I’m glad I can use the train for my daily traveling. I enjoy not being in a car and all the hassles that go with that. I enjoy feeling so greenly virtuous.

I’ve almost always travelled third class on the train – sorry, I mean Metro class. It feels safer. In fact, the only time I’ve felt really nervous I was alone in a first class (oops, Metro Plus) carriage with one very edgy man. There are always more people in Metro class, more women, more mothers with children. It’s also half the price and – as I heard one man joke, watching people run up the platform – we all get to the station at the same time.

I also enjoy messing with the expectations of ticket agents. “Return to Cape Town, Metro class, please.” The eyebrows go up: “Metro?” “Yes, please,” I say, three fingers raised in confirmation. I like the atmosphere in third class. If there are first class people in the world, I’m pretty sure I’m not one of them. I’m also glad to spend time in mixed company. I live in a mostly white, English-speaking world and, in Africa, I think that’s just weird. I like to greet and be greeted. I like the currents of language swirling around me – Afrikaans, isiXhosa and others. I don’t understand the words but I start to feel my way into rhythms and tones, the musicality of speech. It feels surprisingly intimate.

In fact the only thing I hate about Metro class is the ranting preachers.

But a few months ago, I upgraded. The overcrowding had become inhuman, intolerable. All the carriages are full by Steenberg and packed from Retreat. People manage somehow – with shoving, screams and laughter. It’s part carnival, part hell realm. I figured getting out of there was the least I could do.

So now I’m riding Metro Plus. Conditions are better, especially with those nice padded seats that face forward instead of sideways. But how quickly I caught myself scrutinising fellow passengers for those who didn’t belong! Conductors pass through regularly, looking for chancers who haven’t paid the right fare. They generally do so with a light touch, but I have seen people pulled off the southbound train and penned in at Rondebosch station, presumably to be fined.

And it’s not right. People shouldn’t be made to feel like criminals for trying to get home from work in one piece. It isn’t right that some of us travel in a half-full carriage while the next one is packed to the rafters. (Metro Plus also gets very crowded, but it is never as bad and often markedly better.)

So I’m glad to see [trade union federation] Cosatu putting some pressure on Metrorail. The solution has to include more train sets and creative ways to lighten the peak-time loads. But shouldn’t we also talk about getting rid of this double standard in what is, after all, a public transit system?

Helen Douglas is a philosopher with a counselling practice in Kalk Bay

We were thirteen this evening: some regulars, a couple of people who have been scarce for a while, and a few first-timers. Someone started by saying how appalled he was at Hillary Clinton’s televised reaction to the death of Muammar Gadaffi. Celebrating like a vindictive child who’s won a game of tiddlywinks! What have we come to?

Where did we go from there? The expectations we have of leaders: someone said she never expects anything from anyone, and we talked about that. The widespread contagion of corruption, neglect and irresponsibility across our society: as if anything’s okay if you can get away with it. How television affects us. Someone wondered about the equally (if differently) overwrought response to the death of Steve Jobs: Has no one ever said before that it’s good not to waste your time, or that you should do work that matters to you? Why is he suddenly Gandhi with gadgets? We talked about the ethics of responsibility, ubuntu and love, and how to create the conditions to support that. Someone said she’d been reading about ancient Britain, where there was just as much corruption, mayhem and blood. Is there no progress? someone sighed dispiritedly – and we all laughed. Then a stranger rapped on the window, gesturing urgently. There was a white Golf with its lights on, and he repeated the registration number twice for us before going on with his quest to find the owner. A practical contribution to our topic, I noted. We talked about anger in the face of injustice, the anger that comes from impotence, and the pleasures of road rage. The arrogance that lurks in a compulsion to fix the whole world: I’ve learned to take care of what I can and trust others to do the same. When I closed the session after ninety minutes, people gathered in twos and threes, still talking.

Last month, the conversation began with someone’s story of a suicide at her workplace, and how troubled she was by some of the reactions. What followed was just as wide-ranging and engaged as tonight.

But for me at least, the event itself is more exhilarating than the content. Each time, I approach it as a wager, or a leap of faith. We are immersed in a revolution of communication technologies, but our opportunities for real open candid conversation – with its virtues of spontaneity, generosity, intelligence, humour, daring and care – seem so few. Can a dozen strangers still talk together without an expert or facilitator, without a goal or agenda? I usually win the bet. This is what people can do together, naturally, if given the chance. Each time, I find that remarkable.

