Virtue (A prequel)

Rembrandt—Aristotle with a Bust of Homer—David Mark from Pixabay

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandchildren (who exist), and my great-grandchildren (who don't) — the Stickies — to haunt them after they become grups or I'm deleted.

                  
This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens Perusal by kids, callowyutes, and approximately 39.9% of all grups may result in a debilitating intersectional triggering. 

                                                  Glossary  

                                                    About

Erratically Appearing Hallucinatory Guest Star: Dana — A Gentlerreader

"The greatest virtues are those which are most useful to other persons."
                                                                                        -Aristotle


Dear Grandstickies & Great-Grandstickies (& Gentlereaders),

In my last letter a—New & Improved!—version of my thoughts on the formerly famous Seven Virtues that I originally wrote about in early 2017, I mentioned that I planned on writing a—New & Improved!—version of my take on the four cardinal (hinge) virtues that I also wrote about in 2017.

When I reread last week's letter a hooge honking flaw became apparent. What exactly are virtues and why should we cultivate them? I didn't go into this in 2017 or in last week's letter.

In my defense, having arrived on this planet at the tail end of the Black&White Ages I was thoroughly marinated in a cultural consensus that's been fragmenting ever since.

But I must be ever vigilant concerning things I take/took for granted. For example, when I was a kid baseball was literally the National Pastime, consciously capitalized.

Although to me, and no shortage of my fellow geezers and geezerettes, metaphorically speaking it still is and always will be (and I'm not even a fan)—it isn't.

We have all sorts of competing national pastimes nowadays. Sports, entertainment, infotainment, and outrage—24x7x365—come immediately to mind.

When I was a kid, Americans were hardly all on the same page but at least from this kid's perspective at the time, they all seemed to be on pages in the same book.

That book is no longer in print but many battered copies with yellowed pages and notes scribbled in the margins remain.

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Wikipedia: "Virtue is moral excellence." Sounds simple enough. But this is the very first sentence of complex entry with 53 references.

Sister Mary McGillicuddy taught me and my fellow barbarians that we didn't have to figure out how to be morally excellent. The Catholic church and society had gone to the trouble of working it all out for us.

All we had to do was learn all the ecclesiastical rules laid down by the church. S'ter Mary, Miss Crabtree, our parents' et al. would provide the secular ones. 

However, it was a given that we'd break them from time to time, in fact, that we were born owing a share of the vigorish on Adam and Eve's original bad bet. 

But the all-merciful and all-powerful God had well-established procedures in place to get yourself right. It was highly recommended that you take advantage of them or the all-merciful and all-powerful God would sentence you to burn in hell for all eternity.

Amen. 
                                                                                             
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While I rejected Catholic fundamentalism in my early teens, and reject religious fundamentalism now, I understand the appeal of knowing exactly what the rules are and what sort of behavior is required of a civilized H. sapien.

In fact, I worry not at all about folks of faith from the center, left, or right who cheerfully embrace the notion live and let live, fundamentalist or otherwise. The socialist left, Catholic or otherwise, scares the hell out of me. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

In fact, when the progressive socialists start talking about placing restrictions on freedom of speech I...

[Calm down, Sparky. You're veering off-topic and you've got that look again.]

Look! what look? Serenity now! Serenity now! I'm just... (Heavy sigh), thanks, Dana, you're right.

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Look (GRIN), A life well-lived requires us to consciously decide what sort of behaviors (virtues) will allow us to function at our best while graciously (as possible...) sharing the playground with other kids trying to function at their best.

The cardinal virtues are four time-tested fundamental virtues with a deep pedigree that have much to offer everyone. There are also myriad other virtues that can be classified as fundamental or secondary.

But if you don't want the Big Bad Nihilist ("Everything's, like, relative, ya know?") to huff, and puff, and blow your house down you're going to need, at the very least, a solid foundation, strong walls, and a roof that's up to code.

I don't have a virtual clipboard hanging from an imaginary nail in an office located somewhere in my little grey cells with a sheet of tattered and smudged paper that's a copy of a copy clipped to it that's titled, Virtue's Checklist.

