On connections – Michael Hauskeller in TLS:

‘Most of us form such connections without thinking much about it, but attaching ourselves to others comes at a cost. This not only diminishes our autonomy, but also makes us vulnerable. Lord Tennyson famously claimed that it’s better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. But is it really? It depends on what we want from life. If we value our autonomy and want to suffer as little pain as possible, we should perhaps follow the advice of the philosophers – of whom there are plenty – who have claimed that the best way to secure our own personal happiness is to stay emotionally detached from things, including other people.’

(…)

‘In his new book, One Life to Lead: The mysteries of time and the goods of attachment, Samuel Scheffler answers with a resounding no. We may be able to lead some kind of life without attaching ourselves to other people, but we cannot lead a good life, because “some of the most important constituents of a good life are our relationships with and attachments to other people, which enrich our lives beyond measure”. The central message is that human life is essentially shared and that autonomy is overrated. We make sense of the world and ourselves through interaction and communication: not just by doing things, but by doing them with others and in response to others. Many of our projects involve other people, and we couldn’t do what we do if those people didn’t matter to us; and they in turn couldn’t matter to us if what matters to them didn’t matter to us. Our attachments, writes Scheffler, point us outward rather than inward, by requiring us to account for ourselves to others and to submit to the requirements of activities we find compelling. We achieve good lives not simply by ruling ourselves but by focusing our attention on the world around us and by developing a practical orientation that enables us to engage in ways we find rewarding with items drawn from the rich array of valuable activities and social forms that the world has to offer.’

(…)

‘Unfortunately, however, we have only one life to lead, and only so much time and emotional energy. Of all the many possible attachments we could form, we can accommodate only a small number; we must choose which people and activities we should build our lives around.
Some philosophers have claimed that making such a choice violates what both morality and reason demand of us, namely that we stay neutral and impartial: after all, nobody is more important than anyone else, so we should not treat some people more favourably than others. It shouldn’t matter whether a person is your friend or your brother, whether they live nearby or far away, now or in the future. They all deserve the same. Scheffler doesn’t dispute that, but he insists that there is nothing irrational or immoral about valuing some people and activities more than others, provided we don’t overdo it.’

(…)

‘Other apparent mysteries are more obviously pertinent to our experience of leading an attached life, such as the question of why we consider it proper that people grieve when someone has died, but also proper that they stop grieving eventually, even though the person is just as dead as before.’

(…)
‘But how can we tell what is genuinely valuable and what is not if what we value is at least partially determined by the people and groups we are attached to?’

Read the article here.

When becomes normal grief an illness?

And yes, how do we know what kind of things are genuinely valuable? Should a citizen be willing to die for his country or is it perfectly understandable that law-abiding citizens say: ‘I pay taxes, that should be enough.’

Can things be genuinely valuable if you are not willing to die for these things?