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Dolorosa
Extreme Fanatic   Posts: 856 Registered: 31/12/1969 Status: Offline
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posted on 8/6/2004 at 10:01 PM |
I'm gonna have to say humor. A lot of other vitures are cool, but humor is
really the only one that matters to me. The ability to laugh, either
outloud or however else and to make others do likewise has to be there or
everything else just kinda goes sour. I can even zen a total asshole if
they're funny.
____________________
In the valley of the Goats, the Goat Fucker is King
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Schizo
Extreme Fanatic  Posts: 897 Registered: 31/12/1969 Status: Offline
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posted on 9/6/2004 at 03:04 AM |
Ooooooooh, Mono, I LOVE that word "obfuscate"! Mmmm, big words!
Down to business...
I would like to narrow down the virtue of honesty. How about honesty to
one's self? I can see the difficulties about perfect honesty to other
people (your example of the fat, ugly person you hate), but what about
being perfectly honest to yourself? So many people operate under strong
self-delusion, and get themselves into a lot of trouble. They exaggerate
their strengths and minimize their weaknesses, which is dangerous.
But consider the person who is brutaly honest with themselves? They admit
when they are wrong, which is the first step to healing the problem, and
they know when they are right. They can guard their weaknesses and push
forward with their strengths.
I have often heard the quality of honesty likened to a sword. Perhaps a
scalpel would be a good comparison, also. The hand of the surgeon cutting
out disease. But if it was left just at that, an open wound, new disease
would creep in. Something more is needed. I would like to propose
compassion, as the surgeon's bandage, covering the wound of honesty.
Compassion with one's self, and others. To heal the wounds caused by the
exposure and removal of disease.
Be gentle as you make your incisions of truth, target only what is
necessary, and take the time to bandage and heal with the quality of
compassion, and I would say that you are a man of great virtue.
And yes, this is something I try to practice. ____________________
"You can tell by the scars on my arms and the cracks in my hips and the
dents in my car and the blisters on my lips that I'm not the carefullest of
girls." - Dresden Dolls, "Girl Anachronism"
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IamSquid
Extreme Fanatic  Posts: 658 Registered: 27/5/2002 Status: Offline
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posted on 9/6/2004 at 04:44 AM |
Just out of curiosity, Mono, it sounds to mee as though yoo began this
thread because yoo are feeling pessimistic about those qualities which
people consider to be virtues. Is this the case?
If so my statement about that all things come with both desirable and
undesirable implications is my position on the matter. ____________________
i wanted to die, and then it progressed into wanting everyone else to
die so i could watch, and then me die.
-ickgirl
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Rogue
Member   Posts: 199 Registered: 31/12/1969 Status: Offline
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 posted on 9/6/2004 at 05:49 AM |
My worthless tuppence here...
I would have to go with a vague quality that I call "reasonability" for
lack of a better word. It is basically being honest and direct without
being knowingly harmful, and having realistic and, well, reasonable
expectation of oneself and others.
For example, the "fat/ugly/hate you" incident, although terribly amusing
when it happened, was harmful despite being honest. The same sentiment
could have been paraphrased for lessened impact, but not responding to the
preceding challenge would not have been "reasonable" because it would not
have been honest. It's a delicate balance, honesty versus what people want
to hear or can handle hearing.
Reasonability, to me, also includes things like keeping promises, helping
those who are called friends when needed, accepting help from those who are
called friends when necessary, and generally being reliable or announcing
formally one's unreliability.
Being reasonable includes not being too strict with what is considered
friendship while at the same time not letting oneself be abused by those
who purport to be friends. Same goes for family, as it has been my
experience that family will prevail upon an individual more unreasonably
than will an alleged friend or stranger.
Perhaps this is better called Integrity or Compassion or something else,
but it seems to me to be simply being reasonable.
Rudyard Kipling's "If" really sums this up better than I could hope to do,
and I have carried this poem with me for seven years as a reminder of what
I hope to be one day.
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Monolycus
Fanatic   Posts: 580 Registered: 31/12/1969 Status: Offline
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posted on 10/6/2004 at 05:01 AM |
Looks like I need to drink less and respond more.
