Virtue Quest

as revealed by the Holy Prophets – Spinal Tap!

According to a “self-described ‘data geek,’” social networking is now more popular than pornography on the internet.

But only among “millenials,” that is (I think) people who “came of age” around 2000. So, don’t trust anyone over 30 … to rank social networking over porn.

And he’s only basing his data on searches, not on actual traffic. Because, well, until the government mandates tracking, accurate appraisals of real internet traffic are slightly impossible to achieve.

Even so, more searches for social network stuff than for naked people is a good thing, right?

I guess, in the way that eating deep-fried Twinkies is better for you than eating deep-fried shards of used petri dishes.

Last week, I did a little housesitting for some friends. These friends have two boys, two dogs, and two cats. They took the boys with them on their vacation.

My own family didn’t keep pets. We had a short-lived experiment with gerbils. Then a little grey kitty hung around for a little while. But we never sought pets, nor strove to keep them.

Frankly, I’ve never seen the point of pets. I mean, on a farm, sure: you need some help with guarding the cattle and depopulating the rodents. But in a city, in a suburb, what purpose do they serve?

Still, I know how much my friends love these animals, so I did my best to take good care of them. Food, water, opportunities to fertilize the lawn, etc.

They repaid me with presents, (more…)

James Chastek has been noodling questions of epistemology, that is, how do we know what we know. He’s been examining the basis of scientific evidence and certainty, which is fascinating stuff, but much of it is over my head. Again, this guy is a real professional philosopher.

But he recently had a post on belief and faith that caught my attention. His basic point is that the word “belief” has a very broad range of meaning, and that the word “faith” should be kept distinct from it. Some snippets:

There are certain beliefs that, though reasons can be given for them, do not need to be believed for those reasons; and/ or which should be believed before the reasons are known. Good reasons can be given for why a child must listen to his parents or a tribesman should love his tribe, but the virtues of piety, patriotism, obedience, etc. do not require that the one with the virtue know the reasons for his action. A child who listens perfectly to his parents or teachers would be viewed as having a virtue even if we did not know if the child had a reason for what he was doing; and you can love your family or children even apart from any evidence that they are lovable. (more…)

… on some reading. I want to point out a very interesting post by Dr. Edward Feser, who is a real professional philosopher, on the question whether morality depends on God. As he puts it, yes, but

Not the way many people think it does.

To expand a little:

Now, natural law theory as understood in the Aristotelian-Thomistic (A-T) tradition presupposes this understanding of natural objects. Human beings, like every other natural substance, have a nature or substantial form, and what is good for them — what constitutes their flourishing — is determined by the ends or final causes that follow upon having that sort of nature or substantial form. But just as we can normally determine the efficient causes of things without making reference to God, so too can we normally determine the final causes of things without making reference to God. And thus, just as we can do physics, chemistry, and the like without making reference to God, so too can we do ethics without making reference to God, at least to a large extent. For we can know what is good for a thing if we can know its nature, and we can know its nature by empirical investigation guided by sound (A-T) metaphysics. At least to a large extent, then, we can know what the natural law says just from the study of human nature and apart from any sort of divine revelation. That’s why it’s the natural law.

But this pushes back to the question where human nature comes from, which is where God comes in as the creator of human (and every) nature.

Dr. Feser also wrote another post in which he assures me that I am not alone: when faced with the multitudinous problems of modern society, the best policy is blame William of Ockham.

I can be cranky about really miniscule things. For example, Americans generally refer to yesterday’s celebration as “The Fourth of July,” as if the calender date were explanation enough for the holiday. I’ve been rather obstinate in calling the holiday by its proper name, “Independence Day.”

So, in reflecting upon my own crankiness, I stumbled upon something I’d never seen before.

I thought, if I were a Russian, for example, or an Egyptian, or a Chinese person, I would not have a foundation date of my nation to celebrate. My patriotism would be rooted in some vague confluence of ethnicity, geography, and language. As an American, however, my nationality is based in a very distinct and deliberate confluence of political and military action. As one historian I heard on the radio put it, our nation was founded by an ideological movement. America began in a war of rebellion.

And suddenly it made sense to me why patriotism in America is synonymous with some kind of militarism: because we were founded as a nation at war. We have continued to define our responses to change both within and without in military terms and often with military action. The Civil War stands, next to the Revolutionary War itself, as the most significant defining event for America.

For other nations, sure, wars and battles are important parts of their history; but only rarely do military engagements define what it is to be a citizen, a patriot. The Spanish, for example, did not fight the Moors in order to become Spanish, but because they already were Spanish; the Moors were seen as foreign invaders.

