We haven’t talked about JG Virtue Sets in almost exactly a year.  The reason is simple and probably surprising.  I stopped being able to make a visual model that I liked the look of and somehow not being able to portray it in a way the eye liked stopped me thinking about them altogether.  You will notice there is no chart in that post from a year ago.

The reasons are two-fold.  First, I switched computers and lost my old standard chart in the switch.  Second,  I tried to complicate the chart to make it more “accurate,” which progressively made it uglier.

As a reminder, here is an example of our old standard chart.

I really liked it and still do (except for the cross-hatch lines).  But after realizing that one pair of the virtues and vices were ‘cool’ and the other pair ‘hot’ I grew dissatisfied with a chart that portrayed both virtues as blue (a cool color) and both vices as red (a hot color).  I tried to redo the chart to be  more accurate and the result was ugly.

An example of the “more accurate.”

I also started trying to include the syntheses of the virtues (or vices) in the diagram.  I never found a good look for it.

A synthesis diagram (from here).  The color in the middle is off,  the color in the upper left diamond is bad, and the shape in the middle is off.  It looks like graffiti.

However, I was recently re-reading some of WJT’s work on JG virtue sets and was inspired by the look of his charts.

Classical simplicity with classical colors for virtues and vices.

Even better, very easy to recreate.  I’m playing around with some versions of it and would like to hear what you think.

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Working together as a family and having fun while you work is one of the peaks of human existence.

Watering each other and the plants.

Singing while washing the dishes.

Making charcoal for your garden and deciding among you to see if you could make a charcoal cardboard crown for no good reason.

Its a synthesis of virtues.

Getting there is not just a matter of will.  It takes a fair amount of slogging and sloth and labor without much fun and fun without labor.  The Plan of Salvation in microcosm.

By the way —

Slog + Sloth = Boredom

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 great modern sin complexes goes by the name of authenticity.
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No, not this essay, goose. Another essay. Which will be revealed to you later.

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