6.1.6 Attitude and Character

Version 1.0 January 2019                              (Previous Version)

Martin Luther King (1929 – 1968 CE, an American Christian minister and civil rights activist) said (on August 28, 1963) he dreamed of the day when a person would “be judged not for the colour of their skin but for the content of their character�.  What does character mean in in this context?

Suffering, in others and ourselves, arises from circumstances we can't control and the choices we make.  Despite the Buddha’s teachings, we can't avoid all suffering.  Natural disasters, accidents, illness and so on will continue to occur.  Even without any significant suffering we all face issues in life, as we go through our daily business.

But our behaviour and our value choices in these circumstances are strongly influenced, if not determined, by our physical drives, the degree of our evolutionary altruism, our physical and mental abilities, social situation and life’s pressures in general. 

What matters is how we respond to these influences and pressures, how we react to the genetic and environmental cards that are dealt to us.  Often our reaction cannot be explained by science or our personal history, even if they are consistent with these. 

These choices reflect our core attitudes to life, and demonstrate our personal character.

If we could explain your reactions by reference to science and personal history then there is nothing mysterious about the outcomes.  Character is something mysterious, a reflection of the human spirit that to date is (as yet) beyond our understanding.  It is, in a way, like the god of the gaps, dependent on our current ignorance of science and history, but we are confident that will remain the case for a long time to come, so this elucidation of character and attitude is useful now.

Your character is not the simple attributes of your behaviour that you acquired by luck through birth or fortunate life experiences.  You can take no credit for what can be explained as a natural consequence of your circumstances. 

●      If you are born healthy and with an intellectual bent, into a family that values education and can send you to a good school, then we can all be pleased when you succeed to graduate from high school, or disappointed if you don’t, but because it was not difficult (by hypothesis) it is not evidence of an outstanding character.  

●      On the other hand, a person perhaps with a disability or homeless, who struggles a bit intellectually, but wants the benefits of education and works hard towards it, deserves more praise when they graduate, and perhaps more sympathy of they can’t: they have demonstrated an admirable attitude to life and there is evidence of a persistent, hard-working character.