The Art of Manliness (womanliness too?) The Virtuous Life

[Mandatory Intellectomy]

Suffice to say, personally I would not agree to practice all of the below as per the description given (see strike-through items).

I'd like to add something regarding which values are desirable and which aren't.

I think the trick is more about when to do what. Looking at values as in this list may be a bit simplified. The reality is more along the lines of each characteristic having its negative and positive end, and even that may not be very clear-cut, as what's usually negative can become positive given specific circumstances. I think this was nicely described in Elisabeth Haich's book "Initiation".

You scratched Patience. But instead of deciding whether Patience as such is a good or bad thing, it should be considered at any given moment, in any particular situation, whether this is a time to be patient or not. One face of patience can be tolerance, and another face of patience can be indifference or inaction. So your life should be a stream of constant evaluations of your situation and what's appropriate for it, which is a bit more difficult than just learning a set of rules and sticking to it, but also much more useful.

To give some examples, take Anger. Generally it's seen as a bad thing, and most of the time it is, but there are times to be angry. Like in the movie Network: "You've got to get mad!" When your government is oppressive and killing people, it's probably less of a time for Patience and more of a time for Anger. Or if you see rape in progress, it'll be of little use to stand there and try to talk the attacker out of it because you don't want to be "aggressive".

Is Compassion good? Mostly, but we all know what happens when you have compassion with psychopaths. They abuse it 10 times out of 10 and nothing good comes out of it. You may just be a victim forever.

"Sensitivity – Perceiving the true attitudes and emotions of those around me." OK, but should you go as far as supporting all the gender identity bullshit we see today?

So it's a bit more complex than most explanations will show. You need to be constantly aware (this can not be overstated) of as much as you can, judge each situation with all the context you can get for it, and adjust any "rules" in the light of all the information you have. Rigid rules are rarely if ever applicable in all situations.

Lists like the one you posted are certainly helpful because they bring your attention to all those good traits and help you focus on them. But they still need that extra dimension of awareness, discernment, and good judgement in the light of circumstances.

 

[3DStudent]

Make the list above and maybe add some Ben Franklin things, and try to do a few minutes of each thing on your list every day. Do that for six months and I guarantee you will not be the same person at the end of that time as at the beginning.

The above is from the Hyperdimensional Politics thread. Out of that list, I always feel I'm weak on sharing my experiences, i.e. posting. But I wanted to comment on applying the Ben Franklin virtues.

So I have since December 1st rotated the thirteen virtues each day to focus on. I have the article on my phone and never printed it out. I would just peak at it in the morning. I still don't remember the order, but have a vague awareness of which one is next.

Very interesting things happen, because the virtues are universal and you're bound to come upon something that represents them throughout a day. So sometimes I did well in applying it. Sometimes I completely failed and did something opposite of it. And all in between. But what really was interesting was when I would forget to check my phone soon after I woke up, and then did something antithetical to the virtue! So I started to check the next day's virtue the night before. Because it kept happening where something would come up and had I had in mind the virtue for the day, I would have responded differently.

But what I want to do now is change it up a bit. I want to customize it. Some of them seem like they can be grouped together: Order, Resolution, Frugality, and Industry; Temperance and Moderation; and Cleanliness and Chastity. Definitely want to keep Humility, so the list gets shortened. But I want to add things that are my own character faults. And have longer descriptions that might point out things I did in the past where things went wrong. Sometimes when I have a decision I will read the whole paragraph and see if there is anything I can latch on to to see how to decide on something.

In particular I would add in my OCD traits and what behaviors make that up. Some good ones I can think of (these are the positive versions because they're virtues) would be: Flexibility, Imperfectionism, Lenience (opposite of control?), Others are right (sounds like a Jordan Peterson virtue), etc.

So yeah, I think customizing it for yourself would be useful. Find your faults, pick their opposite virtues, and turn your weaknesses into strengths.

