Get Your Smart On
How friendship becomes us. The new, rewritten Part Two of our series on Friendship.
In What Are Friends For? (1993), Marilyn Friedman offers an analysis of friendship in its moral, epistemological, and political dimensions. Her work is clear and analytic, and particularly useful for 'imagineering' friendship as mutual care bonds that could anchor our community building efforts. I want to focus this post on friendship as a kind of moral capacitation and the political ramifications of this. In an upcoming post I’ll focus on friendship as a way of knowing (epistemology). I’m going to proceed by quoting a little bit of text, then riff-off those ideas. This is one of my preferred ways of working through a text, and I’m taking you along on that thinking journey here. I hope it isn’t too boring!
***“*Friendship, in our culture, is a notably, voluntary relationship. As adults, we choose our own friends; and, together with our friends, we generate relationships that, more than most other close personal ties, reflect our choices and desires.” (Friedman, 207)
Friendship has some characteristics that makes it special, as compared with other forms of love (i.e., familial, romantic, self-love, etc.). First and foremost, it is voluntary. We do not choose the families we are born into, nor who we fall in love with or even find hot, but we do get to choose who we want our friends to be. Friendship is a voluntary association between two or more people based not on duty or an abstract notion of love, but on a concrete affinity and affection for a specific other. There is a special amity alchemy whereby we admire and like our friends for who they are specifically, and they reciprocate and choose us as well. It is not a choice we get to make by ourselves, but must be made together with another.
Who we choose as friends says a lot about what we value, and more important, what we aspire to in the future. In this sense, friendship is forward-looking and its temporality is futural. Family is about history and where you come from, and romantic love involves fantasy, but friends are very practically about our possibilities and who we want to become in the foreseeable future.
"One friend’s superiority in one area, for example, in breadth of life experience, need not give that friend a privileged place in the relationship if it is balanced by the other friend’s superiority in some other area, for example, in vitality of imagination." (Friedman, 189)
Friendship is egalitarian while embracing of differences between friends. Obviously, having a friend that is exactly like you is not desirable, since you can already do for yourself what you can already do for yourself. Besides, it would be a stagnant relationship, go nowhere and be rather pointless. We are likely to choose others who are not like us since we look for what we are lacking in others, and seeing in others our own flaws repulses us. This makes of friendship a pluralizing force that can be set against the forces of hegemony.
So, difference is built into healthy friendships, but these are not necessarily hierarchical differences like gender differences. If there are significant differences between friends — say a large age difference — these can become horizontal and loose their hierarchical orientation.
The strength of our character will determine how much difference we are able to tolerate in our friendships, a tolerance that is built up through friendship itself. If you see a group of “Heathers”1 who demand sameness from each other, know that this is an immature friendship. Having friends should make us better friends, and better at the work of friendship.
*“Friendship is voluntary in at least two ways: we usually choose the particular people we try to befriend from among the larger number of our acquaintances; and we evolve with our friends the particular ways in which we will interact, the extent of mutual support and nurturance, the depth of shared intimacy, and so forth.” (*Friedman, 208)
We choose our friends specifically for who they are, and they choose us. Part of the work of friendship is the co-creation of what that friendship will be about. We all “world-travel”2 across various contexts, and our friendships may start by being bound to a particular world of concern. Of my dog park acquaintances, for example, a friendship may evolve with one particular person and their dog(s). (Can friendships be across species? I think so!) We may invite them to attend a dog event together, and as friends we go deeper into all things dog. Our friendship could continue to deepen and remain within that “dog world” context, or it may move beyond it, bringing our shared doggedness into other worlds. The story of each friendship is unique and specific to those friends. You may join up with some other friends, and a group of friends may be assembled. Friendships are very flexible, connective, open-ended, unlike romantic love that requires privacy and separation from others.