Dolo: I think Benito Mussolini would never have been deposed if he always
appeared in public wearing a big, red nose and floppy shoes. The armies
would march in and get squirted by the flower on Mussolini's lapel and all
would be forgiven. Until, of course, Patton found himself on the business
end of a joy buzzer during the conciliatory handshake. Never underestimate
the power of humour.
Schiz: Now, now. It's not the size of one's words that count. It's how
they use 'em. But anyway. I have thought about this, and I can see no
detriment whatsoever to being honest with oneself. I am not sure which
heading I would throw that under (possibly Alugarde's suggestion of
"introspection"), but as far as I am concerned, you have hit upon something
that I would have no problem listing under the virtue column. Vielen
Dank!
Squid: It really isn't that I am feeling particularly pessimistic about
things. I have just been doing a great deal of meditating on
self-improvement. I have run across list after list of "virtues" lately
(from Benjamin Franklin to the Dalai Lama), and I am not best pleased with
any of them because they either presume complete agreement with them or
they are only applicable in a limited number of situations. As I tried to
state before, a genuine virtue should always be a virtue for all time and
for everyone and this has caused me some pause for reflection. I thought
it might help to get some input here, and it really has.
Rogue: I also don't disagree with you, except that the term "reasonable" is
prone to any number of subjective interpretations. In the same way that
almost everyone agrees that there is a great, unwashed and profoundly
stupid majority, it is practically impossible to find anyone who will admit
to being a member of this large and mysterious group. Even the repeat
guests on the Jerry Springer Show would claim that they were being
reasonable and any misfortune they have is someone else's fault. "Reason"
seems, in most cases, to be a human being's capacity to justify doing what
it is that they wanted to in the first place.
As for your description of what constitutes being reasonable (viz. keeping
promises, integrity, flexibility, &c.), I can find no fault. Perhaps a
better way to say it might be "cultivating sound judgement"... although
this is, also, highly subject to individual interpretation. Good call, but
it is hard for me to codify it except as a blanket term to describe the
conglomeration of all the virtues.
Also, I had mentioned the "fat/ugly/hate you" example purely
hypothetically, but in the instance you refer to it was not, in reality,
remotely honest of me. She was not terribly fat, not at all ugly, and I
didn't really hate her. I was simply on the spot and reacted very poorly.
It is one of many regrets I have, and I resolve never to be wantonly
malicious towards another human being.
And I am very impressed by your choice of poetic inspiration. Kudos.
Everyone: Thank you all again for your generous insights here. Genuine
instruction can never be adequately reciprocated, and I am in all of your
debt. I am, as ever,
your faithful servant,
~M. ____________________
"I believe that woman is planning to shoot me again."
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Moinlen_Drigenu
Member  Posts: 71 Registered: 18/6/2004 Status: Offline
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posted on 18/6/2004 at 01:19 AM |
Honesty, cause i cant it stand when someone lies to me., or to
themselves.
Stubborness, they have to have some of it in them. ____________________
"It is said that we loose ourselves in rage, I think I find what is
missing, when it happens."
"These scars are just for show, it's the ones inside that you have to worry
about."
"When I get into a fight, all I think is..."KILL HIM"..."
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Schizo
Extreme Fanatic Posts: 897 Registered: 31/12/1969 Status: Offline
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posted on 19/6/2004 at 01:22 AM |
I've found that virtues often need to be balanced by other virtues to
remain virtues, such as my example of honesty and compassion. Honesty
without compassion can turn into sheer cruelty, while compassion without
honesty does no one any lasting good.
Also courage with common sense. Inspiration and practicality. So on and
so forth.
Perhaps this is a virtue in itself - call it balance. The ability to take
a virtue, and NOT run with it to some non-virtuous extreme.
