More on Virtue Charts
Awhile back I invented virtue charts. Its a tool to think more clearly and systematically about virtues and vices. It draws from the common-sense idea that there are virtues and vices that are opposites. It adds the Christian insight that most vices are distortions of virtues. And its adds in Joseph Smith’s deep understanding that even virtues have “opposite” virtues–all knowledge is proved in contraries. The result is a square. Put a virtue at one corner. The two corners on either side of it are going to be vices. One of those vices is the opposite of the virtue. The other vice is the distortion of the virtue. Then the opposite corner is the “opposing” virtue. Remarkably enough, the vices will also link to it neatly. The vice that opposed the first virtue will be a distortion of the second virtue, while the vice that distorted the first virtue will be the opposite of the second virtue.
For example–(I am using “bloats” instead of “distorts on this diagram)–
The two opposite virtues make a powerful combination when put together (and one that is very worth thinking about and exploring). So do the opposite vices.
Comely Modesty is beautiful and testimonial.
Uglified flesh-flaunting is the direction so much pornography or immodesty is headed: tattoos, piercings, self-damage, mutilation.
But virtue charts do not have to be limited to virtues and vices. They can be used to explore the good and the bad even if they are not the result of deliberate personal choices.
Take comeliness and ugliness for example
Ugliness isn’t always a choice and we wouldn’t call being ugly a sin. But the virtue chart concept still works. We just have to expand our thinking. Instead of virtues and vices, think of it as goods and bads, or strengths and weaknesses, or blessings and challenges, or gifts and afflictions. Its a natural expansion because sin turns out to be just one kind of weakness that we need to overcome with the help of the Atonement. As they have taught repeatedly in General Conference recently, all sorrows, mistakes, inadequacies, weaknesses, and so on–everything that keeps us from perfect happiness–needs to be and will be overcome by Christ.
Comeliness and ugliness turns out to be a great example of how to use virtue charts to investigate. Because what popped out to me right away was that ugliness must be the distortion of some virtue. But what? I wrestled with the topic for awhile, and the best that I could come up with is when we describe things as “having character.” A gnarled tree may not be comely but it has character and can be beautiful that way. A weather-beaten face has character. An old house with odd additions over the years has character.
I don’t know what the synthesis of comeliness and having character is, but I want to know!
Filed under: We transcend your bourgeois categories | Tags: LDS, Virtue Chart, virtue diagram
Handle
May 21, 2021
“I don’t know what the synthesis of comeliness and having character is, but I want to know!”
‘Ruggedly Handsome’, though note this is exclusively masculine and can’t be too young. Cowboy, lumberjack, Clint Eastwood.
For women nothing seems quite right off the top of my head, except perhaps ‘noble’.
Bookslinger
May 21, 2021
There might be a better fit than ugliness/uglification.
Perhaps along the lines of slovenliness, disheveledness, disorderliness,
dowdiness, frumpiness.
Dowdy and frumpy (sounds like possible names for wives of two of the 7 dwarves) initially came to mind as something that exaggerates/distorts modesty to the point of opposing comeliness.
G.
May 21, 2021
Handle,
good. Ruggedly handsome is perfect for men.
For women, I think the answer is “pregnant.” Not joking. More broadly, the new mother look they call ‘young matron.’
Books,
Your suggestions work. Uglification via tattoing and piercing and such is a more advanced stage of dowdiness vice.
E.C.
May 21, 2021
The synthesis of comeliness and ‘having character’ might be dignity, majesty, or elan. I think that someone who deliberately becomes more ugly will not exhibit dignity, for they do not respect themselves – while a comely (or even a homely!) person who ‘has character’ will naturally be dignified (not necessarily without a sense of humor, however, since dignity and good humor are not mutually exclusive).
Which all reminds me of a Roald Dahl quote:
“If a person has ugly thoughts, it begins to show on the face. And when that person has ugly thoughts every day, every week, every year, the face gets uglier and uglier until it gets so ugly that you can hardly look at it.
A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.”
Question (for another virtue chart entirely): what would you call the vice that opposes parental concern/love? Like, the obsessive unhealthy distortion of that? Because I know there’s a term for it, but I can’t find it for the life of me, and I need that term for a story.
William James Tychonievich
May 21, 2021
I wonder if you’ve seen my adaptation of your “virtue set” idea into a general theory of good, evil, and why there are (eternally) two sexes:
https://narrowdesert.blogspot.com/search/label/Virtue%20sets
G.
May 22, 2021
WJT,
I am in awe.
I feel like
Balboa“stout Cortez” when he first saw the Pacific.G.
May 22, 2021
E.C.,
I don’t think there is a set phrase for it. C.S. Lewis was preoccupied with that vice; he never used a specific term to my knowledge.
The traditional metaphor was expressed in terms like “smothering” or “suffocation.” The modern term is ‘helicopter parent.’
E.C.
May 22, 2021
‘Smothering’ might be the closest I will get. I’ll have to think about that. Thanks!
Zen
May 23, 2021
WJT’s division into Masculine and Feminine virtues, or manifestation of virtues, is very interesting. (though his naming scheme was a lot more cool)
If we take that seriously, then I feel like Mendeleev putting a few elements into columns. If God is a unity of virtues, then we should be able to make a great chart of virtues, where each one supports each other one. Perhaps Virtue charts are at least as useful as G’s Virtue/Vice charts.
But if we have a chart for masculine and a separate chart for feminine manifestations of virtue, then whence is this unity? I would say, marriage. In a healthy marriage, you have to learn, and struggle at times, to learn that Celestial synthesis of virtues.
In that same vein, I have long wondered why the name Eloheim is a dual plural. Is this better translated as Heavenly Father & Mother; Heavenly Parents?
We have previously puzzled over why the Atonement was both stereotypically Feminine (Gethsemane) and Masculine (The Cruxificion). Because both approaches are important?
In order for us to do this, we need to better understand what it means to be a Godly man, a Godly woman and a Godly union: marriage. No wonder marriage involves such growth!