The Good, the True, the Beautiful, the Heroic

One big aha moment is when you realize that at least in this life the good (i.e., the righteous), the true, and the beautiful and I would add the heroic are not the same.  They are all good.  We all praise and value these things and seek after them.   But at least in this life they aren’t all the same thing.  They aren’t purely opposed to each other either.  In fact I firmly believe that ultimately they all become the same thing when we have grown into the fulness of our eternal return to God, but for now they are only partly lined up.   Some things are beautiful but corrupt.  Some heroism is pretty messy and ugly.  And so on.

Aside: the 13th Article of Faith is pretty interesting if you ever think about it.  Let’s focus on just one line.

If there is anything virtuous, lovely, or of good report or praiseworthy, we seek after these things.

Virtuous = good.  Lovely = beautiful.  “Of good report” and “praiseworthy” don’t clearly line up with either the true or the heroic, although heroic is within shouting distance.  But think about the difference for a sec between “of good report” and “praiseworthy.”  “Of good report” means people say good things about it whether or not they should.  And “praiseworthy” means people should say good things about it whether or not they do.

The good, the true, the beautiful, and the heroic may not even be the full list.  We could add the refined, the noble, the fatherly, the motherly , the kingly, the powerful, and so on.  Though some of these may just be combinations or particular applications of the others.  The kingly for example is probably heroic fatherly power.  The samurai spirit is cultivating heroism and cultivating beauty both.  Glory in the common usage is heroism at enough distance in time or space that we can see the beauty of it.

Anyhow the root of the matter is to not delude yourself that if a thing is good on one dimension it must be good on all, or that if you have really gotten somewhere with a thing you have done as much with it as you can.  Aim higher.  Aim for more.

Achilles is fully a hero, but not fully a man.