There is a lot of wisdom in proverbs. They are usually short in length, easy to remember, and carry a lot of information.

There was a person in the Freedomain Radio chat the other day that posted the following proverb from Confucius:

To put the world right in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must first cultivate our personal life; we must first set our hearts right.

The chatter commented that it seemed that this was what FDR was all about, querying for confirmation.

In the moment, it didn’t feel right–it felt a little like conceding this point would open the door to conceding to the Buddhists that drop by that some of the sayings in their religion also have some alignment with FDR, and I wasn’t quite ready to do that. But I couldn’t put my finger on what was wrong with it.

Fortunately (at least for me), somebody on the inside this morning let me know what was up with that proverb (and, by extension, all proverbs):

It’s a conclusion, not a methodology.

Saying that we must set ourselves right and everything else will follow is certainly something that Stef has put forward, but he is not a Man of Wise Sayings in that way. The quote from Confucius is correct (at least to a large extent), but why is it correct?

The thing about religion and even most of the lexicon of wisdom passed down through the copyings of tattered monks is that they are all conclusions. There was some methodology, but the scientific method as we know it today was not the standard of truth, if it was even practiced in such an ancient time.

It is not to say that there is no value in such things, but that a statement about reality–a conclusion–must be validated according to reason and evidence.

I’m not going to completely exhaust the analysis of the Confucian proverb above, but I will give a few reasons as to why it is correct (and hopefully, you will agree).

I’m sure there are ways that the proverb can be interpreted, but the meaning I take from it is that in order to help the world, we must first help ourselves. It is much like the saying, “Physician, heal thyself.” Or, as Stef has pointed out, if you go around preaching the cure but you have not taken it yourself (telling people how to be happy while you are miserable), you actually do more to harm than to help.

The progression of self to family to nation to world is a natural sort of social hierarchy, and I think we can classify this as a fact of reality.

But more than the argument from credibility above is this: it is a psychological fact that whatever we do not acknowledge in ourselves, we re-enact and/or inflict on the world. If I have had an abusive childhood and have never processed it, I will experience the world as abusive or as demanding abuse, and I will act accordingly. So if I do not “set my heart right” (which can be interpreted in many different ways, which is part of why proverbs can only take you so far)–which I will take to mean “process my life according to reason and evidence”–I will inflict my unprocessed trauma in my family, project it onto the nation and to the world.

I think it is safe to say that Confucius (or whoever it was that created the proverb) did not have access to psychology. So the proverb itself is an accumulation of experience, which certainly does have value. But without the methodology, it really does hang in a vacuum. You have to start asking things like, “What did Confucius mean by ‘cultivate our personal life’ and ‘set our hearts right?’” And, of course, there’s no way of knowing. Even if he did put out a whole guide on what he meant by it, if he does not include the methodology, it will be fundamentally incomplete.

Furthermore, there is always room for interpretation when dealing solely with conclusions. It is much more difficult to do that with a methodology–either it is rational or it isn’t; either it is empirical or it isn’t.

I did this mostly for my own benefit, but I hope this has been helpful to others.