Initial Thoughts on the Concept of Virtue and the State's Role in Promoting It

I should start these "thoughts" by relaying the observation that led me to them. I was watching what was from my point of view a good father. And this is (from my point of view) the exception in our State, and not the rule. He is to state it perfectly an exceptional father. We were at a cafe. It doesn't matter what I was doing. The father was there with his two children who presumably just finished school for the day, and were hanging out with dad, doing homework while he finished up some of his own paperwork. The older daughter did nothing noteworthy. She was silent the entire time and did her math problems. The younger boy was slightly more reluctant, and tried to pull the typical stunts to get out of doing his homework, as if he believed that his father was still a juvenile or never was a juvenile and should reasonably believe that the teacher would not assign any homework. This is a situation which is common in parenthood, but the way that most parents address this issue is quite inferior to this father's method, in my opinion. Most parents seem to either ignore the situation, flip out, or try to manipulate the child either by offering rewards or beatings, or loss of privileges. But in an adult tone this father looked at his child and in a matter of fact manner queried quietly, but authoritatively, with a slight smile, "Your teacher assigned no homework?" Of course the child picked up the sarcasm in his father's tone and smiled caught, and replied, "well I have some history to study."
"No spelling words to study?"
"A few"
"No math problems"
"No"
"Let's do some math problems."
"Why?"
"Because skill comes from practice, and being your best is what you always ought to do."
The boy said nothing and willingly went to doing his math problems.
What struck me was how he treated his children differently than how I see most people treat their children. He treated them like they were real people with fully functioning brains, with a propensity for placing value on moral actions, and the ability to do what is right. Most people seem to treat their children like their subhumans with subhuman capabilities towards ethical living. True, kids psyches' must be shaped to an extent, but they are not computers that their parents program, they are more like extremely intelligent dogs that need to be trained, except they are not dogs. They are human children. And he talked to them like people. And he believed that they should be good people, and could be good people, that the responsibility to teach them how to be good people fell on him, but that the responsibility to make them good people was theirs. And that's respecting basic human dignity, which seems to be lost on the last couple of generations. It seemed to me that this father's motive for insisting that his boy do his homework was for his boys' moral benefit, not for garnering future capitalistic virtues. In other words it wasn't pragmatic, and certainly it wasn't just to get them out of his hair. His desire was that his child be a decent human being, and no one can fault that.
I remember vividly one thing that he said to his daughter.
"There are two kinds of people. People who suck everything out of life while they have it, and people who get through. I suppose there is nothing wrong with just getting through, but if you only have such a short time, why not get the most out of it. I want you to be the first kind of person."
Without dissecting that statement to the infinitesimal depths that it can go, let me just say that there is no way that anyone can say this man's advice is bad advice. That is not to say that it cannot be criticized, or be considered false, but it must not be considered non-virtuous.
And what is the virtue that is being propagated? In both cases it is work ethic. And it is that working, doing your best, regardless of monetary reward is good for the soul and makes a person good. I feel like this is American. I feel like this is American because every person I know (the overwhelming majority being American)over the age of 45, has a great work ethic and complains of my generation's lack of a work ethic, and when I see how many 27 year old's I know who are in a fledgling band, without a job and live with their parents, and spend most of their time watching something, or drinking something, I think, What does it mean to be American? When I read history books I find that self-sufficiency was among the most highly valued American virtues, now I find that we often mistake self-sufficiency for the right to live off someone else, which really is the opposite. How did this happen? How was there such a degree of turn in our cultural identity? I propose, and regrettably so, that our slacker culture is not the herald of a competing secular philosophy that defeated a more religious philosophy, or the representative of a major epistemological shift in the last 50 years, but an unexpected branch from the same root that supports the American cultural tree. If you read de Tocqueville, the virtual American prophet, you'll find that it was at least expected by one person. I do not think that a strong work ethic was the thing that made American distinct. A strong work ethic was the result of an attitude combined with an agricultural society that made it necessary, but the prevailing American attitude has always been individual independence, and when there was no one to hand you anything you had to go get it yourself. Now it's another time, a time after the industrial revolution, a time in the middle of the technological revolution, and independence does not have to be earned, and all the while, in true American style it is expected, and as long as government can provide people the money to be able to live the way that they want our culture will be this way, but all the while without us realizing we're becoming (gasp) dependent in order to be independent. Which brings us to the last major question: Can the state make a virtuous state? Answer: No. Morality just cannot be legislated, or executed. It can only be taught and practiced. It can be passed on to our children. Let us not be proud to be Americans, unless by American we mean,ambitious, hard working, honest, equal respecters of all persons. But I fear that what it means to be American is to value independence so much that we're willing to sacrifice true independence for a cheap imitation that gives us the guise of independence while in the long run providing us the opposite. The path back to independence now looks like recognizing that our state is in the process of handing it over, and refusing to do the same by teaching our children that even if the teacher doesn't give you math problems, do some math problems, because only your best is ever good enough.
Final thought: Virtue has no Republic. It is only represented in a virtuous monarchy with a king named Jesus.

