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Tuesday, January 11, 2011

What is the Reward for Virtue?

The problem is not heated rhetoric; the problem is we ourselves.
The problem is not guns; the problem is our lack of virtue.

I am not interested in the theory of virtue in morality as a strictly philosophical inquiry (mainly because I never parted ways from it - not that I was ever that virtuous), but soon we shall all take an interest in what it means to be virtuous and how one goes about doing it.

On a very simple level, it brings to mind the British Empire and the playing fields of Eton, where teamwork and playing one's part were inculcated in the minds of British boys. It brings to mind a simple complex of behaviors: sports team and their dynamics.
Sports had always been considered important in the US also for similar reasons.
Then I think of all the years of stories about parents being out of control at children's sporting events and the speculation on what these spectacles taught the children. I remember all the years of money grubbing owners and steroid using players and the total present day disrespect for the burden of "role model" by not only sports people, but almost any celebrity in the eye of the media.

What behaviors have we been rewarding and teaching?

Virtue is its own reward.
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