MM#96--Virtues and Vices

Welcome to the theory to action podcast, where we examine the timeless treasures of wisdom from the great books in less time to help you take action immediately, and ultimately to create and lead a flourishing life. Now, here's your host, David Kaiser.

Hello, I'm David and welcome back to another Mojo minute. In our last Mojo minute, we visited CS Lewis, in The Screwtape Letters, that great Christian classic, and we discuss the spiritual warfare taking place all around us. Now, this is a traditional worldview. And I know it's not popular, most especially since we live in a country and in a world that's moving into a very post Christian world. And, in fact, a recent poll of those unaffiliated with any type of religion, but most especially Christianity, is at an all time high, roughly three in 10 Americans. This poll has it at 29%. And that's in fact up from 2007 When just 16% of those were unaffiliated with any type of religion. 

And part of this traditional worldview is the notion of virtues and vices, that's kind of gone away as well. But virtue being the good habit that helps us to create a firm disposition in our character, and vice being the bad habit that helps us to do the opposite, thus, helping us to create a firm problem of our character. You can easily see where these virtues and vices can help anchor a person's character towards a habitual good or a habitual, bad. Now, obviously, there's exceptions as human beings. And most, in fact, I would say All human beings are not wholly good or wholly bad. We all have our own shortcomings. And we often fail to live up to our virtues. 

But if we don't struggle against our vices, then you can certainly see where we can go down a bad road, or where a bad road can certainly take us. And regardless if this traditional worldview of virtues and vices is not popular, or not, history reminds us that without personal virtue of each person, families will struggle. And families, when families begin to struggle, then communities are struggling. And when communities are struggling, even nations will struggle. There is no system or laws, or set of laws, no matter how perfect in the world that can be made up and set into law that can work without virtuous individuals setting good examples. A famous Chinese parable says when the wrong man uses the right means the right means work in the world the wrong way. It's pretty good thing. Put another way, you can't build a strong foundation, especially of a building to go up high in the sky. If you don't arrange the bricks at the foundation in a certain way. The building was simply collapse. 

So there is a method to building strong virtuous character, individual setting good example. And the virtues provides that needed to the culture, for other good forms of work to happen. And all of these helped to cultivate a culture for both society and the individual to live a good and happy life, which is what we all want. After all, we all want to live a good and happy life, a flourishing life, which we harp on each and every time I think in these Mojo minutes when we get together. But let's face it when cultures break down, civilization start to break down. And virtues are practice less thought less often by the whole society, and especially by individuals, when those civilizations start to break down. 

Ironically, it's like a cancer feeding upon itself. When vice is allowed to go unchecked, within the human heart, societies begin to break down. Crime increases, families, more often break apart, and individuals suffer increasingly more. Now we can think of Nazi Germany in the 1920s and 30s, preceding World War Two, before the wholesale slaughter of 6 million of our fellow human beings, that society began breaking down, virtue began breaking down within individuals.

They began to see other human beings as sub humans, who were mentioned, as they so called them. Or more recently, we can think of the brutal Rwandan civil war and how virtue broke down within those individuals, within a span of just 100 days close to 800,000 Tutsi, minority ethnic group were brutally killed, and even other ethnic tribes face persecution, a total of 1.1 million human being suffered death in that eruption of pure evil. And certainly virtue broke down among them as a whole society. Can you imagine that happening in just a short 100 day time period? It was a clear modern day genocide, horribly brutal. So the very best thing society can do is to teach the importance of virtues and vices. How do you stop evil from starting? How do you stop genocides from starting? Well, we all know evil begins in the heart of human beings in the form of vices. 

