Last time, we noticed an interesting feature of Alma’s highly-crafted advice to his sons.  His advice to Corianton the fornicator refers to murder at the beginning and then returns to talking about death as a blessing from the Father towards the end.  In other words, we have good death and bad death.

I don’t usually think of death as a good thing (and still don’t really) but Alma seems to be saying that receiving a mortal body and a mortal death are both necessary preconditions to the resurrection.  I don’t know why he thinks that, more study needed.

Regardless, a sermon contrasting bad death and good death puts me irresistibly in mind of a virtue chart.

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This blog will never be a popular Come Follow Me site. What people understandably want is a site that gives them cool insights when they are reading the material. But I get most of my insights in Sunday School when we are discussing the lessons from the last two weeks, or even in the days after when I am thinking about the Sunday School conversation. I believe that there is an intensification of the available spiritual insight as more and more of the Saints simultaneously turn their attention to a subject.

So here goes, thoughts and comments on the part of the Book of Mormon you are no longer reading.

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Certain “outward observances” are private by design.  It’s very hard to virtue signal or be conspicuous about them.

Hypocrisy is the vice of claiming a high degree of righteousness in public while excusing your black sins in private. Hypocrisy is a satanic parody of the virtue of upholding standards that you yourself fall short of. We call this the nameless virtue.

The virtue that is the opposite of hypocrisy is obvious. It’s where you do good in private so you don’t get social credit for it. Virtue non-signalling, we could call it. Christ was big on this virtue in the gospels. ‘that which do in secret your father will reward openly’ ‘let not your right hand know…”

Probably any type of virtue can be hypocrited, but the two classes of virtue are the most vulnerable. One is whatever type of virtues are involved with publicly signalling your allegiance to good stuff.  We don’t normally think of these as virtues because virtue signalling is so common in our world.  But there are virtues like that, they are just buried under the vice of virtue signalling.  The other one is when doing good requires outward observances, where virtue consists of identifiable acts that people can see.  This was the type of hypocrisy that the Pharisees embraced.  Super-large phylacteries, tithing their herb garden, etc.

It’s interesting that most of our restoration outward observances are things that naturally occur privately.  Wearing the garment, fasting, paying tithing, are all things that no one really knows whether you are doing it or not.  To an extent the same is true with sabbath observance and even with the Word of Wisdom.  Of all these I think garment wearing is particularly interesting.  It is *by design* private.  People can tell if you are not following the standards, but it is hard to tell if you are.  Wearing the garment is in a sense the opposite virtue to the nameless virtue.

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Say what you will about the modern world, but the invention of the combined theater kid / front-row kid archetype is a world historic achievement.  You’d think these would be opposites.  You’d think the grey-suited organization man would be over there grimly checking his boxes while out the streets the hippy would be cross-legged on the corner strumming his mandolin. But no.  You clearly lack the breadth of vision and iron will of 21st century modernity.  What do we not dare!  Not only will we create this unholy amalgam, we will set it over us.

Is there a vice synthesis from a virtue chart peaking out at us? (more…)

The Daughterperson No. 1 had an interesting conversation with me about peace.

What vice distorts peace, she wanted to know. It was a fun chat.

The likely answer is complacency, stagnation, apathy . . . and that led in some interesting directions. Because the opposite of that vice is ambition or striving for excellence which is an aspect of glory

PEACE : Complacency/stagnation

Reckless ambition : GLORY

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My daughter helped me solve a puzzle about peace.

Quotes below are excerpts from her journal she sent me.

In my Classical Civilization class we spent a lot of time talking about what violence does to us psychologically/when it invests us so heavily in a story.  One guy said something I thought was really cool – he said that that’s something we’re drawn too because God is perfectly violent – (sometimes death is merciful) and that same ability to conquer/defend/protect is sooo appealing to us, but easy to get wrong.

Then a ton of girls raised their hands and just tore into this guy.  “God isn’t violent.  He’s the opposite.  He is loving and kind and anything violent ever comes from the devil” etc.  [No wonder guys today are emasculated.  God is being emasculated.]

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Let’s think about how we progress through the virtues.

A virtue set is static.  Here are virtues and vices that relate to each other.

