Virtue
What on earth am I doing writing about virtue at quarter to six in the morning on the Fourth of July?
Virtue is a very familiar and very strange word. Dictionary definitions of the word don't begin to do it justice. Virtue appears to be something that it isn't. Someone once wrote a book titled The Book of Virtues. I can remember a general sense that the book's author didn't deserve much respect from liberal-minded people because it was, how to put this, it was self-righteous. It looked at virtue from a right-wing perspective, or so it seemed. Certainly the author was associated with right-wing politics.
Traditionally, or at least through most of my life up until just recently, virtue was something you went to church for. Or at least you went to church and you accepted church doctrines (whether you understood them or not) and you felt good about yourself. The person with virtue was a better person than the person without it and the virtuous person was drawn to want to be a better person because it just plain feels good to think of yourself as a better person than the lower classes of people. So there was this nagging negative connotation to virtue, that it was related to self-righteous thinking and was thus hypocritical.
While all of that still exists, and thrives even, and makes for a good and even lavish living for some very righteous-seeming people, virtue has recently taken on an entirely new facet. Virtue is now something the political Left excels at. If you can look at somebody else and convince yourself that they are racist, then you are the virtuous one. Of the two of you, you are the better person. If you can convince yourself that people are wrong if they think that out-of-control immigration is dangerous and is a form of discrimination and that discrimination victimizes people, you can side with the victims and feel virtuous.
Virtue is the positive feeling that you get when you convince yourself that you are better than somebody else.
There's only one itsy bitsy little problem...
Conceit isn't a virtue.
Virtue is a very familiar and very strange word. Dictionary definitions of the word don't begin to do it justice. Virtue appears to be something that it isn't. Someone once wrote a book titled The Book of Virtues. I can remember a general sense that the book's author didn't deserve much respect from liberal-minded people because it was, how to put this, it was self-righteous. It looked at virtue from a right-wing perspective, or so it seemed. Certainly the author was associated with right-wing politics.
Traditionally, or at least through most of my life up until just recently, virtue was something you went to church for. Or at least you went to church and you accepted church doctrines (whether you understood them or not) and you felt good about yourself. The person with virtue was a better person than the person without it and the virtuous person was drawn to want to be a better person because it just plain feels good to think of yourself as a better person than the lower classes of people. So there was this nagging negative connotation to virtue, that it was related to self-righteous thinking and was thus hypocritical.
While all of that still exists, and thrives even, and makes for a good and even lavish living for some very righteous-seeming people, virtue has recently taken on an entirely new facet. Virtue is now something the political Left excels at. If you can look at somebody else and convince yourself that they are racist, then you are the virtuous one. Of the two of you, you are the better person. If you can convince yourself that people are wrong if they think that out-of-control immigration is dangerous and is a form of discrimination and that discrimination victimizes people, you can side with the victims and feel virtuous.
Virtue is the positive feeling that you get when you convince yourself that you are better than somebody else.
There's only one itsy bitsy little problem...
Conceit isn't a virtue.
posted by Bill | 6:18 AM
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