Virtue Quest

Vita breve, ars longa

I’ll admit it: I like my instant gratification to be both instant and gratifying.

It’s tough for me to recognize good things at much of a distance. And I’m often blind to the good in the things that are right in front of my face. Heaven and religion is a great example of my struggle with the virtue of hope.

Lacking the virtue of hope

When I was a kid, I didn’t think much about heaven. I considered it “pie in the sky” and figured I could always worry about it later. And, at the same time, I looked at religion (I was raised Roman Catholic) as a bunch of useless words and gestures that often involved men wearing dresses.

In high school, I took a turn as an atheist for a couple years. I started out by searching for “truth”, but eventually said that I was looking for “meaning” or “purpose” in life. Now that I’ve returned to the religion of my youth, I think a more proper word is hope.

The irony is that I’ve found hope in exactly the place that I could not find it as a child, in God, in Jesus and his Church.

This doesn’t mean I like everything about the Catholic Church. I find some parts of the Mass to be boring, and I find some priests to be embarrassments, and I find some devotions or aspects of spirituality to be silly.

But I’ve come to see that they all are directed toward the ultimate object of hope: union with God, aka, heaven. And I understand this clearly in my mind, even if my heart or my gut don’t like it or don’t get it.

I have two major obstacles to hope: I don’t recognize something as good, or I’m impatient and unwilling to work for something in the future. Both these obstacles show up in spades with regard to hoping for perfect union with God.

Is heaven really good?

I long ago dropped the childish notion of heaven as a kind of eternal amusement park or (worse) lounging endlessly in a toga on a cloud practicing the harp. But even the profound mystical descriptions of heaven: gazing on the face of God, intimate communion in Love, the glorification of my mortal body… all of these, well, kind of leave me cold.

I mentioned in another post that great hopes are built upon smaller hopes. It’s hard to hope for success in a career if one has no experience of success from a game or a musical instrument. And I think this is part of my problem: I tend to be hyper-critical of everything. Go ahead, ask my friends: I can find fault in a sunset or a view of the mountains.

So I’ve been practicing by reminding myself of how good things are around me: how delicious is this food, or how delightful is the time I spend with that friend, or how satisfying it is to get that bass lick down just so. I remind myself of these good things whenever I’m tempted to say that life just sucks and nothing is worth anything.

And I try connect those small feelings in my gut or my heart with the knowledge in my head that God is the ultimate source of all these undeniably good things. It’s an uphill battle, but (as with all virtue) it’s getting a little bit easier as I keep on practicing.

Why can’t I have it right now?

The dieter’s slogan, “A moment on the lips, forever on the hips!” strikes very close to home here. Ice cream and bacon are my particular weaknesses in the realm of gluttony. And overwhelming emotion – usually anger or sadness – is the fix I seek in the realm of “meaning” or “purpose.”

But the union with God that hope truly seeks, like the health of the dieter, means refusing to indulge in emotional fixes. It means overcoming my desire to feel … not so much to feel “good” as to feel intensely or “importantly.” Instead, I have to recognize that the true good, the true importance, is found in God rather than in the feelings I’m seeking.

By indulging myself now, I’m actually moving away from the source of what is good and important.

So, to practice hope, again I remind myself of how false and unnecessary these immediate pleasures are. And then, as soon as possible, I focus my attention on some good activity (like listening to my friend, or cleaning my room, or praying) that really will bring me more fully into union with God.

As I said, I’m definitely rowing upstream here. I fail far more often than I succeed. But I think I have an glimpse of what success looks like.

My goals: related, but sometimes in conflict

I have several different goals for this blog. First and foremost, I hope that my own experience and learning about virtue will be helpful to other people who are trying to improve their lives too. In that regard, I try to keep my posts as open to people of any background at all as possible.

But another goal, that comes into occasional conflict with that first, is to teach about the history, philosophy, and nature of the seven classical western virtues: the four cardinal virtues and the three theological virtues. This means, when I’m talking about faith, hope, and love, discussing the their specifically religious, Roman Catholic, aspects.

(Another goal, by the way, is to develop my skills and build a career as a writer. So, if any of you out there are editors – please drop me a line! I’m also willing and able to give live presentations on virtue or a variety of other topics.)

The question at hand

In the last couple posts on hope, I’ve steered clear of the theological or religious aspects of that virtue. I’ve tried to keep it as “natural” as possible, because I don’t want to offend or exclude anyone. At the same time, (as I alluded to in my choice of image,) I have no desire to hide or gloss over the fact that this virtue has a particularly Christian core.

I’m just not quite sure how to approach it.

So, I’m preparing another post on the theological aspect of hope that I plan to post a little later today. I would greatly appreciate your feedback – especially if you are not Catholic or Christian – so that I can strike the right balance between legitimate respect for other traditions and accurate portrayal of my own.