 

[Rich]

[But what I want to do now is change it up a bit. I want to customize it. Some of them seem like they can be grouped together: Order, Resolution, Frugality, and Industry; Temperance and Moderation; and Cleanliness and Chastity. Definitely want to keep Humility, so the list gets shortened. But I want to add things that are my own character faults. And have longer descriptions that might point out things I did in the past where things went wrong. Sometimes when I have a decision I will read the whole paragraph and see if there is anything I can latch on to to see how to decide on something.

In particular I would add in my OCD traits and what behaviors make that up. Some good ones I can think of (these are the positive versions because they're virtues) would be: Flexibility, Imperfectionism, Lenience (opposite of control?), Others are right (sounds like a Jordan Peterson virtue), etc.

So yeah, I think customizing it for yourself would be useful. Find your faults, pick their opposite virtues, and turn your weaknesses into strengths.]

I'm aware this was written a while back but responding to what 3DStudent wrote seems a pretty relevant place to start this:

I've been interested in Benjamin Franklin for a few years. I can't remember whether it was suggested in person to me to have go at Franlin's Art of Virtues or as forum post. In any event a few years ago I did have a go on paper at his suggestion thirteenvirtues.com
I thought that the idea could work well as an App.
So I started over a few weeks trying to make an app. I didn’t really know what I was doing, having not done it before and used an online “app maker” of sorts that was called Tigzi.com. Unfortunately that website is no longer available and so the few iterations I made are no longer accessible.

I’ve recently restarted the web business that I started over a decade ago that made websites, web hosting for a small number of clients. I’ve also joined a business growth group who are quite successful in the UK. I’ve been slowly putting my website backup and learning about marketing in order to win some clients. Currently it has none.

Past couple of weeks I’ve been learning Facebook marketing. One of the suggestions is to “give” something of value away for free in order to capture new leads that you can then target with more specific marketing campaigns and convert them to new business customers. In order to get this business up and running I’ve been getting a server up and running that was given to me as compensation for an interesting data loss incident. I hired an Indian systems admin company to help with this and noticed that they also have a branch offering web design and mobile app development. I inquired and they said they would be able to create an Android app of this idea.

To give them an idea of that I was asking them to produce I said I was looking for an app similar to something like Lifetick - Online goal setting made simple

Their response was:

Regarding the App development, we can do it with the Android and our development team got the idea about your app development requirements. We got the following idea from your requirements,

• Set a goal
• Include so many tasks under this goal
• Set difficulty level for each tasks
• Mark the tasks when it completes.
• Update the goal status when each tasks completes
• View the statistics of each goal
• Add participants to each goal with particular privileged.
• Set Notes,Alarm,Journals etc

If you want to include anything additional then we can include it upon your guidelines.

Wasn’t expecting such a literal interpretation of “similar to” but at least it shows that they would be able to have a go at this.

I realized I needed to be far more specific about what the requirements of this app would be. So I bought the domain “appofvirtue.com” where I will start to put together the basic idea and functionality of this app.

Reading 3D Student "to add things that are my own character faults. And have longer descriptions that might point out things I did in the past where things went wrong"

I can see that option to “add character fault” could be a feature.

I’m interested if anyone has any thoughts or ideas about the development of this.

 

[3DStudent]

Well, it wasn't that long ago, as I haven't customized the Ben Franklin list yet. Still rotating each one every day. If it were to be 'appified', I'd simply want something like flash cards where you put your title and a short description and it changes every day in a cycle; maybe it's your lock screen. You'd probably want some beta testers to try it out, because it always seems that it's after the release where people think, "You know, this would be better if it did xyz."

 

[Rich]

Well, it wasn't that long ago, as I haven't customized the Ben Franklin list yet. Still rotating each one every day. If it were to be 'appified', I'd simply want something like flash cards where you put your title and a short description and it changes every day in a cycle; maybe it's your lock screen. You'd probably want some beta testers to try it out, because it always seems that it's after the release where people think, "You know, this would be better if it did xyz."

