Words&Dirt

“Complete friendship is the friendship of those who are good and alike in point of virtue.  For such people wish in similar fashion for the good things for each other insofar as they are good, and they are good in themselves.  But those who wish for the good things for their friends, for their friends’ sake, are friends most of all, since they are disposed in this way in themselves and not incidentally.  Their friendship continues, then, while they are good, and virtue is a stable thing.  Each person involved is good simply and for the friend, since good people are good simply and beneficial to one another…

Yet friendships of this sort are likely to be rare, since people of this sort are few.  Further, there is also need of the passage of time and the habits formed by living together; for as the adage has it, it is not possible for people to know each other until they have eaten together the proverbial salt, nor is it possible, before this occurs, for them to accept each other and to be friends until each appears to each as lovable and is trusted.  Those who swiftly make proofs of friendship to each other wish to be friends but are not such unless they are also lovable and know this about each other.  For a wish for friendship arises swiftly, but friendship itself does not.”

––Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Robert C. Bartlett and Susan D. Collins, Book 8, Chapter 3

“‘Humans: such a brilliant model of emotional self-awareness,’ Aineko says with a theatrical sigh.  ‘You’re as stupid as it’s possible for an intelligent species to be––there being no evolutionary pressure to be any smarter––but you still don’t internalize that and act accordingly around your superiors.  Listen, girl, everything you remember is true.  That doesn’t mean you remember it because it actually happened, just that you remember it because you experienced it internally.  Your memories of experiences are accurate, but your emotional responses to those experiences were manipulated.  Get it?  One ape’s hallucination is another ape’s religious experience––it just depends on which one’s god module is overactive at the time.  That goes for all of you.'”

––Accelerando, by Charles Stross, loc. 6693