Some friendships are based on deep affections, and others broadly extend out across many worlds. Some friendships feel heavy, and others are lighthearted and playful. Some friends, when we have known them for a long time, hold the key to how we have become who we are, and they may be guardians of memories. As Sharon Marcus details and as I wrote about in “The Radical Future of Women’s Friendships,” in Victorian England, intimate friends did trust each other with their life stories, and wrote each other’s diary entries.
Some friendships are fresh and new, and help us makeover our own sense of ourselves. There are friends who challenge us in ways that stresses us in a good way, like the wind against the trees helps make them strong so that they can stand tall. Some friendships fizzle out with little drama, others explode and do damage on the way out. But there isn’t a single friendship, in my own experience, that has not been worthwhile. What have your friendships been like?
There are just so many ways that friendships can manifest, and no one way to do it right or wrong. It is part of the work of friends to co-create their shared “we.”
*“If kinship is a form of ascribed status, then friendship is a kind of achievement. Those who would be friends must exert themselves actively to sustain their relationship.” (*Friedman, 209)
Friendship requires our continued and active participation, and maybe in this way it is looser than kinship bonds. (Family is family by definition, a definition that is imposed externally from without. We can coast on the strength of these social norms, and also find them to be limiting or overdetermining.) It is a common experience for friends to come and go, some marking out different eras of our lives.
As I think of my eras, I think of a childhood friend whose brother was my first “boyfriend”; the high school bestie whose love of the classics turned me on to Plato and Aristotle; the ambitious, feminist college friend who shared a first SPEP (Society for Phenomenology and Existential Philosophy) experience with me — and yes, we took it by storm; a graduate school side-kick and roommate at the Collegium Phaenomenologicum in Citta di Castello, Italy who taught me the virtues of minimalism in packing and travel. There have been many friends along the way, each of them shaped me in very crucial ways. Yet none of these friendships have survived the test of time, each dissipating in their own way.
I do wonder, if we were to give friendship the respect that it deserves, and take it seriously (at least as seriously as our romantic and family bonds), could friendship become a well tended and beautiful garden from which we can take sustenance year after year? There is evidence this was once the case, so it is possible. We should try.
I say “we” rhetorically here, since it is me that I’m talking about. For a long time, I thought friends come and go, and since I move a lot, I learned to make fast friends and let go easily. It has been challenging to maintain friendships across time and place. I imagine that I’m not alone.
It is likely that our highly mobile, fast paced lives have led to friendships playing a smaller role in our lives. In a way, friendships can be delicate and situation dependent. Friendships can take time to develop, and this means slowing down and paying attention to others needs who are not related by blood or marriage. Our first priority seems to revolve always around family first, then friends. But our first priority, really, should be ourselves, and having and maintaining friends that we have chosen is a radical act of self-love. We need friends in order to be whole persons, not only the roles we are made to play on the social stage.
*“What each friend wants should not be self-contained but, over time, should come to recognize and incorporate what the other friend wants from the relationship.” (*Friedman, 211)
The co-creation of friendship means that the friendship comes to reflect the needs and desires of those friends. It can do so without opposition or conflict, and is a practical lesson in cooperation and non-hierarchical reciprocity. Because our friendship embodies your wants, my friend, and that friendship is also a part of who I am, your wants also become a part of me. And you also take on some of my desires.
You like collecting zines from the 1980’s? Knowing how happy this makes you, you teach me and I learn more about that world, so that we can share in that joy. I am genuinely interested in zines because I am interested in you. In this way, our friends can make us smarter, better rounded individuals. This is something we cannot do for ourselves, that friends do very well for us. We do this in romantic love as well, but because of the gender hierarchy, women mold themselves around the man’s interests, and no so much vice-versa. The reciprocity is not there, built into how it works.
