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[eirias]

There is a style of leadership that focuses on the good one's subordinates do, and is silent to the bad. Clever students of such a leader soon learn to chase the praise and correctly interpret the silence as indicating a need for improvement. This strategy has its weaknesses (and can look a lot like passive aggressiveness in the hands of an inept leader). Nevertheless, it looks to me like a good model for a positive ethical system, one framed not by sins but by virtues. As an ex-Catholic, this feels novel to me (though I'm sure it isn't, and though I'm sure that some flavors of Christianity place more emphasis on virtue and less on sin) and sometimes I think about what virtues I admire.


Happiness. This is a good example of why I want to talk about a positive ethical system: by no means do I want to imply that I think unhappiness is a sin. Sometimes it's unavoidable -- sometimes, for short times, it can even be a good. But happiness has so much to recommend it; done right, it does that cool compounding interest thing where it enables you and those around you to make more of the life you have.

I think on this measure, my husband is maybe the most virtuous person I know.

Internal locus of control. I think that on balance, people will get more out of life if they approach it with the belief that they have power, power to change the things that suck, change their ways of dealing with them, change their involvement if need be. I think having this belief is a very good way, maybe the only way, to actually get power. I even think that it may be virtuous when people overestimate the power they have, because I've seen that turn out to be the good kind of self-fulfilling prophecy. I am all about the positive self-lies that make themselves true.

Interestingly, I think this virtue has kindred principles in business and in Girl Scouts -- taking it upon yourself to own problems, because that way you can solve them, rather than looking around for the nearest person to burden with the hot potato.

Again -- feeling powerless, or blaming someone else for a bad outcome: it's not like I look at this and yell, "Sin!" (Or I try not to ;) ) It is what it is and sometimes it's true. I just don't think it's a good end state for anybody.

I know quite a few people with this virtue. Sometimes I have secretly thought them delusional, and I've usually been wrong.

Eyes on your own paper. Maybe this is kind of a meta-virtue, a way to describe why I like the idea of a positive approach to ethics. A lot of people who care deeply about morality -- and I certainly include myself, or pieces of myself, in here -- have a difficult time being charitable about others' motives. Evils that others have committed become preoccupations. This can get tiresome and doesn't increase anybody's happiness, nor does it have a good effect on anyone's locus of control. It seems to me that where feasible, it is a better thing to focus on self-improvement.

This clearly does not work if you actually have responsibility for someone else's ethical behavior (childrearing comes to mind, but also training of young people in your profession, or pastoral responsibilities to parishioners). But there are ways and ways of enacting these responsibilities. A focus on virtue rather than sin still seems preferable.

Thoughts in progress for a few years, still fuzzy and flaky. Yours?

Comments

[ksledgemoore.livejournal.com]

These are really neat. They also remind me of how awesome my husband is. He is pretty good with each of these, but to whatever extent he is lacking, he is great about focusing on improving in each of these areas, esp 1 and 2. He's also really awesome about giving me advice on trying to follow these principles more myself.

I think there are a number of other important virtues you could add to the list, but I do like what you have here and the explanation. I also like the idea of focusing on the positive rather than the negative. I think a lot of religions could benefit from that focus. There are way too many religious people out there who think they're models of their religion and will go to heaven just because they aren't committing sins, when in reality they're also not virtuous in any way, either. Being good is at least as important as not being bad!

[elwe.livejournal.com]

"As an ex-Catholic, this feels novel to me (though I'm sure it isn't, and though I'm sure that some flavors of Christianity place more emphasis on virtue and less on sin) and sometimes I think about what virtues I admire."

Huh! As one of the other flavors of Christian, I actually learned to think in terms of virtue ethics from Catholic theology (this sort of approach was vital to St. Thomas Aquinas, and its revival in late 20th century philosophical ethics is in large part due to Catholic philosophers G.E.M. Anscombe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.E.M._Anscombe) and Alasdair MacIntyre (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alasdair_Macintyre)). But then again Catholicism has an frustrating ability to have a deep, powerful, and subtle philosophy which completely fails to make its way to the local parish church. :-(

But, yes, this way of thinking of thinks is exactly right, I think, and the listing of happiness in the way you do is particularly perceptive.

[eirias.livejournal.com]

Thanks for this reply. It occurred to me after posting that I was likely to be misrepresenting Christianity here for the simple reason that virtue is hard to teach and sin is easy to teach, and so when people have to figure out how to get their preschoolers to behave they lead with the sin part. (I suppose my cynical side would say this is an object lesson in how much of modern Sunday school type stuff is not really "How to be a good Christian" but instead "How to be a good member of the American middle class." My own experiences are far too particular to justify my being this cynical, but it amuses me anyway.)

[elwe.livejournal.com]

"I suppose my cynical side would say this is an object lesson in how much of modern Sunday school type stuff is not really "How to be a good Christian" but instead "How to be a good member of the American middle class." My own experiences are far too particular to justify my being this cynical, but it amuses me anyway."

You're experiences here are depressively true of a fairly large chunk of (especially American) Christianity. The attempt to get the Church in the US to be actually, you know, the Church and not a merely part of American 'civil religion' (on the 'conservative' side or the 'liberal' side) is a big challenge at the moment.

[vfoxy.livejournal.com]

I think the motivation (avoiding sin) is the same in both systems, but how you do it (by not sinning or by being virtuous) is different.

I think internal locus of control and happiness are pretty much the same thing. Or rather, happiness is an example of something you can control....

Also, while I agree that positive self-lying is a positive self-fulfilling prophesy, there is great danger is not learning from it when it fails and blaming an external factor since, obviously, you yourself are so great.

So I boil it down to 2. Internal Locus of Control, and Eyes on Your Own Paper.

[eirias.livejournal.com]

The thing is, I don't like the orientation toward avoiding sin. I think it makes it hard to live out any of these virtues, actually. It encourages a kind of moral cognition I find ... less useful.

Perhaps I wasn't clear: an internal locus of control would look at a failure and say, where did I go wrong here, and how can I fix it? I don't mean that all self-aggrandizing lies are good, merely the useful ones.

Absent a belief in a god, moral questions boil down into very practical questions -- like What works? and Who benefits? I'm focusing on the first here, but I will probably post something about the second sometime soon. My thoughts on that aspect are perhaps ... less virtuous ;)

[vfoxy.livejournal.com]

And yet, from the example you gave about the grad student and the advisor, the grad student is aware that he does not want to receive the 'negative' feedback of silence and instead aims for the positive. He's still trying to avoid sin.

I think, as a short answer to 'who benefits', the evolutionary response is "me" and the civilized response is "my local group that I care about".