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Why is Virtue out of fashion? Why is it no longer an ideal to live by? Why don't we find more virtuous people? Why don't we have more people whose values have high standards that strive towards human excellence?
The virtues of confidence, of honesty, of goodness. Our values of greed, selfishness and our trauma of what has happened have created this world that is less ideal.
What is virtue after all? What is vice?
What we must envy the most about the religious is this code of conduct that is high on virtue and a value system that supports this virtue. Will the legal system replace it?
Virtue is a net negative unless others act in the same way? What's the point of being honest if others are going to cheat you? Isn't it better to be selfish and greedy to have a better life today? The system rewards those that are selfish and greedy and gives them a better life?
Is perhaps heaven and hell, god and the devil, built out of the worlds that come into existence because of these values? Is our choice to be more selfish and greedy a path towards a hellish world? Not something for the afterlife but something we see before we die if we are smart enough to see it?
I continued this discussion on Virtue with AI, Claude Sonnet 4.6 and ultimately concluded that being virtuous is the better path, not out of divine authority or meta-physics but of the consequences to our worlds of a non-virtuous path.
Virtue and Excellence are out of fashion and we must revive these as a way of living while preserving individual freedom. Can we still live for money and status or is it time to change them? These must remain as they are important to a better and fuller life but we must transcend it.
We are entering a world where character will matter more. And a defining feature of a character is its virtues, its values, and with growing weight, its taste.