Of course, this is a very difficult virtue to pinpoint. Who really thinks
that they are unbalanced? ____________________
"You can tell by the scars on my arms and the cracks in my hips and the
dents in my car and the blisters on my lips that I'm not the carefullest
of
girls." - Dresden Dolls, "Girl Anachronism"
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Monolycus
Fanatic Posts: 580 Registered: 31/12/1969 Status: Offline
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posted on 19/6/2004 at 02:00 AM |
M_D: Let us be honest with one another, then. Did you read the objections
to including honesty amongst the virtues or did you simply skim? While
honesty, in and of itself, can be a very admirable thing in some
circumstances, the fact that it is not mutually exclusive from other, less
desirable, qualities indicates that it is not, by itself, either good or
bad. It is simply a quality. A virtue improves the possessor in all
instances. Further, let us examine the grounds by which you have decided
to prize this quality. You "can't stand it when someone lies to (you), or
to themselves". It is a very common mistake to presume that things we do
not like are necessarily bad, but we have demonstrated before that this is
not so. I object to exercise; it is uncomfortable to me. However, without
it, my heart is strained and I decrease the general quality of my life.
Things that we dislike are not necessarily bad in and of themselves, and
our dislike for them is not enough to determine the nature of a quality.
Similarly, stubborness can not be esteemed to be wholly good nor bad...
however, more often than not, it leads to the ossification of one's mental
faculties due to the habituation of never entertaining alternative ideas.
Schizo was kind enough to admit a special case of honesty, honesty with
one's self, with which I can find no objection to including amongst the
virtues. In this special case of honesty, one can not be malicious and can
only benefit. I have proposed referring to this special case by different
nomenclature to avoid confusion. I have proposed "introspection", but that
does not exclude the possibility of deceiving oneself. I would propose
"objectivity" (which it more closely resembles), however that would spark
pointless debates about how genuine objectivity is impossible. I'm open to
suggestions here.
Schiz: Actually, I can not fathom compassion existing without some measure
of honesty... at least insofar as experiencing something outside oneself as
it genuinely is and not as we want it to be requires some degree of honest
appraisal. Without that, it is not compassion at all but rather simple
imagination.
As for your other suggestions, I think that practicality and inspiration,
while both admirable, are not qualities that one develops, but rather
result from one's exercise of virtuous behaviours. I think they may be
symptomatic of doing things correctly but are secondary attributes
("accidents" in philosophical circles) and not primary ones
("universals").
As for balance... it is a lot like Rogue's suggestion of being reasonable.
Certainly admirable, and it is not arguable that being sensible, reasonable
and rationale are preferable to the alternatives, it seems to me, once
again, that we are discussing the net result of many qualities when we use
those terms. Perhaps a better word than "balance" would be "moderation" or
"temperance". Both of those are specific virtues that one can cultivate
and should, in theory, lead to one's being pragmatic and sensible.
What is interesting to me is that this is starting to resemble Aristotle's
"Middle Path". Perhaps there was a bit to it. Anyway, thanks again,
everyone! I am, as ever,
your faithful servant,
~M. ____________________
"I believe that woman is planning to shoot me again."
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IamSquid
Extreme Fanatic Posts: 658 Registered: 27/5/2002 Status: Offline
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posted on 19/6/2004 at 07:13 AM |
| Virtue is really starting to sound too complicated for my limited psyche to
wrap around. I think I'll just stick with hedonism. ____________________
i wanted to die, and then it progressed into wanting everyone else to
die so i could watch, and then me die.
-ickgirl
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Monolycus
Fanatic Posts: 580 Registered: 31/12/1969 Status: Offline
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posted on 20/6/2004 at 04:32 AM |
Aw, damn! I was really enjoying the back and forth action, you big old
chicken of the sea! Well, everyone helped me to put a great many thoughts
together on this topic, so I'm not really in a place to justify too many
complaints. Chase that Dionysian dream and I'll toss you a seasick
passenger next chance I get! I am, as ever,
your faithful servant,
~M. ____________________
"I believe that woman is planning to shoot me again."
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IamSquid
Extreme Fanatic Posts: 658 Registered: 27/5/2002 Status: Offline
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posted on 20/6/2004 at 05:56 AM |
| Everyone enjoys the back and forth action of the giant squid!
Mwahaha! Welcome to my garden of tentacly delights, my puny little sex
toys! ____________________
i wanted to die, and then it progressed into wanting everyone else
to
/>
die so i could watch, and then me die.