Downtown

Every town, regardless of its size has a downtown. But one town has an uptown, New York City. This makes things a little unclear for me. My guess would be that "downtown" was a term that originated in New York city to differentiate between North and South Manhattan, hence uptown, (North) or downtown (South). But in every other city downtown refers to the commercial section of town. I know this would make no sense in Manhattan, but why call it Manhattan then, why not call it the same thing we call every other part of town that's commercial? Why don't we call it Downtown New York? Or maybe we should stop referring to the commercial areas that are in the north part of their towns, or in the middle, or even if they're in the south part, as downtown and just call refer to it according to its actual geographical location, like Manhattan does. Of course, regardless of the semantic illogic, everyone seems to understand the system. No one seems to see the outright untruth of calling the North part of town downtown, just because it's commercial. We know that people mean the commercial part of town when they say downtown. We need not be too picky about words. On second thoughts, I think maybe we should reconsider our thoughts about being "too picky about words". On third thought, maybe we shouldn't be too lax with words, neither should we be too picky. We should be just right, like everything baby bear owns. Because upon further thought, North isn't technically up, and South isn't technically down.
I am going to make a map with Antarctica on the top. (But what shall we make of east and west?)Hmmm... And who decided that the middle of the Pacific Ocean was where a day would change?

Who Commandeered my Blog

I swear I didn't write the last post. I will find this culprit. My leads so far: He is an insomniac. He has a poor handle on English gammar.

Sleep

Sleep is important. I am a different person when I get sleep. I am happy, and smart, and able to write blog posts. I cannot use my brain today in a voluntary sort of way. Right now its just my nervous system. Sleep energizes my soul, and makes me more than just an animal. The most frustrating thing about all of this is that it probably makes a ton of sense right now, but when I read it say tomorrow, I will inevitably say. Was that worth writing? Ehh... Off to work, and running on artificial energy, a.k.a. caffeine.

What that was

The post that appeared right before this one was once a very long polemic against religion, in favor of what is difficult to specify with words, but for now shall I say, "a real application of the principle of loving your neighbor as yourself minus the artificial supervision of a religious system". By some sort of freak accident or providential protection that post was not saved correctly, and is forever lost. Without having any confidence that the post's deletion was just an accident and was therefore a providential act of God, I feel it might be too great a risk to publish it again in its original form, despite my attachment to the post. But what I have is a very brief synopsis. Feel free to ask me my thoughts on it, if you dare.