Thanks!

James Chastek writes an intriguing post on how “rights” are not sufficient to provide true justice.

Kelly seems to have been reading my mind. How did you know I was going to follow up by talking about hope in the big picture?

Here’s the thing: I think we’ve had so many of our hopes dashed that we Americans have become fairly cynical about placing hope in anything. But this also means that we have had an intensifying craving for something to hope in, because hope is a natural way of relating to the world.

So, when something claims to be, well, worthy of hope, we tend either to mock it or to cling irrationally to it.

Irrational hope

Ultimate hope

All we have to do is rewind a year.

(As a disclaimer, I don’t intend to say anything about President Obama, except that he is a human being. He has done some good, and some evil, and has made some mistakes. History will judge his reputation and God will judge his soul and the only judgment I can make is whether or not I vote for him when he next runs for election.)

Then-Senator Obama ran one of the most memorable political campaigns in recent history, and one of the main features was the iconic poster of him with a single word under his upward-gazing face: “HOPE”.

This poster polarized opinions of the candidate, and most people I know took it either as A) a sign that Obama brought a new and better approach to politics, or that B) a confirmation that Obama’s ego had outstripped all sense of reality.

The fact is that, like most politicians throughout history, Obama the candidate promised all sorts of things, some of which were beyond his power to deliver – at least, without the aid of Congress.

In other words, his campaign encouraged people to place an irrational hope in him: a “hope” beyond the realm of possibility.

Rational hope

The virtue of hope, on the other hand, is grounded in reason. As I noted before, hope as a virtue pursues a future good that is difficult but possible. That is, whatever we hope for has to be a real good, and it has to be really possible.

Strictly speaking, we cannot hope for a fantasy, or for something impossible.

And that is where most big “hopes” go awry. Politicians, and salespeople, and coaches, and journalists, and … you get the picture: they all try to raise people’s hopes toward fantasies or impossibilities. And they do this because it works. Many people do raise their hopes to these things, and act accordingly – whether with their votes or their dollars or their actions.

And, when inevitably these hopes fail, these people find it more difficult to satisfy the yearning for good, for something better than all this.

True hope prevails

The solution is to hold fast to the virtue of hope: to insist on reality, on truth. This means sometimes calming the emotions – stepping back to take a more objective view of the promise – and sometimes it means overcoming resistance – especially when we discover a groundless prejudice.

It means putting the right hopes in the right places.

Kelly said:

I just find it so much more exhausting to have hope in, say politics or the state of the world, or an end to hunger.

It’s entirely rational to hope that political action will result in a more orderly or fair society. It’s irrational to hope that politics will make us all better people or make the world a better place. It’s entirely rational to hope for a better distribution of the world’s goods, so that fewer people suffer from hunger. It’s irrational to hope that no one will ever again face malnutrition or starvation.

Growing in hope

Hope for greater things builds on hope for smaller things. If I have no experience of success in learning to play the bass guitar, then I have very little to base a hope for a career (or for politics, or for global reform) on.

This doesn’t mean I don’t desire those great things; it means I’m unable to really understand the difficulty of the task, or to estimate whether it is possible. I’m liable to be suckered in by a fantasy, or to wear myself out striving for an impossibility.

Strangely enough, the best way I’ve found to grow in hope is to constantly seek a reality check. I’ve found that playing bass and political action are easier in some ways than I feared, and challenging in ways I didn’t expect. So, I revise my expectations, and take the next step forward.

A New Year's Toast

About a year ago, I wrote a post about New Year’s resolutions on another, now-defunct, blog. The truth is, I’d been debating whether I should repost it here, and I’ve been afraid to because (like so many people) I didn’t really keep my resolutions very well. But a friend asked me about the post, so … here ’tis. It’s a reminder of where I was a year ago, and of the kind of progress I still want to make.

A quick disclaimer: the other blog was more explicitly aimed at my fellow Catholics than this one is, so in the post my assumption was that the readers were or knew something about Catholics.

For the Church, today, the First Sunday of Advent, is the beginning of the new year. It is also a penitential season, a time to repent, reform, and renew. Which puts me in mind of a more secular tradition: new year’s resolutions.

I’m going to make a new year’s resolution, and I’m going to begin now, at the beginning of the Church year. This is my resolution: to grow in my life in Christ. This resolution has three simple parts: pray, learn, and serve.

And I invite anyone to join me in this resolution. Grow in life with Christ: pray, learn, serve. After all, this is what we should be doing as Christians anyway.

Now, as for me, I know I’d fail by tomorrow morning if I left it as vague as that. So here are some concrete steps I’m going to take to fulfill this resolution.