-ickgirl
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callei
Extreme Fanatic  Posts: 759 Registered: 31/12/1969 Status: Offline
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posted on 20/6/2004 at 08:01 AM |
So wait, there are virtuous attitudes or thoughts, behaviors or actions,
and outcomes after they run into other people's virtues and phobias? my
favorite examples of this are "is it wrong to kill someone that is dying
painfully infront of you and begging you to end thier pain?" and "If they
ask for my honest opinion, and i give it, and then they blow up for thier
own reasons, why was my honesty "bad"?"
What about the unspoken escape clause we all have for the the virtues that
we try to have like "unless no one is looking", or "unless i really need
it". you hear this one all the time, "i would never kill, except to protect
a child" or "i would never steal, unless it was to feed a child." or "i
would never wear that, unless you asked really nicely".
Is it still a virtue if you think it and usualy act on it, but it goes
badly about half the time? (thinking of your arguement about honesty being
unvirtuous because the person might not want to hear "you are fat ugly and
dumb") why is a virtue not a virtue if other people dont like the outcome?
hitler being one extreme, but Buddha being another. or the leaders in
France handing over the government to keep widespread death and distruction
from happening to everyone is another. ____________________
Real goths wear silver and crosses to keep the werewolves and vampires
away.
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feralucce
Extreme Fanatic  Posts: 1810 Registered: 31/12/1969 Status: Offline
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posted on 20/6/2004 at 10:42 AM |
virtue is an absolute...
I play in an online gaming community... My friends and I are good. We
normally play 3 on 5 or 2 on 6. The other night, guy pins us in our spawn.
Before I can take a stap, less than 1/4 health left. I ask him to play
honorably. His quote, "wat the fuck you talking about? Honor in a video
game?" I explained to him that honor pervades ones life. If you are
honorable, then you will be honrable in all situations.
Virtue, like honor... will always be there....
BUT the definition of virtue is cultural. we find somethings virtuous, when
according the the quran, it is considred virtuous for a woman to be
circumcised. it is not necessary, but it is virtuous...
Callei - the guestions you asked... are not a matter of virtue, because
virtue is set by the religious and cultural paradigm... what your people
hold dear. Your questions are more of a moral nature... morals are one's
personal paradigm...
tosses his two pennies in the jar...
Feral ____________________
The earth turns on a tilted axis - just doing the best it can.
Hohenheim of Light~Full Metal Alchemist
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Monolycus
Fanatic Posts: 580 Registered: 31/12/1969 Status: Offline
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posted on 22/6/2004 at 12:44 AM |
callei: You raise some interesting questions; I'll see if I can address
them satisfactorily. I'll have to take Squid's cut-and-paste approach,
though, to minimise the ensuing confusion. You have my apologies.
Q: ...are virtuous attitudes or thoughts, behaviors or actions, and
outcomes after they run into other people's virtues and phobias?
A: My response would be that a virtue should not have to be predicated upon
the basis of extenuating circumstances. It should be sound enough to
retain its qualities whenever applied. This does not, however, mean that
everyone else is going to agree upon what is virtuous and what isn't, nor
would they have to. The reason I think that this question is such an
interesting sticking point is that a virtue is, in theory, a virtue
regardless of who possesses the quality. The fact still remains, however,
that human beings can not reach a consensus about which qualities are
laudable, despite the fact that in most cases we all have the same (or
nearly the same) physical and emotional systems, dreams, goals and
aspirations. Still, I am going to have to object to ethical relativism on
the grounds that it is a system (or, more accurately, non-system) that does
not serve to guide or better anyone... it merely allows a person to justify
doing anything they want to.
Q: "is it wrong to kill someone that is dying painfully infront of you
and begging you to end thier pain?"
A: That is a classic conundrum. It boils down to whether you value life
itself for its own sake above the duty to alleviate the suffering of others
(viz. whether you are a quantity or quality person). It can be a real
problem for somebody faced with the situation if they have not thought
about and come to terms with what they believe. Personally, I am a quality
sort and would have no compunction about "pulling the plug". Since life is
necessarily finite, I place a higher priority upon trying to ease
suffering. But this is something each of us needs to come to for
themselves.
Q: "If they ask for my honest opinion, and i give it, and then they
blow up for thier own reasons, why was my honesty "bad"?"
