co, 1964.