When: 10:30am, Sunday 20 March 2011
Where: 5062 9th Avenue NE, Seattle – the downstairs room in the school across from the church

Here’s a chart I’m putting on the handout:

I expect that’s perfectly clear to anyone who thinks exactly as I do. The above organization is (as far as I know) my own invention. If anyone out there actually knows stuff about virtue ethics and thinks I’m barking up the wrong tree, or am just barking mad, please drop me a line and correct me. I’m working stuff out as I go.

Anyway, if you want to know what I’m talking about, come hear me talk!

Second, and far less importantly: I’ve had tech troubles with my old computer for the past few months. Random crashes and so on. It finally became intolerable, so I have a shiny new laptop. (Okay, it’s actually a matte finish.) Now I have to constantly remind myself that cool new toys do not equal happiness.

“Yes, I love technology / though not as much as you, you see / but still, I love technology / always and forever…”

This is not the only bar that matters

I am, tragically, that all-too-common combination of lazy procrastinator and idealistic perfectionist. This means that whenever I want to do something, I am both overwhelmed at the size and/or difficulty of the undertaking, and despairing of ever being satisfied with what I have done.

This applies, depending on my mood, from tasks as great as writing a twelve-volume epic novel (which really is a gargantuan task) to duties as tiny as brushing my teeth. Most of the time, thankfully, my ambitions range through more middling territory: cleaning my apartment, writing a decent blog post, finishing a chapter or a short story. That sort of thing.

Even so, I have this irrational expectation that I should somehow achieve some ultimate and final perfection. There’s a part of my that truly believes, if I have brushed my teeth well, I should never have to brush my teeth again, because I shall have achieved dental perfection.

Did I mention that this expectation is entirely irrational?

Fear of lowering my standards

Now, when someone points out to me the insanity of this notion of perfection – even when the someone who points it out to me is me myself! – a defense springs up. That defense is: “I don’t want to lower my standards.”

This is a logical fallacy. It’s known as the Red Herring. That is, it’s a distraction from what’s really going on. Specifically, at least in my case, it’s the argumentum ad superbiam, or, an appeal to pride. I want to think that I’m capable of things that are in fact beyond me. I want to believe that I’m some sort of super-hero or Herculean demigod who can brush his teeth so well that he never has to brush them again.

The problem with the standard isn’t that it’s too high; the problem is that the standard is impossible. It’s not a proper human standard. It doesn’t conform to reality.

And this is the case even with the more apparently plausible expectations I have: that I should be able to write a stunning blog post in less than half an hour every day of the week; or that I should be able to act with perfect charity toward all my friends and family all the time without ever giving offense. Jesus Christ himself gave offense to many of his friends and family (and never, ever, wrote even a fair-to-middling blog post); so who am I to believe I can do better?

Correcting my standards

This is not to say I should just give up and allow my slacker instincts to take over. But it is to say that there are options besides attempts at the impossible and giving up in despair.

I don’t need to lower my standards; I simply need to trade my impossible fantasy standards for genuinely human ones. As I’ve said before, the core of virtue is getting in touch with reality.

So, rather than beating myself up because I’ve been unable to compose the most brilliant blog post for the beginning of 2011 on the whole internet, I need to remind myself that writing even a bad blog post is good for my psyche – and might actually help someone out there. Rather than despairing because, if I vacuum the carpet it’ll just need another vacuum in a week or two, I can recognize that vacuuming regularly makes my apartment more amenable to guests. Rather than ignoring my friends, I can accept their forgiveness for the times I’ve hurt their feelings, and continue to seek what is good for them as best I know how.

And I can practice this sort of reminder, building up a habit of seeing real goods that are really present – or possible – rather than focusing on the impossibility of impossible “goods”. I can do something from my list of things to do, and I can build that into a good habit, a small kind of virtue. Perhaps it’s the virtue of prudence. Perhaps it’s the virtue of hope.

The easiest way to avoid bad stuff is to do good stuff. One of my many problems is that I tell myself, “I don’t know what to do!” and the only desires that come to mind are, well, slothful at best. When the best idea I have is to play a mind-numbing game on the computer, then I’m clearly not thinking straight.

Hence this list. It’s not in any particular order, because they’re all good activities. One might be better than another at any given time, but even if I choose one at random it will be better than sitting around trying to come up with a reason not to waste three and a half hours setting up a tower defense against “creeps”. My mind’s in the wrong place if I’m even asking the question, so I need to take some action to get my mind into a better place. This list does the work my mind isn’t capable of doing in those bad moments.

I’m sure I’ll be able to add to it as time goes on.

Where to begin...?

As a sophomore in college, I had a single dorm room. No roommate. A space entirely my own. And I remember that, after the first ten minutes, it terrified me. I don’t think I ever finished entirely unpacking.

I had no one to tell me where my things were supposed to go.

I know that most normal people – you do realize I’m rather abnormal, I hope – would feel the thrill of freedom and the drive to creativity in deciding for themselves where their own things should go. But I was very caught up in a way of thinking limited to “right” and “wrong,” that had no room for “good” and its chums “better” and “best”.

It was actually the required class on Western Civilization that woke me up, or started to. The prof was describing the ancient and medieval notion that has come to be called “the great chain of being,” essentially that everything in the universe has a fixed place on a strict linear hierarchy, like rungs on a ladder, with “prime matter” at the bottom and God at the top.

It seemed obvious to me that, while a linear hierarchy is one way of organizing and relating the various things in the universe, it’s probably not the most useful. There are different kinds of order, and different kinds of relationship between things. Therefore, it didn’t surprise me when, years later, I discovered that great thinkers in ancient and medieval times held a much more subtle and nuanced view than that simplified and dumbed-down notion.

What did surprise me was how long it took me to apply my insight to my own life and behavior.

Clean your room, young man!

I’ve been living in my current apartment for about six months now, and I’m still not entirely unpacked. I have boxes and crates stacked against the wall, waiting for me to decide where to put their contents. Some of these boxes have remained unopened for the past couple moves I’ve made. This is because there’s a part of me that’s still afraid to put something in the wrong spot.

This fear is, I know, entirely unrealistic. It is stuck in a misunderstanding, or maybe a misapprehension, about freedom and order.

Order is nothing other than the relationship of things to each other. How I decide to order something, whether it’s the files in a cabinet or the furniture in a room or the tasks on my to-do list, depends on the relationships I’m looking at. With files, my goal is quick and easy access to information; the relationships I’m looking for are based on the use of the information I’m filing away. For example, bills and receipts go together, and letters from friends go together, and owners manuals and warranties go together.

Relationships between furniture, on the other hand, is based on the relationships I hope to develop between the people using the furniture. I like open rooms, where everyone can see and communicate with everybody else. There’s a part of me that wants to maximize open floor space, but a friend pointed out that putting some furniture pieces at an angle – even though it cut off a square foot-and-a-half in the corner, provided better sight lines for people sitting in chairs and on the sofa.

My to-do list actually benefits from a strictly linear ordering: first this, next that, third something else, and think twice before re-ordering the list. That’s because many activities, in reality, require something else to come first. It’s linear because the relationships are based in the uncompromising march of time.

Order provides the structure for free action. If my files are organized, I’m more free to find the information I want; if my furniture (and my to-do list) is well ordered, it’s easier to have fun with my friends.

Fear of punishment and fear of chaos

So order is both something that I create from and for myself, because it depends on the relationships I’m choosing to look at, and something that is independent of me, because those relationships are based in something real and objective.

This is normal and reasonable and helpful to me. Why, then, do I have such a fear of both aspects of order? Why am I afraid both that I’ll have to decide what to do, and that someone else will impose a decision on me?

I’m sure there are plenty of psychological reasons and childhood traumas that might explain the origin of my fears. But those don’t matter very much. What matters is, replacing my false view of order with a true one. And that is done one act at a time.

It takes practice to look this cool

Anyone who plays guitar (or, as I do, bass guitar,) develops calluses on their fingers where they hold down the strings. It doesn’t take long, maybe a week of playing a little every day; but that can be a painful week, and the strings feel like they’re cutting into the soft flesh at the tips of your fingers. It’s especially bad if you only play occasionally, because any calluses you develop fade away when you’re not playing, so they have to develop all over again.

Whenever I pick up the bass again after neglecting it for a month or so, it’s not just the physical pain I feel. I feel a kind of moral pain, that “I should’ve been practicing all this time.”

