Virtue Quest

More goodness from Pinckaers’ The Sources of Christian Ethics!

Following St. Thomas Aquinas, Pinckaers gives three basic stages of growth in virtue:

1. Beginner / childhood
2. Proficient / adolescent
3. Perfect / mature adult

Each of these stages essentially follows the growth in freedom of a person, and challenges the person to become more free in his or her life. Here’s how each stage works:

Beginning in virtue

The beginner needs to learn how the world works. This is the stage of getting to know – to know oneself, to know one’s abilities, and to know the world and the moral basis of one’s life in the world. The primary work of this stage is learning or, to use a more traditional word, discipline.

Now, it strikes us that discipline is something opposed to freedom, but when the freedom we seek is to live a fully human life, we start out in need of knowledge and in need of practice. Human beings need to be raised and trained and taught.

The goal of education is to lead the child to understand (and the educator must first understand this himself) that discipline, law, and rules are not meant to destroy his freedom, still less to crush or enslave him. Their purpose is rather to develop his ability to perform actions of real excellence by removing dangerous excesses, which can proliferate in the human person like weeds stifling good grain, and by guarding him against unhealthy errors that could turn him aside and jeopardize his interior freedom.

Moreover, this is only the initial stage of growth, just as practicing scales is the beginning and not the end of playing the piano.

Progress in virtue

The second stage involves internalizing the rules by seeing and acting on the reason the rules exist in the first place. It involves a certain testing of the rules – not to destroy them, but to understand them, just as a pianist might try out different formations of a chord or ask what happens when you add this note to it. This is the stage where virtues become, not actions that one follows because they’re imposed, but a kind of “second nature,” an ability that really is one’s own.

Virtue is not a habitual way of acting, formed by the repetition of material acts and engendering in us a psychological mechanism. It is a personal capacity for action, the fruit of a series of fine cations, a power for progress and perfection.

In other words, freedom and goodness cease to be mechanical exercises and become organic parts of us.

Perfect virtue

First off, Pinckaers warns (and I warn with him) that “perfect” here doesn’t mean the end of the road; rather, it means the fulfillment, and the completion of development. Probably a better word for today would be “mature” but St. Thomas used “perfect” so Pinckaers explains what he meant by it.

We can characterize this stage by two features: mastery of excellent actions and creative fruitfulness.

This is the ultimate goal: to be able to do whatever we do well, and to do it creatively. This is what Thomas Edison meant by saying that “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.” The virtuous person has gained the freedom and the ability to bring inspiration to reality in spite of the difficulty or obstacles in the way.

This does not mean the end of learning or of growth; rather it means that learning and growth continue almost naturally, without great effort – because the virtuous person has learned how to learn, and has rooted him- or herself in good soil for growth. Virtue has become a stable foundation for the freedom to do what really leads to happiness.

And that’s a goal worth striving for!

I suppose Valentine’s day is as good a time as any to talk about lust.

The other day, I was working with a client who happened to be a good-looking woman about my age, and I found myself tripping over my words trying to be witty, trying to impress her, wondering how I could shift the conversation away from professional topics and toward more … intimate sharing.

I also made a greater-than-average number of typos. And I completely forgot about the main question she’d come to resolve. So I had to scramble to correct a fairly major error. And she walked away, doubtless thinking me a fool.

Such are the wages of lust.

The difference between love and lust

The thing about my actions and reactions is that they really had nothing to do with her. They had to do with my response to her physical appearance. That’s the core of lust: it clings to the surface and cannot survive at any depth at all. This is because lust is all about pleasing the senses – both the physical senses, like sight and touch, and the psychological senses, like self-esteem and emotions.

Love, on the other hand, considers the other person first and foremost as a person. It doesn’t disregard the surface or the appearance, but it seeks the fulness of life that animates that surface, that expresses that appearance. Love also recognizes that the other person is looking back, is seeing the appearance that I show. So love reflects the beauty and goodness it sees back to the beloved. Love treats the other person as someone to be served, not as an object that serves my desires.

Love as a virtue

Love has many levels and kinds and degrees. I love my friends. I love my mother. I love my neighbor. If I had a sweetheart, I would love her. These all are different kinds of love, and some loves are “greater” or “stronger” than others.