Who are we? is the question posed in a timely series presented by the Cape Times and the Institute for Justice and Reconciliation. Really, it’s incredible. If “I am because we are”, and we are not the “we” we thought we were – then who am I? If “a person is a person through other people”, and we’re not getting through to each other – then what am I?

Rather than reach immediately for an answer to this terribly urgent question, perhaps we should slow down enough to reconsider it. Or, as Njabulo Ndebele beautifully suggested recently, to “wake up and re-dream” ourselves. It does stir us up. Whoever and whatever else we may be, we are the ones in question. We are called to account for ourselves, as if everything depends on this, our moment in history. It’s the new Senzenina. It’s terrifying and exhilarating.

Who are we? It’s an open question. You can walk right in. (Just leave the door open behind you, thanks.) It’s already crowded and noisy here, heated with opinions, ideas, critiques and proposals for “the way going forward”.

This is the national question. It’s all of us living here, the inaugural generations of a democratic South Africa. “Inaugural” is a good word; it refers back to Roman times, when a court official – an augur – would interpret omens from the flights of birds. Do we augur well for the future? Do the gods and the ancestors still favour us?

And what exactly is being asked? It’s not an empirical question; StatsSA can’t deliver us. Although the answer (the way forward!) will have to deal with material facts, the plaintiveness of the question comes from something more elusive. Something about recognition and home and belonging and the meaning of our freedom. Who are we? means Can we live here together in peace?

What is the setting? Narrowly, South Africa after 17 years of democracy. By the expanded definition: South Africa after 17 years of democracy, following fifty years of apartheid and longer ages of war, slavery, oppression and resistance.

Looking further out, we find ourselves in an apparent opening in history, a moment of crisis for the natural order and its populations, but also perhaps for the prevailing order of power. Beneath the pervasive torpor of globalised capitalism, the ground begins to shift. It’s a very potent, genuine situation that calls for a skilful response.

Who are we? means What must we do? And if not now, then when?

But something odd occurs when this question is taken up in public conversations. It has happened in this series. Its logo asks, “Who are we?” and the subheader is “Race and Identity”. The series has in fact been consistently referred to as “the series on race and identity”.

This assumption ­– that the question of national identity must be answered in terms of race – prematurely shuts down the space the question is trying to open. I have a nagging sense that we’ve set the cart before the horse, that the tail is wagging the dog and we’re off on the wrong foot or otherwise hobbled before we’ve even begun.

Coming back to the question, I see another “we” concealed behind it. Who is asking? Not every South African finds the issue so riveting. This “we” is a subset, a fraction of the whole. We who want to understand. We who had great dreams for this new South Africa and are dismayed (shocked, enraged) by such levels of poverty, unemployment, looting and violence. Who are we? means We do not recognise ourselves and This is not the way things were supposed to be.

The question itself draws us together. Look around. Every demographic is represented here, every shade of skin, every mother tongue, faith, gender, age group and social class. What we share is not captured by any category or classification, not by birth or blood. What we share is a commitment and an obligation to the dignity of others and the indivisibility of freedom. We don’t even have a common interest, in the usual sense of seeking advantage. (Although, in that sense, we certainly do have conflicting interests: politics is still necessary.)

Consider us the People of the Question. The question of national identity – who are we? – conveys to us our sense of responsibility, our freedom and our uncertainty. From the first it identifies us as, and calls us to be, persons who are reliable, sovereign and modest. (I can’t say if I’m part of this “us”: surely not all the time, as much as I’d like to be.) This community is porous and dynamic. It shrinks in times of confusion and also, happily, in times of peace. It develops in the necessary work of justice and redress.

This is where race and culture take on another significance: as resources, what we bring to the work that needs to be done. In order to grapple with difficult conditions, we must draw on our own set of skills, experiences, understanding and wisdom. Inevitably, these are coloured by race – both as cultural expressions of “how we do things” and as socio-political consequences of centuries of racist injustice. The same is true for our markings of gender or language or birthplace, and all their many combinations and permutations. These are the cards we’ve been dealt. How we play them is our choice and our freedom.

