Virtue, according to the Greeks

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.

To start with, the virtues seem to overlap one another, or even replace one another. The obvious example is Charity trumping Justice: do you really need duty if you’re always going above and beyond duty?

At a slightly deeper level, it’s a little hard to see what’s particularly “theological” about the new virtues. After all, the goal is the same, isn’t it? All the virtues aim at making our lives more fully human, at helping us become who and what we’re meant to be. And you don’t have to believe in Jesus or have the life of the Holy Spirit in your heart to see that love is a good thing, that hope is important, even that faith – in the sense of trust and faithfulness – is central to living a properly human life.

And since I’m trying to build a career as a teacher of this stuff, shouldn’t I be able to explain it in some crystal clear way?

So here’s what I came up with.

The perfect cup

Maybe a royal Greek's coffee mug?

Now the goldsmith takes the cup to the king’s steward, who admires the cup. And the goldsmith is proud, and says, “It’s the perfect cup. You can’t get a better cup than this.”

But the steward says, “It’s excellent, no doubt. But it’s not perfect yet.”

The goldsmith is, understandably, heartbroken. “I can’t do anything more to improve it!” he cries.

“Of course you can’t,” says the steward. “But come with me.” And the steward leads the goldsmith to the palace’s cellars, where the royal vintner is maintaining the casks of wine. The steward hands the chalice to the vintner, and commands him to fill it with wine.

“Now,” says the steward, “it is a perfect cup.”

But the vintner laughs. “It’s beautiful, but it’s not perfect yet!” And he hands the cup full of wine to the steward, and tells him to drink. And as the steward tastes the wine, the vintner says, “Now that is a perfect cup!”

Perfection pointing to further perfection

So the cup itself has a kind of perfection in itself, but that perfection is directed toward the further perfections of being filled up, and being drunk from, even though it cannot achieve those perfections without something beyond itself.

Likewise, I can become a good human being in myself and by my own power; but being a good human individual is directed toward being a member of a community, toward receiving from others and giving to others. But these are not things I can accomplish without those others.

To go further, from the Catholic point of view, this shows how theologians can say that we are both created to share God’s life in heaven, and also utterly incapable of achieving that communion by our own power. A cup can’t be full unless wine is poured in from outside; but it first has to be a good cup, so that it will hold the wine that is poured in.

I hope this image is useful to someone else. It’s certainly been useful to me.

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.

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.

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.

Can you tell if this artist is moral?

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, at a certain level, it doesn’t matter who paints a picture or throws a touchdown pass; you can say, “awesome” or “lousy” about the picture or the pass itself. On the other hand, it’s a moral question whether it was a good thing for that person to paint this or to throw that pass. Moreover, no matter how amazing a painter or player someone is, it doesn’t necessarily make that person any better a person. Talent or genius are, in themselves, incapable of bestowing wisdom or happiness.

The problem of role models

So it makes perfect sense that someone who has some great gift might also be an alcoholic or drug addict, might blow all their money on gambling, or might be even be violent. There’s no necessary connection between genius and virtue.

But one of the ways human beings learn is by imitating others. So when I see someone doing something I really want to do myself, I tend to imitate everything about that person. I make that person an ideal, a model for the role I want to play. It’s easy to forget or overlook the difference between a person’s accomplishments and the actual person.

It’s even easier if that role model’s vices match with my own temptations. Someone who is promiscuous (whether apologetic, like Tiger Woods, or unapologetic, like James Bond) gives me an excuse to go easy on my own lust; someone who indulges greed, like Vick, or wrath, like Mel Gibson, lets me think that maybe I can get away with greedy or violent activity.

Now, if I want to throw a football, I can still learn a lot from Vick about how to excel at quarterbacking. If I want to be an actor, I shouldn’t ignore what Mel might have to teach. But I need to distinguish their skill at their arts from their virtue as human beings. I can learn tactics from Napoleon or rhetoric from Hitler, but I need to make sure I’m not imbibing grandiosity or insanity or inhumanity along with the expertise.

Putting art and life in right relationship

All that said, the question of whether it is good to throw a football or to attack an enemy or, for that matter, to do anything at all must come before that question of how to do it well.

When I’m watching others, I do my best to keep their work distinct from their person. I try to “judge not, lest I be judged.” I’m not perfect at this kind of detachment, but it’s my goal.