But what they all have in common is that they seek what is good in the one I love. When love finds something good in someone, it rejoices. When it finds a lack of good, it tries to help or remedy that lack. But love always focuses on the good of the other.

And that takes practice: sometimes, the good in another is not all that obvious. My brother and I are so different, that I spent several years just trying to avoid him, because I couldn’t see anything good in him. For that matter, a spouse’s annoying habit, or a friend’s inconvenient imposition, or even just one’s own bad mood can blind us to what is good in those we love.

At times like that, I’ve found the best thing to do is stop, look at the person, and look specifically for any little thing to appreciate. It will always be there, if you’re willing to search for it.

One of my friends is a young priest at my parish, Fr. Raphael Mary. He preached the homily this morning on the Beatitudes – Luke’s version, with the “woes” as well as the “blesseds”.

He started with Krispy Kreme donuts. (No, I won’t link to their site!) He described an occasion on which he thought such a donut too good to pass up. Repeatedly. At least seven times. And as he lay on a sofa with a stomach-ache, seven donuts congealing into a blob of greasy sugar in his belly, a friend asked him, “Why did you do that?”

Temporary and permanet goods

Fr. Raphael Mary’s answer was, basically, “It seemed like a good idea at the time.” In other words, he chased after the immediate pleasure rather than the long-term good.

He then used TV as another example. While you’re actively watching a show, he said, it gives you pleasure. But when the show is over, that pleasure doesn’t last. In fact, it leaves you feeling rather empty.

Now, this is where I have to disagree with my friend.

No, I don’t disagree that television is all-too-often a superficial pleasure – if it’s a pleasure at all. Actually, I disagree that it’s something that disappears as soon as it’s over, or as soon as one leaves it behind.

Those images, those thoughts, those repetative themes from the soundtrack all stay with me long after the show is gone. They sit in my mind like the remnants of those donuts sat in Fr. Raphael Mary’s gut.

And, to some extent or other, so does everything else. At a bare minimum, the time spent on an activity – whether skiing or feeding the poor or napping in front of a “Gilmore Girls” marathon – has fixed itself permanently in one’s past. It has become part of one’s history, and no one can undo what has been done.

There may be other effects that last beyond the event as well: one can never not cheat on that one test, or take back those words to one’s mother, or not eat those seven donuts. We can’t change the past, and we have to deal with the ramifications of the past in the present and the future.

Real and apparent goods

Our actions and choices don’t just change the world around us; they change our very selves. They form habits. I become accustomed to eating lots of donuts, or to watching telly for three straight hours, or to lying to my friends, or to ….

This is why the real question is not, How long will the pleasure last? The question is, Is this pleasure really good?

Maybe more accurately, the question is, What kind of good is this thing that I desire? Is it an important good? Is it something that will help me be more myself? Or is it only good for a part of me – my tongue, or my eyes, or my self-image? Is it good for a part, but bad for the whole of me?

These are the questions that lead to virtue.

I’d been having a pretty good month, till about the middle of this past week. I’ve been waking up on time, getting work done, keeping in touch with friends, praying regularly, and so on … but little things slowly began to slip. So, I haven’t really made my bed since Wednesday. I came in late to work a couple days this week – only a couple minutes late, but definitely late. And these past couple days off, I’ve spent more time watching telly and playing computer games than reading or writing, which is what I had planned to do.

The demon despair

Now, my tendency when I find myself slipping into bad habits is just to give up the fight.

That’s because I’m (first) lazy and (second) a coward and (third) prone to depression. Big whoop. I know plenty of people who can identify with those vices, and I know I’m not alone. But that doesn’t make it okay.

So, the question is, what to do about it. How can I overcome the temptation to despair?

I think the first step is to recognize that this isn’t just a minor foible. This is self-destructive behavior in a very literal sense. Despair is just a non-committal form of suicide, and I need to recognize it as a real and present attack on my life and happiness.

Doesn’t matter that the attack comes from within. I need to recognize it as a threat, or else I won’t meet it with the right attitude.

The monk’s solution

I heard a story once about a guy who walked past a monastery every day, always longing to be like the monks inside but thinking he wasn’t holy enough. One day, he met a monk who was sweeping the sidewalk. He asked the monk what he did in the monastery.

