Virtue Quest

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, (more…)

I'll just play one more level....

[A historical note: I started writing this post over a week ago... and have only now got round to finishing it. Urp!]

I think I mentioned that I’d given up computer games for Lent. I’m not much of a gamer, as gamers go. Spider solitaire and a third-party version of Risk are my favorites. Never got into the MMOGs. But I’ll be honest, those games can waste hours at a time. That’s plural hours. As in, way too many.

So, that’s a big reason I’ve been slowly growing sleep deprived since Easter Sunday. End of day comes, and I think, hey, I’m allowed my games. And next thing I know it’s 1am (or later), and I have to be up for work the next morning.

Run away! Run away!

Sure, I play games to relax. But it often becomes something more than that. It turns into an attempt to escape from my life.

Not that my life is all that rough. But I am, as I’ve said, a lazy man and I resist any intrusion on my comforts. It quickly becomes a matter of principle: if work takes time away from leisure, then play takes time away from sleep.

Sleep, of course, ultimately takes its time back … usually at the least convenient moment.

All of this could have been avoided if only I’d been a little more disciplined, a little more realistic. I just don’t have all the time I’d like to play and relax and make a fool of myself. None of us do. There’s lots of good in life, but some parts of life are just plain tough, and that’s normal.

Penance and parties

I think that’s one of the lessons of Lent: that part of life is hard work, is difficult, even painful. But the penance leads to a celebration: our work bears fruit, and there’s a greater joy than the mere escape of vegging out with a computer game.

So I’m trying to remind myself of the good things that arise from giving up computer games and other distractions – good things like a full night’s sleep and the ability to enjoy life the next day.

And when I restrict my game playing to times when I really have nothing better to do, I find I actually enjoy the game more. Who’d have thought it?

"But I shot a man in Reno..." or did I?

Have I mentioned how much I love the book I’m reading? The Sources of Christian Ethics by Servais Pinckaers. And it’s not just because the author’s last name sounds just like “pink hairs,” either!

A history lesson

The middle section of the book gives a quick history of major ideas in morality from Plato to the present. The very short version is that in the fourteenth century (that’s AD 1301-1400) an English Franciscan named William of Ockham (famous for “Ockham’s razor”) began pushing the theory that the will was more important than the intellect, and that freedom was the greatest of all goods – greater even than truth.

Ockham’s ideas caught on, and in the next couple hundred years transformed the way people thought about ethics and morality.

Instead of being about the pursuit of goodness, happiness, and excellence, morality became a struggle between freedom and law, between choice and obligation.

Don’t impose your morality on me!

There’s a lot packed into that history, but something that struck me very personally was that law is something imposed on me from outside, whereas virtue is something I develop from within myself.

Now, being a basically lazy man, I’ve spent vast portions of my life waiting for somebody else to make me do things. I’d put off homework till the teacher sat me down and watched me do it. At work, I would only get things done if the boss was around to make me look busy. Heck, even at home, I only bother to pick the place up if there’s company coming over.

In other words, I’ve been defining my freedom as avoiding the imposition of law – and I associated doing anything at all with the obligation of law. Even things I know are good for me, I need someone to “make” me do them.

The approach of virtue is altogether different. It recognizes that freedom is at the service of a person’s ability to act, to do stuff. And it is a person’s mind that figures out what’s good to do. The will follows the mind and moves us into action.

Right, totally abstract. Let me see if I can give an example.

An example

So I’m sitting on my bed looking at the mess that is my bedroom. Papers piling up on the desk. Clothes strewn all over the chairs and the corner of the bed – not yet on the floor, but that’ll come soon if I don’t do anything about it. A bowl and a glass from when I ate lunch in my room a week and a half ago.

But something in me says, I don’t have to clean my room. Nobody’s going to make me. You’re not the mom of me!

So, instead of cleaning my room, I read a book. Yep, The Sources of Christian Ethics. And it occured to me that I could choose to clean my room – not because someone was forcing me to, but because it was good to. I could clean my room simply because I enjoy having a clean room.

So I stood up and started clearing off my desk.

Those who cling to freedom will lose it

It’s ironic that, by clinging to a false freedom – refusing to let anybody “make” me clean my room – I actually lost a true freedom: the ability to clean my room and to enjoy it. But that’s what happens when a good thing gets put in the wrong place.

Freedom is not the highest good, and is not something to be grasped with both hands. If we hold it lightly, and use it to grow in virtue, then it blossoms itself and makes everything we do truly free.

It is not good for a man to be alone with a computer

Yesterday was my day off from Working for the Man this week. I slept in a bit, read some of my favorite blogs that I haven’t read for a while, watched some TV, and played a lot of those addicting online games – the stupid ones that aim as much at making you laugh or grossing you out as they do at challenging your skill.