But when I do practice regularly, not only do I learn new songs quickly and enjoy the music more, I also find it just plain physically easier to play. My fingers don’t hurt at all – not till I’ve been playing solidly for a couple hours or more. My fingers have calluses to protect them, and they’ve grown stronger through exercise.

Building up habits of virtue

Now, for the past couple weeks I’ve been distracted, pulled in several different directions. I haven’t always been able to get to bed on time, or to eat at normal meal times, and so on. Sometimes I’ve used the difficulty of the day as an excuse to break my habits, to stay up late or to sleep in, to drop my daily prayer and meditation, to skip walking or exercising, to let the dishes pile up, and so on.

So right now, I feel like my soul has lost its calluses, and lost its strength. It’s hard, even a little painful, to do simple things like add appointments to my calendar or fold my clothes as soon as I take them out of the dryer. I know I should, and I know how much easier it makes life; but I’ve let myself go soft, and that means I have to deal with some extra difficulty here and now.

Virtue makes life easier exactly by embracing the difficulty of life. That is to say, developing good habits allows me to do only the actual toil, and suffer only the necessary pain, of the work itself – instead of having to toil at learning how to do the work, and enduring the pain of building strength and resistance, every single time I try to do something.

There’s no avoiding the difficulty and suffering of life; but the habits of virtue build up the ability to keep going, even to do better and better things, with as little difficulty and pain as possible.

The primary virtue of prudence

I find in my own life I keep returning to two virtues: charity and prudence. Charity is called the “form” of the virtues, because it directs us toward what is good; that is, it is the habit of focusing on the goal of virtue. Prudence is called the “first” of the virtues, or the primary virtue, because it shows the means to achieve the good; that is, it is the habit of making responsible decisions.

These two virtues, especially prudence, are the hardest for me to develop. They’re also the most rewarding. They provide the strength and the toughness needed for the other virtues to form and to flourish.

My temptation to neglect prudence usually takes the form: “I’ve done so much already, I deserve a break.” It’s the illusion that there are times or situations in which I don’t have to make a good decision. It’s an attempt to avoid taking responsibility for my own actions.

So, when I find I’ve let myself go soft, as I have over the past couple weeks, I realize the only solution is to start practicing again. Scheduled routine, to-do lists, and journaling are some of the tools I use for practicing prudence. At first, it’s hard, and I keep wondering why I have to do this dull and artificial-feeling work. Don’t I already know what I think, and what I have to do?

But it’s the difference between knowing where to put my fingers and actually playing music.

Just keep walking, just keep walking...

I get overwhelmed pretty easily. Sometimes, just looking at the pile of dishes in my sink exhausts me. Other times I’m more ambitious: I figure I can conquer the world but I worry if I’ll make it outside the little pond of our solar system. But the fact is, whenever I face a new task – or a new start on an ongoing task – there’s a part of me that asks, “Can I really do that?”

For example, I’ve mentioned that I’m working on a book about my grandmother’s life. Until the last couple weeks, I’ve been stuck on the magnitude of the project. I talked to one of my uncles about my problems, and he suggested a couple ways to break the project down into smaller pieces, each of which is do-able in an hour or two.

Well, duh! says I. I know how to do that. I just don’t want to.

Why not? Because there’s another part of me, call it the grandiose egotist side, that doesn’t want to do anything that isn’t instantly apparent as brilliant and perfect. Plugging along at little tasks just doesn’t have the same feel as finishing a book, or even a chapter.

Reality check

It’s at this point that I need to pull myself back down to earth. Both my despair of finishing a job and my desire for the feeling of accomplishment are unwarranted. What is true is that every task has some pleasant and some unpleasant aspects to it. That’s just the nature of reality, and it does no good to focus only on the difficult aspects while ignoring the easy or exciting aspects – or vice versa.

Rather, I need to focus on what is directly in front of me: what is here and now. So, for my grandma’s book, I have some research to do and some notes to take today. If I spend my time worrying about how many interviews I still need to conduct, or on the other hand daydreaming about how high it will reach on the New York Times bestseller list, then I will create my own failure.

If instead I do a couple hours of work, and spend five minutes at the end reviewing what I’ve done, then I will see the progress I have made. It may be small progress, but it shows me where I am in the big picture of the job. Moreover, it allows me to know exactly where to pick up again tomorrow.