*“Just how we care for a particular friend depends on her specific needs, interests, and values. In some cases, one might feel called upon to provide a great deal of support or nurturance for a friend. In other cases, because the friend wishes to struggle independently with the burdens in her life, one will find it fitting to resist the inclination to help or comfort her. One’s behavior toward the friend takes its appropriateness, at least in part, from her goals and aspirations, her needs, her character—all of which one feels prima facie invited to acknowledge as worthwhile just because they are hers.” (*Friedman, 191-192)
A good friend knows when to jump in and help you move forward, because it is what you need or want in that moment, and when it is more appropriate to play a supporting role. Like active listening, being supportive of another person seems simple but takes practice. Being supportive requires us to set our own ego and judgements aside, and help our friend in the ways that they explicitly ask for support. It means not interfering with their process, even if you think they are making a mistake. In the case that you are not able to support them on their terms, a good friend communicates this honestly and, if possible, steps aside. As your friend, I want to help you manifest your ideas, not my ideas of what your ideas should be. I give as wide a breadth to this as I possibly can.
There is a kind of trust inherent in friendship that is unlike even the trust that we can place in family members — perhaps because family bonds are not disinterested, since your fates are tied to each other. This is why the trust inherent in friendship is ideally suited for moral capacitation. I have to be able to trust that the other person has my best interests in mind, even above their own, where it concerns my affairs. I need to trust my friend in this way, even if they warn me not to do something because they think it would be a mistake.
*“Because the other friend is a friend, what she wants from the friendship matters to me. If I initially want to participate in certain activities with her but discover that she would prefer to avoid them, I do not simply search for a bargaining advantage to force her to yield. Since she is already, or is becoming, my friend, I am, by definition, interested in her and in what she wants. Against my own needs and desires, I now have a countervailing inclination to attend to her needs and desires, even when they conflict with my own. Her response has altered, and added complexity to, the nature of my desire, to the nature of what I want and expect from our friendship.” (*Friedman, 224)
The ability to set aside our own desires in order to attend to a friend, the ability to take on another’s project in a supporting role, these are all ways of deepening our sense of ourselves and extending our moral capacity. Later, we may be asked to support someone whom we may not even like, say because of a common political goal. The ability to do this necessary political work, of working with others with whom we may disagree, depends on us being able to extend ourselves in the ways of friends first. The skills of empathy, cooperation, and tolerance learned through friendship can improve political discourse and enable collaboration across differences.
*“Nevertheless, friendship, that is, a relationship of some degree of mutual intimacy, benevolence, interest, and concern, strongly promotes trust and the sharing of perspectives, a kind of mutuality that, in turn, fosters vicarious participation in the very experience of moral alternatives.” (*Friedman, 199)
We experience the world vicariously through our friends, taking on a set of circumstances and a situation that is different to some degree from our own situation. We learn to see the world through their eyes and judgement — the very definition of empathy. Not only do we experience many worlds — worlds shared between us and alien, both — but also, we see the world through their eyes, including seeing ourselves through their eyes. What is more, they see us seeing them seeing us, and sharing in their experiences of a world, in and through friendship. This mirroring that friends do for each other, ideally without interest and trusting in their kindness and affection, is essential to developing our moral sensibilities and self-worth. Further, this is the basis for being able to inhabit moral positions that may not be popular or politically expedient. It is a support for what Freidman calls “moral alternatives” above. Friendship works against the forces that would have us all think and feel the same about everything, allowing us to develop a plurality of life forms.
In his account of intersubjectivity, Sartre speaks of an agonistic relation to the Other that undercuts the subject’s freedom and self-determination, representing a challenge over recognition that goes all the way back to Hegel’s account of intersubjectivity — see “The Subject and its Other in Continental Philosophy.” “Hell is other people,” Sartre writes in his play No Exit, describing the discord of desiring subjects — one desiring another who desires a third who desires the one. In a friend, we find an other who lovingly reflects ourselves back to us, kindly and honestly, scars and warts included. Without agon, competition, or recognition as struggle. This allows us to know ourselves as loveable, and is reflected back in and through us as self-love.
Making friends, whom we choose freely based on our needs finding affinity for the other, is ultimately love that comes back to us as a recognition that sees us as we really are, getting us closer to authenticity. We cannot know ourselves without the mirror of the other whom we trust, and when we don’t know ourselves in this way the world itself becomes distorted.
To be continued…