But when I’m doing work myself, whether it’s writing a book or talking with a friend, I do my best to do what is good and beneficial, and I try not to let fear or pride about how well I can do it interfere with the decision to do it or not.

As G.K. Chesterton famously said, “If a thing is worth doing, it is worth doing badly.” But it is also worth doing as well as I can manage to do it.

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.

"And sorry I could not travel both / And be one traveler, long I stood..."

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. There is simple education about basic moral principles; there is memory, which allows us to learn from our experiences; there is thoughtful consideration of implications and consequences.

But discernment is, in a way, the act that brings those all together in a concrete situation. Here and now, with these people and in these circumstances – what is really going on and, therefore, what is the good that I should pursue.

As a semi-functioning egomaniac, I tend to assume that I’m the smartest person in the room, and that whatever I think or feel is pretty equivalent to absolute truth. I need to remind myself that there are other perspectives than my own, and that there are significant limits to the information I have. I have to do the basic work of checking things out, asking challenging questions, and making sure that my decisions conform to reality rather than trying to conform reality to my opinions.

It’s not even that big a blow to my ego, if I’m diligent about it. I don’t have to assume that I’m always wrong; I just have to avoid assuming that I’m always right. I have to remember that I have only part of the picture, and that it’s okay to have to work a little to find out the truth.

Actions speak louder than words

As difficult as it sometimes is to figure out what’s going on, and to decide how to act, the real challenge for me is putting that decision into practice. Here, the virtues required are temperance and fortitude, aka, self-control and courage.

I think the reason is that I’m an introvert and a writer. I live in my head, and I work through words. The thing about thoughts and words is that they’re very safe. I can change my mind. I can revise a sentence. But I can’t take back the past. I can’t undo some action I’ve committed, even if it’s so small as saying something out loud. And that incredible impact that even the smallest action can have terrifies me.

It terrifies me into the fantasy that inaction is somehow better or safer than taking some positive action. I flee into the self-indulgent comforts of laziness or gluttony or some other distraction from my cowardice. In other words, my failure at courage leads directly to a failure at self-control.

And it even leads to a failure at prudence: because the only way to really learn from my mistakes is to have mistakes to learn from.

Discernment leading to decision

So I have to be careful both to take the time needed to make a good decision, to gather as much relevant information as I can, but also not to stall or delay in acting on a decision, with the excuse that “I’m still discerning.”

This is true in small decisions (like prioritizing today’s to-do list) and in major life decisions (like whether to marry or what career to pursue). Major decisions may require more time or effort spent in discernment, but the discernment always leads to a decision. A discernment that is meandering toward ambiguity is, by definition, going in the wrong direction.

Like all virtue, discernment is about reality: seeing reality clearly, and acting accordingly.

You've got to love a man who loves his mother

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, assertions that have been taken for granted by pretty much all economists since. The first of them is that labor is the source of wealth.

Now, there is no denying that labor is one of the sources of wealth; but Smith treats it as if it is the sole and entire source of wealth. He claims that “The abundance or scantiness of this supply [of goods], too, seems to depend” on the productivity of the laborers. While it is true that there is no wealth without labor, it is equally true that labor must have some thing to labor upon to generate a valuable product. Wealth, or value, is not disconnected from the real stuff of the world; it is not created ex nihilo.

He then demonstrates by multiple examples how a division of labor leads to an increase in productivity. This gives him opportunity to reveal a couple other assumptions that disturb me. Consider the following sentence:

First, the improvement of the dexterity of the workman necessarily increases the quantity of work he can perform; and the division of labour, by reducing every man’s business to some one simple operation, and by making this operation the sole employment of his life, necessarily increases very much the dexterity of the workman.

Now, I’m a homebody: I don’t get out much and am perfectly happy to ignore the parts of the world I’m not too interested in. This is not one of my virtues. But even left to my vicious insularity, I want something more than “one simple operation” to fill up the “employment of my life.” I have no desire to be “reduced” to such mechanical production.