Or, to change the metaphor, consider the torn and unravelling social fabric of South Africa. The needle to mend it is Justice. Our identities, in all their varied colours and textures, are fibres of the thread that passes through the needle’s eye. Thread and needle have to work together; neither can go it alone. And like dogs and tails and horses and carts, they have to work in the proper order. Thread can’t take the lead. A primary concern for social justice calls us together. A primary concern with race will only ever divide us.

This produces a robust version of our nation’s motto, “unity in diversity” (!ke e: ǀxarra ǁke). When we come together with all of who we are to make “a home for all”, our differences are no longer either a misfortune or a threat. They are the assets we bring to the table – or choose to leave at the door – as needed.

This can be very simple. You see it every day, in small moments and large. Kindness, humour, acknowledgement, courage. As Fanie du Toit wrote in his introduction to this series, “Many ordinary South Africans have… experienced profound and positive changes in racial relations.” We must not downplay the significance of this.

This view also gives us better sight of who and what is against us. It’s not white people or black people or the government or the media or any other group you might name. It’s certainly not the Constitution.

We can identify the adversary as “corruption” in the broadest sense of the word: as moral breakdown, dereliction of duty or abuse of power. (In this sense, racism is a particularly ugly and intransigent corruption of our humanity.) And the parade of the corrupt in the new South Africa is as multi-hued as the ranks of the virtuous. Greed and neglect have also been democratised. There are angels and devils in every segment of society, and in each one of us.

Who are we? Every generation of the liberation struggle has had to engage with the national question. Now it’s our turn and ultimately we will be known by what we leave behind. Will we come together, effectively and in good time, for justice and reconciliation? I honestly don’t know.

But the question brings me to the same conclusion as Professor Ndebele: our salvation might well lie in our subjectivity (maybe it’s just sleeping): “the elemental site of our conscience, our moral sensitivity, ethical awareness, and our self-esteem… the most precious source of our future citizenship.”

Choice has always been an important topic in philosophy, usually framed in terms of free will versus determinism. Are we free to choose our course in life? Or is our fate already sealed, whether by God or some chain of events we didn’t create that leads us inevitably to a future we cannot influence?
For most of us, the truth lies somewhere in between, although we may personally lean more to one side than the other. (My husband once landed in jail for political activity and was put in a holding cell with a young man who was in on a criminal charge. My husband commented that he was surprised to find himself there. The young man replied, “For me, it was inevitable.”)
The reality of free will seems obvious. To deny it ignores our inner experience, both of choosing to act and of being responsible for what we do. Nevertheless, our ability to choose is clearly limited both by personal and social circumstances and natural conditions. I think a better question about choice is this: how do we make the best choice – get the most of our freedom – in any particular circumstance? This question can’t be answered once and for all, which is part of what makes choice such a loaded issue. A free choice is always a fresh choice.
Another aggravating factor is that choice isn’t a matter of fact but of value. Choices are not “true or false”. They’re “good or bad”, “right or wrong” or “more or less preferable”. Ancient Greek philosophers used the word “ethics” (ēthikē tekhnē, the moral art or skill) to describe the way we conduct our lives, and choice is the very stuff of ethics. We are morally responsible for our choices and their consequences to the extent that we are free and capable to make them. Likewise, we are free to the extent that we can make choices and take responsibility for them. (Freedom is not the absence of responsibility but a commitment to it.) Finally, the choices I make over time develop into habitual patterns that reveal my character or the person I am becoming.
So it’s no wonder that we sometimes struggle when making choices. There is a lot at stake.

