In our earlier post, we asserted that excellent performance is dependent upon cultivating excellent character – focus, conscientiousness, fairness and logic. Still, we are left with a question, why strive for excellence in the first place?
Lend me your ear.
When high vibrations hit the inner workings of our ears, we experience something called sound. Often, we identify these sounds as simply noise. But sometimes, we hear something like music. Distinct from sound, music can be remarked as being pleasant or ‘pleasing to the ear.’ Whilst we’re mostly indifferent to general sounds, unless they’re alarming or signifying danger, with music there is a compulsion to listen, not from stress but from pleasure.
Furthermore, according to the Taoists, Hindus and ancient Greeks, this music or sense of ideal good, is inherently attractive. They also had it, along with Native American Indian’s and many others, that any creative or original ideas (something that starts from absolutely nothing, as opposed to a reaction to something else i.e., danger), starts with an attraction to something, whether that be admiring someone for their attractive qualities, or the willingness to sacrifice time and resources to an idea.
For pursuit to commence there must be an attraction to begin with, and that attraction is a leaning towards something that makes sense, that’s situated between order and disorder (not too plain or rigid and not too abstract or fluid), and ultimately invokes a sense of innate order. The fact that we can all recognise that there is a sense of order, or good i.e., we can agree that there is a distinction between music and static noise, is testament that we are first and foremost driven by a reason that is sound, complete and pleasing – we can all agree that burning incense is pleasant whereas burning ash is not.
In the next post we’ll give a breakdown of the key points that we’ve taken from this series.