Life application

Now, the example of working on my grandmother’s book is an application of the virtue of prudence, with a little temperance thrown in for good measure. And even though it’s a book – a book! – it’s still a fairly small and focused task.

The life of virtue is a call to apply virtue to every aspect of my life. I need to be prudent, not just about writing a memoir, but also about cleaning my kitchen and relating to my friends and voting in the election and my attitude toward strangers and…. I need to do this for the next 50 years or however long I happen to hang out on this earth. Zoiks! I really can’t deal with a task that big!

And yet, a life is composed of days, and a day is composed of hours. Every moment is an opportunity to practice some small virtue. Every day is a chance to live life fully – meaning to fully live, though not to live an entire life.

I used to write up a daily inventory on this blog. I stopped that because I was self-censoring, leaving out the parts of my life I didn’t particularly want to publicize. So now I’m keeping the inventory in a journal. This is an old practice. The Jesuits have a form of it called the Examen. Twelve-step programs call it the Tenth Step. The reason behind keeping an inventory is to learn to recognize what is really going on in any given day. It is like reviewing my work at the end of a task: it gives a reality check and shows me where I am in the bigger picture.

Slowly but surely, I’m beginning to see my life – my desires, my relationships, my work – more clearly. Slowly but surely, I’m making progress in virtue, and part of that progress is recognizing my small steps forward as genuine progress.

Classical virtue - very classy

I was talking with a friend this weekend, and she said that she was a little confused when she first visited my blog because it wasn’t clear what kind of virtue I was talking about. So I took another look at the page, and I realize that the words “classical” and “cardinal” are entirely missing from the page.

I’ll rectify that soon, but in the meantime I realized that it never hurts to take another look at the big picture.

The classical virtues

The main reason I’m writing this blog is as a kind of public self-improvement exercise. I’ve found that the classical philosophy of virtue describes my strengths, my faults, and my potential. It also gives a very practical structure to work on overcoming my weaknesses and to work toward my potential.

These virtues are traditionally grouped under the four “cardinal” virtues and the three “theological” virtues:

• Cardinal virtues
  • Prudence, AKA Wisdom
  • Justice
  • Fortitude, AKA Courage
  • Temperance, AKA Self-control
• Theological virtues
  • Faith
  • Hope
  • Charity, AKA Love

Each of these virtues describes a different way to achieve a certain excellence or fulfillment of human life. They are ways to become more human, and more humane.

Habits of life

A virtue is a habit of life, that is, it is an inclination to live and act easily and effectively. It’s not a “natural” inclination, in that no one is born with it. We acquire the virtues, mainly by practicing the kinds of actions associated with them. For example, I develop an inclination to courage by taking standing fast in the face of danger and difficulty, even when I am terrified; as I grow in courage, I find that facing danger is easier and less intimidating – if not actually less frightening. I grow in both confidence and ability.

On the other hand, a virtue is exactly a “natural” habit because it is fulfills my nature as a human person. It is part of human nature to grow, to develop, to learn, to interact with other people, and so on. Virtues are the habits of living a fully human life: wisely, justly, lovingly. Practicing virtue helps me to become more myself.

It is something like the habit of playing a musical instrument: at first, the actions don’t feel natural; but with practice, they become a kind of “second-nature”. Playing music becomes easy and enjoyable. Virtues are habits that apply, not just to a single activity like music, but to every aspect of life.

Vice

A vice is essentially a bad habit: it is an inclination to act less than human, or even contrary to human nature. We all have them. My own main vice (as far as I can tell) is sloth: I’m lazy, and I also tend to be skeptical about whether something is worth doing. It takes a lot to get me moving. This means that I spend a lot of time and energy complaining or looking for escapist entertainment rather than actually facing reality or doing something positive.

Generally speaking, every virtue has at least two vices: too much and too little. Taking courage as an example again, it’s possible to be too timid, or to be to rash. Courage is bold, but not brash; it’s cautious, but doesn’t hesitate.

Overcoming vice and growing in virtue go hand in hand.

That whole “theological” thing

The “cardinal” virtues were taken for granted by the ancient Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle, and it’s possible to find similar ideas in most ancient cultures. In the middle ages, Christian philosophers like Thomas Aquinas added three “theological” virtues mentioned in the Bible. These virtues are acquired, not only by practice, but by a gift from God.