Pray. I’m going to schedule half an hour of private prayer every day. I’m putting it in my schedule so that the time is protected, and so that I don’t come up with excuses to avoid it. I know myself well enough to know I’ll take any excuse I can find.

Learn. I’m going to read through at least one article of St. Thomas’ Summa Theologica every day. St. Thomas is still regarded as the most comprehensive theologian in the history of the Church, and he has a certain pride of place in the Dominican order. And moreover, he has a way of surprising me every time I read him closely. This will be a good way for me to make sure I’m growing in my knowledge of Christ.

Serve will be a bit trickier, since most of the Christian life can be seen as some kind of service. But the part I struggle most with is time management: I spend time I should be working for other people on distracting or entertaining myself. So I’m creating a fairly comprehensive schedule for myself, to hold myself accountable to actually spending my time serving other people. I’m also making sure that my leisure time is protected, and plan to use it in truly recreational activities — but more on recreation vs. distraction in another post.

In short, I’m focusing on one simple way I can improve my prayer, my learning, and my service. It won’t make me into the perfect Christian, but that’s not my goal right now. My goal right now is to grow in my life in Christ. Maybe I’ll grow more than I’m laying out here; but at least I’ll do this much. And I will trust that God will use all my efforts — and even my failures, since I know I’ll fall short from time to time — to draw me deeper into his life.

I’ll try to reflect on how it’s going for me over the course of the coming year. And I’ll welcome comments from you if you decide to join me. I’m doing it now, but maybe you’ll try it at some other point: for Lent, or starting on your fortieth birthday, or whenever. Just remember, the goal is simple:

Grow in life in Christ.

1. Pray
2. Learn
3. Serve

Good for the soul

I was going to confession once, and the priest pointed out to me that what my sins had in common was that they were sins against hope.

Not to excuse myself, but more to say “it takes one to know one,” I think I see a lack of hope – or even an opposition to hope – all around us in the American culture. And I think this “sinning against hope” is at the root of many problems in the world today.

Hope … for what?

Thomas Aquinas says that the object of hope is a future good, difficult but possible to obtain. This deceptively simple definition has four parts:

• Hope seeks a good - i.e., it looks for something truly desirable and worthy
• The good that hope seeks is in the future - it is not something we can have here and now, or even immediately
• This good is difficult to achieve – it is not something that will simply come to us, that we can take for granted
• Yet, it is possible - it is not a fantasy, or a daydream, but is something real and within the grasp of those who strive for it

Beauty is always worth striving after

For myself, I find I fail on every one of these points. For example, I hope to be a good bass guitarist. But there are times I just don’t feel that playing music is very important or worthwhile. Or I grow impatient and figure if I can’t be a rock star right now then I’d rather not play at all. Or I give up in frustration, not wanting to endure the effort and pain of practice. Or, worst of all, I despair of ever improving, imagining that I am missing some vital talent or gift.

In all these cases, though, the objection is summed up easily: “Why bother?”

Why bother?

I hear variations of this objection all the time. I hear it from co-workers: “Who’s going to find out?” I hear it from friends: “Eh, whatever.” I hear it from my own heart: “I’d rather just watch TV.”

The problem here is that we lose touch with reality. Whether we wallow in a wishful fantasy or settle for a lesser or easier goal, to lose hope is to let go of the truth that good things are worth pursuing. It is to forget that music really is beautiful, and that there is a unique beauty that can only come through my own fingers.

It is to believe the lie that this – whatever situation we’re in, whether personal or political or practical – that this is as good as it’s going to get, and nothing we do can make it any better.

Despair says: “It’ll never be perfect.” But hope says, “It can always be better.”

And the virtue of hope is repeating, reminding, building the habit in myself and others of always doing things even a little bit better.

As you already know, I struggle a bit with time management. That’s a polite way of saying I procrastinate, and am trying to overcome the vice of sloth.

So, as I’ve been getting my feet wet with this new job, I’ve fallen short of my ideal use of time outside working hours. Please forgive me.

And please check back. I hope to put a substantive post up later today! Thanks!

The cast of "Monk"

I’ve been watching “Monk” with my family for some time, and we all gathered around the tele last night for the series finale.

For those who don’t watch much TV, the show follows Adrian Monk (played by Tony Shalhoub), a former detective for the San Francisco Police whose OCD went into overdrive when he lost his wife twelve years ago. He’s been consulting with the department, because he has an uncanny insight into what “doesn’t fit” at a crime scene. Mostly, it’s a comedy hung loosely on a detective show with the running gag of how to set off Monk’s phobias or obsessions. Sort of an anti-Columbo.

The one case he’s never solved is his own wife’s murder. So, of course, the series had to end with the solution to this cold case. As with most episodes, the actual clues and mystery-solving aspect of the story are mostly incidental. The resolution is quick and neatly resolved. It’s all about the character quirks. But it surprised me by showing a dark side of Monk’s character that I did not at all expect from a normally light entertainment.

