Series:
Essay #9:
Synopsis:
Ends & Means
Wired Virtue
Virtue is mind and body together, so by doing virtuous acts and creating virtuous habits, I wire my corporeal self into virtue
Here’s where I left off my last essay, Habitual Free-Will: I have a vision of my highest good and a better me. That vision informs me in all aspects of life, in every choice and action; and by that vision, I train myself in the habits that bring this new person into reality. It’s all about training.
Imagine I want to be a good fighter. I’ll train martial arts so that I can develop the habits that make up a good fighter. I wire my brain and train my body, and I take great care in this process. For example, I rarely permit fight-or-flight situations because that causes bad wiring. A coach should gradually introduce the student to sparring, making sure that the student wires up in the play-part of his brain. Fighting should be play: loose, aware and creative. A martial artist never wants his neuronal connections to pass through the fear-part of his brain, because fear is too powerful. Fear dominates the mind, and fear is a bad fighter. Therefore, I mostly train in the play-zone because this is how I wire myself into a good fighter.
It's the same with virtue. Doing virtuous action wires up neuronal connections, and as I do more virtuous acts, the wiring gets stronger until it becomes default habit. Virtue is a good habit that I’ve developed in myself. For example, I become courageous by acting with courage, and I become just by giving others their proper due. Imagine that my social group treats a person as the other and ridicules him. I become just by giving respect to that person, especially when I don’t like him. I become courageous by speaking in defense of him, especially when I’m scared that my group will disapprove of me. With practice, the habits form a stable, physical disposition which is me. But beware bad habits because they lead to bad character, like if my group degrades the other and I watch timidly, or I join in viciously.
Here’s my big idea: a virtue is mind and body together, inseparable, expressing what a person should be. One half of virtue is the mind that informs and organizes body and behavior. The other half of virtue is matter, the bodily wirings and physical behaviors that express the mind. So, virtue is material because it exists when I do it; and virtue is immaterial mind because the wirings and behavior are random spasms until brought together and made intelligible by meaning. Virtue is an Aristotelian form instantiated in my body and in my actions.
Think of a kid who wants to be courageous. I wasn’t courageous when I was a kid, that is, my brain wasn’t wired for courage yet, but I knew courage when I saw it, and I wanted it. I watched Magnum P.I. and I wanted to be him and solve murder cases with his pals, TC and Rick. The actor, Tom Selleck, walked and talked a certain way, and both of us understood the same essential form of courage when he showed it on TV and I watched at home.
Me and Tom Selleck participated in the same elemental form of courage. The virtue of courage (like the other virtues) is real and objective. It’s a set of behaviors that hang together and make sense. Over time, a child can let that Aristotelian form of courage guide him in acts of varying degrees of courage, and each time he succeeds, the child wires a little more courage into his corporeal self. This habitual physical expression becomes the virtue of courage in the man. In my middle age, I reflect on the decades of training needed to build out my meagre portion.
Watching virtue on TV isn’t enough; I must do it over and over, to make it habitual. I wire my own brain. Every thought I think, every choice I make, every action I take wires up neuronal pathways in my brain, and the more I do it, the stronger the pathways get. The pathways become habit, and over the years, habit becomes character, and character becomes my way of being in the world. I become what I do, for better or worse.
I asked my son, age 19, what was the most important book he’s read. He said, The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson. The Slight Edge says that, in every little choice and action, I’m either building good habits or I’m not; I’m either going forward or backward. If tonight I go to bed a little later, then tomorrow I go to bed a little more later. There’s no hiding behind neutrality because not choosing is a choice, and that too becomes habit.
Psychologist Erich Fromm said,
“The longer we continue to make the wrong decisions, the more our heart hardens; the more often we make the right decisions, the more our heart softens–or perhaps comes alive. Each step in life which increases my self-confidence, my integrity, my courage, my conviction, also increases my capacity to choose the desirable alternative. Each act of surrender and cowardice weakens me, opens the path for more surrender, and eventually freedom is lost.”
So how do I build good habits? In every choice and action, do right. I start with the big question: who I want to become. I answer with my highest good and I judge every action by its standard of right and wrong. In every choice and action, I do right by the standard of my highest good. I train myself to do right, so that over the years, doing right becomes default habit and good character. I wire my own brain.
That’s the moral of this story. Now I pray for the courage to do it.
Essays in this Series, Ends & Means: