Adages: Friends have all things in common.

Some people choose a meaningful word to meditate upon for each new year. This year, my wife’s word was “Gather.” The word inspires and motivates her to think and act in ways that bring people together. It is a laser focus for productivity and generosity. However, I have never been able to rally around a single word. I crave adages. An adage is a traditional saying expressing a shared experience or observation. One of the first adages came from my father and encouraged me to write down what I wanted to remember: The dullest pencil point is sharper than the keenest mind. I have become a curator for a limited edition collection of adages. 

Photo by Desiré Kranenburg on Unsplash

One of the outstanding achievements of Desiderius Erasmus (1466-1536) was his magisterial work The Adages, a remarkable attempt to collect all the extant proverbs of ancient Greek and Roman culture. As a historian, I have repeatedly opened his book and marveled at his scholarship and erudition. Interestingly, he was the first to make his living by writing printed books. One proverb in particular has always stood out as the most memorable, and it is first in the collection: Friends have all things in common. This latter is a proverb of Pythagoras that Plato quotes in Phaedrus. Whatever the Greek philosophers meant by this is not as important as what Erasmus made of it concerning his cultural situation. It was what Erasmus thought it meant and how he used it that influenced my philosophy of life in a way that has brought both the joy of simplicity and the deserved ridicule from my wonderful friends.

As a Renaissance humanist, Erasmus dedicated himself to convincing sixteenth-century rulers to adopt a “philosophy of Christ” that considered warfare, the traditional medieval solution to solving problems between countries, irrational. Erasmus says that if these bellicose princes were motivated by enlightened friendship, they would want to share their wisdom with anyone who might benefit from it. Friendship, as Plato inferred, is the real basis of satisfying community. Wisdom is its bread. What a contrast to the unenlightened ruler who constantly flexes his military muscles, perhaps dreaming of empire and glory, but dies without a true friend in the world! One should freely offer life’s most precious gifts rather than withhold them out of revenge, mistrust, or greed.

I have believed for years that Erasmus was on to something. 

Still, the prevailing view of those around me (even some friends and family) is that this philosophy is naïve at best. Something like Erasmus’ ideal was termed availability by French philosopher Gabriel Marcel (1889-1973). The latter meant by this a readiness to offer the good things I have for others at a moment’s notice based on a just demand of their claims upon me. Like the apostles Peter and John in the New Testament, I may not have silver and gold, but what I have is available to the one who has a need. One might object, “Isn’t that a dangerous proposition? Won’t someone take advantage of you and leave you with nothing?” Of course, there is a risk to living with an open hand. Others have taken advantage of me: another scholar stole my research and conclusions and published them, and my car was vandalized in England by neighbors of the family with whom I lodged. A friend of a member of my family stole my truck. Damage was done to my reputation by someone I made a generous loan–which he never repaid. Colleagues I trusted betrayed me to save their own jobs. But most of the time, I have made friends using whatever assets I had–mainly money. I didn’t buy friends; I used wealth for the sake of friendship: a cup of coffee at a morning meeting, a clever card to delight another, a proffered feast to rival that of the praiseworthy Babette. Jesus spoke of this sort of thing when he said, “Make friends for yourselves using the mammon of unrighteousness.”

Using wealth to make friends is not as absurd as it might seem. It is both fun and a relief. I often tip servers above the prevailing rate, and I most enjoy it when I can reach hilarious levels. I lend my books, dishes, and tools without obsessing continually on the date of their return. I got rid of my watch partly so I could be less concerned about spending time with people and leisurely enjoying their company. My life on the internet has been an open book. I invite a wide swath of humanity to ask me questions, read my lack of wisdom, and copy and paste whatever they find helpful. I do this, as Erasmus suggests, for the sake of friendship. It is not because I trust my would-be friends but because I trust in divine justice and eternal advocacy. You see, I own nothing. It all belongs to God. I am not arguing against private property; I am simply offering a sketch of the conscience of a fool.

Erasmus essentially said the wisdom of the Greeks and Romans embodied in their proverbs was public domain, a wealth shared by all. We can share this because the people of the past who passed on their traditions are friendly toward us, giving us the best of what they had: wisdom to live well. What a surprise to me to discover that living well is not a matter of how much I accumulate but how lightly I hold even what little I possess.

There is another Erasmean phrase I meditate upon. I think of Erasmus when I play it in my mind because he was a bibliophile. All Books are Neighbors. It should have been in Erasmus’ collection, but has a more modern provenance. What does “All Books are Neighbors” mean anyway? It sounds like an adage, but as far as I can tell, there is nothing like it anywhere in Erasmus’ venerable collection. And while at this time, a Google search of the phrase will unearth a few results, it cannot be attributed to me. I was having coffee with a friend early one morning at the Black Dog in Kansas City when a friend uttered those four words. At first, I thought I had misheard because a barista let forth a piercing jet of steam simultaneously, so I asked him to repeat himself. He said, “All books are neighbors.” He had never heard the saying until recently when a speaker used it.

Since the speaker he heard was the first person to use it, as far as I knew, the context of the speech would help give context to what I am no doubt sure my reader recognizes as an ambiguous phrase by now. The context was that the convention of language means that one can find common ground shared by any two or more books: assumptions, understandings of the audience, and meaningfulness. Marx and Smith, King and Christie, Calvin, and Kerouac, in print, all these very different authors are neighbors, and they engage in a dialogue that only makes sense if there is commonality. The commonality is so commonplace that readers don’t give a fig about their shared assumptions and move their attention to the margins of dissonance. When I heard this, I had to think whether this was true, but I decided I didn’t give a fig either. Nor was I convinced that this was the best original context. The adage was so elegant, but the context was oddly strained. It violated Occam’s Razor and all other sharp instruments of critical analysis. So I don’t think it can mean all books are neighbors to each other.

While books may be our favorite artifacts of human existence, they do not physically breathe or have the relationship capacity. We personify books in relationship to the real beings who create them. I prefer to understand the adage to mean that we cherish the written word to know we are not alone (think C. S. Lewis) and that we have access to the artifact that, as the product of human creativity, reminds, amuses, entertains, and angers us. In short, books inspire us to be human.

I have thus admitted that I adopted (stole?) this adage and invested my meaning to it as wantonly as any petty proof texter. But let us dialogue. What do you think it means? Please comment. I promise that most future posts will contain more stories than dialectic.

Assuming we accept my meaning of the adage, I chose it for this post to suggest that books, stories, history, and reading are the focus of my work. I am using an adage to inspire my idea of wanting to be more consistent with my blog as an expression of art (kitsch?) and not as a cash cow and to share my thoughts and receive feedback from my friends who are willing to take time to read. I hope my thoughts and stories entertain and inspire any who “take up and read.” That last allusion is to St. Augustine of Hippo, so you see it is true. All books are neighbors!