Thanks 3DS. Pleased to say that the site is now live with a background image from Free stock photos · Pexels and using Wordpress with a free theme and possibly use Wordapp plugin. Like your suggestion but please could you give an example of a title and short description for flash card number one.

Like the beta testing idea. Who from where do you think would make a good beta testing cohort?

 

[3DStudent]

It will be for each user to fill in the virtues they are lacking in, where their faults take over. Here's one I'm familiar with:

"Procrastination.
You tend to put things off until the last minute. Do what is urgent first."

I'm not an app developer so I don't have experience with beta testing. I guess you could open it up to the internet or post on a forum. Or just ask friends and family an open ended question like, "If you had an app that would display virtues, what features and functionality would it have to have?"

 

[3DStudent]

"Procrastination.
You tend to put things off until the last minute. Do what is urgent first."

And actually, I put the vice for that one. I think the virtue would be something like Expediency.

 

[Rich]

It will be for each user to fill in the virtues they are lacking in, where their faults take over. Here's one I'm familiar with:

"Procrastination.
You tend to put things off until the last minute. Do what is urgent first."

I'm not an app developer so I don't have experience with beta testing. I guess you could open it up to the internet or post on a forum. Or just ask friends and family an open ended question like, "If you had an app that would display virtues, what features and functionality would it have to have?"

Yes, sounds good. I think it would just be one of those to try and see how it goes.

Yes, procrastination is a good one for this type of thing. It is something most people are aware of and I'm sure something they would like to improve upon.

And actually, I put the vice for that one. I think the virtue would be something like Expediency.

Thanks. That's helpful. Not a word one hears too often but I shall expedite your suggestions! :)

 

[Rich]

OK. Very pleased to announce that the App of Virture is just about to go live and is available in the App Store AppOfVirtue Self-development - Apps on Google Play
Still a few things to do to organise correct payments, FaceBook page and I haven't actually tried the latest version on my Android device! :) So it is going to take time to get properly rolling. Will have to do marketing and promotional work but so far I'm very excited to get this developed and for people to have the opportuity to try it! :)

 

[3DStudent]

OK. Very pleased to announce that the App of Virture is just about to go live and is available in the App Store AppOfVirtue Self-development - Apps on Google Play

I know you've just launched it, but could you include more of a description of how the app works? And pictures of the how the app works, settings screens, etc. on the play store page?

 

[Rich]

could you include more of a description of how the app works? And pictures of the how the app works, settings screens, etc. on the play store page?

Yes I can do that and will be done. There's a few things I need to do first for the developers to properly launch it. I think they are having difficulty logging into Facebook developers page. I am new to all this so find the number of different platforms involved quite confusing at times. But thanks for suggestion, will make it so! :)

 

[Rich]

Just to add, My developer says "I have conveyed the message to the designer to include more information on how the app works in play store section. It will be updated soon. " So thanks for the suggestion and see how it develops :)

 

[Alma.Innovadora]

How about adding Putin in there too? At least for me he is a great example in many aspects and especially in his interactions with others and how disciplined he is with himself. He is alive too and so you can watch and learn from him in action every day, which has a lot of benefits as well. Plus you can regularly try to put yourself into his shoes and see how trivial and pathetic your own little problems really are, compared to the responsibility he has to shoulder every waking minute.

Looking at it from that point of view, how about if for those who find it difficult to follow the discipline through annotations, they also observe with great attention the virtues that other people have developed? people who make us project our shadows even.

For example, I am very impressed by the will and discipline of a homeless person to control himself and not to steal or kill in order to survive. To not take his own life without giving up even when he has nothing.

I am amazed by my mother's virtue of being temperamental, but to get her anger out of her head from one second to the next, so that the fight does not escalate to greater levels. I tend to give my anger the run-around.

I am amazed at the constancy of a liar, her uninterrupted focus on the goal she is pursuing.

I have been amazed at how even the most villainous person I have ever met can remain calm and not get carried away by his emotions, in fact we see it every day.

I don't know, but it makes me think of those things that soulless beings copy from those that do have souls. It's as if they emulate the best of the opposite polarity.