However, I do have Aristotle's comprehensive and actionable take on this sort of thing as explained in this video clip 'cause I'm cool like that... Also, it saves me from having to write an entire column on a subject that would probably bore you and most of my tens of gentlereaders.

Poppa loves you,
Have an OK day

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Your friendly neighborhood crank is not crazy about social media (I am a crank after all) but if you must, you can like me/follow me on Facebook. I post an announcement when I have a new column available as well as news articles/opinion pieces that reflect where I'm coming from or that I wish to call attention to. Cranky don't tweet. 

The Seven Virtues - New and Improved!

Image by Clker-Free-Vector-Images from Pixabay

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandchildren (who exist), and my great-grandchildren (who don't) — the Stickies — to haunt them after they become grups or I'm deleted.

                  
This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens Perusal by kids, callowyutes, and approximately 39.9% of all grups may result in a debilitating intersectional triggering. 

                                                  Glossary  

                                                    About

Erratically Appearing Hallucinatory Guest Star: Dana — A Gentlerreader

"The virtues, like the Muses, are always seen in groups. A good principle was never found solitary in any breast." -Buddha


Dear (eventual) Grandstickies & Great-Grandstickies (& Gentlereaders),

I wrote a series of letters about the seven virtues a few years back that was well received by my gentlereaders. I think that given the fact that what used to be called Western Civilization continues to be under attack on multiple fronts its time for an update. 

[Used to be called?]

Well, Dana, it is, as they say, complicated. 

It would take a very long essay for me to explain myself properly. Suffice it to say that when I recently had reason to enter the search term Western civilization into the Wikipedia search box I was presented with an article titled Western culture that begins by prevaricating, equivocating, and etceterating.

Hmmm... perhaps I screwed up.

As I was retyping in the original search term I noticed that Wikipedia helpfully offered up the search term Western civilization bias to save me some keystrokes. 

Clicking on their helpful shortcut brought up an article titled Eurocentrism which includes the words bias, colonialism, and imperialism in the first paragraph. 

[Oh... Well, why did you enter Western civilization in the first place? I mean...]

Background. 

I was thinking about providing more background than I had provided in the original version of this column. See, I was taught that the Seven Virtues were a very big deal, an important part (but now apparently just another "deconstructed metanarrative") of something called Western civilization. 

I was taught that I was both a product and beneficiary of this now revised meme. 

This was back at the tail end of the Black&White ages when I attended Catholic grade school. I was taught that there are four cardinal virtues and three theological virtues. Both kinds, I was told, were a very big deal.

I attended a public high school, and the theological virtues, for obvious reasons, were never mentioned. It occurs to me that neither were the cardinal ones.

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The three theological virtues of the Catholic/Christian tradition, we were told, come from the grace of God. They’re sort of a list of the basic requirements that need to be met in order to live a Christian life while you’re here if you want to get your butt into heaven when you cross over to there.

They are faith (belief in God). Hope (the belief that you’ll make heaven if you live right). And charity, or love (love of God and everyone else, which implies it’s on you to be your sibling’s keeper).

Two quick points from your (technically) agnostic (it's complicated) Poppa.

One, note the simplicity. To hell (pun intended and embraced) with dogma wars. If you believe in God (which I personally think, although many do not, can simply be the higher power that saves drunks and druggies every day), follow a moral code and do what you can to take care of the other kids, you got this.

Two, It’s quite easy to secularize these three. If you don’t believe in God you can (and regardless, should) find something/someone to believe in and/or work towards. This will supply hope (and meaning) even when life is kicking you in the crotch. Finally, do unto others as you would have them do unto you. This will make for a much nicer playground.

For the record, number two is a vastly oversimplified version of what I stole from the work of Dr. Deirdre N. McCloskey—polymath, and one of my heroes—who describes herself thusly:

“I’m a literary, quantitative, postmodern, free-market, progressive-Episcopalian, ex-Marxist, Midwestern woman from Boston who was once a man. Not ‘conservative’! I’m a Christian classical liberal.”

Dr. McCloskey was trans (and fully transitioned) long before trans was cool. And long before the Social Justice Warriors woke up and started identifying as this, that, and God only knows what other things.  

But I digress. 

