Friendship

 A true friend is someone you know what to expect of. You know your friendship will endure no matter what happens.

 This article covers a topic that has been discussed by many philosophers. Aristotle, Descartes and David Hume are some of the most famous philosophers who worked to explore how people relate to each other as friends.

 Your best friend can sometimes be more important than your family. Colleagues and club members often become best friends. If people in a group are working well together, they are probably friends. Still, you have friends who do not belong to any of the groups you belong to. People are sometimes willing to die for their friends.

Aristotle divided friendships into three different categories:

 1. Useful Friends (= Friends of utility)

 2. Amusing Friends (= Friends of Fun)

 3. Lasting Friends (= True friends)

 A Friend of utility is your friend because you can use him one way or another. People in a group are often friends of utility. Many friendships exist only because somebody wants to take advantage of the acquaintance. But such career friends" are rarely really liked. Their mere existence questions the value of friendship and might lead one to wonder if friendship really exists.

 Amusing Friends are friends you enjoy having fun with. It may be a friend you go out and have a drink with or someone who tells you lot’s of jokes. People like to hang around persons who spread funny stories and jokes. But that has very little to do with true friendship.

 Aristotle pointed out that true friendship lasts. When it lasts, it does so because the friends are decent beings who respect each other and like each other as they are. Aristotle emphasized in particular that such friendship lasts, while the other kinds of friendship only exist for a short while and is also very capricious.

 Every individual is basically the same good-natured being at all times. If you like that individual the way he/she basically is, then your friendship will endure. However, if you like someone because he/she is funny or useful, there is no reason to continue to stay friends with him/her anymore once the fun or use ends. Aristotle's analysis of friendship works as well today as in ancient Greece.

 All human relationships work better when based in true friendship. One can become sexually aroused by someone, but that has very little to do with true friendship. To become worthwhile a marriage needs a foundation of true friendship.

 Of course you can have working relationships at your job, even without being true friends. But if you are true friends, things will work out just so much better. It is very possible to work together with others without true friendship. But the cooperation will work much better on a base of true friendship. A group without true friendship will easily turn bureaucratic. It becomes impersonal and cold, people are treated as packages. They must behave in a certain way towards each other, because they do not like each other the way they are. Real lasting friendship enhances the quality of life on all accounts. Perhaps the reason behind betrayals between friends and lonely individuals is just a lack of understanding of what friendship really is and how to cultivate it

 It has been said that accepting responsibility makes you lonesome. But a leader need not stand alone, if he does not fall into the trap of selecting only those that are useful as friends. If he instead seeks friends among those he can like the way they are, he does not need to be alone.

 The Code of Honour states that you should never betray the fidelity once promised. But what fidelity is most important? Is it the fidelity you swore an ideal or the allegiance given to individuals? Sometimes groups try to make you betray your friends for a "good cause". Maybe you get a hint that you can not continue associating with some of your friends, if you want to advance in the company. That is a really inappropriate way to interpret the Code of Honour. If an individual is one of your close friends, it is obviously more important to maintain that friendship than a “friendship with ideas” that requires you to break all ties with your real friends.

 Parents often worry that their children do not choose the right kind of friends. They do not want their children to get into bad company and may tell them to socialize with sons or daughters of parents who have high status in society. But it's the same as telling your children to only acquire friends of utility. Children need to learn by themselves who is a good or bad friend. We do not judge our own friends based on some quality control to see if they deserve to be our friends. Instead, it is better to realize that we all deserve to be loved for what we basically are. It's a matter of learning to know each other as we basically are. True friendship is something very simple and natural. If people just took the time to learn to know each others true nature as the good beings they basically are, they would become friends with no effort.

 True friendship lasts. Maybe the most painful thing that can happen to you is if someone, who you thought was a true friend, turns out to be very unfriendly and do something that you would never expect a true friend to do. A really true friend is someone you know how he/she is. You can usually predict how a true friend will act in different situations. You know that the friendship will last no matter what happens. Religious or political beliefs do not matter, because true friendship is way above such things.