A: That would fall smack dab into the middle of S.E.P. (Somebody Else's
Problem). My objection to honesty as being, itself, virtuous is that one
can be honest and malicious simultaneously. On the other hand, if somebody
doesn't like something that you said in the spirit of good will, I wouldn't
say you did anything "bad" (I have problems with "good" and "bad", though.
Who was it that said "There is no good or bad but that thinking makes it
so?").
Q: What about the unspoken escape clause we all have for the the
virtues that we try to have like "unless no one is looking", or "unless i
really need it".
A: Once again, that's ethical relativism, and I wouldn't qualify it as
enough of a coherent system to represent codified beliefs. One's beliefs
should not require pre-requisites or they are just intellectual games
designed to help us sleep at night and generally undermine our efforts to
improve ourselves. Here's an example. Most people would agree that
murdering another human being is wrong, but in the United States a majority
support capital punishment by adding the non-sequitur that in some
cases it is both desirable and necessary to kill people that they
personally disapprove of. Further, to keep that option open, they never
establish a definitive parameter for those cases. What this does
is to increase homocides as crimes of passion becasue in the backs of
people's minds is the idea that in some cases it is necessary and
desirable to kill another human being, and when we are pissed off, nobody
has ever deserved to die more than the object of our anger, so this
must be one of those cases. Rather than make us better human beings,
escape clauses actually make us statistically worse. There is also the
consideration that not applying an ideal consistently is no virtue at all,
but at best the semblance of virtue (which I tried to touch upon when I
responded to Bettie regarding "humility"). The appearance of being
virtuous might be better than nothing, but if we are examining a
phenomenon, we will learn very little by dissecting its counterfeit.
Q: Is it still a virtue if you think it and usualy act on it, but it
goes badly about half the time? (thinking of your arguement about honesty
being unvirtuous because the person might not want to hear "you are fat
ugly and dumb") why is a virtue not a virtue if other people dont like the
outcome?
A: Very good question. Let me begin by saying that I didn't say honesty
was "unvirtuous". I just said (an I have to qualify this by saying "from
my perspective") that honesty did not seem to be inherently good or bad by
itself, but that its value was contingent upon how it was being applied.
Whether someone is hurt by my honesty is secondary to whether I had
intended to hurt them with it. If something can be used in that way, it is
obviously not inherently "good" or it wouldn't present itself as a weapon
to be used. Similarly, it would be counter-intuitive to call honesty
inherently "bad". I am left to conclude that it is neither good nor bad in
itself, but its value is contingent upon other things. But that's simply
the way I view it.
Now, if a "virtue-in-question" ends badly, I have to ask how it ends badly
and for whom? As I tried to explain to Moinlen_Drigenu, we often apply
values to things based simply upon whether or not we enjoy them. This is
not a great yardstick. The guitar player has to practice until their
fingers arehard and calloused before they are capable of producing sweet
music... if someone asked me point-blank whether it was "good" to make your
fingers bleed, I would be inclined to say no if I did not think about it.
I would be mistaking one end (pain) for a final end (the ability to produce
sweet music). Most "badness" can be transformed by us, or serve as
learning experiences, so it is not always easy to know at which stage of
"finality" we are at and whether things genuinely have ended badly. Some
"bad" is a "good" thing... "You can not grow a lotus on marble, you can
only grow a lotus in the mud." If we learn and grow by the "bad", I would
still say the quality in question might be a virtue.
Feral: I have some difficulty with the two maxims that:
A. "Virtue is an absolute", and
B. ""The definition of virtue is cultural".
My specific query (which I never articulated as such... my bad) was not
whether or not the society at large regarded a thing as praiseworthy, but
what are those things that, if cultivated, make us better human beings?
I do agree with you're approach, however, that a virtue should be
consistently practiced and not merely when it's "important". I wonder if
you would be kind enough to define or describe what you call being
"honorable". I look forward to hearing! I am,
your faithful servant,
~M. ____________________
"I believe that woman is planning to shoot me again."
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Schizo
Extreme Fanatic Posts: 897 Registered: 31/12/1969 Status: Offline
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posted on 22/6/2004 at 02:26 AM |
The key to the difficulty I think you are finding, Monolycus, in
discovering pure virtue is described well in Ecclesiastes. (Forgive me for
bringing a Bible passage into the discussion, but I think it is a pertinent
quote.) "To everything there is a season, and a time for everything under
the sun." In other words, there is no right and wrong, only timing.
