The Loss of Virtue
We are coming closer, every day, to a society that places the rectification of injustice above all other goods. We now value fixing other people and giving them their just deserts, over fixing ourselves and healing the iniquity within our hearts. We overlook all other moral goods and set upon a pedestal out of our vanity that good, which is among them all, is most easily corruptible. In seeking justice, we have become tyrants. Select groups of people are applying an iron fist where other virtues could have been better suited.
Virtues, the likes of which are unknown to this generation. Through the industrializing of our education system, we have lost the pursuit of these foundational truths. We do not support temperance, courage, understanding, patience, or modesty.
Worst of all, we do not foster love and a charitable spirit, for love, in this sense, has been obliterated. In place of love, we experience vengeance, envy, and hate. We think that these negative motivations are the appropriate response to have towards “Bad People.” In this line of reasoning, the badness of the villains is used to justify all our vices. We need only view ourselves in a self-righteous light to appease our consciousness. We maintain our self-image through a steady diet of lies under the guise of self-care, self-love, and self-esteem.
As a result, we believe that our character defects are the traits that ought to be amplified to bring about and altered society, and that may be true, but only partly. You can indeed bring about change and some good in a society with hate and vitriol, but there is change, and then there is change, you know.
Change as a Moral Good
Change in and of itself Is not morally good. You can develop a society that is always shifting like the sands in a desert. You can, in fact, create a world where every third Tuesday, you throw out the constitution in light of the new and altered one. You could erect walls one day and tear them down the next day, all in the spirit of change and progress. You can go on into the future smashing and altering everything in existence, bringing about change after change, ushering in the new world order of change. Your altered and edited society containing no solid ground would fall as surely as the walls do every other day. Your contently changing society would be consumed by a stalwart unchanging one, subjecting all its members to the tyranny of consistency.
Change becomes good insofar as the thing being changed is being turned into something good in and of itself. In other words, change becomes good at the precise moment that the thing being modified is being changed into something good. You can learn this from fairytales. In the “Beauty and the Beast,” there are two changes or transformations. One good and the other bad. They are described as such based on the outcomes they bring about. The difference between the changes is not the change itself, for there is a change in both instances, yet one is good, and the other is bad. The thing that divides the alterations is the outcomes they bring about.
There have been many beneficial instances of change in our lives, as well as in the lives of our ancestors. I am not arguing against the alteration of our society. We could benefit a great deal from changing many of our systems, norms, and government policies. Most notably, the police force in America and the policies around our healthcare and welfare systems. Along with many other frustrated individuals, I would like to see these institutions altered in a lasting and beneficial way. However, with our current mode of operation, I do not think that is possible.
As far as I can tell, our society is seeking to bring about change by any means necessary, and it is moving our world closer to Sheol. If we took the time to consider our actions and planned our steps before leaping into the fray, we would be all the better for the transaction. Unfortunately, that is not the case. We are making an attempt, and a quite successful one I might add, to desecrate and destroy anything that offends our senses without so much as a second thought. Most of us have no stomach for disagreement or discourse, and as a result, we are willing to burn any offensive enterprise to the ground, with only the slightest provocation. Utterly changing our society but not in a way that anyone would be willing to call good.
The Malevolence of Reality
If we could stave off our volatile feelings, I think we could be more effective instruments for change. The best way to bring about change begins from the bottom up. That is true for structural changes as well as individual changes. So, if we are seeking to alter reality at any level, we need to address our fundamental apriori errors.
As far as I understand, one of our primary errors manifests itself whenever we talk about the goodness and badness of people, institutions, and non-physical structures. I know of nothing that is free of corruption, but if you listen to specific individuals of my generation, you would think the opposite. For example, many people believe that the self in and of its self is divine and requires no alteration. As a result, the prevailing mantra is self-love, self-care, and self-belief. Now, if you are not already aware of the self’s corruptibility, let me make it clear to you.
