Virtue Quest

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…)

First off: I’ll be speaking this Sunday morning at Blessed Sacrament Parish in Seattle. The topic: Virtue in Everyday Life.

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:

Foundation	Form	Strength
Prudence: natural foundation – discern good and evil	Justice: natural form – give what belongs to another	Fortitude/Courage: overcome external obstacles
		Temperance/Self-control: overcome internal obstacles
Faith: supernatural foundation – remain in trusting relationship	Love: supernatural form – give oneself for another’s good	Hope: direct life toward God with purpose and meaning

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…”

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? (more…)

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. (more…)

I had been hearing about the Christmas Tree bomber in Portland all weekend, and was very glad to finally hear somebody mention the word “entrapment.” But it’s not just Mohamed Osman Mohamud I’m concerned about.

I’m worried about an FBI team who contacts an isolated individual who’s failing to make contact with jihadist radicals, teaches him how to make a bomb, helps him to plan and carry out an attack, and chooses a large and public venue to arrest him.

I’m worried about an Attorney General who claims “that if Mohamud hadn’t come in contact with the FBI, he ‘would have made his plans tragically real.’”

And I’m worried about mass media outlets that just repeat the line that this is a plot that has been “thwarted” or “foiled.”

For the record, it sounds to me like this Mohamud fellow may actually have become a threat on his own someday. He very well may have warranted observation by the FBI. But the way the Bureau pursued this investigation sounds very much like entrapment for Mohamud and fear-mongering for the rest of us.

“Look!” says the FBI & co., “here’s a home-grown terrorist you should be afraid of! It could be anybody! What’s a little inappropriate pat-down compared to the risk of being bombed while lighting a Christmas Tree? What’s a little warrantless wiretapping or email surveillance next to, you know, a west coast 9-11?”

What would have been wrong with just watching this kid, and seeing what he does on his own? At least then, he might have actually led investigators to a real terrorist cell, and could have led to some genuine intelligence of real plots to commit terrorist acts. And, when arrested, he might have been guilty of a real crime.

As it is, he’s just become the solitary target of an FBI plot to … to what? boost their own ratings? I hope not. To foil and thwart terrorist attacks? Not very effectively.

I want good security and I want active intelligence gathering on terrorist activities. But that’s not what this was. At best, this was a colossal mistake. If anyone in the FBI is reading this, please, don’t make the same mistake again.

I’m not much of a sports fan, but I heard a story on the radio the other day about Michael Vick, the quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles who took a break from football in federal prison but now is a contender for MVP of the NFL. The story revolved around the question of whether it was okay to cheer for Vick and the Eagles, to acknowledge Vick’s incredible skill as a player, in light of his less-than-upright past. The reporters admitted to a certain pressure to portray great athletes as morally good people.

In a similar way, I have friends who tell me that they just can’t watch some actors in any movie or TV show because they know too much about that person’s private life.

Thomas Aquinas points out, however, that art and morality are distinct categories – and for the sake of argument I’m including “sports” as a kind of art. The difference is that art is good or bad specifically in the work itself, whereas moral acts are good or bad in the act of working.

In other words, (more…)

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, (more…)

Discernment is the process of seeing something more clearly. The reason to see something more clearly is to know how to act toward whatever is seen.

Pretty simple, right?

It’s one of those “easier said than done” things. There are two obstacles, at least two that I’ve encountered in my own life:

1. Admitting that I don’t see things very clearly to begin with
2. Actually acting on what I’ve discovered to be true

Seeing clearly

In terms of virtues, discernment falls under the virtue of prudence or wisdom: it is the skill of looking closely at oneself and the world to find a clear understanding of what one is to do.

There are other aspects of prudence, too. (more…)

So, as I mentioned in the comments below, I’m an economic and political ignoramus, and I’m essentially live-blogging my self-education. So, of course, Adam Smith’s classic The Wealth of Nations is on my reading list; I’m working through it now.

Now, I’ve been told that Smith isn’t quite the die-hard laissez faire 100% regulation free super-capitalist my mother warned me about. I’m advised that he’s quite a moral guy, and sees an important role for government regulation in the marketplace, but that those parts come later in the book. I’m happy to keep reading.

But there are a few major red flags popping up in the first few chapters, and I thought I’d mention them because they all have one thing in common: they put things ahead of people.

Unwarranted assumptions

Smith makes a number of assertions at the beginning of his work, (more…)

So the family matter has taken up more time than I expected. Such is life. But I’m adapting, trying to do what good I can with the limited time and energy and other resources available.

And that’s a big chunk of what all of life is about. It’s what I was trying to do when I had a cold. It’s what every business does in making a budget. And someone famously defined politics as “the art of the possible.”

The virtue of prudence is, of course, all about making just that kind of judgment call: (more…)