By definition, to choose is to decide voluntarily on a course of action where there are at least two possible alternatives. The act of choosing typically involves becoming awareof these alternatives, deliberatingbetween them and then acting.
A friend of mine could serve as a good example. For a while now, he has been busy trying to decide what to do about his prostate cancer. He may not have a choice about having cancer, but he is still free to choose how to respond to it. This is the first choice: choosing to choose.
The next stage is to discover the possible alternatives to choose between. He’s been doing research – “Not my favourite reading,” he says – about his prognosis and treatment options. He’s looking for doctors who will help him make sense of it all while respecting that the decision is his to make. As in most choices, the options available are limited by a combination of objective and subjective factors. In his case, these include his age, the state of the cancer, his financial and personal circumstances and how far he is willing to go.
Next comes the work of deliberation, which is also a combination of the facts of the matter and his own values, desires and fears. He tells me there is a possibility that surgery could result in impotence and incontinence. Some days he imagines he could live with this. Other days the prospect horrifies him. So he starts to think about the kind of odds that would make the risk acceptable. If the likelihood is 40 percent, then forget it! In this way, he begins to narrow down the options.
He is also very deliberately giving this decision as much space as he can among his other commitments. He has asked me to postpone some work we’ve been planning. Once he comes to his decision, he says, his mind will be clear for other pursuits. Until then, he is preoccupied. As they say, there’s nothing like imminent death to focus the mind.
At the same time, of course, there’s nothing like the thought of imminent death to unhinge the mind. While I’ve been writing this, I catch myself slipping into worry and fear, sleeping badly. I begin to appreciate what he must be going through. How is it that he can face this choice with such integrity, clarity and humour?
What could it be other than a lifetime of practice of ēthikē tekhnē, of consciously and conscientiously making the choices that have lead him here?

My friend’s story opens a range of thinking beyond “fate vs. will” about what choice means for us, and how to approach the choices we have to make. Unless we are completely incapacitated, choice is – however ironically ­– a necessary part of a human life. So to live well, we have to pay attention to what and how we choose; and how we choose will help to determine – more irony – the life we live.
Often our choices come so easily that we barely notice we make them. But when the choosing gets tough, how can we stay on track?
Choice is always a leap. It takes courage. If the impetus comes from your own desire for change, you must choose your moment, watching and waiting as opportunities arise. But if the choice is thrust upon you, like my friend’s cancer diagnosis, can you step up for that moment? Accepting reality is a choice – but it’s a tricky one. On the one hand, there is a risk of giving up too easily or of tolerating something intolerable. On the other, there is the risk of driving your stubborn head into a brick wall. In the end, it’s just another choice you have to make.
Now, can you be deliberate in your choosing? This is thorny, too, because once we’ve leapt, we only want to land. Deliberation means choosing to stay up in the air, to delay your choice as long as you can, as long as you have to, to be able to act appropriately and decisively. Can you be gentle with your own anxiety and impatience? Can you take the care and the time to choose consciously, to explore your options and desires in the light of both existing commitments and likely consequences? This stage calls especially for practice and attention, because you will rarely have as much time and as much information as you’d like – but your confidence will increase with tested experience.
Deliberation narrows down the possibilities until we make, or come to, a decision. At the end, one course may appear to be just as good as another. Then you simply choose. Or it may become clear to you that, all things considered, only one option is really possible. And at that moment, you’re done with choosing. Either way, the final moment of choice is to act. And now you feel an urge to hesitate! There is no knowing where this moment will lead, but you know you’ll have to live with it.
In any case, you can only chew for so long before you either have to swallow or spit. Once your choice is made, act and be done with it, finish en klaar. As my friend says, then your mind will become clear for other (hopefully more pleasant) things. Your chickens will come to roost in their own good time, but don’t you want to face them knowing that you made the best of your freedom to make your choice your own?

Helen Douglas is a philosopher with a counselling practice in Kalk Bay, Cape Town. Her first book, Love and Arms: Violence and Justification after Levinas, has just been published

* A small taste for those who have wondered how philosophical counselling/practice works. You might notice the constant inter-play of feelings, words, images and ideas, and how different strategies are utilised.

Disgruntled, grumpy, ugh. A smuttering dissatisfaction, all the more annoying for its sheer pettiness. Objectless but fidgety, ennui with ants in its pants. Ugh. What to do?

Assert your will, why don’t you? (I tell myself.) Spring into action. Just do it! This is a discontent with the present, its unbearable overwhelming immobilised presentness. As if your car had broken down in some god-forsaken one-horse town and there’s no help ’til Tuesday. With any luck, you’re in a bad movie. What wouldn’t you give for zombies with chainsaws now? Little Miss Crankyboots wants some entertainment, some distraction, someone to cajole her out of this funky misery. She’s settling into it now, dressing it up with little touches of stubbornness, spite and resentment. Will gives way to wilfulness. Ugh. (But one could almost laugh.)

