The Importance of Ethos

Renaissance Humans, #76

In rhetoric, ethos refers to the credibility or ethical appeal of a speaker—how they establish trust and authority with their audience. That’s not the definition I want to discuss here.

The other definition is: the characteristic spirit, values, or guiding beliefs of a person, group, or culture, expressed in their attitudes, actions, or works.

Kevin Stark discusses ethos in his coaching work, public speaking, and retreats.

If we belong to a faith tradition, an ethos is embedded within the belief structure. But even then, not everyone follows it.

If we don’t belong to a faith tradition, an individual ethos assumes even greater importance. It serves as a compass, a centering point to keep you grounded. The winds of life will at times assail with hurricane force. Without an ethos—without a clear understanding of what you’re all about—you risk being pushed and pulled into places you don’t want to be. You may be pressured to make or go along with decisions you don’t agree with.

We know that our bodies are important—we understand the need for exercise, nutrition, and rest. We can agree this is foundational to a flourishing life.

We know that our minds are important—we understand the need to cultivate critical and creative thinking. We can agree these are essential to learning and innovation.

But somehow, many of us leave the realm of the spirit on auto-pilot. What do I mean by spirit? Mostly, our sense of the sacred, the transcendent, the mystery of reality, and what fills us with awe. For some, nature and for some, god, or both.

This realm becomes an afterthought, overlooked in the rush to focus on the physical and mental fads of the day. This is in part a hangover from our enlightenment empirical, dualist, materialist paradigm. Sometimes we don’t want to discuss it, out of a well-meaning desire to be respectful of others.

Some of us had negative experiences with a traditional faith. But in this falling away from religion, we let other things creep in and take its place. Things like the pursuit of money or celebrity, something the ancients knew a bit about. As that great prophet, David Foster Wallace, memorably said, we all worship something.

Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship — be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some infrangible set of ethical principles — is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things — if they are where you tap real meaning in life — then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It’s the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you.

Most dangerous is when we put the energy and emphasis of this domain into politics. Politics is not meant to carry this load. When we do this—when we imbue the political realm with the burdens of the spiritual, every issue becomes existential, and our opponents become not just wrong, but evil.

What can writing a personalized ethos do for you?

I’ll speak for myself here.

First, it helps me to clarify. What, exactly, do I stand for? What do I believe? What am I willing to die for?

Second, it helps me identify boundary conditions. These are places where a given situation or person are driving me toward acting against my ethos. If you don’t think this through beforehand, you might not be happy with how you decide in the heat of the moment.

Finally, it articulates a steady state of existence to aspire towards. I might not always live up to my ethos. If I fall short, I pick myself up and try again tomorrow.

My ethos is alive—it’s a living, breathing chain of words and propositions that will flow and change as I move through the stages of life. My ethos as a forty-seven year old married-with-three-kids-dude-recently-retired-from-the-military is different from the ethos of me as a thirty-five year old SEAL officer, different from the twenty-two-year-old-new-guy-hard-charging-enlisted-Frogman. I expect it to change as I learn and grow. It’s going to be a little different for each of us, because our temperament and experiences are unique.

These words become beliefs, which become actions and behavior. It’s a way to hold myself accountable to how I want to show up to life.

My Current Ethos

Wait a while. Be still. Breathe. Stillness reveals the signal amidst the noise. Leave things better than you found them—Seek to repair, refine, and renew. Keep your wits about you—Calm breeds calm. Prepare to be unprepared—uncertainty is the only certainty. Read the room. Discernment is the key to survival and understanding. Pick your poison. Every choice carries cost; wisdom lies in choosing with purpose. I am a father, son, husband, and father—these relations are core obligations before all else. I will seek mentors and be a mentor. I stand on the shoulders of those who came before—and bear the duty to lift those who come after. My attention is primary in how I understand and relate to reality. Tomorrow is not promised. Tempest Fugit, Memento Mori. Trust the process; respect the process. Surrendering to the path is not weakness but wisdom.

The biggest part of our problem in the WEIRD West today with the Polycrisis is that we don’t foreground the sacred—we don’t understand that this realm of spiritual value has to be above everything—above politics, economics, ideology, academics, and most importantly, above the material realm. My earnest, sunnily optimistic hope is that we will remember this fact in the years to come.

So give it a whirl. Try writing an ethos for yourself. You might be surprised at what you learn about yourself in the process.

And maybe, just maybe, it will help you persevere through life’s challenges with curiosity, grace, and humility.

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