The monk said, “We fall down, then get back up. We fall down, then get back up.”

I always thought of that as a smarmy way of saying, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” But I’m starting to take it a little more literally: think of a boxing match. If you get knocked down, you stand back up. You struggle to your feet by whatever means necessary. If you don’t the fight is over. You’ve lost.

I’ve read enough works by mystics to know that “spiritual warfare” is not just a metaphor for them. I think it can’t just be a metaphor for me, either.

A declaration of war

Therefore I’m declaring war on my vices. I may not win, but my plan is, like Galadriel, to “fight the long defeat.” Or like Rocky, to “go the distance.”

After all, virtue is not about perfection. It is about excellence. It is about settling for nothing less than one’s best.

One of my friends describes her life as “the daily grind.” She’s worried that she doesn’t have the joy or enthusiasm for things that she used to. She feels tied down, restricted by the work of just maintaining stuff in her life: job, home, relationships, and so on.

My experience is totally different: I’ve been bouncing all over the place so much in the past few years that I’m soaking up stability and regularity wherever I can find it. It’s comforting to me to punch the clock at work, to have a morning routine, to do things like fill the car with gas or hit the grocery store on the way home.

But I have some distance from the chaos of the last couple years, well, I’ll probably get tired of the daily grind myself. And maybe my friend will find some new inspiration in her life.

The only constant is change

The trick is to find some way to happiness, some way to excellence, regardless of mood or life circumstances or whatever. And this is where virtue comes in.

Virtue is constancy in the midst of change.

Virtue holds up the goal, the ideal, the good, and shows the path to strive for it. The good, happiness, never changes; even though the way to pursue it often does.

Sometimes it takes courage; sometimes it takes self-restraint. Sometimes it means stepping back to a more objective distance; and sometimes it means jumping into immediate action.

Sometimes virtue is sticking with a person through thick and thin, even when you don’t feel like it. And other times, virtue is making a change, even when you’re overwhelmed by fear.

How to know the right thing to do

It’s easiest to see right and wrong in the rear-view mirror: hindsight, as they say, is 20/20. But there are a few things we can do in the moment to make better decisions – even if they’re not always the best:

1. Know the goal: take some time regularly to sort through your priorities. Check your list with someone you trust. Give yourself a clear, concrete image of what you’re aiming for
2. Take inventory: before making a difficult decision, look around and double-check the facts of the situation. Ask if there’s anything you’re missing. Ask if you’re assuming something that isn’t really there.
3. Listen to your heart: if something feels very right, or very wrong, there’s got to be a reason for it. Look for that reason. Don’t dismiss it.
4. Follow your head: your heart can give you good information, but it makes lousy decisions. Leave the actual decision to your reason. Ask yourself how you can move toward your goal, toward happiness, toward excellence, in this situation here and now. And, if you’ve gathered all the facts, trust your reasoning. Do what you have concluded is good, no matter how you feel about it.

For me, it’s the last two that always are the hardest. My feelings cloud my thinking; or my thinking pushes down my feelings. But I keep trying to learn from my mistakes, to go back and try to do better next time. Even small progress is better than no progress at all.

I hate to give an unconfirmed quotation, but the sentiment is apt. My spiritual director told me that someone once asked Robert Frost how he became such a great poet. He answered:

The first thing I do in the morning is to make my bed.

Unfortunately, I haven’t found a reliable citation. Even so, it’s worth noting that great virtue has its seed and root in small virtue.

My doctor tells me that it’s not uncommon to feel drowsy in the mid-afternoon, and that either a little snack or a bit of exercise is a decent alternative to a nap. For myself, the soporific tendencies begin around 3:00pm, and a snack will at best delay the lowering of the eyelids.

But today has been a particularly productive day in a number of ways. I solved a tricky network problem for my uncle’s insurance business, reviewed my parents’ taxes from last year in preparation for filing this year’s, finished reading Book IX of Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics, and accomplished a few other little household tasks.

By three in the afternoon, I was certainly feeling sleepy, but I also wanted to keep rolling on this productivity streak. At the very least, I wanted to write a blog entry … but I knew if I sat down at my computer I’d sooner or later drift off into the Land of Nod.