I include them in this blog, not because I want to push a Christian agenda, but because I think there is a natural aspect to these virtues that fills out the cardinal virtues. Love resolves the conflict between justice and mercy, hope gives purpose to courage and temperane, faith extends rational prudence into deep relationships.

That said, I’m a practicing Catholic myself, and many of the people I read approach these virtues from a Christian point of view. It would be silly to try to hide that. My goal, though, is to propose rather than to impose, to share the wisdom I’m learning without expecting it to be the final word.

Not actually all that logical

My good friend Amy said:

The problem here is that you can’t teach people how to think. Not, at least, without heading straight long into [indoctrination] schools (Communist, Nazi, etc). Not a soul on the planet will tell you they don’t know how to think, even if their life is a long string of screw ups. And who gets to judge whose thinking is “right”? (After all everyone must think to act, even if poorly.) Other than practical matters of social order and universal natural law, I think humans might be best to leave that judgment to God.

There’s a lot going on it that. I replied that you can teach people how to be critical or rigorous in their thought, and she replied:

Of course you can teach someone the rules of logic. Notice however, they are your (or someone elses) rules of logic. … You can ask others questions, but by definition these must come from your cultural background. And the act of questioning to find “weaknesses in thought” creates a framework that suggests that you may have a superior line of thinking from the get go. … All people think spontaneously and creatively on their own. It maybe that their illogical or weak thinking is simply something that you don’t understand or agree with. Very dangerous stuff, this “logical” thinking.

Dangerous stuff!

I fully agree that thinking is dangerous stuff. It’s far too dangerous to leave children in ignorance about it.

As Amy says, we think spontaneously and creatively. We can’t help but think. We are, by nature, rational animals; Homo sapiens literally means “wise man”; thinking is what defines our species. But thinking is an ability like all our other natural abilities: walking, for example, or eating, or communicating. But all of these require, not just natural ability, but a certain learning as well. We assist children in learning how to walk, we encourage and correct them. If someone shows great ability, we train them into athletes. We refine and strengthen our natural ability through instruction and training.

Likewise, we introduce different foods to children, and teach them what is food and what is not, and continue to refine our tastes into adulthood. And, while the instinct and need to communicate is innate, it is only through learning the “artificial” structures of language that we are able to actually make ourselves known to others, or to know them ourselves.

Thinking is the same way: the rules of logic are like the rules of walking or the rules of digestion. They are discovered rather than made up. Logic is the science that shows how thought works, and is able to analyze whether a conclusion really does follow from a premise. People don’t have to know the rules of logic in order to think, but they will think more easily and avoid more pitfalls if they know where the pitfalls and obstacles are.

Beyond logic … there be dragons!

There are lots of ways of thinking that don’t fit neatly into the forms of a syllogism or the structures that logic uses to describe thought. There are lots of sentences that don’t fit neatly into a grammatical diagram, and grammatical diagrams are far from the easiest way to communicate; yet grammar is a tool to help us understand speech; and logic is a tool to help us understand thought.

Logic helps us test and understand whether the questions we ask are limited to our cultural background, or whether they speak to something universally human. Logic helps us discover whether a line of thinking has problems or contradictions, that is, weaknesses. Logic, far from being “your” rules or “someone’s” rules, are our rules. They are ways of bridging the gaps that appear when we disagree or don’t understand someone else.

When we let go of logic, then there is nothing to bridge the gaps. All we have left is, “Well, I disagree,” and there’s no possibility of further communication. That person who says something I don’t understand may be a friend or an enemy, but I have no way of knowing. We may agree or disagree, but I have a hard time figuring that out unless we can examine our thoughts and find out where they are similar, where they are different, and where either of us may be making mistakes. The person I’m arguing with may be a dragon or may be a knight in shining armor, but without logic, I have no way of finding the truth.

The truth will make you free

And this, I think reaches the foundation of Amy’s assertion. She says:

George Lucas got it dead on with the line “The Truth very much depends on your point of view”

Taken to its extreme, (which is what we have in today’s realm of “identity politics” and “advocacy journalism” and so on,) this is an utter denial of the existence of truth or of our ability to think about it.

