What can and what should we promise for the New Year? (Venue A: Caffè Nero)

THE VENUE: Caffè Nero

It's winter so we will meet indoors for the next few months.

When we meet indoors, we run the same event in two locations: Caffè Nero and Starbucks, so as to provide capacity for as many people who would like to attend, without overwhelming any one venue. Thus, there will be two events published, and you can choose which one to attend. Please don't sign up for both. This event is for the Nero location.

We meet upstairs at Caffè Nero. An organiser will be present from 10.45. We are not charged for use of the space so it would be good if everyone bought at least one drink.

An attendee limit has been set so as not to overwhelm the venue.

Etiquette
Our discussions are friendly and open. We are a discussion group, not a for-and-against debating society. But it helps if we try to stay on topic. And we should not talk over others, interrupt them, or try to dominate the conversation.

There is often a waiting list for places, so please cancel your attendance as soon as possible if you subsequently find you can't come.

WhatsApp groups
We have two WhatsApp groups. One is to notify events, including extra events such as meeting for a meal or a drink during the week which we don't normally put on the Meetup site. The other is for open discussion of whatever topics occur to people. If you would like to join either or both groups, please send a note of the phone number you would like to use to Richard Baron on: website.audible238@passmail.net. (This is an alias that can be discarded if it attracts spam, hence the odd words.)

THE TOPIC: What can and what should we promise for the New Year?

My thanks to Richard for suggesting his week's topic and providing the introduction.

New Year resolutions look like orders to ourselves, orders which tend to get disobeyed after a few days. But they can also be seen as promises to ourselves, and sometimes to people who will be affected by our conduct and who would benefit from its improvement. The promises might be private, kept to ourselves, as in "I promise to keep my body in better shape by cutting down on chocolate". Or they might explicitly be promises to other people, as in "I promise to do more of the housework". Perhaps even when they are private, they will carry more force as promises than as orders. After all, we feel bad about breaking promises.

But what can we promise (at the New Year or at any other time)? What should we promise? And is there sometimes virtue in breaking promises?

Here are a couple of quotations from Nietzsche's work Human, All Too Human (Hollingdale translation, CUP, 1986), to get us thinking.

Volume 1, section 58.

What one can promise. - One can promise actions but not feelings; for the latter are involuntary. He who promises someone he will always love him or always hate him or always be faithful to him, promises something that does not reside in his power; but he can certainly promise to perform actions which, though they are usually the consequences of love, hatred, faithfulness, can also derive from other motives: for several paths and motives can lead to the same action. To promise always to love someone therefore means: for as long as I love you I shall render to you the actions of love; if I cease to love you, you will continue to receive the same actions from me, though from other motives: so that in the heads of our fellow men the appearance will remain that love is still the same and unchanged. - One therefore promises the continuation of the appearance of love when one swears to someone ever-enduring love without self­ deception.

Volume 1, section 629.

Of conviction and justice. - That a man must, in subsequent cold sobriety, continue to adhere to what he has said, promised, resolved in passion - this demand is among the heaviest of the burdens that oppress mankind. To be obliged to recognize the consequences of anger, of a blazing re­vengefulness, of an enthusiastic devotion, for all future time - that can engender an animosity towards these sensations made the more bitter by their idolization everywhere and especially by the artists.
...
Were we not indeed at that time deceiving ourselves? ... Are we obliged to be faithful to our errors, even when we realize that through this faithfulness we are injuring our higher self? - No, there exists no law, no obligation, of this kind; we have to become traitors, be unfaithful, again and again abandon our ideals. We cannot advance from one period of our life into the next without passing through these pains of betrayal and then continuing to suffer them.

Do come along - we promise it will be fun.