There is a time to blurt out the truth, and there is a time to keep your
mouth shut. There's even a time to tell an out-and-out lie, although that
time does not come nearly as often as most people do it. There are times
to be humble and times to be proud. Times to be chaste and times to be
promiscuous. Times to be gentle and times to be rough.
The problem with trying to pin down one virtue is that you will always find
a scenario where it ceases to be virtuous. Where the timing, or the degree
of the virtue is wrong.
Maybe this is because virtue in itself does not exist. Only balance. Yes,
this is hard to pin down. Maybe because with balance, every moment has its
own set of virtues, of things that would be right to do at that moment, but
not at another. Something that is different for every person, every
situation.
Even honesty with one's self isn't so much a virtue, it's just a smart
thing to do. How can you judge what you are to do with this moment, if you
don't even know who you are?
I think the bitch most people here have about Christians is that they lay
down a certain code of "virtues" that they like, and expect everyone to
keep that code at all times, no matter what the circumstances. "Good"
people keep the code, "bad" people break it, that's it, no flexibility
whatsoever. But life isn't that way.
There are generally a fairly wide range of things that are "right" to do in
any given situation, and several that are definitely "wrong". It's a
personal thing, and the trick is to choose the path that gets you where you
want to go without screwing over people who aren't trying to screw you
over. And if you want, you can help some people along the way, if you
think they're worth it. Whatever furthers this aim is "good" to me.
Whatever keeps this from happening is "bad." And that's as far as I want
to go.
____________________
"You can tell by the scars on my arms and the cracks in my hips and
the
/>
dents in my car and the blisters on my lips that I'm not the carefullest
of
girls." - Dresden Dolls, "Girl Anachronism"
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feralucce
Extreme Fanatic Posts: 1810 Registered: 31/12/1969 Status: Offline
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posted on 22/6/2004 at 05:28 PM |
Mono...
In new guinea, there are some tribes that feel it is virutous to eat
another human...
according to the quran... if you kill an infadel and die in the process...
you are rewarded... vituous...
just examples of the flexibility of the nature of virtue...
Just being honest... ____________________
The earth turns on a tilted axis - just doing the best it can.
Hohenheim of Light~Full Metal Alchemist
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IamSquid
Extreme Fanatic Posts: 658 Registered: 27/5/2002 Status: Offline
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posted on 22/6/2004 at 09:23 PM |
I am strongly opposed to ethical relativism because I am a nihilist. For
this reason I feel it's neccessary that we define virtue before arguing
over what is and is not a virtue.
I was under the impression that a virtue is something within a person's
character which dictates a pattern of behavior that others respect if not
admire.
Is this not correct? ____________________
i wanted to die, and then it progressed into wanting everyone else
to
/>
die so i could watch, and then me die.
-ickgirl
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feralucce
Extreme Fanatic Posts: 1810 Registered: 31/12/1969 Status: Offline
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posted on 22/6/2004 at 10:43 PM |
| squid... by your definition, it HAS to be relative... I admire your
nihilistic tendencies... while christianity, on the whole, would not find
that virtuous... ____________________
The earth turns on a tilted axis - just doing the best it can.
Hohenheim of Light~Full Metal Alchemist
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IamSquid
Extreme Fanatic Posts: 658 Registered: 27/5/2002 Status: Offline
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posted on 23/6/2004 at 08:57 AM |
| Yes but by my definition it has nothing to do with ethics. Nihilists are
against the ethical part of ethical relativism, not the relative part. ____________________
i wanted to die, and then it progressed into wanting everyone else
to
/>
die so i could watch, and then me die.
-ickgirl
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feralucce
Extreme Fanatic Posts: 1810 Registered: 31/12/1969 Status: Offline
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posted on 23/6/2004 at 04:58 PM |
| the question is this then ... if you deny all aspects of moral or religious
deistinction... how can you even hold a discussion focused on ethics? ____________________
The earth turns on a tilted axis - just doing the best it can.
/>
Hohenheim of Light~Full Metal Alchemist
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