Soar

"You haven't seen a tree until you've seen its shadow from the sky."
-Amelia Earhart

Virtue

~Wisdom~
~Courage~
~Justice~
~Moderation~

Presenting the four cardinal virtues. Also known as the chief western virtues. No doubt voiced in part by Socrates and certainly enumerated by Plato. Part of me is glad there isn't much active consideration these days, otherwise they could be thrown away with things like the ten commandments in the trash of obsolete, broken wisdom. Thankfully they have no religious grounding and are broad enough concepts to have resisted the effects of age.

Before proceeding further I will detail what I refer to as the twin concepts of the chief virtues:

Prudence = Wisdom
Fortitude = Courage
Justice
Temperance = Moderation

One is rarely without the other yet they are more than synonyms. As with the shortcomings of language, sometimes one twin is better described in place of the other. "Patience is prudence" because it it is wise to be patient.

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Wisdom
                        is the virtue of the thinker; the considerate mind. In a very general sense it refers to an ideal state where someone makes the best decision given the situation. The twin concept of wisdom is prudence. It is the positive trait of someone who treads carefully and is mindful of their actions. "Take care." I've seen wisdom and knowledge be confused with one another many times. The important difference being that knowledge is what you know and wisdom is what you do (with what you know).

Courage
                        is the virtue of the emotional heart; the empathetic soul. Truly the most popularized virtue of modern times. I would be careful to establish the difference between courage and valor.* The twin concept is fortitude, which helps to make the distinction. It is the determination of an unwavering spirit; the steadfastness of someone driven toward an end. While I don't aim to reduce it to a trite status, the application is without limitation. Fortitude is just as readily observed in an inspired student as it is in a worker facing adverse circumstances. Courage is acting on your convictions even if met with resistance.

Justice
                     is the virtue of the accountable mind; the socially responsible. Certainly the most abstract of the chief virtues and I suspect the most difficult for contemporary attitudes to digest. With our legal system being referred to as the "justice system" there is plenty of room for misinterpretation. Ask kids in Pennsylvania right now if their court system is just and get the response you'd receive from most "Americans" these days who don't really trust anything any more. If we can, let us--for a moment--hold it separate and take it in as the beautiful idea that justice is.

There is no twin here, which I find very interesting. The hardest thing about accepting the concept is that it requires a person to be able to consider their self wrong in any situation. Consider it tandem with accountability. People think justice is someone getting what they deserve in a judicial sense. Like a bible, they bring it out only when it is needed then quickly re-shelve afterward. Justice is served. If anything, I would have people consider it more a constant than a fleeting convenience.

Given thought, justice is less and less a verdict to be decided by someone else and more a quality of life best experienced if all embrace the notion. Plato saw it as the unifying virtue which made possible and preserved the others. Perhaps that is why it's difficult to define justice without referencing the others. To be just is to be wise, courageous and moderate.

Moderation
                                is the virtue of the balanced presence. As fat as the U.S. is, it is a topic widely discussed now. The word itself is easily applied to nearly any situation. The twin concept here is temperance, which when found in a dictionary has 'moderation' as the first word of the 1. definition. To lose your temper is to lose your self-control. As a cognizant being this can be the most embarrassing virtue to lack.

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To discuss virtue is to have a conversation about 'morals' and 'ethics' but hopefully without using either word. I say that because people in this country have an awful tendency to condemn each others varied world views when they'd have as much luck telling someone their opinion is wrong.

On paper we consider virtues individually but in practice they are a unified force. Moderation is impossible without the wisdom necessary to exercise it. Courage and fortitude are foolhardy without prudence to temper their application. Justice without moderation is corrupt. They are independent yet intertwined and one cannot exist without all others.



*valor -noun: boldness or determination in facing great danger, esp. in battle; heroic courage; bravery.

Utility*

Whenever I assess the value of something, there are a few key thoughts that go through my mind. I now call this process

---

the utility test:
   1.) Observe something; an object, person or entity.
   2.) Determine a purpose^†.
   3.) Evaluate how well it performs this function.

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In simpler language there are two questions to answer:

What does it do?
How well does it do it?

Example [Object]: A tool is built to cut a specific gauge of wire. If the tool does so and makes a clean cut without fraying either new end of the wire one can conclude it has good utility. If a tool of similar function only produces a firm kink in the wire or leaves very frayed ends of metal it has no or poor utility.

Example [Person]: A grocery store requires its stockers to lift items ranging from 10 to 40 pounds in the course of their daily duties. A worker who can do this passes the test. A worker who cannot lift these items fails this test and has little utility as a stocker.

Example [Entity]: A real estate business is responsible for managing its properties; signing and extending leases, maintaining grounds and equipment, addressing tenant needs and concerns, et cetera. There are many degrees to which it can perform its respective functions but at the very least an entity should pass the utility test. If said business does not complete requested work orders or reply to tenant communications then utility suffers greatly.

As the reader might have noticed, these are all nouns. An entity can be a business or a group or even an attitude. People, in their varied capacities, can have a large number of purposes. Utility, as it is addressed here, is specific as it pertains to individual functions of a person. Overall utility is where you begin to approach the topic of worth, which is a general term.



* utility -noun: 1. the state or quality of being useful; usefulness.
† purpose -noun: 1. the reason for which something exists or is done, made, used

Orphans

_"
And if god is great and god is good,

why can't he change the hearts of men?
Maybe god himself is lost and needs help.
Maybe god himself he needs all of our help.
Maybe god himself is lost and needs help.
He's out upon the road to peace.
_"

-Tom Waits, "Road to Peace" (From Orphans: Brawlers)

Duality

"He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man."

-Samuel Johnson

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    Humans are animals. This means:
        +You must eat
        +You must generate offspring
        +You must rest
        +You must fear

    Humans are mammals. This means:
        +You want to be around others like you
        +You want to be warm
        +You want to be solitary periodically

Homo sapien : "wise man"

Therein lies the ^conflict

You think, therefore you are? Accepted, but before you thought, you were already an animal; born into life as active as any other. Our nature affects everything about us. Why is an eighty hour work week bad? Because you're not built to do that.

BUT YOU CAN.

Ah, yes. Pandora's gift for modern humankind. We have the capacity to defy our needs. We have the capacity to exceed our nature. You can squeeze something so hard it damages the nerves in your hand. You can understand the surgeon general's warning and still go buy another pack. Yes we can.

The absolute greatest challenge for modern humans is to reconcile the flesh and the mind. More often than not it's perceived as an internal conflict of interest. You want to have sex, but you'd better have protection. You want to get really wasted tonight, but your body will reject the poison and eventually enter a passive state. You want to max out your credit card, but you may not have enough money for good food.

So you have teen pregnancy and overpopulation. You have a 12 step program and the best hangover cure. Credit repair and cheap fast food. Ginkgo biloba and caffeine. You have Restless Leg Syndrome and lumbar support. Gastric bypass and a personal trainer.

And you have charities and support groups. Volunteers and non-profits. Cooperatives and carpools. You have social contracts and public sanitation. Exchange students, liberty and the internet. Courage, wisdom, justice and moderation. Bicycles! Yes we can.

Humans made it this far due to their wits. Our genome is at least ninety-eight percent identical to that of some chimpanzees and I don't need to point out the difference two percent makes. That variance blossoms extraordinary potential and like any tool the merit is in the application. Alfred Nobel invented dynamite to aid construction, then they dropped tonnes of it on cities to do the exact opposite. Clearly our biggest threat is ourselves. Clearly our greatest savior is ourselves.

The Sprawl

"And the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish and short."

-Thomas Hobbes

(also in Tom Waits' song 'Come On Up to the House') was describing the natural state of mankind from the year 1651. Things haven't changed much. A "war of all against all" is another way of saying "every man for himself." Before the human was Social, it was belligerent. Unfortunately the former does not eclipse the latter. In Leviathan, Hobbes offered his interpretation that when faced with the anarchic state of nature most people would give up liberties in exchange for peace or "freedom." Thus, you have the broad concept of government.

Say you have 20 humans (5 groups of 4) living separately in a large wooded area. Each group is completely self-dependent and -supporting. These humans are able to survive under the circumstances but are constantly taxed by environmental conditions, marauding predators and conflict with other humans.

Now think of these humans as people.

Assume the condition of trade has been met. Being as they are mentally endowed, the idea is introduced that if they work together and pool their resources they could achieve a more rewarding and satisfying life. A whole greater than the sum of its parts.

Jump to the smallest society you can imagine. Every member has specific functions and carries out certain duties. Efficiency is a hallmark of this system. Each person influences a whole to which their daily life is tandem. As a result, one can see the impact of their actions manifest almost immediately.

Jump to a society where a true democracy is no longer viable. This is where things get complicated. This is what most people associate with the word 'government:' Representatives. Taxes. Parties. It's the base idea expanded only to encompass the growing size of the system. It becomes a sprawl.

Social contracts exist under the requisite concept that those involved are contributing to the group. In the United States we pay taxes. Those taxes go to a pool that is then spent on things concerning the whole. Public spaces, infrastructure, security, et cetera. For simplicity we'll address local, state and national levels at once. People pay taxes (whether intentionally or not) because they want the continued benefits that participating in a society affords them. In a representative democracy delegates convene to determine who gets "what, when and how" (Lasswell. Word.). That stage, right there, is where the problems arise.

If a government is supposed to represent the wishes of the people through the spending of public money and the number of people exceeds the capacity of government to satisfy, what good is the system? If you were to sit down and have a conversation with me I would likely delve into more complex and specific instances and projections of this concept at work, which is where the meat of the subject is. I believe there are deep negative social effects that result from such a situation. Problems that would be much less likely to occur without.

Because the literal characteristic of a sprawl is separation of the community. 100s of 1000000s of people have a stake in the same national resources yet each of them regularly interacts with a dot fraction of the community. Darwin's finches evolved different beaks over a 18,750 square mile area (and that's counting water). By comparison, Texas is 268,820 square miles. Imagine how many different ways people evolved to think about the world over the span of the United States. And all of them have a say in how the common resource is spent. In theory.