We do not like to lack anything in our daily lives. We do not like scarcity. Or, to put it even more strongly – we hate it. But what would happen if scarcity disappeared, and we began to lack scarcity?
It is also worth looking at scarcity from a philosophical, less quotidian point of view, which allows us, among other things, to see everyday life itself in a different light. So, I will look at the phenomenon of scarcity by discussing the plenitude of lack, the lack of plenitude, and how the dialectical relationship between these two aspects of scarcity allows us to see the conditions for the possibility of being able to worthily face the challenges that confront us and to overcome them creatively.
All of us can see that the world is becoming increasingly chaotic and turbulent. Chaos and turbulence are gaining not only a new degree but also a whole new quality: we are confronted not only with the known but also – as the saying goes – with the unknown unknowns.
As we are preparing for predictable challenges, we are confronted by others – ones we lack the time to prepare for as well as those that we could not foresee in advance, and also those that we could not even imagine or dream up in our worst nightmares. The pandemic, an increasingly capricious climate, and recent wars are just a few examples of such unexpected problems.
In order to navigate the ever-growing chaos and turbulence of modern life, we need to figure out how to solve the equations with these unknowns. Chaos is, strictly speaking, unpredictable, but it is still necessary to prepare for an unknown and unpredictable future. We must look to the future with hope, whatever it may be, and at the same time, we must learn to read the signs of the times, which a proper understanding of the signs of evil and other scarcities in the world in its various forms would help us to interpret.
Evil is also a kind of scarcity – in St. Augustine’s view, it is a lack of good. Even before St. Augustine, Plotinus, a Neoplatonist philosopher, had a similar view of evil. But while all evil is also a manifestation of lack, lack itself is not always evil – or only evil.
There are genuinely terrible manifestations of evil in the world – terrible evil, even radical. Evil can become so incomprehensibly terrible that its very existence in its most radical form paradoxically becomes another argument for God’s existence – or a basis for such an argument. But again, paradoxically, scarcity inoculates us against inadequate engagement with problems and insufficient responses to evil. Scarcity itself, in its weaker and more positive forms, prepares us to deal with the more radical scarcities that confront us in the form of problems and unexpected challenges.
As a result, a philosophical look at scarcity reveals what we would call secondary, higher-level phenomena that could not be revealed if we did not experience trials. Such phenomena exist not only in human life and culture but also in nature.
Here is a simple example: on a clear day, we cannot look directly at the sun and see its shape, but if we look through a blackened glass or a veil of fog, its shape becomes visible. The dimming of light, a kind of haze, which is a scarcity of light, allows us to see the shape of the sun.
Another example: the landscape is layered in several layers when taking a look into the distance on a foggy day. Closer objects by are more vivid. Those further away appear blurrier, fainter. The three-dimensionality and the stereometric nature of space are revealed. On a foggy day, we perceive the landscape in a completely different way than on a beautiful day when there is no fog or mist – after all, on a sunny day, we see everything with the same brightness, making the visible space seem flat.
The uniform brightness of objects at different distances would not result in a differentiation of brightness so that we would not see different planes, as if to divide the visible space into different layers and reveal its volume. Thus, the obscuration created by fog and haze allows us to experience the visible space not as flat but as three-dimensional, with volume, and therefore more ‘thing-like’ and, in this sense, more real.
This is an example of how the lack of a primary phenomenon – in this case, the lack of light – creates a secondary phenomenon that manifests itself in unexpected ways and fruitfully enriches our experience. On a foggy day, a shroud of fog would seem to diminish the realism of the visual image. Still, it is the relative lack of light – the dimming of the image, which affects the details of the landscape at different distances – that makes the visual image appear even more realistic.
Another example is the emergence of the pearl. A pearl would not grow unless a speck of dust is introduced into a mollusk, which irritates the mollusk which, in an attempt to neutralize it, produces a liquid which solidifies into a pearl.
A certain disturbance of the normal balance, a certain manifestation of imperfection, can later produce a form of beauty and perfection far beyond any conception and expectation of the original, average – devoid of lack – normality.
I would also like to draw attention to the difference between the joy of knowledge and the joy of getting to know. We could know everything at once. We would have the plenitude of knowledge, and we could find it enjoyable. But when we initially lack knowledge and seek it, we experience two plenitudes. First, we experience the joy of the process of knowing, and then when we have acquired knowledge, we have the joy of knowing.
So instead of one, we have two plenitudes. It is like an algorithm for all the situations where we strive for something. Climbing a mountain, feeling the adrenaline rush, and seeing the panoramic views is a different kind of joy than when you are already at the top. The process itself, our ability to achieve different things, is enriching, and we get plenitude as an endpoint after we have overcome the difficulties, which then complements the other plenitude we have experienced as a process.
We can also look at scarcity from a Christian perspective. Surely, God could have created a world in which the creatures would possess all that the Creator’s plan intended them to have at once. But God, by placing human beings in a dynamic and contradictory world, allows his creatures to become in some ways like himself – the Creator.