The reason I’m writing about all of the seven virtues is because it's occurred to me that given the fact America, and a goodly chunk of the rest of the world, tossed the tot out with the jacuzzi water back in the 60s, perhaps we could find some guidance and common ground in all of them.

I believe that we react emotionally/instinctively/intuitionally first—rationally (hopefully…) later. While the former is an effective survival mechanism, the latter enables us to live together and, with a little luck, thrive instead of just survive. The creation of the seven virtues was the result of the applied reasoning of a lot of individuals who were smarter than I’ll ever be.

                                                  *     *     *

The cardinal virtues are prudence (making good choices, wisdom), justice, temperance (restraint, self-control) and courage (not just bravery, refusing to define yourself as a helpless victim). There are all sorts of other virtues posited but these four were considered to be the foundation stones of a well-lived life in the Western tradition.

The Western tradition has nothing to do with cowboys or country music. It’s a term, now considered politically incorrect in many circles, that refers to a way of looking at, and living in, the world. It’s fallen out of favor for claiming (although it's admittedly flawed) that it's the best H. sapiens have come up with so far for how to share the playground. 

But, we’re now all one big happy global family; don't be a hater. Everything is like, relative, ya’ know? After all, the Western tradition includes all the evil dead white guys that ruined the world.

                                                    *     *     *

I’m a crank and I’m a libertarian. But, I hold some positions normally classified as conservative, others normally classified as progressive. I have a bias towards trying to discover what actually works and trying to discover how the left and right can compromise and peacefully share the playground.  

I’m a crank and I’m a follower of Taoism (an Eastern philosophy), but also a firm believer in most of the Western tradition. I think that the USA, a product of this tradition, though flawed (as is every-one and every-thing), rocks, and I’m glad and grateful this is my team.

I’m a crank. This is why I’m going to devote my next five letters/columns to restating my take on the cardinal virtues (you've been warned).

Poppa loves you,
Have an OK day

Please scroll down to react, comment, or share. If my work pleases you I wouldn't be offended if you offered to buy me a coffee.  

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Your friendly neighborhood crank is not crazy about social media (I am a crank after all) but if you must, you can like me/follow me on Facebook. I post an announcement when I have a new column available as well as news articles/opinion pieces that reflect where I'm coming from or that I wish to call attention to. Cranky don't tweet.

Halloween, 2019

Image by Enrique Meseguer from Pixabay 

This is a weekly column consisting of letters to my perspicacious progeny. I write letters to my grandchildren (who exist), and my great-grandchildren (who don't) — the Stickies — to haunt them after they become grups or I'm deleted.

                  
This column is rated SSC — Sexy Seasoned Citizens. Perusal by kids, callowyutes, and approximately 39.9% of all grups may result in a debilitating intersectional triggering. 

                                                  Glossary  

                                                    About

Erratically Appearing Hallucinatory Guest Star: Dana — A Gentlerreader

"From ghoulies and ghosties
And long-leggedy beasties
And things that go bump in the night.
Good Lord, deliver us!"


Dear Grandstickies & Great-Grandstickies (& Gentlereaders),

For the record, the quote above is a poem, or a (Scottish) prayer, or an anonymous children's rhyme of Scottish or Cornish or Welsh or Celtic origin. It depends on who you ask.

If it were my job to choose, I'd go with Scottish prayer because, well, because it pleases me, I have a poetic license—and it's my column.

Which reminds me, I need to get off the dime and ramp up my campaign. I'm running for king next year. You may have missed the announcement given that the obsessed purple press is about to begin year four of all, the Donald, all the time.

Anyways, I confess that the whatever it is that I quote above fascinates me. I've always liked it for its own sake. But then I went a-googlin' and discovered that everyone says or writes it the exact same way but no one is sure where it came from.

I think it reminds us that even in the Dizzinformation Age all facts—however useful, time-tested, corroborated, etceterated—are potentially provisional given that...

[FOR THE LOVE OF GOD! Is Mr. Cranky suffering from a severe bout of dementia and wandering the streets of his neighborhood in a fugue state, peeing his pants, and asking the feral cats under the viaduct why they killed all the birds?]