More than that, I find Smith has a very low opinion of work. He separates work entirely from leisure and sets the two in utter mortal enmity with each other. For Smith, labor is something to be exchanged rather begrudgingly for the “necessaries, conveniences, and amusements of human life.” Its value is only in that I’d rather not do it, and will pay money to have somebody else do it for me. In other words, there’s no possibility that I might have a life’s work, some labor of love to which I dedicate myself and which gives meaning and value to my days.

Yet another assertion:

As it is the power of exchanging that gives occasion to the division of labour, so the extent of this division must always be limited by the extent of that power, or, in other words, by the extent of the market.

I have trouble with the ideas that the “power of exchanging” is an equivalent phrase to “the extent of the market.” I think there is a great deal more involved with the “power of exchanging” than simply how many people are interested in making exchanges, or even how many different kinds of exchanges there can be. For example, the power to exchange is limited also by what I have that I am willing or able to exchange, and by my responsibilities to my family and community.

It’s not all bad

It’s easy to be critical, and I don’t have a better theory of economics to propose – not yet, at least. As I said, I’m still educating myself. But I wanted to note an excellent distinction Smith makes, which is easy to forget or overlook.

The word value, it is to be observed, has two different meanings, and sometimes expresses the utility of some particular object, and sometimes the power of purchasing other goods which the possession of that object conveys. The one may be called “value in use;” the other, “value in exchange.”

It seems to me that many problems arise because we confuse these two distinct kinds of value, or because we treat “exchange value” as the real value of a thing, when it is largely dependent on “use value.”

More thoughts to come, as I continue reading. If you have any insights or recommendations, I heartily welcome them!

A lot on my mind

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: what is possible? and what, among those possibilities, is the good most worth pursuing?

This past week, my priorities have largely been made for me. Health, family, sanity. Not quite at the level of basic survival, but pretty close. I didn’t feel like I had many choices available to me. In other words, my possibilities were pretty limited.

That’s okay, sometimes. The trick is to not let it become a habit. At some point, I have to get back some measure of control over my time and my priorities. Today, I’m starting to get a little of that control back. If I use it well, I’ll continue to gain more control over my time as next week progresses. Here’s hoping!

Politics! Not really a topic change

I live in a vote-by-mail county, so I cast my ballot last week. But all the news coverage on this year’s elections also hit this theme of possibilities and priorities and control. There was a lot of rhetoric about the Republicans “taking back control” of the House and Democrats “fighting for control” of the Senate and so on.

I would love to see our whole government shake off the “control” that’s being exerted by the so-called “special interest” groups, and to return to a focus on the common good. It’s a beautiful dream, but I don’t know how possible it is.

I mentioned how, in my own life, external forces sometimes take control of my time and energy. And sometimes, that’s appropriate. But the normal way of human nature is for each individual to make his or her own decisions – yes, always in the context of a community, but in such a way that no one really can make a decision for me. I am the only one who has ultimate authority, real control over my actions. That is why they are morally praiseworthy or blameworthy.

If I refuse to step up to that responsibility, if I neglect to set priorities for my own life, I can only do so by handing control over to some external force: maybe it’s a manipulative acquaintance, or maybe it’s whatever ad is on TV, or maybe it’s the latest book I’ve read. It’s my decision to hand over control to someone or something else.

I suggest the same is true with government. We have cast our votes. That’s great. We’ve handed direct control over to the various people who won their races. But the government remains our responsibility – each American citizen’s. Voting is not enough to absolve us of our responsibility to govern ourselves as a nation and as citizens of local communities.

A practical suggestion

I’ve mentioned how I’m trying to get my own life into better order: I’m setting priorities, keeping a schedule, asking others to hold me accountable. How can we do the same sorts of things with our government?

Well, I notice that whenever some bill is being debated, the various forces pro and con ask us to write our legislators and tell them to pass or reject whatever is being proposed.

But why wait for lobbyists to enlist our aid? Why only write in when they tell us to? And why only write in about particular issues?

Here is my own political resolution: I’m going to try to open a conversation with my own elected officials. I don’t care what party they are – I don’t trust either major party. But if I write a genuine letter, saying what my priorities are for our society, and asking them to explain their own thinking to me, then there’s a chance at real influence beyond the ballot in the box every couple years. If I keep writing, say, once a month, then maybe a genuine conversation can grow out of it.

I’ll post whatever letters I write to the blog. I figure, the worst that could happen is that I could learn something new. And learning is never a bad thing.