Prudence to the rescue!

So I took stock of my situation. I was sleepy, but not really tired; I wanted to get some more work done, but didn’t have the energy. I wasn’t hungry. I wasn’t even feeling particularly lazy, for once!

Moreover, I’d just been talking with my mother about the taxes, and I knew that both she and I were trying to incorporate exercise as a regular part of our lives.

So I asked her, “How about a walk around the neighborhood?”

As we walked, she asked about this blog and I said that I was planning to write today about the relationship of prudence and justice. I described prudence as the virtue of being in touch with reality, with one’s place in that real situation, and making decisions in accordance with one’s nature.

And it only occurred to me at that point that I had used exactly that process in deciding to ask my mom to take a walk with me.

An action and then a habit

For a long time, I’ve been thinking about prudence, thinking about how to practice it, thinking about how it fits in with the other virtues, thinking … thinking …

Today is the first time I’ve actually caught myself being prudent. I don’t think it’s bragging to say that I’m happy about it. After all, it’s a fairly small act of prudence, and it’s still a long ways from being “second nature” to me. But every action helps to build the habit; and I’m going to remember this little action when I’m faced with future temptations to nap or to do anything else that avoids facing the real world.

After all, I know that I can do it, at least in a small way. And if I can do it, you certainly can as well!

So far, this has got to be my favorite line from Aristotle’s Nichomachian Ethics:

The self-indulgent man, as was said, is not apt to repent…. (VII.8)

Ah! How true! But then, is there any hope for me?

Temperance, self-indulgence, and incontinence

Aristotle is contrasting the self-indulgent person with the incontinent person. Here’s the difference: while both are intemperate, that is, both pursue pleasure or avoid pain to excess, the incontinent person is either overwhelmed by desire or is just plain thoughtless; the self-indulgent person, on the other hand, has made a deliberate decision to pursue pleasure or avoid vice in some excessive way.

The incontinent person just grabs that extra chocolate on impulse; the self-indulgent person decides that a diet of chocolate is really what’s best for him.

Now, Aristotle says that … well, I’ll let him speak for himself:

Now, since the incontinent man is apt to pursue, not on conviction, bodily pleasures that are excessive and contrary to the right rule, while the self-indulgent man is convinced because he is the sort of man to pursue them, it is on the contrary the former that is easily persuaded to change his mind, while the latter is not. For virtue and vice respectively preserve and destroy the first principle, and in actions the final cause is the first principle.

Okay, maybe he’s not entirely clear. Here’s how I read it. The incontinent person knows he has done something wrong, but the self-indulgent person is convinced of a lie: that he is acting rightly. So, it is easier for the incontinent person to admit wrongdoing and to take steps to reform his behavior (such as keeping the chocolate under lock and key) than it is for the self-indulgent person who sees no need for reform.

This is because the whole goal of virtue is to bring us in touch with reality, while vice is wrong and harmful exactly because it distorts or denies reality. (That’s roughly what Aristotle is talking about with the whole “first principle” stuff.)

Repent! Repent!

I think one of the reasons this line caught my attention was because I so strongly associate the word “repent” with religious preaching. But Aristotle is using it in its basic meaning: to feel sorrow (or penitence) for what one has done. And this sorrow is the foundation of a “change of mind”, which could also be translated by another word with religious overtones: conversion.

And yet, this is exactly what Aristotle suggests: if you’ve done something wrong, be sorry and change your behavior. Don’t make excuses. Don’t beat yourself up, either. Just keep in touch with reality, and try to correct your mistakes.

Because, while this means feeling sorry every so often, it also leads to a fuller and deeper happiness: the happiness of being fully human, fully yourself.

If only I could remember that every time I pass the candy dish….

You do remember Tetris, don’t you?

Of course you do. Those blocks keep coming, faster and faster… at a certain point I would just give up and let them stack like a skyscraper. But apparently there were Tetris experts who could play for twelve hours straight! Cuh-ray-zee.

So I was thinking about how to explain the process of building a habit, and it was Tetris that came to mind.

The blocks don’t stop!