All people in history possess a self, from mother Theresa to Ted Bundy and everyone in-between. I know with certainty that no one would prescribe self-love to Ted Bundy. It’s clear that he has done things that make him unlovable even unto himself. We see it clearly in a person like Ted Bundy because he is removed from us and deemed an outlier. For the same reasons, we think of Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot, and Mao Zedong in the same ways. They are fringe cases, or so we are lead to believe. We may be tempted to think that they are anomalies, and we share nothing in common with them, but we do so to no avail.
It only takes 30 seconds of reflection to find that we also have unlovable qualities. It does no good to smooth over these insecurities with self-love. We explain them away as if they were not a reflection of our true selves. There is a reason why self-analysis is not one of the sacred tenants of the new doctrine. Self-analysis reveals our rotting underbelly, the parts of us that are unlovable, unbelievable, and undeserving of care. Self-analysis makes it challenging to coddle our conscious.
So, in an effort to soothe our souls, we have deliberately neglected to understand the fundamental nature of our existence. This simple truth was among the first truths to be exiled partially because it is religious and partly because it is inconvenient. The fact of the matter is that all of life is poisoned with pain, suffering, and malevolence. There is evil in every structure, substructure, person, and system. Purity and Holiness belong to God alone, another idea abandoned by the acolytes of the new religion.
The belief that our word and it’s people are in some way corrupted has never differed across time or culture. We have all shared the idea that humanity is dirty and in need of washing; of course, people differed in the methods by which humanity could be made pure, but they in no way contradicted the idea that we were and are morally unclean. Now, for reasons stated above, and in the spirit of modernity and progress, we have dumped out our ancient bathwater, content to be filthy the rest of our days.
The failure to recognize our shortcomings is one of the most unwelcome and unhelpful changes in our society. It has hindered our ability to pursue virtue, and as stated previously, the pursuit of virtue or bottom-up reformation is the building block to positive societal change. If we feel that we are all sufficiently virtuous, as many in my generation do, we neglect to improve ourselves. Without understanding the evil we are capable of, we cannot hope to combat the corruption out in the world.
If we want to produce a society of peace, love, and joy, the first step does not begin with the dismemberment of our current society, but rather with surgical intervention within each individual, voluntarily undertaken by the individual themselves. We must recognize that evil is not only out there in the world but also within each of our hearts and minds.
A Humane Solution
It’s not an easy task, recognizing our inborn faults, but it is necessary if we wish to build a desirable society. Many people who have lived, lived their entire lives in denial of that simple truth. The worst of all atrocities were carried out by individuals who thought themselves to be quite morally good. Our own position in the world is the thing we most often lie to ourselves about; it is our most significant impediment to true and lasting progress.
The quickest way forward from here is not to continue down the path we are currently treading. If we continue with our current mode of operation, we will undoubtedly end up in hell. The best thing we can do is the best thing anyone can do when discovering that they have been traveling down the wrong road. That is to turn around. If we want to create a more loving, peaceful, and just society, it makes little sense to keep walking towards the ever-burning pit of fire. Progress in the wrong direction is not progress. It’s regression.
As much as it pains most to admit, we have to bring back that old religious idea of the virtuous life. We must set it up as a desirable alternative to living a life ruled by the vices. If we can reassert the primacy of the virtuous life, the life lived in service to virtue incarnate, God. We could ultimately spur each individual in this generation and every subsequent one on to bear the burden of their own existence, leading us to turn the lens of purification not outward on the society at large but inward and in seeking to cleanse ourselves first rather than forcibly purifying our neighbors and enemies, we would necessarily bring about positive change in our society.
It is not too late for us to drop our torches, abandon our unending pursuit of justice, and begin our journey towards the virtuous life and ultimately towards heaven.
Consider Supporting My Work
All purchases go towards the cost of the website and software used to produce my content.
Shop Now
Great stuff today!!
Thank you sharing honesty. Looking inward and knowing we need to change something about ourselves is not difficult. Taking action to make these required changes is. Through God all things are possible, even if we are but a tiny agent of making these things happen.
Peace to you, and your journey.