Our perception of the truth depends on our point of view. The truth itself, reality itself, does not. We can be wrong about the truth. This is why we need tools like logic (and grammar, and physics, and economics, and so on) to keep us honest, to keep us grounded in reality. My point of view is limited, and fallible. My culture’s point of view is biased and historically conditioned. But points of view can be tested, and taught to connect to reality. Reality, truth, is the only real basis we have for speaking and working with each other.

To everything... (turn, turn, turn)

I have two main goals for this blog: First, to share practical, down-to-earth tips on growing in virtue that I glean from my own experience and what I’m learning from others; Second, to transform the world into a perfectly virtuous society.

Okay, so maybe the second goal is a little ambitious. I guess I’ll focus on the first.

I find I often get stuck, whether in a project or in a relationship or just in life, because I don’t feel like I’ve made enough progress. I feel like I’m spinning my wheels, like I’m never going to get to the destination. I wonder whether it’s worth all the effort I’ve put into it – or worth any effort at all.

It helps me to see where I actually stand in the big picture. For example, I’m working on a book, and I’m still mainly in the research phase. It’s frustrating that I don’t have many pages written, but I have to remind myself that I really shouldn’t have many pages written at this point in the project. What I should have – and do have – are lots of notes and a to-read list that I’m slowly working through.

The big picture of a virtuous life

Living a life of virtue is a much bigger project than writing a book, and the process can seem vague or unclear. The goals are abstract: happiness, ease, skill. The advice is general: practice, discern, persist. This is because virtue is a habit that applies to every action and decision a person takes, pretty much from birth to death; so it’s hard to get too specific.

That said, I do think there are three broad stages of growth in virtue, and seeing where I am in those stages helps me keep working.

The stages are:

1. Discipline
2. Experimentation
3. Mastery

Discipline

This is the beginning stage of virtue. In languages, it usually looks like memorization. In basketball, it looks like drills and free throws. In carpentry, it looks like apprenticeship.

Essentially, it is the recognition that I haven’t got what I need to do what I want to do. So I build up the skills by repetition and exercise. I “practice” the virtue. I do the sorts of things that a skilled or virtuous person does; but I recognize that it will be difficult and take concentration for me, while it is easy and second-nature for them.

I also recognize that I’ll make lots of mistakes. Mistakes are normal at this stage. Mistakes are not failures; rather, they are lessons.

Experimentation

As I gain the strength or skill in the foundational actions, I begin to make them my own. I try them out in different areas of my life. I try constructing my own sentences in the new language, or a complex shot in basketball, or building a custom cabinet.

This is where the growth is most obvious, and it can be very exciting. It’s also where failure hurts the most, because I invest each experiment with personal energy, and the stakes feel quite high.

The real lesson of this stage is evaluation, or discernment. The success or failure of a given attempt doesn’t matter nearly so much as the learning I can gain from it. Why did I succeed at this? What caused that to fail?

Mastery

In a way, this is the goal: making decisions and taking actions has become easy and I can do it without some arduous process. But growth hasn’t stopped. It hasn’t even plateaued. Rather, it has deepened.

A master is still experimenting; but at a deeper level than a less experienced person. Now, the only language I am a master of is English: but that doesn’t mean I never make mistakes, nor have I stopped trying out new turns of phrase and discerning whether they work or not. At the same time, I correct my mistakes before most other people notice them, and even my failed experiments usually succeed at some level or other.

More than this, though, a master is able to teach others. I’m able to spot, not only my own mistakes, but other people’s misspellings and grammar errors and weak expressions. I’m able to show them how to improve, to grow in their ability to speak and write English.

The temptation

The truth is, the English language is probably the only area of my life I can claim mastery of; and even then, I’m far from the greatest poet or speaker in the world. I’m always learning something new myself.

And my mastery of English doesn’t automatically make me a good writer – poetry and fiction and essay all require more than mere language. And none of that spills over into my ability to manage my time well, or be a good friend, or decide how to deal with an unjust situation.

My temptation is to rush ahead, to expect the results of a master, or even of an experimenter, when I really need to keep working on the basic discipline. I see my mistakes as failures, and I want to just abandon the whole project.

I need to remind myself that I’m right where I belong in the process as long as I don’t give up, as long as I keep moving forward.