 Actually, true friendship is total understanding and therefore a spiritual quality. True friendship only exists between living beings and is thus beyond such things as family, group, society, economy, politics, space and time, ideas and thoughts. Your true beingness is ultimate truth. If you can learn to fully know yourself, you will find ultimate truth. Then you can be free to be yourself and a true friend to others. True friendship exists between beings who are alive and who know each other as they basically are and disregard appearances or body qualities. True friendship demands that you care about the other person's inner qualities and is achieved only if one is willing to allow others to come close to you and also dare move close to others. You must also be willing to allow others to find out who you really are. When you confront learning to know someone else as he/she is deep down inside, you are confronted with much truth. Thus you need high confront on truth to acquire true friends.

 True friendship is a spiritual quality. To make it possible for true friendship to exist in present time, it needs "something" to incarnate into. When two (or more) individuals are true friends, it means they are forming a spiritual communion that exists beyond space and time. This community can manifest itself in the space/time, where individuals have created something they can coexist in. The existence (beingness) they create together is closer to their true selves (basic personality) than most other identities and continua. That's why you get closer to your true self, the more true friends you have.

 Friendship also concerns empathy. If you can share another person's feelings and thoughts you can be his true friend, but that does not imply that you have to agree with the person. If you only share thoughts and feelings with him/her you can become true friends.

 A person who hides his feelings and thoughts and pretends to be something else than what he really is, prevents others from becoming his true friends. You feel disappointed if you discover that someone was not the friend you thought, or was not able to deliver what he promised.

Know Yourself

  People who are unwilling to show themselves as they basically are can not get true friends. Probably they do so because they believe that no one would like them if they got to know them. They do not understand themselves and they do not like what they see in themselves. Therefore, they believe that others would think badly of them if they could get to know them. If they could learn to understand their true motives and their own true nature, they could enjoy themselves and get out of the trap. Then they would be able to acquire true friends and they could be true friends.

 To have the same ideas does not necessarily mean that you become true friends and it isn’t necessarily so that you become friends just because you have a common enemy. True friendship goes much deeper and is much finer than ideas and common enemies.

 "Friendships" based on common ideas and interests are unstable and very risky. When such friendships cease because the agreements no longer exist, it can turn into hatred or open hostility. This is especially true when ideas are considered more important than individuals and beings. There is a scarcity of true friends in our world, but each one of us can think up hundreds of ideas and thoughts any time. Thus you should care more about true friendship and not worry so much about ideals or ideas.

 If you read history you can see that fanatical cults and cult movements often get the idea that ideas are more important than friends. They believe they can afford to sacrifice their friends for the good cause. They believe that "the end justifies the means" and understand that "it is OK to commit harmful acts against other people" to promote "the cause".

 You can discuss how to protect yourselves, so that you don’t become fanatical and begin to sacrifice your fellows and friends for a sacred cow. If we care about (empathy) our fellow human beings and believe that individuals are more important than ideas and cults, the risk is not so great. If you improve your judgment by loving wisdom and truth it will be difficult to make you commit such deadly sins against your friends.

 To show empathy for your fellow human beings is perhaps the most important thing on earth. In any case, it is extremely rewarding for those who care for people and for those who receive care and consideration. Both are growing stronger as beings while approaching the truth. If kindness and friendship were considered of greater importance in our world, life would become more inclusive. It would create conditions for more peace, more unity and better quality of life. What has led us astray is that we have allowed ideologies and untested theories to become more important than individuals and the people affected by them. We must not forget that the ideologies and theories are there to serve the individual and not the other way around.

 A very important lesson everyone needs to learn about friendship, is that the most faithful and most stable friend you have is yourself. It is a true friend who will never abandon you. The most important thing when building true friendship is to "know yourself" (this was written in bold letters over the entrance to the "Oracle at Delphi" in ancient Greece, along with “nothing in excess”). When receiving or delivering meditation (by our Modern Socratic Method) on "The Road to Truth" that is what you do - Learning to know yourself/your true self. So let us become true friends.

Todde

Also check:

http://axiom1b.blogspot.se/2015/04/true-friendship-philosophy-freedom.html

 Modern Western Philosophy on Friendship at: www.duga.se (use google translate)