Never mind that my room was a mess, and I had unopened mail piling up on my desk, and I had three different articles I wanted to write and/or research, and… you get the picture.

I didn’t shower till 4:45. Yeah, that’s P.M.

Stopping the vice of sloth

Call it laziness, call it procrastination, whatever you like. Among the seven deadly sins, it’s known as sloth or (for the etymologically minded) acedia. The closest twenty-first century word might be, depression. In any case, it’s the despair of anything in the world having value. And it gives rise either to doing nothing, (because nothing’s worth doing,) or compulsive activity, (because you’re distracting yourself from your fear of worthlessness.)

Anyway, I was supposed to go to a lecture on Greek culture last night with a friend (yes, I’m a nerd; get over it) but instead I asked her to come over and sit with me while I tried to get my life back on track.

It wasn’t until I had someone else there, someone to get me out of my head and the whole spiraling cycle of unanswered questions, that I was able to actually do anything.

Replacing vice with virtue

So what did I do? I mostly got my room cleaned.

Kind of an aside: I find my mental state often manifests itself in my physical state. If my thinking is muddy, I tend to let my room and general surroundings devolve into chaos. The external disorganization reinforces the internal messiness, and sometimes the best way to reset the mind is to reset my surroundings. That’s why I focused on cleaning my room.

I’m still behind on the unopened mail, but it’s within the realm of possibility now. By shifting from doing something bad to doing something good, I’ve taken a step in the right direction.

And that’s a step I couldn’t have taken without my friend’s help.

How a friend helps

My friend didn’t take much action. She helped me fold up my bedspread, and then sat and laughed at me while I scurried around my room throwing junk from one pile into another.

But she was there.

I’ve said many times that virtue is all about taking action appropriate to reality. In sloth, I was caught up in fantasy, an endless stream of “what if’s” and “why’s”. These are questions that can’t be answered by statements or by thoughts. They are questions that need to be answered by actions, by engaging the real world.

My friend, by being there, reminded me that there was a world beyond the confines of my skull. And that’s exactly what I needed yesterday.

So, Tammie, thank you very much!

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

I’ve had much fodder for reflection on procrastination in the last week or so. I’ve managed to avoid both desired and necessary tasks (such as writing or laundry) while still staying awake till the wee hours with the important work of advancing yet another level in an online game.

If there’s one thing I’m truly expert at, it’s putting off what needs doing.

The nature of my procrastination

I used to describe my procrastination as “not wanting to do something.” As in, “I don’t want to do laundry; I’d rather advance yet another level in this stupid online game.” I would think of it as a competition between an immediate pleasurable good and a remote and/or difficult good. My vice lay in preferring instant gratification.

But this past week, I noticed something. It’s not so much “I don’t want to do {X} (because I’d rather do {Y})” as it is “I want NOT to do {X}.” That is, I’m actively avoiding some activity {X} that I know is good and even necessary – even enjoyable! – and will accept nearly any substitute {Y}, even things that are less enjoyable than {X}, rather than do what is good.

I’m avoiding laundry. I’m running away from laundry.

So … am I afraid of laundry?

Procrastination and fear

I honestly don’t know what I’m afraid of. My shrink calls this, “self-destructive behavior,” which is one of the few psychological terms I comprehend immediately.

But it is absolutely clear to me that I am not “preferring” one good over another. Instead, I am fleeing headlong from something I know to be good, and using whatever excuse is at hand to aid my flight.

It seems that I am intent on sabotaging my own desire and efforts at happiness. There is something about happiness, virtue, goodness, that utterly terrifies me and that I am unwilling (as yet) to face directly.

Virtue and psychology

Psychology and virtue approach the problem from almost opposite angles. Psychology starts with understanding the problem, its roots and causes, and proceeds to prescribe a cure. Virtue, on the other hand, starts with action, and expects understanding to follow upon developing a habit of right action.

I think both approaches are valuable – at least, they have been to me. They both have given me tools to live a better life than I have before, and to hope for a life better still in the future.

But neither of them works alone. Psychology without virtue leads to navel-gazing. And virtue without psychology leads to ignoring the underlying causes so long as they can be covered by mechanical action.

I know I’m over-simplifying. Classical virtue ethics, after all, is all about the formation of one’s character – and not about the mechanical “rightness” of one’s actions. And psychology ultimately seeks a healing of the whole person, including one’s choices and behavior.

Where I am, right now

So I have no profound advice to give here. All I have today is a new recognition of where I am, and a hope that this recognition will allow me to stand fast in the face of my laundry.