Now, I’m not sure what conclusions to draw from this. I’m neither a warmonger nor a pacifist; I believe war must be conducted according to the principles generally known as Just War Theory. With regard to ethic or cultural heritage, I’m ambivalent: it gives individuals a concrete community to belong to, but it also gives rise to us-versus-them ways of thought. I see pluses and minuses to the way America has defined itself as a nation, and to the ways other nations have done so throughout history.

But it is clear to me, in a way it never has been before, that the American Revolution really did start something new in the world. And this insight is helping me to see my nation and my own cultural heritage more fully.

I’ve been in San Francisco this past week, and it’s been impossible to ignore the preparations for “Pride!” this weekend. Trust me, I’ve tried to ignore it. But one reason I can’t is that the whole thing is deeply problematic, right at the root.

I’m not talking about homosexuality. That’s another topic entirely. I’m talking about pride.

Pride has been growing for a while: “I’m proud to be an American” and “proud parent of an honor student” and “say it loud, I’m black and I’m proud” and so on. Even the brand of hand soap where I’m staying is “Pro Pride.” The LGBTQWERTY movement has simply capitalized on it to a greater extent than anyone else, and maybe has cornered the market at this point.

But pride is not a virtue. It’s a vice. It’s the foundational vice, the root of the seven deadly sins.

Not “pride” but joy

Now, I don’t think all the advocates of pride are aiming to “overstep beyond” what they are, which is how Thomas Aquinas defines pride. (more…)

I’m a firm believer that the virtues are helpful to everybody. Any random Jane or Joe can benefit from growing in Prudence and Justice, Fortitude and Temperance. You don’t have to be smart, or strong, or rich, or anything like that.

You don’t even have to be Christian.

Huh?

So, at this point, I expect there are two groups of reactions to that sentence. First, from the Christians, I expect some flavor of “What do you mean you don’t have to be Christian?” And from the non-Christians (whether atheist or adherents of other religious traditions), “Why would you even ask that question? What does Christianity have to do with it?”

Here’s the thing. The virtues I’ve been studying arose in what’s called the Western philosophical tradition. Greeks like Plato and Aristotle wrote about them, and the early Christians picked up their ideas and ran with them. In developing the older, pagan ideas of virtue – ideas, by the way, which don’t fit neatly with the Jewish heritage of Christianity – they connected them to their theological notions, and significantly added three new virtues that were mentioned in the Bible: Faith, Hope, and Love.

The original Greek virtues were called Cardinal Virtues, since (like the cardinal directions on a compass) they point you in the right direction. The new ones were called Theological Virtues, because they are seen as gifts of God.

So I’m a Catholic myself, and I have no problem with some virtues being gifts from God. But I have big questions about how it works. (more…)

I know it’s horribly late notice, but it also serves as an explanation (not an excuse) for why I haven’t blogged much lately.

Tomorrow, that is, Friday the 10th of June, I’ll be presenting at the Northwest Catholic Family Education Conference.

I’ll actually be appearing several times during the day. I’ll give a talk on practical approaches to virtue in everyday life. Then I’ll sit on a panel with such luminaries as Mark Shea and Dawn Eden. And between, I’ll be providing one-on-one consultation with people, sorting out exactly what each one can do to begin the quest for virtue in his or her life.

This whole “virtue consult” thing is a new development. I’ll see how it goes tomorrow, and pay close attention to the feedback. But if it goes well, I’m thinking of offering ongoing “virtue consultation” as a regular service.

If you are at the conference tomorrow, please let me know what you think of the talk and of the consult idea. If you’re in the greater Seattle area, and are interested in trying out a consult, please let me know! I’d love to talk with you.

I know some people who don’t get started on a task or deal with a problem until it becomes a crisis. They wait and procrastinate and put off until further inaction will result in disaster. Then, most of the time, they scramble everything together and get done what needs doing.

They say, “I thrive under pressure.”

Maybe this is true for them. For me, the pressure, the anxiety and the fear, can become overwhelming. I get paralyzed. I drop the ball.

That doesn’t stop me from procrastinating. It just means my threshold for crisis is much lower. A deadline a week or a month away produces as much urgency in me as a tomorrow morning deadline provides for them. I know (from sad experience) that if I put it off any longer, I’ll freeze up and utterly fail.

This gives me the reputation as someone who is responsible, who plans ahead, who is organized. If only.

I’m just as crisis-driven as anybody else. The only difference is my tolerance for anxiety. I hate the stuff. And it’s taken a while for me to learn how to get moving before the pressure crushes me.

Currently, my goal is to head off anxiety at the pass. (more…)