Actually, I’m generally not big on willpower. (Being your own boss is also being your own wage slave. Who needs it?)  Reason might work better. How’s this… This disgrunt is just a transient mental state. It has come upon me out of the blue and into the blue it shall surely return. I could simply endure it, shove it in my back pocket, occupy myself with mindless chores. Then when the mood has passed, at least the bed will be made, the floors swept and the toilet bowl sparkling… But still, ugh. Not good enough.

This state has a weird energy. It only knows what it doesn’t want — and it doesn’t want this. It wants something else. What? Who knows? Just go! There’s a neurotic edge: a bit of fright, some meanness, a big dollop of impatience. Nasty. The Tao Te Ching has it right, as usual: “there is no greater disaster than discontent.” And then the neighbours’ dogs start to yap and their children to squall and how annoying is that! Shut up already! Ah, projection. As Freud would say, I’m relocating the trouble in here out there. Another attempt not to be here now. (Which also seems pretty funny, once I notice it.)

But once I notice it, the word “projection” holds a key. Heidegger used it in a completely different way, suggesting that we humans “project” ourselves – throw ourselves – into our future possibilities. And a “project” is also a piece of work. Well, at the moment, I find myself somewhat between projects. There’s no pressing deadlines. Nothing to pull or push me forward. Nothing demanding my attention. I’m just stuck here. Stuck in the middle with me. Ugh.

Aha! Now I can see my mistake. There’s actually nothing wrong with this situation; it’s just unfamiliar. Instead of anxious, I could feel relieved. Instead of rushing out, I could welcome a bit of stillness, take the time to be aware of the world going on, and of me going on as well. To attend to reality with the proper measure of patience and curiosity. Surprisingly, it feels something like freedom, something like grace. Ah!

We have a duty to change our mode of thinking. David Harvey

There appears to be magic simply in the willingness to tackle life’s hardest problems from the humble position of simply being one among many in a circle of individuals caring for the common lot. Alice Walker

The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them. Albert Einstein (attributed)

Having these words slung my way from many directions recently, I have decided to shift the focus of my philosophy café. To change our mode of thinking. Could there be a more philosophical challenge? But how is this even possible, if the mind we use to think with is the thing we have to change? I don’t know, but I have a few clues.

First, it – whatever it may be – should be radical; it has to get to the root of things, go all the way down. And perhaps it entails a qualitative shift. If that’s true, we may have no more idea of this “new mode of thinking” than water could imagine steam. Second, we have to do it together. We need to put our heads together, in all our commonality and differences. We need to talk. Third, we have to do it alone. I can’t think for you, and I sure don’t want you thinking for me. Our specific concerns and desires are our own business. This is a good thing. It means we can have lots and lots of experiments. No dogma; no dogs eating dogs.

This also means that these conversations will not be abstract but will draw upon and feed into whatever other work we each have to do. For me, my writing and counselling practice. For you, something else entirely.

What we will hold in common is at least this recognition that current modes of thinking will not get us out of the insoluble problems we face. It’s a humble position, which calls for presence, patience and attention. The philosopher Emmanuel Levinas (in “Beyond Dialogue”) refers us to the airman in The Little Prince, who can’t draw a lamb to satisfy the child until he draws a box in which, he says, the lamb lies sleeping. Levinas continues:

I do not know how to draw the solution to insoluble problems. It is still sleeping in the bottom of a box; but a box over which persons who have drawn close to each other keep watch. I have no idea other than the idea of the idea one should have. The abstract drawing of a parallelogram – cradle of our hopes. I have the idea of a possibility in which the impossible may be sleeping.

The

Against the horizon of the media tribunal disputes here, I have been thinking about how we chatterers create the conditions for the political leadership we get, and wondering if we couldn’t do it better.

Politicians must be the last group of people that can be maligned in polite society with impunity, or even relish. A bunch of crooks, fat cats at the trough, only out for themselves, inept, corrupt. Right? You hear it on the train, in the coffee shop, at the golf course. You read it in the papers. It’s not uncommon. But it’s a big problem.

In fact, it’s misguided on every level. One: it’s bad logic, a flawed thought that assumes what it sets out to prove. Two: it’s toxic to democracy. This kind of cynicism tears down, but builds nothing. It offers us only the tools of suspicion, manipulation and regulation. That’s not freedom. Three: it’s a disservice. A good leader is just someone who hasn’t been caught yet and a great leader can only appear as an exception to the rule – incomprehensible, miraculous, messianic – which is neither helpful nor true. Four: it’s nasty. It’s unpleasant, ugly and mean.