God alone is the true Creator. Creatures will always be inferior to the Creator who created them – for the Creator creates the world from nothing, from a position of absolute nothingness, so to speak, and man creates by starting from a certain point of departure, which is no longer total nothingness and still not fullness, but rather a dynamic balance of nothingness and fullness, manifested in a relative lack. And in this respect – in his very capacity to create, even if only humanly, not divinely – that man already becomes to some extent like the Creator. By allowing us to experience lack as a possibility and to create something ourselves, God gives us a gift far more significant than that which would manifest itself in the spontaneous and prior possession of all the things we would like to have and should have.
When we contribute to creating things, they become part of who we are. It is not just touching them – it is more like growing them from within. Creation is like childbirth – what we create permeates us, and we grow into it. It is much better, nobler, and more authentic than just disposing of something.
Taking on challenges and problems and turning them into something positive enriches us. We grow as people. Our shortcomings allow us to unlock our potential. If we had everything at once, we would only have various things that are external to us. But when we lack many things and try to create them – at least partly – on our own, we sculpt our character, we show and open what we would not otherwise open in comfort.
Wars, pandemics, and other challenges show who we are. Young people today could be especially inspired by the realization that in the face of challenges, I can unleash my potential in a way that I could not in comfort. All challenges and problems are opportunities for me to reveal myself.
That is why we have to look at scarcity, on the one hand, as a problem to be overcome, but, on the other hand, the very attempt to overcome the problem is also a joy, opening us up to ourselves in a much more nuanced, interesting and colorful way than we would find in our comfort zone.
Regarding the philosophical contexts of the analyzed topic, it is worth noting that the Greek word dunamis means potency, which we can perceive as the starting point of any process, diametrically opposed to the endpoint – the stage of realization, described by another Greek word, energeia. The latter is made from the prefix en-, which means being inside what is named as the root morpheme of the word, and the root erg- itself, which, by the way, we also see in the noun ergon (“work”) – so literally energy means being in activity, at work (en ergōi), being actualized, realized. Here, the Greek word dunamis means opportunity, ability, or power (the Greek verb dunamai of the same root means “I can, I am able”).
But the word dunam itself is interesting because it contains, so to speak, a latent element of energy – possibility itself contains power. (…) The word “dynamic” in the end has a very similar meaning to “energetic”. Let’s also remember an old-generation electric generator – a dynamo that generates electricity. So, the possibility itself has power and potency that is already there from the very beginning, immediately given to us, so it is actual at the very beginning, at the very starting point, not only at the endpoint – you just need to notice it, believe in it and use it. It is the actuality of potentiality – the actuality of possibility as power, possibility as potency. So, the ability to overcome a lack is powerful right away, right from the start. It reveals the powers that we have, and they simply need to be noticed and realized.
In his dialogue Timaeus, Plato intriguingly posits that the Demiurge, when creating the world, created beings of diverse degrees of perfection, because if all beings were the same and equally perfect, the world would lack variety, and indeed variety and contrast are also a certain aspect of perfection. As a result, certain manifestations of imperfection are necessary for any whole that strives for perfection or even reveals it, simply because of the contrast alone – as in a graphic work: if everything was only absolute white and black in it, there would not be wonderful halftones and filigrees of different degrees of gray – in those drawings and in nature itself visible delicate lace, in which light and dark and the play of thin black and white lines create a unique beauty.
Consequently, both darkness and nothingness, and even what is perhaps morally terrible and problematic, have their place in the structure of the world – not so that we justify and tolerate moral evil, but so that we have the opportunity and opportunity to contribute to moral good ourselves. Victories.
Another philosophical system, that of Democritus, talks about atoms moving in a vacuum. Atoms in this system represent being and emptiness represents non-being. But for atoms to form configurations, different combinations of atoms, they must not be frozen like stones in a wall – they must move. As a result, it is the space, designated by the Greek word kenon, that makes it possible for the atoms to move, and these create the diversity of the world. If only atoms existed, but there was no void, then they would not move or form compounds, so there would be no change and diversity in the world.
Often, one type of lack manifests itself in the form of the fullness of other things or the conditions for the possibility of that fullness. What is fullness from one perspective is lack from another perspective. And if there were no lack in the world, then the world, lacking lack, would also not be perfectly full in some respect.
Therefore, the lack of plenitude is a lack that manifests itself when we lack something and want to achieve that plenitude. But for this to be possible, the very starting point must be the possibility of free choice, free movement, and free action in the world. There must be a primary lack that gives reality its dynamism – it is a lack that enables our various free choices, manifesting itself as the empty space of Democritus’ universe. The world then opens as complete by the lack of lack itself – after all, it is lack that gives reality dynamic aspects, the opportunity for us to freely choose, move, and act.
As a result, the lack of fullness is complemented by the fullness of lack. And the fullness of lack means that the world does not lack scarcity and that lack is its element. And, on the other hand, as we grow, as we experience lack, we desire to overcome the lack. Lack is the condition of every possibility – and there is beauty in the fact that we live in a world where we experience different types of lack and we can overcome them. Therefore, hunger – for sustenance or knowledge – is a healthy sensation.
Written by Naglis Kardelis – a contemporary Lithuanian philosopher writing mostly about Ancient Greek philosophy among other topics. He is Professor at the Faculty of Philosophy of Vilnius University, chairman of the Research Council at the Lithuanian Culture Research Institute, and associated expert at Lithuanian Free Market Institute. This essay was translated from Lithuanian to English by Augminas Petronis, in collaboration with the author.
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