Ethics is Happiness

This blog post is a response to an article I read on Middle Eastern Poles, a blog I’ve been following. 

Thousands of years ago, Plato was trying to analyze the human Soul in order to understand human ethics, he then realized that he can't directly understand it because it's intangible. So in order to solve this dilemma, he looked at the society. Society in his opinion is a representation of human soul, because it represents a group of people and so is a reflection of different types of souls. Those souls group together naturally to form society. Plato split the society into 3 categories (he called them Faculties). 1 is the Faculty of workers, the second is the Faculty of soldiers and the 3rd is the Faculty of leaders.

Plato said that the faculty of workers represent desire. Desire is a very important characteristic of human soul. Workers mostly represent desire because they work really hard to achieve something, to be something, to fulfill their desires. They work hard in order to get what they can’t get easily. For workers, it’s all about staying alive, it’s all about the desire to live and the need to create or achieve.

The second faculty, soldiers, is a representation of emotions. Soldiers exist (in a perfect society) because of the need to protect home and land from the enemy. In big societies, there must be soldiers (naturally) and their dedication and persistence and willingness to fight and even die for the sake of home stems from emotions.

The third faculty Plato referred to was leaders. Leaders are a representation of intellect. In a perfect society, leaders are there to organize soldiers and workers and push both to be better, They stress on education because it elevates the society and makes it a better place.

Now pay attention to the below to understand Plato’s point of view about the human soul.

Society is workers + soldiers + leaders. This means soul is desire + emotions + intellect. Their presence together is perfection, is natural ethics.

If you want a perfect society, then desire, emotions and intellect should coexist in harmony. You cannot have a perfectly functioning society if one of the above characteristics overtakes the other. Portions of the 3 need to be equal. The minute we see in a society (or a soul) more intellect than emotions and desires, or more emotions than desires and intellect, or more desires than intellect and emotions then we have a problem.

This is society. This is human soul.

We as human beings are bound to live with each other, love each other and function with each other.
We are a society. This applies to any group of people, to any family or in other words any relationship.
Love alone (this is my conclusion) is pure emotions and if not controlled by desires and intellect together, it creates problems.

In order to have a healthy family or friendship or relationship with others, or a healthy society, we need a healthy soul. A healthy soul is equally 1 third desires, 1 third emotions and 1 third intellect.

If you have this, you have happiness. If you try to maintain those 3 characteristics in harmony, you have happiness.