Get a grip, Dana. I know perfectly well most of the birds have fled south, as I wish I could. Winter's here in Canada's Deep South (Ohio) are brutal.

[Fine then, could we move past the freakin' lame lyrical loopy introduction and get on with the show?]

Speaking of dementia, I've noticed that you seem to be losing your temper a lot more than usual lately. When was the last time...

Bam! (A door slams shut in my head.)

                                                     *     *     *

My daily morning and evening perambulations around the neighborhood I've lived in, but have mostly ignored for the past decade, detailed in Mr. Cranky's Neighborhood, continue apace.

Halloween's upon us and the leaves are dying. Climate conditions this year were such that they're not going out in a blaze of glory. More like a soft glow of pastel mediocrity.

Halloween decorations, some of which went up quite early—but not as early as miniaturized candy bars encased in holiday-themed plastic bags (same candy, different bags)—have appeared here, there, and even in that street half full of deserted houses way over there.

Also, orange Halloween lights—I try to hit the streets when the sun is almost gone, sunsets in the Flatlands of Ohio are normally only at their best for a brief time—while not commonplace, are also not rare.

When I was a kid, there was no such thing as Halloween lights and miniaturized candy bars were rare. Full-sized bars were the rule and the infidels that desecrated the holiday by handing out tiny candy bars were as reviled as the people that handed out fruit.

And no, it wasn't because of a fear of carefully hidden razor blades, it was because it was fruit.

Yes, even back in the Black&White ages that story, and variations of that story, were in circulation. I went a googlin' and discovered it's so common there's a Wikipedia entry about it.

                                                     *     *     *

The good news is that the Wikipedia entry, along with all sorts of other sources, have ruled that this myth is officially busted.

The bad news is that this urban legend has roots that extend all the way back to when candy started being made in factories, which according to this website, was as long ago as 1847.

"The inventor of 'chocolate for eating' is unknown, but in 1847 Joseph Fry discovered a way to mix cocoa powder, sugar, and cocoa to create a paste that could be pressed into a mold. The resulting Bar was a success."

"Candy from a factory, made by a machine? I'm stickin' with Mrs. McGillicuddy's hot chocolate. Lord knows what might be in that bar!"

The current kerfuffle concerning candy tampering commenced when I was a kid and coincided with the cultural chaos of the 60s and 70s that continues (alliteration rules! sorry...) to this day.

Although the stories have repeatedly been debunked, the legend, now more than 150 years old, lives on. Given the 24-hour news cycle, social media, and global terrorism it's not hard to imagine why. 

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In America, with the exception of certain pagans and a seemingly ever-diminishing number of Catholics, All Hallows Eve remains an unofficial and secular holiday even though it generates lots of profit, lots of jobs, and lots of fun.

Somehow, it's managed to avoid being turned into a Monday/three day weekend holiday even if some heretical communities celebrate it on a Friday or Saturday night.

Somehow, even public-sector unions haven't found a way to turn it into a paid holiday—for public-sector unions and no one else.

I've even heard rumors of places that don't have officially authorized hours for when ghoulies and ghosties are permitted to go trick or treating.

"Stop yer cryin' kid, rules are rules. If ya don't want yer candy confiscated ya gotta play by the rules. Hey, have your parents seen this costume? I mean..."

"Don't even go there, Ed, those rules are only for college students."

[Geesh, is there a point to this drivel?]

Dana, welcome back!

[Don't start, I...]

A point? I guess I'm just trying to say it pleases me no end that in America the busyiful we celebrate a holiday of (almost) no religious or secular significance primarily for the fun of it.

On a vaguely related note, I promise that if I'm elected king that I'll spend no shortage of political capital promoting the passage of the America's Closed on Sundays Just Because We Can Be amendment to the Constitution.

Poppa loves you,
Have an OK day

Please scroll down to react, comment, or share. If my work pleases you I wouldn't be offended if you offered to buy me a coffee.  

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Your friendly neighborhood crank is not crazy about social media (I am a crank after all) but if you must, you can like me/follow me on Facebook. I post an announcement when I have a new column available as well as news articles/opinion pieces that reflect where I'm coming from or that I wish to call attention to. Cranky don't tweet.