What Are Your Cardinal Virtues?
While I don’t believe in normative ethics, and I see rather limited use of even subjective morality, in practice I find that I, and most others, live according to strong heuristics that loosely align with virtue ethics. But what’s fun about modern virtue ethics is that we all get to decide what virtues are valuable to us.
Plato, in The Republic, recognized four virtues (prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance) as the ideal ones for the functioning of individuals and society. These traits were later incorporated into Catholic doctrine, most notably by Thomas Aquinas as the “cardinal virtues.” Faith, hope, and charity were later added as the “theological virtues.”
Many people still recognize the classical virtues as primary, but some people have other lists. Different religions propose different virtues. Benjamin Franklin had thirteen. Eliezer Yudkowsky proposed twelve virtues of rationality. Other psychologists, philosophers, and writers have their own lists. At heart, nearly everyone has their own personal virtues they strive to live by and respect in others. Below is my list. These are not the only traits I value, but they are the ones I value above all else. I don’t delude myself into thinking that any of these things matters in a cosmic sense, but I find that my life is better when I live these values and seek out others who do the same, and I use them as strong heuristics to guide my behavior.
Honesty. Unvarnished, undaunted, unbroken honesty. The kind where you go well beyond the ethical injunction not to lie and actively communicate what you really believe. This is the most important virtue and informs all of the others. It starts with honesty toward yourself and extends to others. Being honest with yourself is the only way to live virtuously because otherwise it’s too easy to delude yourself into thinking you’re already doing it. Most failures of virtue are simply an inability to take an honest look at ourselves. I reject the Kantian idea that dishonesty is always wrong and I don’t fully subscribe to radical honesty, but I do think that being completely honest, including giving accurate impressions, avoiding being misleading, and correcting mistaken assumptions, is a requirement for a trusting relationship. I also recognize that everybody lies about everything all of the time. I try hard to be the exception and practice scrupulous honesty with most people. I only choose dishonesty when I’m in a situation where trust isn’t a viable option.
Bravery. Virtuous behavior takes courage. Most people will extoll the virtues of honesty until practicing it would mean an iota of conflict or social awkwardness. Then it is abandoned. We have a whole concept of “white lies” meant to excuse this kind of deception. Likewise, almost all of the other virtues on this list can be frightening to actually live by. Every society has a lot of foolish or counterproductive norms, and it can be terrifying to reject them. Living your best life requires facing that fear. A lot of fear is reasonable, but humans have strong biases toward loss aversion. My favorite people are able to overcome that bias and make the right choice even if they’re afraid.
Reason. Reason is the best tool we have to understand and affect the world. Rationality is how we fight the forces of ignorance and confusion. Collectively, reason is the engine driving human progress. It is the thing that allows us to correct our mistakes, build upon previous discoveries, and increase our total knowledge. Individually, good decisions are generally reasonable ones. Most of the good things in my life are the result of thinking rationally and making decisions based on the rigorous application of reason. On the other hand, the most destructive people I’ve known make their decisions based on intuitions about what feels true. When someone demonstrates rational thinking, it makes it much easier for me to trust that they won’t believe false things about me or my loved ones based on flimsy evidence, and that I can rely on them to make decisions that will mostly work out well, or at least represent the best they could do given their knowledge at the time.
Humor. The most foolproof way to earn my friendship is to make me laugh. Laughter is one of the greatest joys one can experience. Shared sense of humor also signals shared values and experiences. Humor is the application of a certain level of cognitive dissonance. If we feel a similar amount of dissonance from the same things, it shows that our beliefs and the amount we care about them are comparable. But that’s mostly cope. I just really like to laugh, and I like to be around people who laugh with me.
Individual Freedom. Ever since I was a toddler, I’ve hated feeling controlled. I immediately try to break out of any box you put me in. I reject all paternalism on my behalf, as I am the only one who has any right to decide what’s best for me. I resist efforts to lock me into unnecessary commitments, as commitment is just a tool to limit someone’s freedom of action. Likewise, I have a strong distaste for controlling others. I want everyone to make their own decisions and respect the ability of others to do the same, and I want those decisions to have as few constraints as possible. My greatest wish from my relationships is to empower others, and my favorite people feel the same.
Independence. Part of making my own decisions is having the skills, knowledge, and wisdom to make good decisions and to execute them properly. I don’t expect other people to share my goals or values, so if a certain outcome is important to me, then I make sure I am able to bring it about on my own. I avoid being an NPC. Similarly, my favorite people have a high degree of agency and take responsibility for having their own needs met. We see our relationships as welcome additions to our independent flourishing, but not substitutes. We value our own and others’ independence highly and don’t try to undermine it through codependence, extracting commitments, or manipulation.
Hedonism. Despite this being a whole post about living virtuously, I don’t ultimately care about being virtuous. These are just heuristics I use to improve my life and find like-minded people. What I really care about is pleasure, and I try to have as much of it as possible. Under certain conditions, I’m pro-wireheading. But until then, I want to have as good a time as possible. I want to eat all the best food, have all the best sex, see all the most beautiful things and people, hear all the best music, take all the best drugs, and have all the most fun experiences. Life is ultimately meaningless, but if there is any goal to life, it’s to have the best time possible for myself and my loved ones in the time we have. I try to always be having a good time, and if I’m not, my impulse is to hit ‘da bricks.
Efficiency. This is probably the autist is me, but I find it beautiful when things can be done with as little cost as possible in terms of resources, time, stress, energy, etc. I’m always trying to do things in the most efficient way possible, whether than means automating tasks, finding better routes, rearranging my living space, or reconfiguring my whole life. I take a small amount of mental damage every time I have to throw away leftovers or have to stand around waiting because I’ve mistimed something. I take a sublime joy in preparing a meal where multiple dishes are ready at the same time or using every part of a piece of lumber on a project. I consider the fact that the same amount of hot dogs and buns are now contained in a package a glorious victory for humanity. Factorio and Satifactory are two of my favorite games, and I’ve spent hundred of (hedonically valuable!) hours on both. If I have an aesthetic, this is it.
Disagreeableness. Nothing bores me faster than a person with nothing controversial to say. The normie impulse not to offend is the enemy of engagement, novelty, and dynamism. Everything out of the ordinary (and thus most things worth doing or discussing) carries a substantial risk of offending or bothering someone. The most interesting people not only value disagreement, but fully embody it. When 100 people stand, they sit. When a crowd moves one way, they go the opposite. There is a failure mode of hipster contrarianism, where the act of nonconformity is seen as an end in itself (“I liked it before it went mainstream”), but that’s theater. Virtuous disagreeableness happens when you can’t help but see the flaws in the usual and popular, and chart your own course. The type of disagreeableness I value is the intersection of reason, independence, and bravery. It is the autonomy to look past the crowd, the rationality to decide which way is better, and the courage to follow it.
Equanimity. AKA chill the fuck out. Ultimately, nothing is that important. Worrying, stressing, or having anxiety are mostly counterproductive. Even if bad things happen, usually nothing is as bad as you think it will be. When things don’t go as planned, I just pivot and make a new plan, and it’s usually fine. Also, the most annoying type of person is someone who has strong preferences about everything. When there’s a conflict among friends, it makes sense to default to whoever has the strongest preference. The problem is, if someone has strong preferences about everything, they always win. Strong preferences are for a handful of very important things. For everything else, I try to relax about it and wish others would too.