* * * Spoilers to follow! * * *

Monk has always been haunted by his inability to solve his wife’s murder, but when he discovers the killer’s identity, he has two very dark reactions: he grows vengeful, and he implies that his OCD derives from an inability to “breathe the same air” as Trudy’s killer.

Vengeance and Justice

You knew this had to get back to virtue at some point, didn’t you?

Justice is the act of giving to each person their due. This is obviously the principle behind civil justice: I sue someone who refuses to give me what they owe me. But it’s also the case in criminal justice. In committing a crime, the criminal owes the victim what belongs to them; and, a little less obviously but just as truly, the criminal “is due” the consequences and punishment that belong to the crime.

Vengeance, on the other hand, is the simple desire to harm someone who has harmed me. It belongs to the “misery loves company” class of motivations. Vengeance says, “I have suffered, and I want that person to suffer at least as much – maybe even more!” It’s not interested in restoring order or right; just in causing hurt.

Monk’s vengeful turn

Now, throughout the series, Monk has consistently sided with justice over vengeance. But then, he’s also consistently made an exception to all reason and logic wherever his wife was concerned. Even so, in a previous episode he was not willing to kill the person who planted the bomb that killed Trudy.

So I was surprised to see him, not only asking Stottlemeyer (Ted Levine) to kill the suspect without a trial, but actually stealing a gun and apparently threatening to kill the suspect himself. I was also surprised that he had no reaction other than “emptiness” that the suspect committed suicide.

If the show was willing to go into that area of wrath and revenge, I would have hoped that they would, well, do the topic justice. Show Monk struggle with his desire for revenge, his regret that he didn’t pull the trigger himself, and so on.

I also had hoped that, having set up that Monk didn’t want to “breathe the same air” that Trudy’s killer breathed, they might have resolved that with some idea of the world being “cleaner” now. But maybe there I’m reading more into the statement than it warrants.

Character welcome

Now, I know all too well that Monk is just a fun diversion, and is not intended to be high art or profound literature. Even so, I do wish it would reach a little higher – especially in episodes where it delves into some deeper aspect of a character. Frankly, I think any show is more entertaining – more funny, more exciting, more romantic, what have you – when it reflects the fullness of human life and motivation.

Monk’s series finale left me, unfortunately, with a rather flat character whom I just didn’t believe in anymore, much less care about or identify with.

Ah well. That leaves more time for my own writing.

Aristotle’s idea of virtue is that it is the means to an end; virtue is the way to achieve a goal. In Greek-speak, this is called teleology, since telos is the Greek word for “end” or “goal”. Here’s how he puts it:

Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim. (N. Ethics I.1)

If, then, there is some end [i.e., goal] of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake (everything else being desired for the sake of this) … clearly this must be the good and the chief good. (N. Ethics I.2)

Now, the “chief good” of people is usually called “happiness” (which, in Greek, is eudaimonea, literalistically good-spiritedness, good-life). He points out that, while everyone seems to agree on the word, many different ideas of what the word means are floating around, ranging from physical pleasure to social honors to philosophical contemplation. It’s important to know what happiness is so that we can know how to use virtue to attain it, just as it’s important for a plumber to know how the pipes are supposed to work so that he knows what tools he needs to install or repair them.

Don't worry

Happiness: more than a feeling

Now, I usually think of happiness as a word to describe how I’m feeling at the moment, as in, “I’m happy to see my friends” or “I’m unhappy that my car has broken down.” But Aristotle is talking about something more permanent. Essentially, he says that happiness is being fully human, of fulfilling one’s nature as a person.

That means, of course, that we need to know what human nature is. It’s certainly a part of human nature to have emotions, and to have physical senses that can receive pleasure or pain, and even (going to the most basic level) just to be alive. But these are things that we share with other creatures in the world, such as plants or animals.

What sets human beings apart, for Aristotle, is that we can reason. More than just thinking logically, this includes the ability to make decisions. That is, it means we have free will. And that means that our happiness depends on our freely chosen actions.

Virtue and happiness for all

So it’s obvious that virtue is all about making good decisions, or, in other words, about choosing to act according to our nature rather than against it. This is why, for example, so many moralists have warned people against acting like animals: if we follow our emotions and ignore our intellect, we’re acting against our own nature, and won’t find happiness.

But there’s one other aspect of human nature that comes into play: our social nature. As John Donne put it, “No man is an island, entire of itself.” None of my actions, no matter how private, can be confined only to myself without affecting others. My simplest thoughts change my choice of words, my body language, my emotional reactions.

This means that the happiness I seek is not merely my own, but is the fulfillment of the human community as a whole. If anyone weeps, I must weep with him, and if any rejoices I share that joy.