“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.” —Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough For Love
Welcome to the Renaissance Humans Newsletter, where I focus on sense-making and story-telling in the turbulent twenties. The Renaissance (“rebirth,” in French) spanned from the 14th to the 17th century and marked a period of cultural, artistic, and intellectual renewal in Europe. A Renaissance Human fosters curiosity, critical thinking, and character in a journey of never-ending learning. They cultivate Mind, Body, and Spirit, in service of Community, and oriented to the Transcendentals.
Virtue’s Return?
Wait.
Where did it go?
What do I mean?
What am I even talking about?
Let’s come to terms, because words like Virtue can be very broad and mean different things to different people. Let us define it as a quality deemed morally good or desirable in a human.
This word is often used interchangeably with Value, which we can define as principles, standards, or trait that an individual or group considers important or desirable.
Here’s a Google Books Ngram showing the prevalence of each word over time. Since the 1870s onward, Values have ruled the day. I tried this several different languages, and it stayed approximately the same.
Let’s try to suss out the daylight between the two words.
The best way to highlight the difference is the following:
Virtues are Qualities—they refer to who you are.
Values are Priorities— they are what you care about.
The roots of the word Virtue harken back to the Latin Vir (man) and Virtus (moral strength, high character, goodness; manliness; valor, bravery, courage; excellence, worth). Back then, Virtus also implied public service and devotion to the state, reflecting the not always realized Roman ideal of putting the common good above self-interest.
Virtues are usually universal and timeless, reflecting a standard of conduct that cuts across cultural differences. They are habits of being, used to guide moral and ethical actions. References to Virtue, and the striving towards it, are embedded within the world’s oldest faith traditions and philosophies. Ancients cultures all over the world wanted humans to cultivate it.
What Happened to Virtue
In After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, Alasdair MacIntyre traces how the West got to the current moral landscape, and advocates for a return to Aristotelian Virtue ethics.
Like many things in the contemporary world, it goes back to the Enlightenment, where the West took a step back from Greco-Roman conceptions of Virtue. Thinkers like Kant and Hobbes began to focus on universal moral laws, individual rights, and self-interest instead. Virtue was increasingly seen as subjective or parochial compared to the universal principles of reason and natural rights.
During the Industrial Revolution, societies shifted from focusing on moral character to measurable outcomes like utility, productivity, and survival. The notion of Virtue was quaint and irrelevant in comparison to empirical progress and economic efficiency. Two traumatic two world wars challenged traditional frameworks, and thinkers of the day painted Virtue as oppressive, hierarchical, or outdated.
Then, Postmodernism strutted onto the scene, deconstructing grand narratives and casting a critical eye upon existing structures of power. Morality became viewed as culturally and socially constructed.
In our lifetimes, the rise of individualistic consumerism promoted self-expression, personal success, and material acquisition over collective or moral ideals. Virtue then, with its emphasis on self-discipline and communal values, is in direct conflict with the hyper-individualistic ethos of "living your truth" or "doing what feels right."1
The Golden Mean Between Vices is Virtue
We attribute the concept of the “Golden Mean” to Aristotle, referring to the Goldilocks Porridge that is just the right temperature, betwixt excess and deficiency. Too much courage is foolhardy rashness, while too little is cowardice.
How do you find the sweet spot? Good question. Usually modeling from others, advice more experienced humans, and reflections.
In military training, Virtue Ethics, Consequentialism, and Utilitarianism are taught to recruits and new officers. These three systems serve as lenses through which to evaluate complex, life or death decisions.
Inner Development Goals
The Inner Development Goals (IDGs) are a framework introduced to complement and support the achievement of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by fostering the necessary growth, skills, and capabilities in individuals and organizations. The IDGs emphasize the belief that personal and collective transformation is essential to address complex global challenges effectively.
Character Strengths
The following “periodic table of character” was developed by the VIA Institute on Character. Martin Seligman, creator of the academic subdiscipline of “postitive psychology”, was a driving force behind its development. Notice four of the six Virtues highlighted map to the Greek Cardinal Virtues.2 The Institute developed it through a comprehensive review of major religions, cultures, nations, and belief systems:
Both well-intentioned, I see the IDGs and the VIA Character Strengths charts as attempts to cultivate Virtue in a secular format, similiar to how we adopted Mindfulness and Yoga from the East and stripped out the spiritual components.