So to understand the importance of virtues and vices, and the role they play in our society, and how it's a big part of shaping our character, no matter how popular it is, or it isn't. We have to dig down and understand how virtues and vices work. Now traditionally, the ancients, Plato and Aristotle mostly, and various other ancient cultures, they defined four Supreme or what they call cardinal virtues. And those virtues are prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. And a quick sentence on each. And I'm, I'm pulling these definitions from an excellent homeschooling book called character building a guide for parents and teachers, by David Isaacs. So let's go back to prudence, our first virtue. Prudence is defined in work and in dealings with other people prudent people access in the light of rights standards, they weigh favorable or unfavorable consequences for themselves and others prior to taking a decision. And then they act or refrain from acting, in keeping with the decisions they have made. So that's a pretty good, pretty good in depth, definition of prudence. 

And this book provides you with a wonderful set of definitions and questions and examples and cultivating each of these virtues, especially in children. But it's also helpful as adults or teachers or educators to have a self examination. Are you leading a good example, and living out the virtues? So I highly recommend this book. But moving on to number two, our second virtue, justice. Justice is defined as people who are just and strive constantly to give others what is their do, so that they can exercise their rights and they're responsible bilities such as the right to life, to own property, to political freedom, most especially as parents, as children, as citizens, as workers and as rulers. 

Well, this definition says as rulers I would say, I would replace rulers with leaders to much better word. And they also try to see that others do likewise. So justice is that building that commonality that we always strive constantly to give others what is their do? Now justice is closely tied to fairness. And our culture mixes those up. So in later Mojo minutes, we're going to explore how justice is being exploited and corrupted under the guise of fairness, but more to come on that later. Moving on to number three fortitude. Fortitude is defined in situations which make it difficult to improve. courageous people resist harmful influences. They withstand difficulties And they strive to act positively to overcome obstacles and undertake great deeds.

It's a fantastic definition. Now, part of the greatness of this book is they offer some good examination questions. And we have to hear for us right now that we should ask ourselves Do I try? Do I usually try to discover what the quote right thing to do in each situation is? Do I usually manage to focus on what is quote good for others, even if it takes effort, or I have to suffer for having done so. So those are two very good examination questions that we should ask ourselves in practicing this virtue. And our fourth virtue, temperance, it's called moderation in this book. It's defined as people who are moderate distinguished between what is reasonable, and what is self indulgent. And they make reasonable use of their senses of their time of their money of their efforts, and so on in accordance with what is true. And with upright principles. Now, this is probably one of the virtues, especially we in the American way of life and in our culture, we get wrong daily, and I'm guilty, and most likely, most of you are guilty. So one question we can firmly ask ourselves, can I firmly say that I have not set up, quote, pleasure, as the main goal of my life, unquote. And I would suggest that in our consumerist society, in the 21st century of America, that this consumer society, which is different from free market capitalism, which people often get confused, and get wildly wrong, but I would suggest in our society that we make pleasure, a very common goal, and most likely, in an often an unconscious way. So this character building book offers some guidance. It says to do things, thinking about other people's good, takes an effort these days, and making effort is not very popular these days. Unquote. 

So that's absolutely true. So just something we can think about in trying to live out a virtuous life, those four traditional values, and how we can live those out in our modern day society. Now, it's also important to know that in opposition to those traditional Four Virtues, that there are four vices, and this helps us to understand when we're going wrong. And those four vices that are opposed to the Four Virtues quickly are folly, which is opposed to burdens, injustice, which is opposed to justice, cowardice, which is opposed to fortitude, and in temperance, which is opposed to temperance. 

So in today's Mojo minute, let us begin to cultivate the traditional values, as traditional values are prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. And as we begin to cultivate those traditional values, let us know that for some 2500 years of existence, human beings began to observe what was true and right and just and ourselves. And in doing so, and living this virtuous life, practicing those four traditional virtues, we will begin to build that foundation of a virtuous life, a flourishing life. High fives, as we march on the road, to a flourishing life. 

Thank you for joining us. We hope you enjoyed this theory to action podcast. Be sure to check out our show page at T Mojo academy.com where we have everything we discussed in this podcast as well as other great resources. Until next time, keep getting your mojo on