Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Good/Bad/Virtuous

“Chastity”

(Gossip done, and standing outside Costa in CP, we were talking about overrated virtues, and that is what accompanying friend came up with.)

Me: “That’s not a virtue, that’s just bad luck.”

He: “How is that bad luck? People “save themselves” all the time.”

Me: “Sure, yes, still doesn’t make it a virtue. It’s not in the list.”

Him: “There’s no list. Cardinal sins, seven, yes. No virtue list.”

Hmm

Long live Google:

Virtue (Latin virtus; Greek ἀρετή) is moral excellence of a person. A virtue is a trait valued as being good. The conceptual opposite of virtue is vice.

Point being, back then, I couldn’t think of one single virtue, forget overrated.

How can that be, but. Brow deliberately furrowed, and driving back, I forced myself to think. Turns out, diplomacy isn’t a virtue. And neither is sweetness, to set one my one lovely g-talker straight!

Which means, last men standing = Charity, Patience, and Fidelity.

As it happens, Wikipedia has some 85 virtues, including autonomy, foresight inventiveness and unselfishness. All quite peripheral in my book, but I like that they list humour and lovingness as well.

To each his own of course, but apart from the indispensables, and just to my ‘umble way of thinking, compassion, integrity, respect, and truth apart, not too many that would make you a foul person.

No?

8 comments:

Perakath said...

Discretion? Or does that come within 'integrity'?

Perakath said...

{delete this}

Anonymous said...

I completely agree!!

Depends on what works for whom..

there'll be people telling u being religious is also a virtue!

I think being a good person in general, not being malicious deliverately is good enough!

Yohan said...

There is in fact a virtue list in Catholicism which goes along with the seven deadly sins:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_virtues

Prudence, Justice, Restraint, Courage, Faith, Hope, and Charity/Love.

Methinks these are all virtues I would like to see in all people, irrespective of particulars. Prudence means "proper judgement of reasons for action with regard to appropriateness in a context", so that should take care of specifics of situation and so on.

Virtue and altruism are not as relative as most people think.

Cinna the Poet said...

silence?

Perakath said...

Not in a blogger, that.

Nimpipi said...

pera: disscretion, really? no man. we live well amidst the loudest mouths...e r.. why 'delete this'?? why TYPE THAT first u tell me!

And by 'not in a blogger, that', u mean silence of course.. haan.. ok.

Perakath said...

Because I wanted to have follow-up comments mailed to me and the first comment was necessary to sign into Blogger so that the "mail me follow-up comments" box would show :( samjha?