Adam’s Iceberg Theory of Character Development
An individual human’s character is built brick by brick, through the steady cultivation of Virtue. When a person consistently acts in accordance with them, these traits become defining aspects of their character. Values serve as a subcomponent, guiding what a human or organization prioritizes.
My take is that your character is formed by the non-linear aggregation of all the inputs into your life. For a few years I’ve been pitching this concept as an iceberg, in that a lot of the important stuff is below the surface. Moreover, your character doesn’t change overnight, but it does change. Like an iceberg, it moves slowly, the way a snake sheds skin. As we progress through life, some of our qualities change— they ebb and flow based on the factors listed below the surface.
This is part of why something like a high school reunion is so surreal. We’re the same person, but also a different person. So is everyone else from your class. We’ve grown, internally (sometimes externally, in the form of waist size….). Some things change, but some things stay the same. This is my attempt to illustrate this progression:
“Tell me your company, and I will tell you what you are.”— Taylor Swift.3
Parent’s know this instinctively. We know the influence that peer groups have on kids. But it goes for adults as well. Our human relations impact our character, so hopefully we’re bringing the standard up for the group.
Counter
The counter-argument to seeking personal excellence is…. everything is relative? We shouldn’t try to embody Virtue because it’s some old dead white dude’s ideas of how we should live?
Seriously, one counter-argument is that the concept of Virtue assumes a universal standard of morality, when many believe life is historically, culturally, and situationally context dependent. It can also lead to “Virtue-signaling,” where we performatively attack someone or something to publicly showcase our moral superiority.
Another argument would be it’s a weakness to seek to conduct your life with Virtue in a world that rewards amoral or immoral behavior. Gresham’s law is an economic concept discussing the slow debasement in quality of currency. We can make more silver coins if they are less pure—“Bad money crowds out good.” This gets at the “race to the bottom” that certain systems get into, with humans and corporations competing for attention and market share.
Finally, a focus on individual Virtue can possibly lead to ignoring larger societal or systemic injustices. This could shift responsibility for social problems from institutions to individuals, neglecting the need for collective action and systemic reform.
So What
So why, why, why, should we return to focusing on Virtue as humans, on a societal level?
What do I mean when I say Virtue’s Return?
I mean that we need to make the deliberate cultivation of Virtue more important at the societal level. Religiosity is declining in the Western World. Perhaps it will flourish once more, but as of yet, we’ve lost something essential, some glue that bound things together.
The world is complex— it has always been such.
Our span of control is limited, but what we do at the individual level is important.
We should never stop working to create a better world on a large-scale, systemic level.
One way to do that is to develop ourselves.
To prepare ourselves for the road, rather than prepare the road for us.
How do we do that?
Lots of different ways.
We show up for our obligations. We model “what right looks like” for friends and family. Volunteer in our communities. We find challenging situations that force us to grow out of our comfort zones. Learn from the voices of the past— Make friends with dead people, through their work. Train hard, in a sport, martial art, or physical endeavor.
The cultivation of Virtue makes us physically, mentally, and spiritually strong—resilient to the shocks life will throw our way.
Antifragile, even.
Currere Certamen Tuum
There are exceptions, like Ryan Holiday. In addition to evangelizing about Stoicism, he has written or is writing a book devoted to each of the Cardinal Virtues.
Prudence: Ability to make wise and thoughtful decisions. Justice: Fairness, respect, and the pursuit of the common good. Fortitude: Courage and inner strength. Temperance: Self-control and moderation.
Attributed to Sancho Panza in Don Quixote, written by Miguel de Cervantes
Large thoughts, sir. This is one treatise i will need to read again, but i wonder about how we define the context of the individual in relation to the group? Group mores define the zeitgeist of an era or age of human consciousness; we still lack an overarching mantra for the current era of "the tumultuous twenties".
In Zen and the Art of Maintenance Pirsig talks about "Quality" and relates it to the teaching of "arete" by the Sophists prior to the objectification of nature by Aristotle and Plato. Arete roughly translates to "virtue" or "fittness for function." Pirsig also tells an antecdote about the idea of a "good dog" in Lila - to illustrate that American Indians also saw fitness to function as being a critical aspect of their world view.