The very worst thing about this politicophobia is that it promotes more and more corrupt politicians. Any right-minded person would hesitate to enter such a morass. Those in office who sincerely want to work in the public interest are continuously undermined. And those who seek self-enrichment at the public’s expense go merrily about their business, doing just what’s expected of them and thus proving the cynics right. What a hollow victory.

The alternative is not blind idealism, which is the flip side of the same coin; the most virulent cynics are, after all, broken-hearted and resentful idealists. And it yields the same result – bad politicians. Idealism is a problem when it closes its eyes, when it can’t accept unpalatable facts, when it insists its beliefs about reality are more real than reality itself. Reality does not take kindly to this, ever.

We shouldn’t imagine ourselves as standing on the sidelines shouting “yay” and “boo”. There are no sidelines. One way or another, we are all in this field together, and what happens next depends on choices we make now. Like it or not, that’s how it works.

Then how could we prepare the ground for better politicians? How can we lead our leaders better? Since cynicism and idealism are characterised by wilful blindness, first of all we had better open our eyes. We will need to be clear-sighted and aware of what’s happening. This new vigilance is part of cultivating a new attitude: trust.

“When you do not trust people, people will become untrustworthy.” So says the Tao Te Ching, and our previous administration demonstrated it very well. At every juncture where they could have consulted people, they didn’t. It’s not surprising that people got unruly.

There are, I think, three strands to correcting this error. Certainly, the government needs to listen seriously to the people. When we are trusted, we will be trustworthy. Historically, South Africans have shown this time and again. “Being trustworthy” means showing up, constructively and substantively. This is the second strand: if we are to have a participatory democracy and people-centred and people-driven development, we the people must take our place.

The third strand is that we have to trust the government. If we don’t, how can the government be trustworthy? If we trust our leaders, they can rise to their position and we can hold them to account with dignity and respect. When we mistrust them, we cultivate corruption and then pile on more layers of regulations and checks and balances to limit it – which never work anyway. We hobble state power instead of harnessing it for the public and social goods that we so urgently need. This is crazy.

An outlook of vigilant trust, however, which is neither pessimistic nor optimistic, can also generate what we value in our democratic order. It can call for a free press to keep us informed, to present different opinions, to analyse, to investigate and to expose bad behaviour. It can call for electoral processes that are credible, free and fair. It can call for systems of accountability and transparency in government. These appeals are more supportive and better supported than when they’re made from mistrust and suspicion, or even from a merely technocratic logic of “best practices”.

I won’t deny that power tends to corrupt. But notice that “corrupt” refers to an original integrity which has become tainted. Václav Havel, who also journeyed from dissidence to power, spoke very lucidly about this in a speech he gave in 1991. To the extent that we are involved in the political sphere, perhaps it applies to each of us, journalists, citizens, politicians.

“Politics,” Havel said, “is an area of human endeavour that places greater stress on moral sensitivity, on the ability to reflect critically on oneself, on genuine responsibility, on taste and tact, on the capacity to empathise with others, on a sense of moderation, on humility. It is a job for modest people, for people who cannot be deceived…  I have no idea whether I am such a person. I only know that I ought to be, because I have accepted this office.”

Every society venerates the wisdom of its elders, at least in principle. Wisdom is seen as a consolation for the physical decline of age and the approach of death. And although not every old person is wise (and not every wise person is old), it is partly wisdom that distinguishes elders from those who are merely elderly.

It seems clear that wisdom is something we should want more of, particularly here and now. And not just for our own sakes. For better or worse, disease, violence and tumultuous social and technological change have ruptured the traditional passage of wisdom across generations. So how do we get it?

Confucius has a very concise and helpful answer: There are three methods to gaining wisdom. The first is reflection, which is the highest. The second is imitation, which is the easiest. The third is experience, which is the bitterest.

What are the conditions for reflection? You have to be still, like a quiet lake. Your mind has to be focussed and precise, but also open and spacious. You must be curious and patient, honest and courageous. Through reflection on what is true and what is right, we develop our faculties for reason and ethics. Reflection is good in every aspect, making it the highest and most noble way to wisdom.