Its true that real men and women tend to experience a mix of most virtues and vices to greater and lesser degrees all at the same time.   That mix changes over time.  We can become more or less virtuous.  Our existing virtues become stronger.  Our branches grow.  The real experience of virtue is growth, repentance, and change.  A virtue set is a terrain.  We move around on it.

There is a lot of precedent in the scriptures.

For behold, thus saith the Lord God: I will give unto the children of men line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little; and blessed are those who hearken unto my precepts, and lend an ear unto my counsel, for they shall learn wisdom; for unto him that receiveth I will give more; and from them that shall say, We have enough, from them shall be taken away even that which they have.

-thus 2 Nephi 28:30.

That which is of God is light; and he that receiveth light, and continueth in God, receiveth more light; and that light groweth brighter and brighter until the perfect day

-thus D&C 50:24.

We have the Plan of Salvation which moves us from stage to stage.  In mortality we have dispensations and the Law of Moses giving way or being fulfilled in the higher law of Christ.  We have the concept often preached in the Church and elsewhere that we need to move on from negative virtues (thou shalt nots, direct commands) to positive virtues (thou shalts, open-ended principles).  It is a wicked and slothful servant who must be commanded in all things.

What if for fun we rearrange the virtue set as a virtue chain?

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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 (more…)

One of the most interesting parts of a virtue chart is where we explore the synthesis of apparently opposed virtues.

Here is something I came up with that unfortunately I did not have the time to do the build-up for. The end result just came to me, I’ll have to try to reverse engineer it later.

But in short, it seems to me that there are virtues related to the past, the present, and the future. And that integration is the synthesis of them.

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Many relationship conflicts are conflicts of virtues.  Virtues come in opposing pairs.  If a man is particularly alive to a virtue, it is likely to be the case that he has a harder time recognizing the vice that distorts the virtue.  If he is particularly alive to a virtue, it is likely he can see even the faintest hint of the opposing vice, and reacts in horror.  Which means  he has a harder time seeing the opposing virtue.

So when a husband and wife have opposing virtues–and they will, somewhere–each one is particularly likely to stray into the vice that is paired with the virtue, and each one is particularly likely to sound the alarm at the opposing virtue even when there isn’t much of the vice in it if at all.

Because our  natural virtues and natural vices are often the results of some character trait that is  neither good nor bad in itself.   The angel in the Great Divorce asks the man who carries his sin around with him in the form of a whispering reptile for permission to kill it.  The man is terrified, there is dialogue, and finally the man agrees in a whimper.  The angel slashes . . . but when the lizard falls dead, it transforms into a unicorn that the man rides off on.  The virtue is the redeemed face of the vice.  The vice was the corrupted form of the virtue.

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cockiness distorts confidence.
cockiness contradicts humility.
timidity distorts humility.
timidity contracticts confidence.

-thus Bookslinger

I can’t upload images today for some reason. Otherwise, you’d see a virtue chart here.

But what is really interesting is the synthesis of the opposite virtues and the opposite vices.

Confident Humility sounds like a contradiction. So does Arrogant Timidity. But they are common enough that they are almost archetypes.

Perhaps this is what Helaman meant when he spoke of growing stronger and stronger in humility.

There is an interesting passage in the Screwtape letters about folks who don’t think their appetites for food are disordered because instead of eating hyper quantities of food they are just hyper particular about the foods they eat. Vegans, basically.

Remember, appetites are good.

Being content is a gospel virtue.  In its superpowered form, contentment is gratitude.

Growth is also a gospel virtue.  Not just moderate, quiet growth.  It too must be superpowered.  Immoderate growth.  Progressing beyond all reason.  Insatiable ambition.

The man of God must have both. (more…)

Diagramming sentences teaches you a good deal about language.  It also makes you realize some odd things about it that you had taken for granted before.  Grammar is not the Platonic form of language.  What it is is a good tool.

The West doesn’t think much about virtue.  We do have a rich and neglected treasury of practical experience out there, and a decent amount of engineering knowledge, for those who look for it.  We also have thinkers who address first principles and meta-ethical questions.  What is the nature of the good? and so on.  What we don’t have is anything in between.  It is as if the study of biology knew evolution (along side stockbreeders who knew practical things) but had never invented anything like taxonomy.

A while back I accidentally invented a sophisticated tool for investigating virtue.

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