Day 41

A question raised in a class last week was" can a person be virtuous while alone on a deserted island?
I believe a person can. Not all virtues, however, can be applied to such a situation with no social contact of any sort (generosity for example), but some still can.

Take honesty. It would take honesty to be able to accept ones predicament. As in, there are times a person would have to be honest with himself about the reality of given situations.

And courage. It may take courage to risk a life alone on this island (or a slow death) in order to will oneself to stay alive (ie. not committ suicide. See the movie Castaway for an example of this virtue playing out.)

Perhaps peace as well. Does our lonely inhabitant lash out at the environment around him, or does he treat it with a kind nature?

Now, maybe we can apply this all to real life. I believe that often the best way to learn about a person's true character is not to watch their deliberative actions, but watch their 'gut' reactions to significant events (ie. their actions divorced of social norms etc). These reactions precede reason's kicking in, and are thus more raw and revealing. When a sportsman loses the big game and punches over the water cooler in anger upon facing this loss, we've learned something very telling about him, regardless of how sportsmanlike and humble he is at the post-game press conference.
Ask yourself how you react to these kinds of things. Does your good character save you from such harsh emotions, or must you quell your emotions with rationalization?

Comments

Anonymous said…
I agree with your assessment of the deserted islander, with respect to applicable/inapplicable virtues-- but I feel I should elaborate on some of the assumptions you may (or may not) have made in the last paragraph.
I take it that you think that virtue (or virtuous character)is a product of both rational deliberation and constant practice, usually informed by widespread social expectations of one's culture-- not some static thing that one 'possesses' by sheer accident. And you must agree that it is somewhat artificial to divide 'gut reactions' from 'social norms', since it is often gut reactions (think extreme cases, resulting in nasty consequences) that social norms attempt (and sometimes succeed) at targeting in the long term. Also, a given 'outburst' by a hypothetical stranger may indicate a norm of action (or provocation-reaction) on his or her part, or it may be an exceptional response to exceptional circumstances (for one reason or another), though I understand that your water-cooler-puncher is intuitively meant to illustrate the former.
All that being said, your final question seems a bit misleading or unfortunately worded-- deliberately "quelling your emotions with rationalization" (prior to overt action) is part and parcel of the very project of modulating one's learned emotional responses to a variety of unfavorable situations. Thus character is not so much a distinct faculty that 'saves' you from flaring emotions but rather the conscious recognition and acknowledgment of these responses, along with the knee-jerk reactions they tend to produce, as they occur throughout one's life-- as a means of curbing their influence and gradually replacing them with more commendable ones.

I'm thinking you are in agreement with most of the above. The last part of this post just came off as somewhat truncated and confusing to me, compared to your usual standard of candor and clarity.

And, just because I haven't quite over-analysed this entry enough :-), you might be wary with vague expressions like 'significant events' and 'these kinds of things' because they are not too helpful in procuring understanding between people as to precisely what kind of gut responses we should be most concerned with here-- it may come off as moralizing to those who simply do not agree with your (or our) assessment of which particular actions count as 'preceding-reason', or 'overreactions'.

Sooner or later, I'm going to get around to responding to some of the more interesting posts here...
1:33 AM
Max said…
Are you implying that this entry isn't interesting?

j/k. Yea I figure you're spot on. The vagueness of it all is due mainly to the all-of-eight-minutes I gave to the entry last night. I think my idea, in truth, was to say somewhat less than what you read into. It wasn't so much the idea to separate virtue itself into modules, but to give the reader what I believe to be a bit of insight into figuring out who is and isn't more 'fully' virtuous.
This stems from the question raised in class... if, when we're at our initial stages of learning we're just trying to mimic the actions of virtuous people, we need to look to the virtuous as role models, then how are we to tell between the truly virtuous and those who are just 'acting it out'?
In my mind, at least, it still stands to reason that looking for 'gut reactions' in people can serve as a telling indication of character (though obviously not the only indication). Yes, perhaps the water-cooler-puncher is an ok guy, who's practicing his virtues, but he just isn't quite there yet! Someone with a more humble gut reaction would be fairly considered more virtuous, all other things being equal.
And of course, my final thought was to implicitly express the idea that we ought not to get too smug just because we're able to convince others of our virtues - that is - when our 'mental behaviour' doesn't line up with the image we seek to portray. If you'r shaking your opponent's hand, smiling, humbly saying 'good game', but you're actually thinking "fuck that guy," then you've got a lot of work to do, even if nobody notices. I'm sure this is agreeable.
12:35 PM
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