Imitation is easier because it isn’t so lonely. You find someone wise and try to act as they would. The imitation of Christ is an age-old practice for Christians. You could find a role model in a wise family member, a teacher, even a boss. How do you know a wise person when you meet one? According to Montaigne, “The most manifest sign of wisdom is a continual cheerfulness; her state is like that in the regions above the moon, always clear and serene.”

Cheerfulness, clarity and serenity sound right, but the wise people I’ve known are also very down to earth, skilled in practical wisdom, creative and spontaneous. They’re comfortable with themselves – but you never feel completely relaxed with them! They can be forceful, even rude, when they need to be. Imitating them involves spending time with them, paying attention, noticing what they notice and the way they carry themselves, and trying to conduct oneself accordingly.

Or it might be different for you. There is a broad affinity of wisdom, but it takes on different characteristics in different times and cultures, for women and men, or those with different kinds of education and experience. Epicurus, who taught that tranquillity in body and mind was the best way to live, claimed that “of all the things which wisdom provides to make us entirely happy, much the greatest is the possession of friendship.”  African and other sage traditions cherish community and the relatedness of the sacred world, its creatures and its spirits, including past and future generations. Would Confucius and Montaigne each think the other man was wise? Perhaps, but they’d also find a lot to disagree about.

If imitation is like training wheels on your bicycle, eventually you do have to ride on your own, no matter how wobbly you are or how rough the road. Which brings us to the wisdom of bitter experience.

Why does Confucius say that experience is the most bitter method? He is not saying, as so many do, that adversity should toughen us up (make a real man of us!) and make us strive harder. Bitter experience often makes for bitter people. Disappointments and failures can wring us out to dry. With wisdom, we appreciate hard times and let the world transform us from the inside, like some kind of alchemy. Wisdom isn’t dry and bitter and twisted. It’s soft, ripe and rich. Learning how to get from one to the other is precisely the acquisition of wisdom.

As Hélène Cixous writes, “We are shaped by years and years of all kinds of experiences and education, we must travel through all sorts of places that are not necessarily pleasant to get there: our own marshes, our own mud. And yet it pays to do so. The trouble is that we are not taught that it pays, that it is beneficial. We are not taught the pain nor the hidden joy.” Hard times can be opportunities to soften up, to redeem our bitter and wounded selves with a bit of grace and humour.

All three of Confucius’s methods of attaining wisdom fold into each other in a life. We practice acting wiser than we are, we reflect, we mess up, we reflect, we get a bit more wise.

You don’t need a lot of education to become wise. You certainly don’t need a lot of wealth. You don’t have to be young or thin or even good-looking. (Socrates was notoriously ugly.) In fact, all these things that people chase after are well known impediments to wisdom and living well.

Real wise guys don’t think they know it all. On the contrary. Socrates says that wisdom begins in wonder and that “true wisdom comes to each of us when we realise how little we understand about life, ourselves, and the world around us.”

He pulls half a peeled orange from his pocket, its pith ratty with lint, and holds it up to me. There are tuts and murmurs from the other passengers, most of them women. I smile. Something’s starting and I don’t know what. I meet his eyes, half laughing, anteing in. He rubs his grubby hands on the fruit, as if washing it. The audience mutters and clucks. He breaks the fruit in two, considers them, then gallantly offers one to me, half rising from his seat. I take it and hold it in my hand. As the women cry out in disgust, he puts his half in his mouth, eyes steady on mine. It’s my turn. And there is no way I’m eating this thing.

He sets into pleading with me. Please, my lady, please, I am begging you, oh won’t you, oh my lady, please! I shake my head no. I think of appealing to the women – what must I do with this man? – but they’re busy not getting involved. Now he’s on his feet, capering and gesturing. I start to lose patience. I’ll only ask you once more, he whines. I say that would be good. So he sits himself down and pulls out a pack of cigarettes (more gasps from the chorus). He takes one and starts rolling it smoothly across his fingers. Sleight of hand. Then he’s off to the end of the carriage, teetering and tottering as the train sways, everyone scared he’s going to land on them but he never does. The next station is mine. I get off, not looking back. A bit ruefully, I drop the orange in a rubbish bin. After all, it was a gift. And it is my birthday.

