Sometimes we take a look around our clown world and think "What is going on? Everything is backward. We're in bizarro world!"
Well, that's true. Especially in the world of good and evil, virtues and vice. But it didn't happen overnight.
This guy is onto something. Take time to read his thesis. You won't be sorry.
If you compromise the words and make the virtues seem so lame that nobody has any interest in them, you have killed moral aspiration altogether. Consider the evidence. Across the board, modern usage has systematically degraded the words:
1) Prudence becomes utilitarian calculation, bordering on cowardice.
2) Meekness becomes weakness.
3) Chastity becomes prudery.
4) Humility becomes round-shouldered self-deprecation.
5) Charity becomes niceness.
6) Temperance becomes portion control.
7) Hope becomes wishful thinking.
8) Justice becomes whatever political outcomes are most convenient for the Regime.
9) Courage gets tainted by associated with the supposedly "stunning and brave" artists and activists who say banal and safe things.
10) Strength (or prowess) devolves largely into a metaphor for mental toughness.
Magnanimity (which Aquinas calls "the jewel of the virtues") suffers a different fate of simply being forgotten. Many have just never heard of it: "Magna-whatnow?"
This is next-level stuff, absolutely masterfully nefarious. Again, why would anyone care to be prudent, humble, just, etc, when these things are so unimpressive and make no claim on the heart?
This is the problem as this guy sees it.
And generally, I agree. We have disincentivized virtue by dumbing down, softening, and outright changing their definitions.
But not to fear. The author has a solution.
It's never my intention to leave blackpills on the table, so let me offer what I believe to be the most targeted and simple remedy for reclaiming a sense of the virtues: get to training! Literal physical training.
Nothing teaches a man the possibility of improvement quite like getting stronger, faster, and more capable. Your efforts, your work, your discipline becomes a part of you, which you bring with you everywhere.
It is a moral lesson made undeniably physical and simple, and it teaches you how to get started down the path of excellence in other areas of your life. The words start to come alive in a new way once you've tasted that success.
Self-improvement is a good step in a long road to building a culture of values.
As that alt-right domestic extremist says:
But I want to end with one caveat: Something the random chivalry guy didn't include in this thread.
You can try to be self-controlled and disciplined, and maybe you even sort yourself out most of the way - at least in your own mind.
But to all the Chads out there who think they can pull themselves up by their bootstraps, there's one little thing that will keep knocking you down:
You can't do it on your own, and if you try, you might end up worse than those woke types.
There is no one righteous, not even one
...
I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do — this I keep on doing... What a wretched man I am!
So if you want to build a strong house, start with the firm foundation. There's only One who claims to take away sins, and He's the source of all virtue.
Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!
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