In real life, as in Tetris, new situations keep appearing and they have to be fit into life as it is, whether we like it or not. There’s no choosing what shows up on the horizon. And there’s no stopping it. Life will keep coming at us, at a steady pace of twenty-four hours every day, for the rest of our lives.

But, there are ways to deal with it, to keep from being overwhelmed, even to use the strangely-shaped situations that life throws our way to the good. It’s like clearing a line in Tetris: when we arrange the different parts of life into the proper order, they cease to cause problems.

And, as we practice arranging our lives, we get better at it. Maybe we even begin to see new “problems” rather as “opportunities” to fill a gap, or to discover a new way of ordering life.

Perseverance is a virtue

Now, I’ve already mentioned that, in playing the game, I eventually give up out of frustration. I have to admit that I’m tempted to do the same in my life. I have friends who always get going whenever the going gets tough. I admire them tremendously. For myself, I tend to avoid the situation, to procrastinate, or even to hide.

That’s because, at root, I’m basically a coward. And perseverance is a kind of sub-virtue of fortitude. It’s the courageous act of facing every obstacle as it comes, no matter how many obstacles there are. It’s the refusal to surrender in the face of ongoing adversity.

Growing in perseverance

So here’s what I’m doing to overcome my cowardice: I’m setting a schedule. I’m pacing myself. I’m writing a to-do list, and putting the tasks in order of priority. In short, I’m taking a little time to strategize, to arrange my life as it exists, and to plan out where those incoming events can fit into it.

But just as importantly, I’m giving up the fantasy that someday it will all become easy. I think that’s the ultimate root of my fear: I think that life ought to be easy, and I’m frustrated when my dreams don’t arrive on a silver platter.

That is a lie. It’s time to face the fact that, whatever I might want, life will keep coming at me. I can’t put the game away; it’s not a game. But I can start looking at life as a series of opportunities rather than as a series of problems. I can look for how new situations can fit into some kind of order – even if it’s an order I hadn’t planned on.

If you want to find new ways to bring order to your life, too, please join the quest for virtue! We can learn from each other, and grow together!

Yesterday, I answered Sarah’s question by saying that virtue is a good habit. That’s pithy and fits neatly on a bumper sticker; but it’s not nearly the whole story. I wrote a little about it being good, but today I want to write about virtue being a habit.

Rinse, and repeat!

I’ve heard various theories on how to form a habit. Some say, repeat an action for thirty consecutive days, and it will become a habit. Others say, repeat an action one hundred times, and it will become a habit. Others give variations with different numbers. But all focus on the repetition.

Now, I’ll grant that if you do something the same way enough times, you’ll develop a kind of habit: a sort of physical habit, like a proper golf swing – or so my dad tells me. But I don’t think this is quite the kind of habit that makes a virtue. Nor do I think it’s the easiest way to develop a habit.

Purposeful repetition

In my own experience, the ways I’ve developed habits most quickly and easily all have one thing in common: I had a strong sense of purpose when I repeated the action. When I was in the habit of daily exercise, there was a particular girl I wanted to impress. Now that I’m not trying to impress her, my habit of exercise has slipped away.

This cuts both ways. In fact, it helps explain why I develop habits of vice so much more quickly than habits of virtue. When I eat that extra bowl of ice cream, mmm! I get an instant affirmation of how nummy ice cream is. Meanwhile, when I’m trying to develop virtuous habits, I need to constantly remind myself why I’m doing it.

All you need is love!

I didn’t choose the example of trying to impress a girl at random. I was in love, and that love motivated me beyond myself. That is, after all, what true love will do: move me to some good beyond myself.

The trick, then, to developing virtuous habits is to fall in love with the results of virtue. Maybe it’s just to remind yourself of what it is you most love. Maybe it’s to draw out the connections between some virtuous action and the object of your love.

What I’m trying now (and I’ll let you know how this goes) is to listen carefully to the people I love most, and who love me best. I’m listening for what they think I’m doing well, and what they think I need to improve at. I’m doing this because I’m awfully good at convincing myself that I’m just fine, or that I’m utterly worthless. My friends give me a reality check.

Because that’s another thing love does: like every virtue, it puts me in touch with reality.

If you want a little help from some friends, join the quest! I know that we will grow more together than separately.