Can we ever be sure who stands before us? In ancient Greece, a stranger was welcomed with finest hospitality because it might be a god in disguise. Scripture suggests the same: refuse the stranger and you refuse Christ. Or sometimes you might look in a stranger’s eyes and find Trickster laughing back, sacred clown and magician, beckoning to you from a threshold between the worlds. So should I have eaten the offered fruit? I wonder. All the stories tell us that terrible things happen to those who do. But if they hadn’t, would there even be stories at all?

Three recent reviews published in the Cape Times (Cape Town, South Africa)

1. Re-imagining the Social in South Africa: Critique, Theory and Post-apartheid Society (Jacklin and Vale, eds)
2. Nurtureshock: Why everything we think about raising our children is wrong (Bronson & Merryman)
3. Africa: The Politics of Suffering and Smiling (Chabal)

Re-imagining the Social in South Africa: Critique, Theory and Post-apartheid Society
Heather Jacklin and Peter Vale (editors)
University of KwaZulu-Natal Press
Reviewed by Helen Douglas (Cape Times, 1 April 2010)

Ten chapters, eleven academics, all theorising “the social” and the state of “social theory” in South Africa. The immediate question for a non-academic (but sociable) reader trying to make sense of our current muddle: is there something helpful here? Well yes, there is.

Imagine: to form an image in the mind. The many opinions South Africans hold about the state we’re in and where we’re going reflect our own varied states of mind, our dreams and prejudices, what we imagine this country is or has been or is supposed to be.

And there has been a change in the way we have imagined a democratic South Africa, from the experiences of apartheid and struggle though the years of transition from Mandela to Mbeki and now Zuma. It feels like our perhaps naive imaginings hit a wall along the way, and some fresh “re-imagining” is certainly in order.

The work of social theory, which draws from the disciplines of the social sciences and humanities, is to articulate and critique the predominant conceptual or symbolic frameworks of a community’s social and political life, the discourse that such a framework makes possible (or impossible), and to imagine new futures and the conditions that would bring them about. The first two chapters, by the editors and Theodore Schatzki, provide an excellent overview of the book and of the dimensions of social theory. Ivor Chipkin’s chapter then takes up the relationship between the state and state-funded or -mandated social research institutions.

Three essays by Bert Olivier, Michael Neocosmos and Richard Pithouse encourage, from various positions, a resurrection of emancipatory politics. John Higgins, via a long stroll with Karl Marx and Edward Said, says some interesting things about representation and citizenship. In the most pragmatic chapter, Nicholas Rowe describes how St Augustine College, a private Catholic university in Johannesburg, “based on a Christian ethos and intellectual tradition, engages the priorities of the South African context through the disciplines of the humanities.” Suren Pillay and Premesh Lalu round off the book with two essays on how we have posited the history and the meaning of apartheid  (and the controversies thereof) and how the post-apartheid experience is to be historically understood (and in whose voice).

For the most part, the writing is both challenging and accessible. There is no programme here – that’s not what social theory does ­­– but there are many provocative sparks. These ideas are not particularly easy to think, but the thinking itself is liberating.

In this critical vein, I find a couple of shortcomings. The first is the complete absence of black African and gendered perspectives. This isn’t just a matter of ticking boxes for political correctness: how can we approach a post-apartheid society without hearing these voices? Or is there something about the practice of social theory that needs to be “re-imagined” to incorporate more of us?

The second problem is a prevailing demonisation of the state, as if states were uniformly and structurally opposed to freedom and free thought. On the one hand, this results in a knee-jerk cynicism to any government initiative, while non-governmental and non-party social movements are treated with a less-than-critical reverence. On the other, there is no engagement here with the political and social theory currently coming out of the ANC, SACP and COSATU. Maybe there’s little to engage with, although the historiographers here, Pillay and Lalu, find a lot of meat in the old debates between Harold Wolpe, Martin Legassick and others. The tripartite alliance constitutes the most important political presence in the country. Where is the serious academic engagement with these representative organisations of the vast majority of the electorate?

The book also presents itself as a response to a real threat to “the academy”, particularly the humanities and social sciences, under the logic of neo-liberal globalisation, as universities turn their focus from independent research and intellectual discourse to the production of knowledge and skills driven by market demand. Lalu offers resistance to this, while Vale and Jacklin and Pillay acknowledge that academics have, to some extent, stifled themselves. But perhaps no less than the rest of us. Imagination takes courage. Re-imagination takes more.