What I see (in me)

Hope

Hope is a great thing, when it is understood correctly. Hope, in the way we use the word has a very sour taste to it, it puts into play the possibility of failure. Maybe I think that because I am of the "glass is half-empty" variety. But if hope is certain, or at least positive, it is a great thing. We usually don't use the word hope, in our ironically negative and ambitious culture, in its positive sense. If we're trying to express anticipatory excitement, then we usually say things like: "I'm looking forward to...", or "I can't wait until..." We're not in this case leaving the door open, if you will, for what we anticipate to happen to fail to happen. But when we say: "I hope that I will get to see..." There's a tinge of uneasy, uncertainty in that comment, as if you might as well attach to the comment, "But it probably won't happen." So when we're told in the Bible that our hope is in Christ, if we understand hope in the contemporary sense, it essentially means nothing.
But I say again that hope is a great thing. Because hope is not all that it's made out to be. It's very simply the actual future experience. It ought not to mean anything to say "I hope such and such happens." It ought to mean something, and certainly it does mean something to say, "Although I have not experienced such and such, I know that I will". A first reaction to this attitude might be one of disgust, since it smacks of a sort of sad cosmic denial, but if one were to ask a very basic question, "Why do I live?" he should find that he lives because of hope. That despite his inability to "know what is going to happen" with same sort of certainty that he is presently certain that he is physically where he currently is physically, he knows it with the same sort of certainty. If it is a sad sort of denial to look forward to (hope for) a resurrection, is it not also a sad denial to look forward to dinner? There are thinkers who are consistent enough to say this is true, and I would never fault a person for living according to this way; in the moment as they say. "Carpe diem!" But what is at stake if he does look forward to a dinner that never comes? Disappointment? Embarassment? Maybe. But those feelings depend on the subject. They are not objective. For if one has already decided on a disposition of content, then he cannot be shaken. Perhaps one would say that this is still a sort of denial, and thus is dilly-dallying in potential untruths. I can certainly sympathize with this point of view, but I would say that a Christian is not afforded the privilege of only affirming the truth by means of the senses. "Faith is the evidence of things not seen, the assurance of things hoped for". Thus hope is a marvelously great thing. For it is assurance. If it were not assurance then it would not be faith, it would be false hope. And I don't wish to sound like the offspring of some certain 19th century Dane, but this paradox cannot be mediated".
Either there is a future resurrection or there is not. If we doubt it, and begin to structure our certainty based on our senses and experiences, if we're honest, objective, and truthfully unbiased we will see that there is clearly no empirical argument, nor proof, which will bring us the kind of assurance of hope that is as certain as our location in our current physical location to us. There really is no end to doubt.
The truth claims, we hold so dear as Christians, are not entirely irrational, but if irrationality be defined as starting from any other place in our thinking than the senses, I think this is an accusation we can take with dignity. Our assurance of a resurrection, is a genuine assurance, reasonable, rational, meaningful, and empirically indemonstrable to consistent skeptics.

Since the Last Time

I got engaged! It's surreal really.
All of the things that people seem to get excited about marriage seem to be very superficial to me. If the happy couple have no convictions about pre-marital sex, and they live together, what in the world could make marriage significant besides lame cultural norms? If the happy couple has convictions about pre-marital sex, it seems that many times their excitement to get married is full of erotic love without any consideration for agape. Any two people can have sex. Not everybody can live together. In fact, I don't believe that anybody can live together their whole lives without an agape kind of commitment to one another. And this is not a bad thing. Actually this is the beauty of monogamous relationships. They stay together for love, in the fullest sense of the word, not just the Hollywood sense. Sex is the beautiful commencement of a commitment. (Which is why pre-marital sex, fornication, and adultery are so ugly).
So while commencement is an exciting prospect. It's not the only prospect of marriage. I also realize that hard times are coming, and so is pain, but I'm excited to be able to live life with someone I really really care about. I have no Hollywood ideas of grandeur and romance. I in no way can believe that this marriage will alone bring me the happiness I've been waiting for. It will however be one of the major things that God uses to bring me more joy as he uses our relationship to show us Himself, the source of all joy.
And to my married audience. I am very open to advice.